Casualties

New Program Speeds Approval for Vietnam Veterans

WASHINGTON – December 17, 2010 - The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has decided more than 28,000 claims in the first six weeks of processing disability compensation applications from Vietnam Veterans with diseases related to exposure to the herbicide Agent Orange.

“With new technology and ongoing improvements, we are quickly removing roadblocks to processing benefits,” said Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric K. Shinseki. “We are also conducting significant outreach to Vietnam Veterans to encourage them to submit their completed application for this long-awaited benefit.”

Red Cross says Afghan conditions worst in 30 years

Dec 15, 2010 - Spreading violence in Afghanistan is preventing aid organizations from providing help, with access to those in need at its worst level in three decades, the Red Cross said on Wednesday.

"The proliferation of armed groups threatens the ability of humanitarian organizations to access those in need. Access for the ICRC has over the last 30 years never been as poor," said Reto Stocker, Afghanistan head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which rarely makes public comments.

OUR VIEW: Detached from the war

December 15, 2010 - Fall River's fourth military death this year, that of Pfc. Ethan L. Goncalo, places the burden of war on the doorstep of his home city, but in many American homes, the burden is far too invisible.

Iraq, Afghanistan and related operations have taken the lives of five patriotic Fall River residents in total, all of them volunteers in this pair of wars without a draft. That's a greater loss per capita than any other Massachusetts community, according to a Boston Globe report.

Yet many Americans have never really seen the cost of the war against terrorism — no draft, no war tax, none of the war bonds or victory gardens of the past. The absence of widespread sacrifice has allowed the war in Afghanistan to stretch on year after year with relatively little public outcry.

AFGHANISTAN: Humanitarian situation likely to worsen in 2011 – aid agencies

Photo: Akmal Dawi/ IRIN Wounded in conflict at an ICRC hospital in Kabul

KABUL, 15 December 2010 (IRIN) - The war in Afghanistan shows no sign of abating and conflict-related misery such as internal displacement, lack of access to essential health services and civilian casualties, is set to rise in 2011, aid agencies and analysts warn.

“We are growing increasingly concerned about the conflict, which is into its ninth year. It’s spreading and intensifying and we’re [likely] to see another year of conflict with dramatic consequences for civilians,” Reto Stocker, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) office in Afghanistan, said on 15 December.

Obama apologists are on a low rung of the ladder to hope, hoping that the president will, suddenly, fulfill some of his promises of, yes, hope.

Articles and letters have been composed, direct pleas to the president, by historians, economists, former politicians, retired veterans, physicians, educators, the underemployed, unemployed, and others, all people who just want the man they supported to do something, anything, indicating that he is real, that he works for americaville, for them, for the woe-man on the street.

This week we saw a fired-up Obama, defending negotiations with Republicans. The president explained his position on tax breaks for the wealthy, saying he compromised to insure tax cuts for the middle class. A majority of Americans oppose extending Bush-era tax cuts to the rich.

What the F**K is wrong with this country? Wait, never mind I've been watching it collapse for the last thirty of my comin on 62 years of my life, Questions Answered!

I just got finished watching Meet The Press and the way over the top extremely highly paid 'experts?' mumbling about the tax cuts and who hates who and why.

I didn't hear One mention of these Wars our soldiers are still in nor the countries need to Finally not only 'Sacrifice, after ten years, but Pay Back What Is Owed For Waging Them, not a mention as to the Veterans Of nor their Families, the Only Ones That Have Done Any Sacrificing as these tax cuts came with the start of these Wars of Choice.

It came on just as I was putting together a post for my site on a just released report on Family Care Givers of Veterans, and boy there is so much more then just this!

WikiLeaks Headquarters — Cold War Bunker in Sweden, Supporters in UK, Servers inside the Bunker, Inside the Bunker and Inside Bunker 2 {for bigger view click photo}"This legislation springs from one of our most successful principles. Democracy works best when people have access to all information that the security of the nation permits.

Tony Blair To Appear Before Iraq War Inquiry Commission

12/8/2010 - The independent commission probing the reasons for Britain joining the Iraq war announced Wednesday that it has asked former British Prime Minister Tony Blair to appear before the panel for a second time to give additional evidence.

Blair, who was the Prime Minister when Britain joined the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, is one among several witnesses summoned to reappear before the Chilcot committee. Those recalled include former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and former chief of defense staff Admiral Michael Boyce.

And you'll never guess just what they found in that dust, wink wink!!!!

