December 30, 2005

Why Jerry? Why Now?

War Resister Jerry Texiero,
the Marine Corps and Who Betrayed Whom?

“Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”
Henry Kissinger as quoted in the book “Kiss the Boys Goodbye


Just when was it we in this nation lost our ability to choose if and when we would be willing to kill another human being, or be killed ourselves? When was it that following the “rules” became more important than following what is right? Case in point: Jerry Texiero; who as an active duty Marine in 1965 refused to deploy to Vietnam and took off (For details see: Marine Refuser From 40 Years Ago Faces Court Martial). 40 years later the Marine Corps has Jerry incarcerated at the Marine Corps Base, Camp Lejeune, N.C.

Why would the Marine Corps take so much interest in Jerry Texiero and want to court-martial him 40 years later, when we all know for absolute fact the ‘American War On Vietnam’ was contrived, a war crime on a grand scale, and a war in some ways that has never ended? After all, the Agent Orange we “salted” the earth with in Vietnam is still killing large numbers of people there, as well as here with veterans of that mess; thousands have been and still are being killed by all the unexploded ordinance and land mines all over the country, especially in Quang Tri Province.

The Marines want to court-martial Jerry to send a message to the growing number of active duty military, who are becoming resistive to their participation in this new war of choice in Iraq, that if they are unwilling to deploy to Iraq, they will suffer the same fate as Sgt Kevin Benderman, who is doing 15 months at the RCF (or Gulag if you prefer as do I); If they take off, they will be hunted for the rest of their lives, like Jerry Texiero.

The military, the Department of War and the Pentagon are in serious manpower trouble and they need to make examples of people for the purpose of intimidation and coercion—make them afraid to do anything but “follow orders”; to send a loud message to others so they will not follow the example of people of conscience. That’s why Sgt Benderman is in jail, and why the Marine Corps wants to court-martial Jerry Texiero.

Two different men separated by 40 years; two different created wars and both are being “beat up” by an out of control Pentagon and Military for their refusal to be used for rather nefarious purposes. And all due to the fact both men refused to be turned into mindless obedient killers—or dead in the process, in mind and spirit if not body. They have refused to used as the “pawns” as stated by Kissinger among many, many others.

Recruitment is down even with the lowered enlistment standards; officers are leaving in bigger numbers as are enlisted ranks’ divorces are soaring as a result of extended and repeated deployments to Iraq; thousands of active duty military have followed in the footsteps of the active duty war-resisters during the war on Vietnam and have left the country; suicides in just the Marine Corps alone since the invasion of Iraq has increased by over 29%, far above not only the national average but the increased overall military average as well.

I have received many emails behind the story about Jerry Texiero saying that while the War on Vietnam may have been wrong, Jerry still volunteered to join and due to that he had an obligation to follow the “rules” and go to Vietnam regardless of what he though or how he felt about the war he was being ordered to go into. My reply to that thinking is simply this—Hogwash!

When we enlist in the military, yes there are rules that must be obeyed and followed. No problem with that. Without that the military would simply fall apart, I realized that (after all, I did spend over 4 years in the Marine Corps myself). However, that all changes when it comes to being sent into a war that up front we know to be wrong, illegal, and by definition a war crime; A War Against the Peace.

When it comes to following orders to kill or be killed, every single human being has the inalienable right to choose whether or not they will be a participant in those killing fields! To tag or label someone as a “criminal” for making the conscience choice not to kill is absurd. Simply “following orders” does not relieve one of the responsibilities of their actions, period. That is all compounded when the war you are being ordered into has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the security or defense of this nation; which is what we all swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend—this nation. No oath was sworn to be of assistance to “Empire Building” period. Not 40 years ago and surely not today.

It was not Jerry Texiero who broke the faith, it was not Jerry Texiero who betrayed his oath; it was not Jerry Texiero who violated any trust; it was not Jerry Texiero who betrayed honor; it was not Jerry Texiero betrayed anything…it was those in command and control of the nation and the military who broke the faith, who broke trust, who betrayed everyone in uniform and the people of this nation as a whole.

It has been said that free speech does not give a person the right to walk into a crowded theater and yell “fire”. My answer to that has always been—but what if there is a fire? The same principle applies to Jerry and his supposed “rule” breaking; what if the rules are wrong?

The following report/essay, “War Resistance, Amnesty and Exile – Just the Facts” by Harold Jordan, explains in great detail the so-called Amnesty programs initiated in the 70’s by Ford and Carter. I strongly urge you to read it carefully and closely. Harold Jordan also goes into the tremendous numbers of people in uniform who opposed the War On Vietnam with up to 550,000 that went AWOL or deserted (those are the Pentagon’s own numbers).

Why does the Marine Corps want to prosecute Jerry Texiero?—what if the same numbers of people in uniform today do what those in uniform did during the War on Vietnam and start putting down their guns in large numbers? Interesting proposition is it not? Now with so many standing in opposition to this new imperialistic misadventure in Iraq, what if those involved in following the “rules” take their lead from Sgt Kevin Benderman or Jerry Texiero and say no, or just put down their gun and just leave?

No, it was not Jerry Texiero who betrayed anything. It is those who have been and are currently turning our Department of Defense into the Department of War; who for decades has been slowly turning this nation’s military into the U.S. Multinational Corporation’s enforcement arm. Or as Henry Kissinger who was quoted in the book, “Kiss the Boys Goodbye” stated, “Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy.”

