March 28, 2007

Chavez asks world for peace,...


 
Chavez asks world to halt alleged planned US attack on Iran  
 
Caracas - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has called on nations around the world to help stop what he says is a planned US attack on Iran.

Chavez, speaking one day after the UN Security Council voted to tighten sanctions on Iran over Tehran`s refusal to curtail its nuclear program, cited a Russian press report which purportedly details the time and place of an attack on Iran by the United States, which he has dubbed "The Empire."

"The Empire is moving aircraft carriers and has been moving troops on Iran," said Chavez, speaking on his broadcast programme "Hello, Mr President" yesterday.

Hopefully the world "will halt this imperial craziness of attacking whomever it pleases. Hopefully the Congress of the United States, the United Nations and the most powerful countries of the world can halt this madness of the American empire," said Chavez.

Today it may be Iran, Chavez said, "but tomorrow it could be Belarus, Venezuela, or anyone they dislike."

Chavez is a close ally of Cuba`s Fidel Castro and a vehement critic of US President George W Bush. He hosted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Caracas in January.


Related Articles:

Iran is not in breach of any international conventions or agreements,...

Why War With Iran? 

World on Fire,...The Final Beginning of the End 

World War III 


 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 05:44:07 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 27, 2007

Bush's Cocaine Connection - Part II

 
CIA claims Colombian army, terrorists linked

By Paul Richter and Greg Miller
Los Angeles Times

WASHINGTON – The CIA has obtained new intelligence that the head of Colombia’s American-backed army collaborated extensively with right-wing militias that the U.S. considers terrorist organizations, including a militia headed by one of the country’s leading drug traffickers.

Disclosure of the allegation about army chief Gen. Mario Montoya comes at a time when the high level of U.S. support for Colombia’s government is under scrutiny from Democrats in Congress.

The disclosure could heighten pressure to reduce or redirect that aid because Montoya has been a favorite of the Pentagon and an important U.S. partner in the U.S.-funded counterinsurgency strategy called Plan Colombia. The $700 million a year Colombia receives makes it the third-largest beneficiary of U.S. foreign assistance.

Montoya has a long and close association with Colombia’s president, Alvaro Uribe, and would be the highest-ranking Colombian officer implicated in a growing political scandal in Colombia over links between the outlawed militias and top officials. The scandal has implicated the country’s former foreign minister, at least one state governor, legislators and the head of the national police and has shaken Uribe’s government.

President Bush called Uribe a “personal friend” during a visit to Bogota, the Colombian capital, two weeks ago, and his government is one of the Bush administration’s closest allies in Latin America.

The intelligence about Montoya is contained in a report circulated within the CIA. It says that Montoya and a paramilitary group jointly planned and conducted a military operation in 2002 to eliminate Marxist guerrillas from poor areas around Medellin, a city in northwestern Colombia that has been a center of the drug trade.

At least 14 people were killed during the operation, and opponents of Uribe charge that dozens more disappeared in its aftermath.

The intelligence report, reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, includes information from another Western intelligence service and indicates that U.S. officials have received similar reports from other reliable sources.

In addition to his close cooperation with U.S. officials on Plan Colombia, Montoya has served as an instructor at the U.S.-sponsored military training center formerly called the School of the Americas.

The Colombian general was praised by Marine Gen. Peter Pace, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when Pace directed the regional military command for Latin America, and Montoya has been organizing a new Colombian counternarcotics task force with American funds.

Related article:

Bush's Cocaine Connection - Part I

 
 
 
 
CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 15:17:29 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 25, 2007

Fubar

 

Support the Troops By Sending Them to War!

How can the Democratic leadership

say that with a straight face?

By Kevin Zeese

 

As the United States enters the fifth year of the quagmire of the Iraq war and occupation the Capitol Hill leadership claims: we need to continue to fund the war to support U.S.  troops.  Does this claim pass the straight face test?  Is this what the troops want?


Do we support the troops when we send them to die and kill? Do we support the troops when we send them into a quagmire without adequate armor? 


Three troops a day are killed in Iraq, each month approximately 500 are listed as casualties (ten times more are unlisted casualties who suffer physical, emotional and mental injuries from Iraq) and countless numbers of Iraqis are killed every day.  So, when the Democrats call for a withdrawal by August 31, 2008 it means there will be 1,500 more U.S. troops killed, more than 8,000 officially injured and many tens of thousands of Iraqi children, women and men killed.   In 2007, if the supplemental passes, Congress will have appropriated $165 billion, and in 2008 it is likely much more will be spent.


And, the loopholes in the House Democratic supplemental are large enough to ensure that even after the deadline President Bush will be able to keep as many troops as he wants in Iraq.  For example, troops can stay to capture or kill members of Al Qaeda or other terrorist groups.  We have approximately 140,000 troops in Iraq doing that right now.  With the wording of this supplemental that will continue after the so-called withdrawal date. And, the supplemental does nothing to prevent a military attack on Iran.  


This supplemental is more likely to lead to a larger war in the Middle East than it is a withdrawal from Iraq.

 

How does this support the troops?

 

On the Fourth Anniversary of the war military families, Iraq War Vets, Gold Star family members and active duty troops held a press conference with a simple message displayed behind the speakers:

 

“DE-FUND THE WAR TO SUPPORT THE TROOPS”

 

These are the members of the mere 1.6% of the U.S. citizenry who bear the daily burden of the Iraq War and occupation.  The military and their families who live with this war every hour of every day understand that sending troops into a civil war, that is not supported by the American people or the Iraqi people, is no way to support the troops.  They realize that inadequate funding for the Veterans Administration while at the same time flooding it with new casualties is no way to support the troops.  They have lived not only with battlefield deaths and life changing injuries, but with suicide, the dysfunction of PTSD, the guilt of killing women and children, and broken families – all the result of Congress supporting the troops by sending them to war.