Iraq, Kuwait dust may carry dangerous elements

MC2 Ace Rheaume / Navy Builder 2nd Class Eric Clark, assigned to Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 5, is caught in a sandstorm May 4 at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan. A Navy study suggests that dust from Afghanistan contains metals that may cause respiratory problems and brain damage.

Dec 8, 2010 - Researchers studying dust in Iraq and Kuwait say tiny particles of potentially hazardous material could be causing a host of problems in humans, from respiratory ailments to heart disease to neurological conditions.

It really is sad that this Country has to have it's legislators pass a binding legislation for issues such as this, especially as in many cases those running are appointed, mostly based on political affiliation, and/or are contracted out to the private sector when they should stay in Government hands!

Legislation would hold Army accountable for Arlington's graves

December 5, 2010 - The Senate passed legislation Saturday that would require the Army to give a full accounting of every grave at Arlington National Cemetery and fix any errors found at one of the nation's most sacred military burial grounds.

In the muddy of my mind, the Minutemen are singing “Warfare” lyrics:

Falling down the road
Steeper as it goes
Friend or foe
Nobody knows

In the muddy of my mind the Minutemen are singing “The Big Stick” lyrics: “We learn and believe there is justice for us all and we lie to ourselves with a big stick up our ass.”

On Monday, six US troops, serving in Afghanistan, died after receiving friend-foe fire from an Afghan police officer during a training exercise. Friend or foe (?) must be among the many complexities servicemen, women, and their families ponder.

This wasn’t unique, isn’t an aberration. Similar incidents have occurred. Last December, five British soldiers were killed by an Afghan police officer.

And how is the now not secret use of by the U.S. and other countries, especially those during the past decade and the CIA rendition program, any different then the charges pointed at Iran or any country we and others condemn! And how are the so called leaders of Nations who ordered the policies and than walk around freely bragging about the use of any less guilty then those other so called leaders widely condemned for doing same though not bragging about!

By Dede Miller

Photo by Linda Milazzo

On Monday, November 29th, I attended an event at Saddleback Church, or, as I now call it, Sodom and Gomorrah, in Lake Forest California. George Bush was the guest Philistine. Sodom and Gomorrah is located deep in the heart of VERY conservative Orange county California. I, and my fellow defenders of good and justice, were literally in the belly of the beast..

Jamila AL-Habash, 16, one of the victims of the Israeli bombings on Gaza, whose picture can be seen in the Kai Wiedenhöfer exhibition in the Paris Modern Art Museum ( http://www.lemonde.fr/culture/portfolio/2010/11/26/gaza-2010-ruines-et-v... ) will visit on Saturday the exhibition that the Israeli lobby wanted to prohibit.

She is my daughter and yours as well,

BOYCOTT ISRAEL!

By Charles M. Young

Howard Zinn, probably the most influential American historian ever, had an amazing sense of humor when he lectured or met people in person. He could make fun of himself and the audience in a way that exploded the guilt and ambivalence that so often paralyzes liberals, progressives, greens, socialists, anarchists, communists and everyone else on the more-or-less left. Only occasionally, however, did Zinn use his sense of humor in print. His masterpiece, A People’s History of the United States, had no humor at all, as he himself pointed out, because he didn’t find anything funny about the Trail of Tears and all the other ghastly episodes he wove into a narrative that convinced millions of citizens the United States was something less than what they had believed.

Nov 25 2010 - DOXA Documentary Film Festival launches its 2010/2011 Film Series Motion Pictures by introducing Luc Côté and Patricio Henriquez’s documentary You Don’t Like the Truth: 4 Days Inside Guantánamo.

Based on seven hours of recently declassified security camera footage from the Guantanamo prison, the film captures a series of interrogations of Omar Khadr by CSIS agents. What is revealed is the personal story of a child caught up in the larger forces of political action and the global war on terrorism. {read rest}

 

* 3 million documents set to go online

* Bombshell leak thought to include U.S. assessments of Gordon Brown

* Secret talks on return of Lockerbie bomber to Libya may also be leaked

* Allegations 'include U.S. backing of Kurdish terrorists'

* U.S. diplomats face being kicked out of countries in backlash

* Corrupt politicians expected to be named and shamed

27th November 2010 - David Cameron was warned last night by America that damaging secrets of the ‘special relationship’ are about to be laid bare.

The TSA, the Right, and My Busted Watch

26 November 2010 - For the last several days, I have been trying to locate what would appear to be the appropriate and necessary level of angst and fury over the issue of heavy-handed TSA searches at American airports. I say "appropriate and necessary" because, well, all the noise surrounding the matter seems to suggest I have no alternative other than outrage, and if I fail to react that way, I am some sort of dupe, a fool who doesn't understand the Constitutional issues at hand or the dangers represented by what has been described as a glaring governmental over-reach.