..............
Reference:

More info: Tod Ensign, Citizen Soldier (212) 679-2250: citizensoldier1@aol.com

War Resistance, Amnesty and Exile - Just the Facts
by Harold Jordan
http://www.afsc.org/youthmil/conscientious-objection/Vietnam-war-resisters.htm
......................


Jack Dalton is a disabled veteran of the American War on Vietnam and writer that lives in Portland, OR. His blog is Jack’s Straight-Speak and his email address is jack_dalton@comcast.net. He is widely published on the internet and was a contributor to the book, “Neo-Conned! Again!”, Published by Light in the Darkness publications, IHS Press.

 

"Never Again Will One Generation of Veterans Abandon Another"
 (Vietnam Veterans of America)
 
"If they ask you why we died, tell them 'cause our fathers' lied" 
(Rudyard Kipling)

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 01:26:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 29, 2005

The Politics of PTSD

A Political Debate On Stress Disorder
As Claims Rise, VA Takes Stock

By Shankar Vedantam
Washington Post Staff Writer

 

The spiraling cost of post-traumatic stress disorder among war veterans has triggered a politically charged debate and ignited fears that the government is trying to limit expensive benefits for emotionally scarred troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the past five years, the number of veterans receiving compensation for the disorder commonly called PTSD has grown nearly seven times as fast as the number receiving benefits for disabilities in general, according to a report this year by the inspector general of the Department of Veterans Affairs. A total of 215,871 veterans received PTSD benefit payments last year at a cost of $4.3 billion, up from $1.7 billion in 1999 -- a jump of more than 150 percent.

Experts say the sharp increase does not begin to factor in the potential impact of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, because the increase is largely the result of Vietnam War vets seeking treatment decades after their combat experiences. Facing a budget crunch, experts within and outside the Veterans Affairs Department are raising concerns about fraudulent claims, wondering whether the structure of government benefits discourages healing, and even questioning the utility and objectivity of the diagnosis itself.

"On the one hand, it is good that people are reaching out for help," said Jeff Schrade, communications director for the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee. "At the same time, as more people reach out for help, it squeezes the budget further."

Among the issues being discussed, he said, was whether veterans who show signs of recovery should continue to receive disability compensation: "Whether anyone has the political courage to cut them off -- I don't know that Congress has that will, but we'll see."

Much of the debate is taking place out of public sight, including an internal VA meeting in Philadelphia this month. The department has also been in negotiations with the Institute of Medicine over a review of the "utility and objectiveness" of PTSD diagnostic criteria and the validity of screening techniques, a process that could have profound implications for returning soldiers.

The growing national debate over the Iraq war has changed the nature of the discussion over PTSD, some participants said. "It has become a pro-war-versus-antiwar issue," said one VA official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because politics is not supposed to enter the debate. "If we show that PTSD is prevalent and severe, that becomes one more little reason we should stop waging war. If, on the other hand, PTSD rates are low . . . that is convenient for the Bush administration."

As to whether budget issues and politics are playing a role in the agency's review of PTSD diagnosis and treatment, VA spokesman Scott Hogenson said: "The debate is over how to provide the best medical services possible for veterans."

People with PTSD have paralyzing memories of traumatic episodes they experienced or witnessed, a range of emotional problems, and significant impairments in day-to-day functioning. Underlying the political and budget issues, many experts acknowledged, is a broader scientific debate over how best to diagnose trauma-related pathology, what the goal of treatment should be -- even what constitutes trauma.

Harvard psychologist Richard J. McNally argues that the diagnosis equates sexual abuse, car accidents and concentration camps, when they are entirely different experiences: A PTSD diagnosis has become "a way of moral claims-making," he said. "To underscore the reprehensibility of the perpetrator, we say someone has been through a traumatic event."

Chris Frueh, director of the VA clinic in Charleston, S.C., said the department's disability system encourages some veterans to exaggerate symptoms and prolong problems in order to maintain eligibility for benefits.

"We have young men and women coming back from Iraq who are having PTSD and getting the message that this is a disorder they can't be treated for, and they will have to be on disability for the rest of their lives," said Frueh, a professor of public psychiatry at the Medical University of South Carolina. "My concern about the policies is that they create perverse incentives to stay ill. It is very tough to get better when you are trying to demonstrate how ill you are."

Most veterans whom Frueh treats for PTSD are seeking disability compensation, he said. Veterans Affairs uses a sliding scale; veterans who are granted 100 percent disability status receive payments starting at around $2,300 a month. The VA inspector general's report found that benefit payments varied widely in states and said that was because VA centers in some states are more likely to grant veterans 100 percent disability.

Psychiatrist Sally Satel, who is affiliated with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said an underground network advises veterans where to go for the best chance of being declared disabled. The institute organized a recent meeting to discuss PTSD among veterans.

Once veterans are declared disabled, they retain that status indefinitely, Frueh and Satel said. The system creates an adversarial relationship between doctors and patients, in which veterans sometimes take legal action if doctors decline to diagnose PTSD, Frueh said. The clinician added that some patients who really need help never get it because they are unwilling to undergo the lengthy process of qualifying for disability benefits, which often requires them to repeatedly revisit the painful episodes they experienced.

The concern by Frueh and Satel about overdiagnosis and fraud -- what researchers call "false positives" -- has drawn the ire of veterans groups and many other mental health experts.

A far bigger problem is the many veterans who seek help but do not get it or who never seek help, a number of experts said. Studies have shown that large numbers of veterans with PTSD never seek treatment, possibly because of the stigma surrounding mental illness.