 

The claim that the only way to get Veterans benefits or armor for the troops is by supporting the supplemental is patently false.  The Democrats should have said that Bush’s supplemental was dead on arrival and drafted their own – a supplemental that would have supported the troops, funded the VA, provided for the rebuilding of Iraq by Iraqis, the funding of a regional stabilization force and a diplomatic surge in the region.  That would have been an appropriation that would have really supported the troops.

 

Some of the speakers at the military family’s press conference included Joyce and Kevin Lucey of Belchertown, MA whose son Cpl. Jeffrey Michael Lucey, a Marine Reservist, served in Iraq in 2003, and took his own life after being released and refused treatment at a VA hospital in 2004.  Also speaking was Tina Richards of Salem, Missouri a mother of a Marine who is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and other injuries but may be sent on a third deployment to Iraq.  She recently had a chance meeting in the Halls of Congress with Rep. David Obey, the Chair of the appropriations committee, where he described war opponents as “idiot liberals” who “must be smoking something.” She has a column in the Milwaukee Sentinel Journal urging “We owe it to the troops and their families to end the war now.”  Corey VanBuskirk of Greeley, PA whose husband is a Marine serving his second tour in Iraq. He was deployed 12 days after the two were married. Stacy Bannerman of Kent, Washington whose husband served for a year in Iraq with the Washington Army National Guard, received a mental health exam eight months after serving at the most attacked base in Iraq, and, almost one year from that exam was notified by the military of his diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

These speakers at the Military Families Speak Out press conference describe the real stories of soldiers in Iraq.  Rep. Jack Murtha described the Iraq War as more intense combat than Vietnam or World War II citing a survey that found that 93% of soldiers had been shot at and 86% knew someone who had been shot. 

 

The opposition to the war shown by these soldiers and their families is consistent with polls of soldiers.  More than a year ago a Zogby poll showed that 73% of soldiers in Iraq believed the U.S. should come home within a year.  And a poll by Military Times found that their readers, who are generally more senior and career military, found a majority opposed the war.

 

So, if the Democratic leadership wants to support the troops, why don’t they listen to the troops?

 

A group of soldiers and their families went to find out what the Democratic leadership was thinking after the press conference.  Tina Richards led a delegation of 30 people to the offices of Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the press conference.  Richards has been trying to see Pelosi since November 8th – as soon as the Democrats knew they had won majority control of both Houses of Congress.

 

Richards had worked on a Democratic congressional campaign in Missouri and had made small donations to Democrats across the country thinking that when they were in the majority they would end the war. She has telephoned, written and visited the Speaker’s office seeking to meet her.  Last Friday, before she broke through to the national media with an appearance on Hardball, she received a call from the Speaker’s office saying they would set up a meeting as soon as possible with Pelosi.  But since that time she has received no phone calls from the Speaker’s office and one reporter told her that the Speaker had decided not to meet with her.

 

So, along with other military family members, vets and active duty soldiers she went to the Speakers office to ask when she could meet with Nancy Pelosi.  She did not receive an answer despite her repeated contacts.  She and other members of the delegation insisted on meeting with Pelosi.  TV cameras from networks and citizen news groups monitored the discussion despite a Pelosi rule that no cameras are allowed in her office (whatever happened to “Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of the press!).

 

The receptionist told Tina and the others that someone from their press office would be coming to meet with them.  Of course, a media spokesperson was more to do damage control with the media in attendance than to communicate with the vets, soldiers and their families.

 

Terry McCullough, the Chief of Staff for Speaker Pelosi, finally came out of her office and after urging by those in attendance suggested a meeting with her.  During the meeting families, vets and active soldiers spoke about their opposition to the supplemental that extended the war, their experiences with the VA denying them basic health care, and the challenges they have coming home from the war with no jobs or housing.  They spoke about the impact of depleted uranium poisoning. One couple described the suicide of their son when the VA refused to provide him treatment for post traumatic stress disorder.

 

Ms. McCullough could not answer for Speaker Pelosi.  She did not even attempt to explain how sending troops to war – a war the Speaker says she opposes – is supporting the troops.  Ms. McCullough promised to convey the messages of the delegation but wouldn’t it have been better if the Speaker would meet with this type of delegation? Listen to their experiences? Understand their reaction to the supplemental?  Hear their disappointment with the lack of leadership of the Democratic majority?

 

President Bush refused to meet with Cindy Sheehan to explain to her for what noble cause her son was killed.  Will Tina Richards and other soldiers, vets and military families have to camp out in front of Speaker Pelosi’s office to finally get to talk to her? If so what does that say about the lack of difference between Democrats and Republicans?

 

If the Democrats want to “support the troops” shouldn’t they at least talk to military families about their concerns regarding the continuation of this war?

 

For more information visit:

 

Tina Richards website www.GrassrootsAmerica4us.org

Military Families Speak Out www.mfso.org.

Iraq Veterans Against the War www.ivaw.org

 

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 10:33:53 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 21, 2007

The Original American Foreign Policy

 
The Original American Foreign Policy

"It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world." George Washington

By Rep. Ron Paul

I have written before about the critical need for Congress to reassert its authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and not the executive.