Scahill once again is reading the quagmire right on! Maybe a few do remember or sought out the lessons, the real ones, of our quagmire Vietnam!! If we had stayed, no Iraq total destruction, and helped start rebuilding while searching out al Qaeda, as we promised once again we would, just think!!

Nov. 23: Jeremy Scahill, writer for The Nation and author of Blackwater, talks with Chris Hayes about what it means that NATO was trying to negotiate peace with a Taliban imposter.

 

Especially for those in this Country, who don't visit nor mention except at pointing their own hate towards others, others they don't even know nor care to understand. Who've led in the failed policies while now they whine about their personal freedoms being infringed on with body pat downs, not torture, a direct result of the enhancing of the hatreds by the death and destruction wrought for a decade now and still no call for accountability!

Close Watch on Casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq

21 November 2010 - “EVERY morning I wake up and go looking for dead people,” says Michael White, a computer programmer from Stone Mountain, Ga., who publishes the Web site iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths and injuries among coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Gonzales once again implicates self in Bush torture program

November 22nd, 2010 - Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has implicated himself - yet again - in the Bush administration's torture program.

Gonzales told Talking Points Memo that he knew "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used against suspected terrorists.

My oh my, and to think that all one apparently needs is that higher education industry mill piece of paper, when if a tradesman performs any work and gets caught without being licensed all hell breaks lose, Especially if something goes wrong!!

Uncalculated Risks

Do engineering license exemptions open the door to dangerous shortcuts?

Photo: U.S. Navy/Justin Stumberg: Controlled burn removes oil from the Gulf of Mexico surface in May.

US Falls Behind Other Nations in Reducing Traffic Fatalities and Injuries

ScienceDaily (Nov. 19, 2010) — The United States is missing significant opportunities to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries, and could save lives by implementing a more rigorous, comprehensive program that adopts successful safety practices from other countries, says a new report by the National Research Council.

The committee that wrote the report reviewed traffic safety practices and strategies in high-income countries around the world and compared them with those in the United States. From 1995 to 2009, fatalities dropped 52 percent in France, 38 percent in the United Kingdom, 25 percent in Australia, and 50 percent in 15 high-income countries for which long-term fatality and traffic data are available, but they dropped only 19 percent in the United States.

19 November 2010 - When a former Oklahoma Narcotics Bureau agent, Frank Reyes, pleaded guilty not long ago to running guns, it opened a window on the way Mexican drug cartels fill their arsenals.

The Americans buying guns for Mexican gangsters as part of Reyes' ring are a gamut of college students, jobless men, gun show employees, city workers — in short, the guy next door.

 

A victory for the rule of law

18 November 2010 - The verdict yesterday in the case of former Gitmo detainee Ahmed Ghailani, who stood accused of helping facilitate the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, was a victory for the rule of law. Conservatives arguing that the trial was a failure because Ghaliani was acquitted on most of the charges are missing the point -- the integrity of American justice is more important than any single conviction, and, as it stands, Ghailani will very likely spend the rest of his life in prison for his crimes.

Well what do ya know, Justice {Civilian Courts} still works in the U.S.! Another of the Gitmo detainee's, only this one went to trial, was found that the U.S. Government didn't have much evidence of his guilt. Same for the hundreds let go after years being held and most likely tortured after the bush admin picked them off the streets or wherever and whisked them away to other countries prisons, so the U.S. could denie the torture, and to Guantanamo and held incommunicado from the outside world, human rights, defense of charges and any evidence of what they were charged with!

See we don't do that, certainly not for terror waged with death and destruction as well as now the World knowing we torture and hold others with no trials and miles from their Countries and Families!! Our society is geared to who's buying those we hire as we fear that word 'accountability', would mean the death of political opportunity for those hired reps to work for the wealthy and corporations while we whine about getting hand searched at airports {while our soldiers are getting killed and maimed, we also don't do 'sacrifice' even for the veterans}, seems many now are still seeking retaliation!

Accountability for Torture (in Britain)

November 16, 2010 - The contrast could not be more distressing.

Guantánamo payout deal is climax of years of denials of UK role in rendition

Analysis: Settlement means no more damaging documents or information will be released by the courts

16 November 2010 - The disclosure that UK citizens and residents incarcerated in Guantánamo Bay are to receive millions of pounds in compensation is the climax of years of official denials of Britain's role in the secret transfer of terror suspects to prisons where they risked being tortured – the CIA practice of "extraordinary rendition".