"There are periodic false positives, but there are also a lot of false negatives out there," said Terence M. Keane, one of the nation's best-known PTSD researchers, who cited a 1988 study on the numbers of veterans who do not get treatment. "Less than one-fourth of people with combat-related PTSD have used VA-related services."

Larry Scott, who runs the clearinghouse http://www.vawatchdog.org/ , said conservative groups are trying to cut VA disability programs by unfairly comparing them to welfare.

Compensating people for disabilities is a cost of war, he said: "Veterans benefits are like workmen's comp. You went to war. You were injured. Either your body or your mind was injured, and that prevents you from doing certain duties and you are compensated for that."

Scott said Veterans Affairs' objectives were made clear in the department's request to the Institute of Medicine for a $1.3 million study to review how PTSD is diagnosed and treated. Among other things, the department asked the institute -- a branch of the National Academies chartered by Congress to advise the government on science policy -- to review the American Psychiatric Association's criteria for diagnosing PTSD. Effectively, Scott said, Veterans Affairs was trying to get one scientific organization to second-guess another.

PTSD experts summoned to Philadelphia for the two-day internal "expert panel" meeting were asked to discuss "evidence regarding validity, reliability, and feasibility" of the department's PTSD assessment and treatment practices, according to an e-mail invitation obtained by The Washington Post. The goal, the e-mail added, is "to improve clinical exams used to help determine benefit payments for veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

"What they are trying to do is figure out a way not to diagnose vets with PTSD," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center, a veterans advocacy group. "It's like telling a patient with cancer, 'if we tell you, you don't have cancer, then you won't suffer from cancer.' "

Hogenson, the VA spokesman, said the department is not seeking to overturn the established psychiatric criteria for diagnosing PTSD.

"We are reviewing the utility and the objectivity of the criteria . . . and are commenting on the screening instruments used by VA," he said. "We want to make sure what we do for screening comports with the latest information out there."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 08:28:49 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 28, 2005

Never Again Will One Generation of Veterans Abandon Another,..

A Veteran's Iraq Message
 
Upsets Army Recruiters
 
By Monica Davey
 
DULUTH, Minnesota - As those thinking of becoming soldiers arrive on the slushy doorstep of the Army recruiting station here, they cannot miss the message posted in bold black letters on the storefront right next door.

"Remember the Fallen Heroes," the sign reads, and then it ticks off numbers - the number of American troops killed in Iraq, the number wounded, the number of days gone by since this war began.

The sign, put up by a former soldier, has stirred intense, though always polite, debate in this city along the edge of Lake Superior in northeastern Minnesota. In a way, many of the nation's vast and complicated arguments about war are playing out on a single block here, around a simple piece of wood.

The seven military recruiters here, six of whom have themselves served in Iraq, want the sign taken away. "It's disheartening," Staff Sgt. Gary J. Capan, the station's commander, said. "Everyone knows that people are dying in Iraq, but to walk past this on the way to work every day is too much."

But Scott Cameron, a local man who was wounded in the Vietnam War, says his sign should remain. Mr. Cameron volunteers for a candidate for governor of Minnesota whose campaign opened a storefront office next door to the recruiting station, and he has permission to post the message he describes as "not antiwar, but pro-veteran."

"We're still taking casualties from Vietnam, years later," Mr. Cameron said recently. "Is the same thing going to happen again?" Despite the location, he insists that his purpose is not to prevent new recruits from signing up for the Army, but to honor those who made sacrifices. Still, Mr. Cameron also says, "Before they join the military, people better know what they're getting into."

Clashes like this are emerging elsewhere, too, even as the Army wrestles with the challenge of recruiting during a war, a struggle that left it 8 percent shy of its goal to bring in 80,000 new active-duty soldiers in the most recent recruiting year.

Some of the conflicts are part of a growing number of planned "counterrecruiting" efforts by antiwar groups, parents and individuals. They have fought to prevent recruiters from getting access to students' contact information from schools or have set up their own booths near recruiters' at job fairs to tell potential recruits why they should not sign up.

At George Mason University in Virginia, an Air Force veteran was arrested this fall while standing near a recruitment table on campus, wearing a sign that said "recruiters lie." At Kent State University in Ohio, a former marine climbed a recruiter's rock-climbing display in October and unfurled a peace banner.

But some of the debates, like the one here, have played out far more quietly, seeming less staged, more ambiguous and more like the natural edges of the country's debate over war seeping out on their own.

Early this month, State Senator Steve Kelley, a candidate for governor of Minnesota from the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (the Democratic party in Minnesota, whose name is a vestige of its liberal heritage), held a grand opening for his new campaign office along Superior Street, a main thoroughfare in downtown Duluth. When Mr. Cameron, a Kelley volunteer, asked whether he could put his sign up in the window of the office, alongside the collage of campaign posters, Mr. Kelley agreed.

Mr. Cameron, who was shot in Vietnam in 1969 and says he has since undergone 46 operations to repair the damage, said he felt compelled to post his message to remind people of the soldiers now lost. Decades ago, he said, he did not speak his mind about Vietnam because he feared he might harm support for the troops. He is not, he said, "going to be silent again."

Although Mr. Cameron, 55, acknowledged that he opposed the war in Iraq, he insisted that his sign was not about that at all. Its intent, he said, is simple and apolitical: to remember the troops, to care for veterans, to recognize what is being lost each day. "This is for the veterans," he said. "And the way I understand it, this is what we're over there fighting for in the first place - for my right to put a sign right there."