But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not threatening our freedoms at home

I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and military alliances. In other words, noninterventionism.

Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the internal affairs of other nations. It does not mean that we isolate ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel, communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations ? entangling alliances with none." Washington similarly urged that we must, "Act for ourselves and not for others," by forming an "American character wholly free of foreign attachments."

Yet how many times have we all heard these wise words without taking them to heart? How many claim to admire Jefferson and Washington, but conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Since so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on the critical matter of foreign policy, they should at least have the intellectual honesty to admit it.

Of course we frequently hear the offensive cliché that, "times have changed," and thus we cannot follow quaint admonitions from the 1700s. The obvious question, then, is what other principles from our founding era should we discard for convenience? Should we give up the First amendment because times have changed and free speech causes too much offense in our modern society? Should we give up the Second amendment, and trust that today's government is benign and not to be feared by its citizens? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights?

It's hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify interventionist policies today. The principles enshrined in the Constitution do not change. If anything, today's more complex world cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign policy.

It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to understand the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and time again into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to ask ourselves whether further American lives and tax dollars should be lost trying to remake the Middle East in our image.

 
Dr. Ron Paul is a nine term Republican member of Congress from Texas and is a candidate for President of the United States.

Get to know Congressman Ron Paul - visit his Archives below,...

Ron Paul Archives

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 17:34:51 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 20, 2007

The Bush/Cheney Confession,...

 
The Confession Backfired
By Paul Craig Roberts

The first confession released by the Bush regime’s Military Tribunals--that of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed--has discredited the entire process. Writing in Jurist, Northwestern University law professor Anthony D’Amato likens Mohammed’s confession to those that emerged in Stalin’s show trials of Bolshevik leaders in the 1930s.

That was my own immediate thought. I remember speaking years ago with Soviet dissident Valdimir Bukovsky about the behavior of Soviet dissidents under torture. He replied that people pressed for names under torture would try to remember the names of war dead and people who had passed away. Those who retained enough of their wits under torture would confess to an unbelievable array of crimes in an effort to alert the public to the falsity of the entire process.

That is what Mohammed did. We know he was tortured, because his response to the obligatory question about his treatment during his years of detention is redacted. We also know that he was tortured, because otherwise there is no point for the US Justice (sic) Dept. memos giving the green light to torture or for the Military Commissions Act, which permits torture and death sentence based on confession extracted by torture.

Mohammed’s confession of crimes and plots is so vast that Katherine Shrader of the Associated Press reports that the Americans who extracted Mohammed’s confession do not believe it either. It is exaggerated, say Mohammed’s tormentors, and must be taken with a grain of salt.

In other words, the US torture crew, reveling in their success, played into Mohammed’s hands. Pride goes before a fall, as the saying goes.

Mohammed’s confession admits to 31 planned and actual attacks all over the world, including blowing up the Panama Canal and assassinating presidents Carter and Clinton and the Pope. Having taken responsibility for the whole ball of wax along with everything else that he could imagine, he was the entire show. No other terrorists needed.

Reading responses of BBC listeners to Mohammed’s confession reveals that the rest of the world is either laughing at the US government for being so stupid as to think that anyone anywhere would believe the confession or damning the Bush regime for being like the Gestapo and KGB.

Humorists are having a field day with the confession: “’I’m a very dangerous mastermind,’ said Mohammed, who confessed to the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the Brink’s robbery, St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, and the Lincoln and McKinley assassinations. Mohammed also accepted responsibility for spreading hay fever and cold sores around the world and for rained out picnics.”

If there was anything remaining of the Bush regime not already discredited, Mohammed’s confession removed any reputation left.

The most important part of the Mohammed story is yet to make the headlines. Despite having held and tortured hundreds of detainees for years in Gitmo, and we don’t know how many more in secret prisons around the world, the US government has come up with only 14 “high value detainees.”

In other words, the government has nothing on 99 percent of the detainees who allegedly are so dangerous and wicked that they must be kept in detention without charges, access to attorneys and contact with families.

And little wonder. The vast majority of detainees, alleged “enemy combatants,” are not terrorists captured by the CIA and brave US troops. They are hapless persons who happened to be outside their tribal or home territories and were kidnapped by criminal gangs or war lords who profited greatly at the expense of the naive Americans who offered bounties for “terrorists.”

The US government does not care that innocent people have been ensnared, because the US government desperately needs both to prove that there are vast numbers of terrorists and to demonstrate its proficiency in protecting Americans by capturing terrorists. Moreover, the US government needs “dangerous suspects” that it can use to keep Americans in a state of supine fearfulness and as a front behind which to undermine constitutional protections and the Bill of Rights.

The Bush-Cheney Regime succeeded in its evil plot, only to throw it all away by releasing the ridiculous confession by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Will Bush’s totalitarian Military Tribunal now execute Mohammed on the basis of his confession extracted by torture, or would this be seen everywhere on earth as nothing but an act of murder?

If Bush can’t have Mohammed murdered, the US government will have to shut Mohammed away where he cannot talk and tell his tale. The US government will have to replicate Orwell’s memory hole by destroying Mohammed’s mind with mind-altering drugs and abuse.

It is to such depths that George Bush and Dick Cheney have lowered America.


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 10:06:54 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 16, 2007

The Unbelievable "Confession" of the Ultimate Patsy

 
Can KSM's Confession Be Believed?



