Get ready for the horrible, honest reality of the American occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan like you haven’t heard it before. For four days, from March 13 through March 16, hundreds of U.S. veterans of the two wars will descend on Washington and testify in the “Winter Soldier” hearings about what they really did while they were serving their country in Iraq. And their experiences aren’t pretty.
In vigil (2)
If the whole body is a heart, then the woman who steps out of the car with Texas plates to yell at the silent peace vigil is a heart overlaid with hate
Paying for the Wars’ Wounded
The Bureau of the Census has issued a lengthy summary of “facts” about the nation’s 23.7 million veterans in time for Veteran’s Day. Considering that there are two significant ongoing armed conflicts involving U.S. forces, I expected that there would be some “facts” dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan.
An Open Letter to My Fellow Veterans
As we enter our fifth year of occupation, and as Iraq continues to degenerate into sectarian violence and civil war, I think it important that we talk, vet to vet. Real talk, talk from the heart, as we did back in Iraq, in the Nam, in Korea, on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific. Let us put aside, for a moment, all the bunk we have been fed over the years by those who were not there. You know who I mean. The politicians and war strategists who cavalierly make war, decide tactics, and send us off to fight, bleed, and die for a cause that is uncertain or non-existent. Self-proclaimed "patriots" who, while remaining safe at home, try to convince us that the threat to our way of life – – to America and to freedom – – is real and grave and that the disruption of our lives and the sacrifices we make, and that our brothers and sisters make, are necessary and glorious.
The Sins of Walter Reed
The U.S. military lives by the rule: “Leave no soldier behind.” The Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) seems to have operated according to a different principle: “Out of sight, out of mind.”
Shafting the Vets
ÂWar is hell, Union General William Tecumseh Sherman famously said 14 years after the end of the bloodiest conflict in U.S. history. ÂIt is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation.Â