A few days after the opening, the office drew a visit from next door. Sergeant Capan, 31, said his recruiters were upset and wanted the sign removed. One woman who had just returned from duty in Iraq, he said, found the sign especially disconcerting and impersonal. "It was upsetting to veterans who don't look at their friends and colleagues killed as numbers on a list," he said.

In truth, neither side agrees on what precisely the sign is saying. Each sees its message through its own prism.

Sergeant Capan said he wondered why, if Mr. Cameron was truly trying to send a "pro-veterans" message, he had not instead posted a sign listing how many soldiers had returned home from Iraq safely and placed it somewhere else - an Interstate highway, say, or the Capitol. And Mr. Cameron said he suspected that Sergeant Capan's true fear was not so much the well-being of his recruiters as how the sign might deter potential recruits.

Sergeant Capan dismissed that notion. "Overall recruiting is going well, and this sign has not detracted," he said, adding, "Everybody who's joining the Army knows that there are deaths at war."

Elsewhere, it is nearly impossible to gauge how more concerted counterrecruiting efforts have affected military recruiting, if at all, said S. Douglas Smith, a spokesman for Army Recruiting Command at Fort Knox, Ky.

"There's been a good bit of activity this year," Mr. Smith said of the counterrecruiting efforts. "But in terms of impact, it's very hard to say." In this fiscal year, the Army hopes to recruit more than 105,000 active-duty and reserve soldiers by next fall. As of the end of November, Mr. Smith said, the Army was slightly ahead of its year-to-date goals.

Back in Duluth, Mr. Kelley ultimately decided to leave Mr. Cameron's sign alone, despite the Army's request that it be removed.

Mr. Kelley, who describes the centerpiece of his campaign for governor as education, found himself in the awkward position of being thrust into the debate over war, an issue most candidates for state and local offices rarely have to confront.

"In the past, I have taken positions in support of free speech," he said the other day, explaining his decision to let the sign remain. "And I thought if I'm going to try to be consistent about free speech, how could I tell Scott to take the sign down?"

Since news of the sign was reported in local newspapers, response has been mixed. A woman from Missouri had two pizzas delivered to reward Sergeant Capan's recruiters, while a veteran wrote to say that the sergeant needed "psychological screening" for even suggesting the removal of a disabled veteran's tribute to "his fallen brothers and sisters."

Mr. Cameron, meanwhile, says he has been asked to make copies of his sign (which he had made for $100 at a local sign company) and is thinking of marketing them.

For now, the neighbors on Superior Street have agreed to disagree. An offering of cookies by Mr. Cameron was not accepted, Sergeant Capan said, but Sergeant Capan insisted that relations on the street remained polite nonetheless.

"We're going to move on," he said. "We're soldiers."

 

© 2005 New York Times Company

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK 

"Never Again Will One Generation of Veterans Abandon Another"

(Vietnam Veterans of America)

 "If they ask you why we died, tell them 'cause our fathers' lied"

  (Rudyard Kipling)

 
Posted by Choice America Network at 09:40:32 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 25, 2005

Contact: Citizen Soldier,...

Marine Refuser
 
 From 40 Years Ago
 
 Faces Court Martial

by Tod Ensign
(forward by Jack Dalton)
 
Give me a break! The Marine Corps has got to have better thing to do than try and court-martial a man for refusing to deploy to Vietnam 40 years ago. Especially considering we know for fact we were lied and decieved into that war ON Vietnam. Sound familiar? Does the Marine Corps really want Jerry Texiero, or are they just trying to use him as an example? Something todays military has gotten real nasty about doing. Please take the time to use the numbers Tod Ensign, Citizen Soldier, has provided. I know I will be. -- Jack Dalton.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *     

  More info: Tod Ensign, Citizen Soldier (212) 679-2250   citizensoldier1@aol.com
 
 

THE CASE

  Jerry Texiero, 65, of Tarpon Springs, FL, refused orders to deploy to Vietnam in July 1965.  His decision was based on his opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam.

  For the next four decades, Jerry lived peacefully, spending the last twenty years in Tarpon Springs, FL. There, he ran a business that dealt in classic cars and more recently sold boats at a shipyard. Jerry had been placed on probation for a larceny conviction which, he claims, arose from the corrupt dealings of a partner in the classic car business. (Jerry later scrupulously repaid customers for their losses).

  In August, 2005, a Marine AWOL apprehension unit working in the Pentagon discovered Jerry's current status when it used FBI files to match personal data from his Florida conviction with his military file. He was arrested as an AWOL by local police on August 14 and placed in solitary confinement in the Pinellas County (FL) jail.

  On December 14, 2005 Jerry was sent to the Marine brig at Camp LeJeune, N.C. Marine officials have told Jerry's supporters that it is weighing a court martial for desertion, which could result in a five year prison sentence. 

  Citizen Soldier Legal Director, Tod Ensign has written Lejeune Commanding General Dickinson asking; "Why are scarce Marine resources being squandered on the prosecution of a senior citizen who's only 'crime' is refusing to fight a war that today is universally discredited?  Or is the Corps warning Marines in Iraq that they will pursue deserters to the grave?"

  Concerned citizens may want to support Jerry by letting Members of Congress know about this case and by directly protesting to either: Base Commander Major General Robert Dickinson, or Colonel Wunder, Staff Judge Advocate, at (910) 451-1113 (base locator) or write to either at: PSC Box 2004, Camp LeJeune, NC 28542.

  Vietnam Veterans and others plan to organize lawful protests in support of Jerry and all resisters on or near Camp LeJeune in the next few weeks.