Little in the just released confession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the presumed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, is new. The U.S. government long ago cataloged those alleged crimes based on extensive interrogations of Mohammed and other prisoners held in the CIA's controversial and now liquidated overseas prisons. But the transcripts of Mohammed's hearing — part of proceedings that began last Friday at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — are the first time the U.S. government has made publicly available his personal description of a stunning range of terrorist plots he claims to have had a hand in. These include both the 1993 and 2001 assaults on the World Trade Center, as well as the beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Mohammed boasts he had complete or partial participation in 29 terror plots, some of which were never carried out.

As the transcript portrays him, Mohammed spoke with a meandering elocution before three military officials, with no lawyer but an air force officer by his side serving as a "personal adviser." He came across as an earnest, somewhat chatty mass murderer taking credit for plans to detonate the Panama Canal as well as New York City landmarks like the stock exchange. He also mentions assassination plots directed at former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton as well as Pope John Paul II. Several of the conspiracies he cited, notably the one involving President Carter, have not previously been disclosed.

Are Mohammed's claims to be believed? He has long been described — notably in The 9/11 Commission Report — as prone to exaggeration and self-aggrandizement, fond of portraying himself as a "superterrorist." The notes to the Commission's conclusions mention the possibility of Mohammed "inflating his own role." He may also be attempting to defend his part in the 9/11 planning against the testimony of other terror suspects. The Commission's notes indicate that, according to another terror chieftain, Abu Zubaydah, Mohammed originally offered Osama bin Laden a more modest proposal for attacking the U.S., but that bin Laden reportedly berated him, saying "Why do you use an ax when you can use a bulldozer?" What's more, Mohammed has also used disinformation in the past. He admitted under previous interrogation that a list of 30 supposed U.S. targets, which he circulated shortly after 9/11, was a lie to exaggerate the scale of al-Qaeda's planning. Terrorism experts say that though there is no doubt Mohammed played a major role in planning 9/11, he's famous among interrogators for his braggadocio. "He has nothing else in life but to be remembered as a famous terrorist," says Bruce Riedel, Senior Fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institute and a 29-year veteran of the CIA. "He wants to promote his own importance. It's been a problem since he was captured," says Reidel, who went on to say he wouldn't be surprised is Mohammed was exaggerating his role in other plots.

At one point in the transcript, Mohammed compares himself to revolutionaries like George Washington, and concedes that he is an "enemy combatant," his formal U.S. designation and a status that restricts his legal rights. If the British had arrested him during the Revolutionary War, Mohammed said, "for sure they would consider him enemy combatant." One of the ostensible reasons for the current Guantanamo hearings is to determine whether Mohammed and others can be held there indefinitely as "enemy combatants" prior to facing military tribunals that could sentence them death. The hearings at Guantanamo will process 14 "high-value" prisoners brought to Cuba last year shortly before President Bush announced the shut-down of the CIA's overseas secret prisons.

At another point in the transcript, Mohammed expressed regret for the deaths caused on 9/11, particularly those of children, noting, "I'm not happy that 3,000 been killed in America... I feel sorry even. I don't like to kill children and the kids." He added, "The language of war is victims."

The Pentagon also issued transcripts of hearings held for two other prisoners: Abu Faraj al-Libi, a Libyan who reputedly organized two bombings in Pakistan in December 2003 aimed at killing President Pervez Musharraf; and Ramzi Binalshibh, who is suspected of helping plan the 9/11 attacks as well as a failed scheme to crash planes into London's Heathrow Airport. Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in 2003, was the only one of the alleged terrorists to attend his own hearing. Al-Libi and Binalshibh refused to do so.

The hearings at Guantanamo, formally known as Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are being conducted without press to avoid the risk of releasing sensitive or classified information. The transcripts released yesterday were heavily redacted. Given that all the prisoners have been in U.S. custody for years, however, many critics believe that the U.S. wants to suppress details of the prisoners' interrogation, which could involve torture, or other mistreatment. Nevertheless, in his transcript, Mohammed alleges that he had been tortured.

The U.S. has also fought to keep secret the locations of CIA secret prisons where the prisoners including Mohammed were held for fear that any disclosure would greatly embarrass U.S. allies. Press reports have suggested that secret prisons were located in Poland, Thailand, Morocco, Jordan and other locations. Some 385 men are currently being held at Guantanamo; a hunger strike purportedly involving several dozen detainees protesting the conditions of their confinement has been going on for weeks, and possibly since January.

At a time when the Bush Administration is facing stiff criticism in a variety of domestic scandals as well as for its conduct of the Iraq war, Mohammed's confession has quickly become a focus of cable TV and other media coverage, a reminder of America's ongoing battle against international terrorism. But the attention focused on Mohammed, thought to be al-Qaeda's third-ranking leader, also underscores the fact that the terrorist organization's chief, Osama bin Laden, and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, remain at large at a time when their former Taliban protectors in Afghanistan are resurgent.

With reporting by Brian Bennett/Washington

RELATED: KSM: The Ultimate Patsy "Confesses"

 

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 


 

Posted by Choice America Network at 11:40:03 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

March 12, 2007

Traumatic Brain Injury - Department of Defense Memo

 

Department of Defense Memo Calls for Changes to Brain Injury Treatment


 
The Pentagon needs to overhaul its approach to treating the tens of thousands of U.S. troops who might have traumatic brain injury, the most common injury of the Iraq war, according to a previously undisclosed Department of Defense memorandum obtained by USA Today.

The memo was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request by USA Today.
DOCUMENT:  Defense Department memo

According to the Aug. 11, 2006, memo -- signed by Wayne Lednar, an epidemiologist, and Gregory Poland, chief of the Defense Health Board -- troops with mild and moderate brain injury are of the greatest concern because their injuries are difficult to recognize and can limit mental performance.

According to the memo, "There remains a need to better understand the unique characteristics of blast-associated TBI and to reduce the health risk and complications from mild or moderate forms of brain injury."

The memo noted that the Pentagon's best work on TBI involved the most severe injuries.

The memo recommended that the Pentagon improve protective gear for troops; standardize battlefield methods to recognize brain injuries; develop better methods to determine when an injured soldier can return to duty; and screen all returning troops for brain injury.

In response to the memo, the Pentagon on Wednesday said that it will allocate $14 million to fund more research on blast injuries and provide combat zone medics with evaluation forms to diagnose mild brain injuries.

Pentagon spokesperson Cynthia Smith said, "Our goal is to identify TBI as soon as possible."

Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), an advocate of improved brain injury treatment, called the findings of the report "outrageous."

She added, "Four years into the war and we still don't have a systemwide plan" (Zoroya, USA Today, 3/8).
 
 

©2007 News-Medical.Net

CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK

 

Posted by Choice America Network at 13:14:56 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

March 11, 2007

Veterans Face Inequities for Disabilities,...

Veterans Face Vast Inequities Over Disability

By IAN URBINA and RON NIXON

WASHINGTON - Staff Sgt. Gregory L. Wilson, from the Texas National Guard, waited nearly two years for his veterans’ disability check after he was injured in Iraq. If he had been an active-duty soldier, he would have gotten more help in cutting through the red tape.

Allen Curry of Chicago has fallen behind on his mortgage while waiting nearly two years for his disability check. If he had filed his claim in a state deploying fewer troops than Illinois, Mr. Curry, who was injured by a bomb blast when he was a staff sergeant in the Army Reserve in Iraq, would most likely have been paid sooner and gotten more in benefits.

Veterans face serious inequities in compensation for disabilities depending on where they live and whether they were on active duty or were members of the National Guard or the Reserve, an analysis by The New York Times has found.

Those factors determine whether some soldiers wait nearly twice as long to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs as others, and collect less money, according to agency figures.

“The V.A. is supposed to provide uniform and fair treatment to all,” said Steve Robinson, the director of veteran affairs for Veterans for America. “Instead, the places and services giving the most are getting the least.”

The agency said it was trying to ease the backlog and address disparities by hiring more claims workers, authorizing more overtime and adding claims development centers.

The problems partly stem from the agency’s inability to prepare for predictable surges in demand from certain states or certain categories of service members, say advocates and former department officials. Numerous government reports have highlighted the agency’s backlog of disability claims and called for improvements in shifting resources.

“It’s Actuary Science 101,” said Paul Sullivan, who until last March monitored data on returning veterans for the V.A. “When 5,000 new troops get deployed from California, you can logically expect a percent of them will show up at the V.A. in California in a year with predictable types of problems.”

“It makes no sense to wait until the troop is already back home to start preparing for them,” Mr. Sullivan said. “But that’s what the V.A. does.”

Veterans’ advocates say the types of bureaucratic obstacles recently disclosed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center are eclipsed by those at the Veterans Affairs division that is supposed to pay soldiers for service-related ills. The influx of veterans from the Iraq war has nearly overwhelmed an agency already struggling to meet the health care, disability payment and pension needs of more than three million veterans.

Stephen Meskin, who retired last year as the V.A.’s chief actuary, said he had repeatedly urged agency managers to track data so they could better meet the needs of former soldiers. “Where are the new vets showing up?” Mr. Meskin said he kept asking. “They just shrugged.”

Agency officials say they have begun an aggressive oversight effort to determine if all disability claims are being properly processed and contracted for a study that will examine state-by-state differences in average disability compensation payments.

“V.A.’s focus is to assure consistent application of the regulations governing V.A. disability determinations in all states,” the department said in a written statement.

Many new veterans say they are often left waiting for months or years, wondering if they will be taken care of.

Unable to work because of post-traumatic stress disorder and back injuries from a bomb blast in Iraq in 2004, Specialist James Webb of the Army ran out of savings while waiting 11 months for his claim. In the fall of 2005, Mr. Webb said, he began living on the streets in Decatur, Ga., a state that has the 10th-largest backlog of claims in the country.

“I should have just gone home to be with family instead of trying to do it on my own,” said Mr. Webb, who received a Bronze Star for his service in Iraq. “But with the post-traumatic stress disorder, I just didn’t want any relationships.”

After waiting 11 months, he began receiving his $869 monthly disability check and he moved into a house in Newnan, Ga. About three weeks ago, Mr. Webb moved back home to live with his parents in Kingsport, Tenn.

The backlogs are worst in some states sending the most troops, and discrepancies exist in pay levels.

Illinois, which has deployed the sixth-highest number of soldiers of any state, has the second-largest backlog. The average disability payment for Illinois veterans — $7,803 a year — is among the lowest in the nation, according to 2005 V.A. data.

In Pennsylvania, which has sent the fourth-highest number of troops, the claims office in Pittsburgh is tied for second for longest backlogs, where 4 out of 10 claims have been pending for more than six months. Veterans from this state on average receive relatively low payments, $8,268 per year, according to 2005 V.A. data. Comparable 2006 data were not available.

The agency’s inspector general in 2005 examined geographic variations in how much veterans are paid for disabilities, finding that demographic factors, like the average age of each state’s veteran population, played roles. But the report also pointed to the subjective way that claims processors in each state determined level of disability.