Jack's "Straight-Speak" 

 
 
    

 

 

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 12:05:43 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 21, 2005

The Impeachable Offense

Bush's Snoopgate

The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times'; eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper's editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn't just out of concern about national security.
by Jonathan Alter
 

Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action.

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President Kennedy in 1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times story by Tad Szulc on the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times editor Turner Catledge that he wished the paper had printed the whole story because it might have spared him such a stunning defeat in Cuba.

This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason—and less out of genuine concern about national security—that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.

© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 
Posted by Choice America Network at 09:09:35 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 19, 2005

Dirty Tricks,...

It's Dirty Tricks All Over Again
 
by Arianna Huffington
 

Reading the new reports that the Pentagon is conducting surveillance of peaceful antiwar groups and protests, I feel like I'm having a bad '60s flashback.

But this time, I'm not seeing psychedelic lights and thinking I can fly. I'm remembering how the Defense Department aggressively infiltrated antiwar and civil rights groups during that era, spying and compiling files on more than 100,000 Americans — and how J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI used every dirty trick in the "black bag operation" handbook to sabotage the antiwar and civil rights movements.

Now it looks like those ugly days of government paranoia and officially sanctioned lawbreaking might be making a comeback. A secret Defense Department database obtained by NBC News and the Washington Post this week indicates that Pentagon intelligence and local law enforcement agencies are using the guise of the war on terror to keep an eye on the constitutionally protected activities of antiwar activists.

The Pentagon appears to be doing so despite the existence of strict legal restrictions on the military maintaining records on domestic civilian political activity. According to NBC, the database includes "at least 20 references to U.S. citizens," while other documents indicate that "vehicle descriptions" are also being noted and analyzed.

And it's not just the Pentagon. Documents recently obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force has been recording the names and license plate numbers of peaceful antiwar protesters.

With apologies to Buffalo Springfield: There's something happening here … and what it is is painfully clear.

The Bush administration has a long and ignominious history of rhetorical intimidation, routinely equating dissent with a lack of patriotism and a lack of support for our troops. Now, however, it seems to be moving on to actual intimidation.

No one denies that in the post-9/11 world, the need for greater domestic intelligence gathering, processing and sharing is paramount.

Indeed, don't we all wish someone in authority had been paying attention to the Phoenix memo and the one from FBI Agent Coleen Rowley before the 2001 attacks?

The national security agencies responsible for the Pentagon database were originally tasked with creating "a domestic law enforcement database that includes information related to potential terrorist threats." This intelligence-gathering system is a tangle of acronyms — including CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity), TALON (Threat and Local Observation Notice), and NORTHCOM (U.S. Northern Command) — but they are all geared toward helping the government keep ahead of terrorists.

There is even a U.S. Army-operated 800 number for reporting suspicious activity, 1-800-CALL-SPY. I kid you not, dial it and you will hear: "You've reached the U.S. Army Call-Spy Hotline….Please leave a detailed message of the incident you wish to report. Your call is important. If you wish to be contacted, please leave your name and telephone number…."

But, as usual with this administration, these agencies now appear to be overreaching, moving away from identifying "possible terrorist pre-attack activities" and heading into the murky waters of spying on U.S. citizens who are doing nothing more than voicing their objections to U.S. policy.

President Bush and many of his closest associates have always positioned themselves as a counterpoint to the '60s counterculture. (Indeed, Bush was so detached from it that he once claimed he had no memory of antiwar activity at Yale during his time there — even though the campus was a hotbed of student protest when he graduated in 1968.) And now his administration has adopted the worst domestic intelligence practices of the '60s establishment.

That's why Congress needs to flex its oversight muscle — and make sure that the tragic mistakes of the past are not repeated.

It wasn't that long ago that Hoover's notorious COINTELPRO program was illegally infiltrating Students for a Democratic Society and setting out to destroy the reputations and lives of "Negro radicals" such as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Our government lied, cheated, harassed, intimidated, burglarized, vandalized, framed and spread false rumors — to say nothing of keeping voluminous files on everyone from John Lennon to Lucille Ball — in an effort to quash legitimate dissent against the Vietnam War and the racist practices of the South.

We can't let it happen again.



Arianna Huffington is editor of huffingtonpost.com.

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 01:03:47 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 18, 2005

No Longer a Prediction,...

 

Internet Censorship
By Wayne Madsen  

 
http://waynemadsenreport.com/
12-9-5
 
 http://www.rense.com/general69/intercens.htm
 


Internet censorship. It did not happen overnight but slowly came to America's shores from testing grounds in China and the Middle East.

Progressive and investigative journalist web site administrators are beginning to talk to each other about it, e-mail users are beginning to understand why their e-mail is being disrupted by it, major search engines appear to be complying with it, and the low to equal signal-to-noise ratio of legitimate e-mail and spam appears to be perpetuated by it.

In this case, "it," is what privacy and computer experts have long warned about: massive censorship of the web on a nationwide and global scale. For many years, the web has been heavily censored in countries around the world. That censorship continues at this very moment. Now it is happening right here in America.

The agreement by the Congress to extend an enhanced Patriot Act for another four years will permit the political enforcers of the Bush administration, who use law enforcement as their proxies, to further clamp censorship controls on the web.

Internet Censorship: The Warning Signs Were Not Hidden

The warning signs for the crackdown on the web have been with us for over a decade. The Clipper chip controversy of the 90s, John Poindexter's Total Information Awareness (TIA) system pushed in the aftermath of 9-11, backroom deals between the Federal government and the Internet service industry, and the Patriot Act have ushered in a new era of Internet censorship, something just half a decade ago computer programmers averred was impossible given the nature of the web. They were wrong, dead wrong.