Staffing levels at the veterans agency vary widely and have not kept pace with the increased demand. The current inventory of disability claims rose to 378,296 by the end of the 2006 fiscal year. The claims from returning war veterans plus those from previous periods increased by 39 percent from 2000 to 2006. During the same period, the staff for handling claims has remained relatively flat, a problem the department highlighted in its 2008 proposed budget. The department expects to receive about 800,000 new claims in 2007 and 2008 each.

“It’s clear to everyone here that the system over all is struggling and some veterans are waiting far too long for decisions,” Senator Larry E. Craig, Republican of Idaho, said Wednesday at a hearing before the Senate veterans affairs committee.

The growing strains on the veterans agency have affected some soldiers more than others.

While the Reserve and National Guard have sent a disproportionate number of soldiers to the war, the average annual disability payment for those troops is $3,603, based on 2006 V.A. data for unmarried veterans with no dependents. Active-duty soldiers on average receive $4,962.

Though the V.A. acknowledged that there were discrepancies, officials also said they believed that a significant factor might be length of service. Active-duty soldiers generally serve longer, and therefore more suffer from chronic diseases or disabilities that develop over time. Many who served in the Guard think they are losing the battle against the bureaucracy.

“We take a harder toll,” said Mr. Wilson, the Texan, referring to the fate of reservists and Guard troops compared with active duty soldiers.

He said that last month he received his disability check for his back injuries but only after a 21-month wait and the intervention of a congressman and a colonel.

When active-duty soldiers near discharge, they have access to far more programs offering assistance with benefits than do reserve and National Guard soldiers, according to veterans’ advocates.

“The active-duty guys, they get those resources,” Mr. Wilson said. “We don’t.”

He said that while active-duty soldiers often received medical disability evaluations in about 30 days, many reservists he knew waited two years or more to get an initial appointment. Active-duty personnel also routinely received legal advice about appeals and other issues from military lawyers, while reservists had to request those hearings, he said.

For years, the V.A.’s inspector general, the Government Accountability Office, members of Congress and veterans’ advocates have pointed out the need to improve how the V.A. tracks data on soldiers as they are deployed and when they are injured. That would help prepare for their future needs and ease delays in processing health and benefit claims.

In 2004, a system was designed to track soldiers better, prepare for surges in demand and avoid backlogs. But the system was shelved by program officials under Secretary Jim Nicholson for financial and logistical reasons, V.A. officials said Thursday at a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The V.A., which has said it has an alternate tracking system nearly operational, depends on paper files and lacks the ability to download Department of Defense records into its computers.

President Bush has appointed a commission to investigate problems at military and veterans hospitals.

For Mr. Curry, the reservist from Chicago who has fallen behind on his mortgage payments, his previous life as a $60,000-a-year postal worker is a fading memory. “It’s just disheartening,” he said. “You feel like giving up sometimes.”

Richard G. Jones contributed reporting from Trenton, Bob Driehaus from Cincinnati, and Sean D. Hamill from Pittsburgh.

 
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 13:00:55 | Permanent Link | Comments (1) |

March 10, 2007

Taking the Gloves Off,...and telling it like it really is,....

 
Rudy & McCain Grow Hymens
 
By Tom Gilroy

Why is it that whenever the White House begins a full-scale character assassination on anyone who disagrees with their invented view of the world, they fall all over themselves to make it clear they're not attacking that person's patriotism?

'While I believe Madam Speaker would serve tea to the 9/11 hijackers, piss and shit on the American flag, and drown every American veteran since the Spanish-American War in boiling oil, it's not her patriotism I'm questioning, it's her judgment.'

I mean, why hold back? If you can call John Murtha's bill to prevent under-equipped and unrested GI's from going back into Iraq 'anti-troop,' if you can question the validity of John Kerry 5 medals of valor, if you can call Cindy Sheehan a traitor and Nancy Pelosi an al-Qaeda sympathizer, aren't you in fact questioning their patriotism, but are just too chickenshit to say so?

Why not just go all the way? Why is their patriotism off-limits? It's like the beltway is one big playground filled with children slinging every insult in the book except, 'your mama's a bitch,' which is of course the straw that breaks the camel's back; 'you shut up about my mama.'

Well, let's take the plunge; I question Bush and Cheney's patriotism. I question the patriotism of two arrogant tyrants who have never served in the armed forces sending American GI's without proper training, rest or protection into a war for corporate profits. I call not attending their funerals when they come home dead and having Rumsfeld sign their death certificates by machine unpatriotic. I call cutting their benefits in budget after budget unpatriotic, and I call not bothering to know what a dump Walter Reed hospital is unpatriotic.

Finally, I call forbidding wounded patients in that hospital from speaking out not only unpatriotic but also unconstitutional--and how about inhumane? Because if you're legless in a hospital bed and need your pain killers and you're told you'd better not talk to the press about the shitty care you're getting, what do you think the implicit punishment is? How bad do you want those pain killers, soldier?

This patriotism dodge is all part of the linguistic contortions that have become accepted sport in the government and in the media, although they've always been mainstays of the neocon and fundamentalist movements. Inside the beltway it's called playing politics but the rest of the world--the other 4 billion of us--know it by another word; hypocrisy.

Since we've taken the gloves off, can we go after a few more of these shibboleths? How 'bout 'Support Our Troops?' Isn't that just a passive/aggressive way of saying 'I love our troops and you hate them,' which is of course absurd? Can any member of even the Coulter Crackheads honestly believe a single sane American ---left, right or indifferent---actually wishes harm upon our troops? Isn't this little slogan, while posing as a nice little neutral statement of support, really intended to divide us in a time of crisis? Can we just cut this shit out right now?

While we're at it, how 'bout 'extraordinary rendition?' Isn't that really just 'kidnap and torture of civilians?' And doesn't 'may have overstated the nuclear capability of North Korea,' really mean, 'once again lied through their teeth to the American public on an issue of global significance'?

'Protecting American interests in the region?' Doesn't that really mean protecting the salaries and stock options of corporate CEOs that export jobs, cheat on their taxes and get government bankruptcy bailouts without giving a shit about average American workers?

How 'bout the great act-tough, pissing contest catchphrase you can't go more than an hour these days without hearing; 'no options are off the table.' Doesn't that really mean 'we may drop a nuclear bomb'?

And there's my personal favorite--'anti-PC.' Doesn't that mean whining about not being able to dis the Spics, Gooks, Niggers, cocksuckers, cunts, homeless and poor? Isn't it a nice little euphemism for 'gee, I miss the Dark Ages'?

What happens when we tolerate these lies, er diplomatic terms, is that foggy bottom gets so, well, foggy and filled up with euphemism nothing means anything anymore. So a presidential 'spiritual advisor' can also be 'addicted to a meth-rattled gay hustler' and the vice-president can be anti-gay rights while welcoming the child of his pregnant lesbian daughter into the world.

And so we're forced to listen to a conservative front organization--not unlike the Swiftboaters and Talon News, which employed gay hustler/White House correspondent Jeff Gannon--attack Al Gore for having too many bathrooms in his house instead of remembering he won an Academy Award and is nominated for a Nobel Prize for alerting the world to an imminent disaster that could wipe out humanity. A disaster, by the way, acknowledged by 99% of the world's scientists while being dismissed by mensas like Bush, Cheney, Rush and Hannity as 'liberal PC drivel.'

And just last week, deeply religious Mitt Romney claimed he wanted to bring Americans together from the same podium where Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot. What's next --twice-divorced Rudy praising the sanctity of marriage after Coulter calls Hilary a poo-poo?

But the big cheese in this euphemistic cavalcade of bile posing as diplomacy is the concept of 'revirgination', which makes even the Christian Right's claims of pterodactyls still flying over Mexico and the Earth being only a few thousand years old seem quaint.

Focus On The Family's James Dobson and Left-Behind series author Tim LeHaye have been mid-press juggernaut for weeks about how the big GOP guns for president aren't crazy enough--er, I mean, conservative enough---to get their backing. This is after Rudy claims on Larry King--with a straight face --that cleaning up civil war in Iraq is just a bigger version of clearing Harlem of crack dealers, and McCain gives the keynote address at right-wing 'think'-tank the Discovery Institute, America's top evolution-denier.

Suddenly, these two men who just a few years ago proclaimed their deep belief in the rights of women regarding reproductive freedom, equal rights for gay couples and the rights of illegal immigrant workers to go to an emergency room were out-contorting each other in the euphemism sweepstakes to 'clarify' their former tolerance as actually intolerance, and 're-positioning' their previous progressive ways as actually carefully nuanced regressive hatred.

Isn't this just lying? If Rudy supported abortion rights as mayor but wants to repeal it as president, doesn't that mean he was either a liar then or is a liar now? If McCain thought in 2000 Falwell was 'an agent of intolerance' but now decides to speak at Falwell's Liberty University, doesn't that make him either a liar six years ago or a liar now?

Is this flip-flopping, lying, euphemism, spin, diplomacy, or hypocrisy? It's hard to decide when everything means nothing, which is of course the point; if you can't rely on facts, you have to rely on bullshit---like 'your gut,' which really means 'how their spun image makes me feel.'

When words no longer have meaning, nothing can be discussed or debated. Good-bye, Democracy!

It's kind of like claiming you're a pregnant virgin, which, it turns out, is the exact advice Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax reform--who believe the rich shouldn't pay taxes---gave to McCain, Rudy, et al if they want to win over the Christian Right.

Instilling hope in the GOP contenders that they still might win over the skeptical conservative movement, Norquist advised all it would take is a few 'right promises,' not unlike the abstinence pledges students take--even after they've had sex.

'It's called secondary virginity,' Mr Norquist told the New York Times. 'It's a big movement in high school and is also available for politicians.'

Oh, ....okay. So appealing to conservatives is like claiming you're a virgin after you've done the deed. Isn't that, you know, lying?

I remember plenty of secondary virgins in High School--many of them former pregnant virgins--and their lying didn't really win too many people over. But there they were, terrified they'd be seen for what they really were--dumb teenagers, really---shamelessly asserting they were something they weren't. And to convince whom, exactly?

Anybody stupid enough to buy it.

Tom Gilroy is a writer/director/producer/actor from New York and has appeared in over 30 films, having worked with such directors as Ken Loach, Sidney Lumet, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim McKay, Christopher Munch, Paul Auster and multi-media artist Robert Longo. He has written, directed and produced two award winning films--the short 'Touch Base' (IFC/BRAVO), and the critically-acclaimed feature 'Spring Forward,'(IFC/MGM) starring Liev Schreiber, Ned Beatty, and Campbell Scott. His plays--most notably 'The Invisible Hand' and 'Halcion Days' have been produced in several US cities and around the world.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 23:12:03 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |

Bush's Cocaine Connection,...