Take for example of what recently occurred when two journalists were taking on the phone about a story that appeared on Google News. The story was about a Christian fundamentalist move in Congress to use U.S. Military force in Sudan to end genocide in Darfur. The story appeared on the English Google News site in Qatar. But the very same Google News site when accessed simultaneously in Washington, DC failed to show the article. This censorship is accomplished by geolocation filtering: the restriction or modifying of web content based on the geographical region of the user. In addition to countries, such filtering can now be implemented for states, cities, and even individual IP addresses.

With reports in the Swedish newspaper Svensa Dagbladet today that the United States has transmitted a Homeland Security Department "no fly" list of 80,000 suspected terrorists to airport authorities around the world, it is not unreasonable that a "no [or restricted] surfing/emailing" list has been transmitted to Internet Service Providers around the world. The systematic disruptions of web sites and email strongly suggests that such a list exists.

News reports on CIA prisoner flights and secret prisons are disappearing from Google and other search engines like Alltheweb as fast as they appear. Here now, gone tomorrow is the name of the game.

Google is systematically failing to list and link to articles that contain explosive information about the Bush administration, the war in Iraq, Al Qaeda, and U.S. Political scandals. But Google is not alone in working closely to stifle Internet discourse. America On Line, Microsoft, Yahoo and others are slowly turning the Internet into an information superhighway dominated by barricades, toll booths, off-ramps that lead to dead ends, choke points, and security checks.

America On Line is the most egregious is stifling Internet freedom. A former AOL employee noted how AOL and other Internet Service Providers cooperate with the Bush administration in censoring email. The Patriot Act gave federal agencies the power to review information to the packet level and AOL was directed by agencies like the FBI to do more than sniff the subject line. The AOL term of service (TOS) has gradually been expanded to grant AOL virtually universal power regarding information. Many AOL users are likely unaware of the elastic clause, which says they will be bound by the current TOS and any TOS revisions which AOL may elect at any time in the future. Essentially, AOL users once agreed to allow the censorship and non-delivery of their email.

Microsoft has similar requirements for Hotmail as do Yahoo and Google for their respective e-mail services.

There are also many cases of Google's search engine failing to list and link to certain information. According to a number of web site administrators who carry anti-Bush political content, this situation has become more pronounced in the last month. In addition, many web site administrators are reporting a dramatic drop-off in hits to their sites, according to their web statistic analyzers. Adding to their woes is the frequency at which spam viruses are being spoofed as coming from their web site addresses.

Government disruption of the political side of the web can easily be hidden amid hyped mainstream news media reports of the latest "boutique" viruses and worms, reports that have more to do with the sales of anti-virus software and services than actual long-term disruption of banks, utilities, or airlines.

Internet Censorship in the US: No Longer a Prediction

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Cisco Systems have honed their skills at Internet censorship for years in places like China, Jordan, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam, and other countries. They have learned well. They will be the last to admit they have imported their censorship skills into the United States at the behest of the Bush regime. Last year, the Bush-Cheney campaign blocked international access to its web site -- www.georgewbush.com -- for unspecified "security reasons."

Only those in the Federal bureaucracy and the companies involved are in a position to know what deals have been made and how extensive Internet censorship has become. They owe full disclosure to their customers and their fellow citizens.
 
 


http://waynemadsenreport.com/
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 14:01:26 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 13, 2005

Men of Conscience,...

 

 

 

What Peace Needs

 

 

Monica Benderman

 

The Regional Corrections Facility at Ft. Lewis, Washington is vintage World War II.  The windows are cracked and can’t be closed.  It’s below freezing on most nights now. I could go on – but what good will it do in this country of warmongers, idealistic pacifists, and evangelicals?  Nothing like love for a cause – any cause – as long as it’s impersonal enough that everyone can remain detached, can share their emotions through the war cries and protest chants, staring out into a field of people whose gazes are just as vacant as the featured speaker of the day.

The military prison is filled with the usual criminal element, narcotics and alcohol abusers, thieves, and child molesters.  It has been said that the best chance of parole from this facility is for the child molesters – tells you a lot about our society – the society that professes such a high moral standard that we can dare to invade other countries to bring that same standard to their shores

In among the criminals, sleeping on a three inch thick mattress, sitting in plastic chairs staring at the walls all day, and waiting for months at a time to have his request for a call to his attorney fulfilled, is one who is furthest from the criminal element, a man the Anti-War movement lovingly refers to as a “Prisoner of Conscience.”  Labels, always the labels.  Sgt. Kevin Benderman stands for everything that should be right in this country.  These men stand for liberty, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, FREEDOM to be themselves and live as they choose.

This “Prisoner of Conscience” is jailed because we have been told that we must fear him, just as we fear those who have committed crimes against society, the rapists, molesters and thieves who victimize with their lack of moral principles.  Our government has told us we must fear the Conscientious Objectors because they have stood against an illegal war of aggression.   Our government, threatened by Sgt. Benderman’s moral stand to defend humanity and our constitution, has imprisoned him in the hopes that the slamming of the rusty, mildewed bars will silence his message of truth.

I know I will get letters, and I know I will anger many.  To quote a rather public common citizen of this country, I say “Bring It On.”  It’s time for America to face what it has refused to see – itself in its death throes. 