 
A dark underbelly of mass graves and electoral fraud
 
Congress is questioning a Latin American policy that has left  George Bush with a best friend who is a major embarrassment

By Isabel Hilton
The Guardian


There is little to cheer a US president on a visit to Latin America these days. Where it once enforced its will on the region the US now looks increasingly out of touch. The presidents of Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Peru, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile were not elected as friends of the US, and China has quietly filled the economic gap left by seven years of US distraction and neglect.

President Bush's plan for a Free Trade Area of the Americas has faltered; electorates blame free market liberalism for years of stagnation, and high oil prices help Venezuela's Hugo Chávez bid for Fidel Castro's crown as figurehead of the Latin left. When Bush visits Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia and Guatemala next week, he will be received politely, but with little enthusiasm.

Bush will be the first US president to visit Bogota since John Kennedy, and only in Colombia will he find an unconditional friend in President Alvaro Uribe, whom he has praised as an ally and granted billions of dollars in military aid.

But on the eve of the visit, Bush's best friend is becoming his biggest embarrassment. Uribe leads a country mired in corruption, violence and drugs - the source of 90% of the cocaine in the US - and where critics of the government receive death threats and drug barons and death squad leaders win amnesty.

Uribe didn't invent Colombia's problems - it has endured 40 years of civil war and narcotics flourished long before he became president in 2002. But Uribe, who changed the constitution to permit his own re-election last year, has devised a "peace" plan that has opened the door to a future incorporation of amnestied narco-paramilitary groups into Colombian politics, who have close ties with Uribe's own political machine. As Massachusetts congressman Jim McGovern put it: "President Uribe's main step towards 'peace' has been a likely deal with the paramilitaries that will allow them to pay brief sentences in luxurious jails despite having massacred thousands of innocent people, while avoiding extradition despite having sent tons of drugs to my country."

The paramilitary forces were formed in the 1980s to fight the leftist guerrillas. They soon became as notorious for massacres and narcotics; they robbed Colombia's peasants of millions of acres of land, creating 3 million internally displaced victims. Since their rise in Antioquia, the province where Uribe was governor, the paramilitary have been suspected of collaboration with state security forces. The president denies that they enjoyed political protection and claims amnesty is open to all.

Some 31,000 paramilitary fighters have accepted Uribe's demobilization program, gaining virtual immunity for past crimes. The president claims increased security and a dramatic drop in human rights abuse, but human rights organizations disagree and the recent discovery of mass graves attests to a four-year rise in disappearances. Nevertheless, Uribe's Colombia has won praise from Whitehall to Washington and Colombia's urban middle classes gave him an easy re-election last year.

But now, stimulated by the determination of Colombia's supreme court to investigate the country's dark underbelly, evidence of collaboration between paramilitary death squads and the administrative security department (DAS), the president's intelligence service, has seen key members of Uribe's political apparatus resign, disgraced or placed under arrest. An emboldened Colombian press is now demanding to know what the president knew.

Uribe's troubles began last year when a computer was seized from a paramilitary leader known as "Jorge 40". On it were the names of politicians who apparently collaborated with Jorge 40 to intimidate voters, seize land and kidnap or kill trade unionists and political rivals. Jorge 40 is the nom de guerre of Rodrigo Tovar Pupo, leader of the Northern Bloc of the United Self Defence Forces of Colombia (AUC), a paramilitary umbrella group set up in 1997 and categorized by the US as a terrorist organization. Tovar controlled drug trafficking on the eastern half of Colombia's Caribbean coast. Since then, eight pro-Uribe congressmen have been arrested and the foreign minister has been forced to resign.

But the most dangerous scandal for Uribe comes from the arrest of Jorge Noguera, his former campaign manager and, from 2002 to 2005, head of the DAS. Former DAS colleagues have told investigators of Noguera's close collaboration with Jorge 40 - which included lending him Uribe's personal armored vehicle - and with other paramilitary leaders. The accusations include an assassination plot against Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez, the murder of political opponents, electoral fraud, doctoring police and judicial records to erase paramilitary cases. Noguera worked directly to Uribe and when the investigations began, the president appointed him consul in Milan. The supreme court has forced his return.

Before the US mid-term elections Bush might have toughed the scandal out. But a Democratic Congress is questioning a Latin America policy that has left Washington with few friends besides Uribe and asking whether he is the best recipient of the US taxpayer's dollar.

Colombian senator Gustavo Petro's visit to Washington this week will no doubt have further stiffened the resolve of US lawmakers. Petro has accused the president's brother, Santiago, of helping to form paramilitary groups and of personal involvement in murders and forced disappearances. He is calling for a Congressional investigation into charges that, as governor, the president ordered a halt to an investigation into his brother's case. The president's response so far has been characteristic: he accused Petro, a former member of a legitimately disbanded guerrilla movement, of being a "terrorist in a business suit". Petro has since received death threats.

Democratic congressmen are likely to have received Preto in a listening mood since the scandal in Colombia is clouding Bush's request for $4bn in anti-narcotics aid, most of it for Colombia.

In the rest of the region Bush offers nothing to lift the atmosphere. Hugo Chávez is not the only politician to suspect that Washington's enthusiasm for Uribe is connected to its concern over neighboring Venezuela - suspicions that the revelation of the Chávez assassination plot will do nothing to dispel. In a region that owes its recent growth to high oil prices and to China, the US seems to have lost the plot.

 
 
 
Posted by Choice America Network at 13:16:42 | Permanent Link | Comments (0) |
1 2