War will never bring peace.  War will only bring one more generation who will seek war as a solution.  We hear repeatedly that victory must be achieved in this war for us to move closer to peace, and that victory means the end to all those who are our enemy now fighting against us.  Where is the victory in killing?  We are only creating more enemies, and the time without war that will follow will not be a time of peace.

That time will be a time of regrowth, when the wounds of the generations to come out of this war lay quiet and fester.  When the anger at the crimes of humanity suffered at our hands is fed with the education of lessons learned in this most recent battle. In time, when we least expect it, the fetid smell of a people no longer willing to live with the guilt of the atrocities they allowed us to commit on their lives, will creep across the oceans and slither across our shores.  Our new generation, lulled to sleep with the false sense of peace brought on by an illusion of superiority, will find itself shocked and awed that the security we thought we had was nothing more than a blanket now burning at the foot of a 100 story building built to represent success at the edge of the ghettoes we drive home to each night. 

We cannot win at war.  No one wins in war. Calling Sgt. Benderman a “coward” because he refuses to be a mercenary for men who do not have the courage to defend themselves, does nothing except show a person’s true colors.  Relying on someone else to die so that people can sit on their sofas and grow fat on beer and chips, justifying their right by claiming they pay taxes to this country, is about as worthless an excuse as “men” can have.

Pacifism without a commitment will not achieve peace; it is a cop-out – no different than those evangelicals who go to church each week waiting in prayer believing that someone is coming to save them. Protest marches on weekend afternoons that have been planned for months so that those we speak against will be prepared with cleverly scripted comebacks, are not the way to achieve Peace.  Singing the praises of the “prisoners of conscience” who wait in cells for someone to finally see the light, but not demonstrating our commitment to their stance in our own lives, is not the way to achieve Peace.  The songs may be great for morale, but whose?   Who benefits by songs for a cause when we forget that the “cause” has men like Sgt. Benderman as its foundation.  This man speaks the truth so strongly, because he is a soldier who has been to war, and yet sits behind bars for the fear he instills in the administration when he says he will no longer be party to their destructive ways.  How can we fight to end a war, and not fight as strongly to end the wrongful imprisonment of a man who dares to speak the truth for all of us?

 

Sgt. Benderman is wrongfully imprisoned, not for doing great things, but for doing the right thing, and standing against a corrupt system whose administration fears the statement his actions speak.   He is also imprisoned because his country has done so little to demand that the principles of our constitution be upheld.  He is imprisoned because the citizens of this country have shirked their responsibility by believing the work of Peace was not their job.  The citizens of this country have failed, by NOT demanding that moral conscience be the foundation of all of our actions.

 

He is told how great a stand he is taking and encouraged to continue, and to know that the difficulties he is facing are worth the struggle for the manner in which he is leading others to the truth, all the while people on both sides take full advantage of their “freedom”, taking for granted exactly what the word freedom really means. 

 

Peace takes work; does anybody know what that means?  Peace takes passion.  Peace requires that we allow ourselves to feel – pain, hurt, agony, loss, heartache, rage, hate. 

Peace requires that we act on those feelings with control, and patience.  Peace requires that we never let our enemy know we’re coming. 

 

Peace requires that we fight the terrorist tactics of those who would claim that war is the answer by using every passionate means we have to keep ourselves from acting on the pain, the hurt, the agony and the rage with anything less than absolute moral courage. 

 

Peace requires a trust in knowing that rifles and tanks are no match for an adherence to strong ethical principles, the weapons of moral courage that bear NO resemblance to loaded guns. 

 

Peace requires that we look into the eyes of another and see their pain, but also feel their love.  Peace requires that we know ourselves, that we look in the mirror and see who we are, our strengths and our weaknesses.

 

Peace requires that we ACT – that WE act, not that we rely on the actions of another to represent what we would do if we had the courage.  Peace requires that we act as a non-violent, yet aggressive consensus against what our government as done in our name. 

 

Peace requires that we all have the courage to face the reality of this dying country, and nurture its goodness in the ways that haven’t been for generations, so that its spirit knows we care enough to fight for its soul, its heart – and defend its life by living up to the ideals on which it was founded, each of us in our individual lives. 

 

Peace requires that we look at those men and women so impersonally labeled as “prisoners of conscience” and know their names, and know what they are fighting for.  Peace requires that we know in our hearts that we must give with as much passion for life as they have, and not in words alone. 

 

Can you bear the cold to be honestly free?  Can you bear a Christmas without the warmth of a Yule log, without the comfort of a family around you, without the voices of angelic carolers at your door? 

 

Can you dare to look at your enemy square in the eye, lay down your loaded weapon and honor life, putting your enemy’s life above death, trusting your strength enough to know that you can lead him to Peace?

 

If you cannot, then you do not deserve to say that you fight for Peace, and the strength of the “Prisoners of Conscience” will indeed be something to fear. 

 

Sgt. Kevin Benderman is a wrongfully confined as a “prisoner of conscience” for refusing to participate in war.  Please visit www.BendermanDefense.org and www.BendermanTimeline.com to learn more about his actions.

His wife, Monica may be reached at mdawnb@coastalnow.net

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 02:46:23 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

December 03, 2005

No Protection from Bush's Uranium Crossing U.S.to Kansas

Where Do You Bring

 A 140,000 Pound Chicken to Roost?

 Nolan K. Anderson

 

"George Bush has started an ill-timed and disastrous war under false
pretenses by lying to the American people and to the Congress; he has
run a budget surplus into a severe deficit; he has consistently and
unconscionably favored the wealthy and corporations over the rights and
needs of the population; he has destroyed trust and confidence in, and
good will toward, the United States around the globe; he has ignored
global warming to the world's detriment; he has wantonly broken our
treaty obligations; he has condoned torture of prisoners; he has
attempted to create a theocracy in the United States; he has appointed
incompetent cronies to positions of vital national importance.
Now, would someone please give him a blow job so we can impeach him?"

 . . . Anonymous

The Pentagon is bringing some of its chickens home to roost.  These 70-ton, battlefield damaged Abrams tanks are being brought home - some to Kansas - for (repair? - disposal?).  Who knows?  Do the good people of Kansas even know that they have been selected for the honor of getting a really close look at these possibly radioactive relics of war?  The people of Kansas should be aware that many of the damages to our Abrams tanks in Iraq have been the result of "friendly fire".  "Friendly fire" is especially dangerous because of the possibility of radioactive contamination.  Since the enemy does not have DU weaponry, a badly damaged tank could well be the result of radioactive contamination by our own troops.  Since few case studies of this type contamination have been released by the Pentagon because of the possibility of setting a precedence for medical claims by our veterans, there is probably little chance for civilians to identify the "hit" these returning "chickens" took.  These returning relics need a radioactivity scan from an independent, highly regarded civilian agency for the safety of the people of Kansas and those who have been involved with the transport of these monsters across the United States.  What a shock it would be to learn that Senator Pat Robertson of Kansas, who provides regular coverage for the President's often exposed ass, doesn't know about this dubious honor being bestowed upon his state.  Even worse, suppose he does know but hasn't warned his constituents about the possible infinite radioactive contamination hazard posed by these killing machines.

We Americans have successfully closed our eyes to the environmental catastrophe being visited upon Iraq by the United States through the use of depleted uranium (DU) in Iraq.  The use of these weapons in and of itself is certainly grounds for prosecution for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  It has been estimated that the United States has already used the contamination equivalent of 43,000 Nagasaki sized bombs on Iraq during George's War.  It has been estimated that 25 million Iraqis could fall victim to cancer in the next several years.  In a country of only 26 million, genocide is hardly too harsh a word to describe the very distinct possibility of contaminating more than 90 percent of the inhabitants of a whole country.  This contamination has been spread from such sources as artillery rounds, tank canon rounds, anti-tank weapons, aerial antitank canon rounds and bombs.  The dust residue from these sources spreads over the land to contaminate soil, water, crops and when windborne, invades every facet of life in Iraq. 

Dust is not a completely true description of this contamination.  When DU weapons strike a target, the uranium burns giving a residue so fine that it assumes the characteristics of a gas.  But the danger doesn't stop in Iraq.  When this dust/gas contamination reaches the upper atmospheric air currents, this Chernobyl-like danger becomes worldwide in scope.  This contamination of course is linked to several forms of cancer, but its dangers are far deeper than just killing those contaminated.  This weaponized ceramic uranium oxide attacks and alters the DNA structure of its victims so that congenital birth defects are an inherent byproduct of this monstrous weapon.  Remember, this weapon is nondiscriminatory - it attacks friend and foe alike.  Our soldiers, when contaminated, are just as prone to fathering horribly deformed children, as are Iraqis.  And, depleted uranium contamination is a gift that keeps on giving - forever (well, not really forever, but with a 4.5 billion year half life, one is well on the way to forever).  Depleted uranium is a monstrous weapon.  "There is no possible protection from exposure to very fine particles of depleted uranium through filtering of air". 

Questions.  If one calls the wartime use of depleted uranium weapons a war crime and a crime against humanity, what does one call the unannounced, unprotected transport across the United States and the storage of possible radioactive contaminated weapons in an unsuspecting American community?  Is impeachment enough for a monster who is capable of allowing his Pentagon to commit such a crime against a country that has sacrificed 2,000 of its younger generation to be killed in a hideous war based on lies?  If one calls the use of these weapons war crimes and crimes against humanity, could one logically describe their use as genocidal in nature because of the nature of the long-term humanitarian consequences of the contamination?  If such widespread usage may be described as genocide, is it a mere coincidence that genocide has possibly been practiced for the last 14 years on a country controlling such a large portion of the world's oil supply?  Is it mere coincidence that both Syria and Iran with their oil resources are presently in the sights of George's radioactive military machine?

And here we are worrying about impeaching George for merely manipulating intelligence and invading a country that has never posed a threat to the United States.  At this point there isn't even a whisper about Rumsfeld's and Cheney's complicity in crimes against humanity - let alone genocide.  No, it's probably all coincidence.  Probably nothing there; and, if there is, I am sure there are plenty of low level Pentagon officials to be sacrificed for the greater good of Donald, Dick and George.

Conclusion:

Is there any end to the global ramifications of the weapons and tactics we have created to protect ourselves?   Is there any good to be derived from using "Willy Pete" and napalm and DU and cluster bombs on civilian targets?  Is there any good to be found in using Sadaam-type tortures on ones foes?  Where is the moral high ground in using extraordinary rendition for suspected enemies?

Notes:

SF Bayview.com

November 16, 2005

Radioactive Tank No. 9 Comes Limping Home

by Bob Nickols

Letter from Leuren Moret to Congressman McDermott

with

Declassified Memo to  General L. R. Groves - 1943  A Blueprint for DU

by Leuren Moret

February 21, 2003

 

 

Nolan K. Anderson is a retired engineer and a veteran of Korea who was once a “conservative” until he found there was nothing left to conserve (He may be reached at nkanders@bellsouth.net ).

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 10:42:41 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |