EOD PLATOON SHOT

EOD PLATOON SHOT, originally uploaded by bryce_98034.

From the page: "Taken in Fallujah one day before we were ambushed in Ramadi, 6 of my men were killed that day, We went in Twelve Strong. I am now the only Surviving member of my EOD Platoon.

SEMPER FIDELIS MY BROTHERS"

The Primacy of Healing: Politics and Combat Stress in America

This is perhaps the best writing and analysis I have seen on the issues of readjustment after combat, PTSD and political activism. Boudreau (former Marine captain, OIF veteran) is obviously a very insightful and thoughtful man and I told him so through his web site (link follows essay). Please pass this along, as you think proper.

--Dave Collins

From the page: Iraq war combat veteran US Marine Dave McBee holds his two-year-old son Aiden McBee. Tyler E. Boudreau writes: 'combat stress is, in its own way, a political statement. It is a silent judgment of war (and of society), and that is why the understanding and treatment of it remain perpetually stifled.'"

This is a 'must read' for those who are interested in the nature of our combat veterans' issues upon returning home.

It always amazed me when I encountered people like this when I was in the Air Force. Sgt. Frank Gomes comes to mind. I remember sitting in the back of the flight line crew van at 2 a.m. having wide-ranging discussions on politics, culture and philosophy as the other guys looked on in bewilderment. Just like then, I once again have experienced an 'eye-opening.'

I remember my childhood friend telling about nights when he would be awakened by his WWII D-Day veteran dad's screams in the middle of the night as he relived his experience through nightmares. Only until years later did it occur to me why he might have had the garage closet stocked full of Jax beer. He was an honorable, stoic man who I only saw lose his temper once. It never, ever occurred to us to dilly-dally around if he told us to do something.

Rest in peace Mr. Lewis.

What will YOU do for Veteran's Day?

This is a response I gave to the flickr.com comments from a picture posted by clfhcks

What's interesting is how the commentaries jump to conclusions about what he meant by 'BULL SHIT.'

From the page: "You guys fighting like a bunch of middle-school girls over a guy with your ad hominem diatribes, with the exception of wquatman. Not one of these comments are asking what these guys mean by their flag.

Folks, regardless of what that answer is, we need to pull together to support them not only while they are in harm's way, but when they return. Driving around with a yellow ribbon and attempting to slap down anyone who disagrees with your worldview does not serve our brave men and women in the least.


These guys are hurting. For every dead soldier there are 10 like this one who have returned with obvious wounds like this or not so obvious wounds. Stop this senseless bickering and give your support where it's needed as in veteran's benefits or just someone for these guys to talk to.

Honor the warrior, not the war"

IVAW members arrested while attempting to present questions to Obama and McCain

From the page: "Neither of the candidates have shown real support for soldiers and veterans. We came here to try and get serious questions answered, questions that we as veterans of the Iraq war, have a right to ask, but instead we were arrested. We will continue to ask these questions no matter who is elected. We believe that the time has come to end this war and bring our troops home, and we will be pushing for that no matter what happens in this election." said Jason Lemieux, a former Sergeant in the US Marine Corps and member of IVAW who served three tours in Iraq."

---

---

Dear friends and supporters,

Yesterday Veterans For Peace Long Island was privileged to march in
solidarity with the Iraq Veterans Against the War to the front gates
of Hofstra University. As I am sure you are aware, the peaceful march
to express concerns to the Presidential candidates was meet with
unprovoked violence and brutality by the Nassau County Police.
Following a mounted police assault in which we all peaceably moved
back from the front gate of Hofstra, the Police abusively sought out
and arrested members of IVAW. Three veterans were injured in the
assault and taken to local hospitals. In all fifteen demonstrators
were arrested, twelve of them Iraq War veterans.

The Hempstead 15 will be arraigned on November 10 and VFPLI will be
there to stand in solidarity with those who continue to sacrifice so
much for our country. Please remember them and join us
to support our courageous brothers and sisters and to demonstrate to
our representatives that such police brutality will not be tolerated
on Long Island.

Peace and justice for the Hempstead 15.

The following photos are of Nick Morgan, IVAW member, after the above described police assault targeting Iraq veterans exercising their rights to freedom of speech and assembly. His injury is a result of being trampled by one of the police horses. He suffered a broken cheekbone.

The photos were taken by Vietnam Veterans Against the War member Bill Perry.

---

You can see more on the IVAW site and watch the full coverage on Democracy Now.

---

Here is an update on the Hempstead 15 from Kris Goldsmith of IVAW, one of the veterans arrested at Hofstra.

On Wednesday, October 15th 2008, a peaceful protest outside the third Presidential Debate at Hofstra University on Long Island was met with violence and misconduct by police.Iraq Veterans Against the War had a clear mission that night: to ensure that the issues most important to Veterans would be at the forefront of the debate. With over 4,183 service members having been killed in Iraq (at the time of the protest), it's unforgivable that the candidates have been allowing the Occupation of Iraq and it's casualties to fall into avoidable talking points instead of focused attention.At 7:00pm the night of the debate, IVAW members led a contingent of a few hundred peaceful protesters to the main gate of Hofstra University. As per our letter to Moderator Bob Scheiffer, because we hadn't received notice that two of our Veterans would be allowed to enter the debate to address the candidates, a small, uniformed contingent of Veterans physically attempted
entry.Immediately police began arresting those who "crossed the line". They then began using horses to physically knock protesters back away from the Hofstra gates.As the order to get back on the sidewalk was being complied to at least one officer charged his horse up the curb, and onto the sidewalk- directly resulting in at least three injuries- including two Iraq Veterans.Nick Morgan, a former Army Sergeant was trampled, knocked out, and had his face crushed by the hoof of a horse.Witnesses say that police left him unconscious on the sidewalk for up to ten minutes before arresting him. Nick, disoriented and obviously suffering a concussion, was initially refused medical treatment beyond a simple piece of gauze taped to his face.When Morgan was escorted onto the bus in handcuffs, he didn't know where he was, or why he was arrested. Police initially refused to bring him to the hospital irregardless of his potentially life threatening condition. It
wasn't until other members of IVAW demanded he be allowed to see a doctor, that the police hesitantly put Nick into an ambulance.At the hospital Morgan received stitches, and it was discovered after an x-ray that his right cheek bone was clearly displaced and pushed back into his skull.After treatment, the semi-conscious Veteran was brought to Nassau County's Headquarters Jail and shackled to a bench with the rest of us. With fifteen in total sitting in the jail, the officers and detectives began taunting and harassing Nick, with all of us witnessing this misconduct by police.We, the "Hempstead 15" were issued the same summons and case number for "disorderly conduct" and "failure to obey a lawful order".On November 10th 2008, the Marine Corps Birthday, and one day before Veterans Day, we will be heard in court. We would like to invite you to come out in support of the very Freedoms granted by the United States Constitution that we swore to uphold and
defend when joining the military.First District Court, County of Nassau, Arraignment Part, 99 Main Street, Hempstead New York 11550 (Room 268)I hope to see you all there, for a Peaceful action.

-Sergeant Kristofer Goldsmith
Iraq Veterans Against the War
"1 of the Hempstead 15"

For those who would like to support the Hempstead 15, here are some suggestions from IVAW

So what can YOU do about it? My fellow veteran brothers need you. We need to call the NY police department and ask them why they would trample IRAQ WAR VETERANS exercising their FREEDOM SPEECH in a peaceful manner. Is this the way members of the military who don the uniform and make an oath to defend the constitution, America, and it's people are treated? We MUST NOT ONLY hold the Police Department accountable but the Presidential Candidates as well for allowing this to happen. THIS IS NOT DEMOCRACY, THIS IS A POLICE STATE.

Below are the numbers. Call now and anytime until November 10th when the court date is set for the detained veterans. Stay posted for a possible action then.

LAWRENCE MULVEY
COMMISSIONER OF POLICE
Public Information Office
516-573-7135
516-573-7138 (24 hour)
516-573-7118 FAX
And the complaint line
Call 516-573-7000 and ask to be connected to the Desk Officer where the incident occurred (Hofstra University).
NC Police Internal Affairs Unit: 516-573-7120
NC District Attorney’s Office, Special Investigations : 516-571-2100
NYS Attorney General, Civil Rights Division: 1-800-771-7755

Thank you for your continued support,

Wendy Barranco
President
IVAW - Los Angeles
Combat Medic
SPC, USA
OIF 05-07
Tikrit, Iraq

Here are the names of those veterans arrested at Hofstra.

A total of ten veterans were arrested during the action, including Matthis Chiroux (Army Sergeant), Kristofer Goldsmith (Army Sergeant), Adam Kokesh (Marine Sergeant), Mike Spinato, Geoff Millard (Army Sergeant), Marlisa Grogan (Marine Captain), Nathan Peld (Navy, 1998-2004), Nick Morgan (Army Sergeant), James Gilligan (Marine Corps, 6 years) and Jose Vasquez (Army & Army Reserves, 1992-2007).

What "Semper Fi" Really Means

Stopping the War Machine: Military Recruiters Must Be Confronted


By Ron Kovic -Truthdig Posted May 30, 2008

We must use every means of creative, nonviolent resistance to stop
military recruitment across the country.
As a former United States Marine Corps sergeant who was shot and
paralyzed from my mid-chest down during my second tour of duty in
Vietnam on Jan. 20, 1968, I am sending my complete support and
admiration to all those now involved in the courageous struggle to stop
military recruitment in Berkeley and across the country.
Not since the Vietnam War protests of the late 1960s has there been a
cause more just than the one you are now engaged in. Who knows better
the deep immorality and deception of military recruiters than those of
us who, decades ago, entered those same recruiting offices with our
fathers, believing in our hearts that we were being told the truth --
only to discover later we had been deceived and terribly betrayed?
Many of us paid for that deceit with our lives, years of suffering and
bodies and minds that were never the same again. If only someone had
warned us, if only someone had had the courage to speak out against the
madness that we were being led into, if only someone could have
protected us from the recruiters whose only wish was to make their
quota, send us to boot camp and hide from us the dark secret of the
nightmare which awaited us all.

Over the past five years, I have watched in horror the mirror image of
another Vietnam unfolding in Iraq. So many similarities, so many things
said that remind me of that war 30 years ago which left me paralyzed and
confined to a wheelchair for life.

Refusing to learn from the lessons of Vietnam, our government continues
to pursue a policy of deception, distortion, manipulation and denial,
doing everything it can to hide from the American people their true
intentions and agenda in Iraq. As we pass the fifth anniversary of the
start of this tragic and senseless war, I cannot help but think of the
young men and women who have been wounded, nearly 30,000, flooding
Walter Reed, Bethesda, Brooke Army Medical Center and veterans hospitals
all across our country.

Paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded, shocked and stunned,
brain-damaged and psychologically stressed, a whole new generation of
severely maimed men and women who were not even born when I came home
wounded to the Bronx Veterans Hospital in New York in 1968.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which afflicted so many of us
after Vietnam, is just now beginning to appear among soldiers recently
returned from the current war. For some the agony and suffering, the
sleepless nights, anxiety attacks and awful bouts of insomnia,
alienation, anger and rage will last for decades -- if not their whole
lives.

They will be trapped in a permanent nightmare of that war, of killing
another man, a child, watching a friend die ... fighting against an
enemy that can never be seen, while at any moment someone, a child, a
woman, an old man -- anyone -- might kill them.
These traumas return home with us and we carry them, sometimes hidden,
for agonizing decades. They deeply impact our daily lives, and the lives
closest to us. To kill another human being, to take another life out of
this world with one pull of a trigger, is something that never leaves you.
It is as if a part of you dies with that person. If you choose to keep
on living, there may be a healing, and even hope and happiness again,
but that scar and memory and sorrow will be with you forever. Why did
the recruiters never mention these things? This was never in the slick
pamphlets they gave us.

Some of these veterans are showing up at homeless shelters around our
country, while others have begun to courageously speak out against the
senselessness and insanity of this war and to demand answers from the
leaders who sent them there.

During the 2004 Democratic National Convention, returning soldiers
formed a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War, just as we had
marched in Miami in August of 1972 as Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Still others have refused deployment to Iraq, gone to Canada and begun
resisting this immoral and illegal war.

Like many other Americans, I have seen them on television or at the
local veterans hospitals, but for the most part, they remain hidden like
the flag-draped caskets of our dead returned to Dover Air Force Base in
the dark of night, as this administration continues to pursue a policy
of censorship, tightly controlling the images coming out of that war and
rarely allowing the human cost of its policy to be seen.
Many of us promised ourselves long ago that we would never allow what
happened to us in Vietnam to happen again. We had an obligation, a
responsibility, as citizens, as Americans, as human beings, to raise our
voices in protest.

We could never forget the hospitals, the intensive-care wards, the
wounded all around us fighting for their lives, those long and painful
years after we came home, those lonely nights. There were lives to save
on both sides, young men and women who would be disfigured and maimed,
mothers and fathers who would lose their sons and daughters, wives and
other loved ones who would suffer for decades to come if we did not do
everything we could to stop the momentum of this madness.

Mario Savio once said,
"There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious,
makes you so sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can't even
passively take part, and you've got to put your bodies upon the gears
and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus and you've
got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run
it, to the people who own it, that unless you're free the machine will
be prevented from working at all."

It is time to stop the war machine. It is time for bold and daring
action on the part of us all. Precious lives are at stake, both American
and Iraqi, and military recruiters must be confronted at every turn, in
every high school, every campus, every recruiting office, on every
street corner, in every town and city across America. In no uncertain
terms we must make it clear to them that by their actions they represent
a threat to our community, to our children and all that we cherish.
We must explain to them that condemning our young men and women to
their death, setting them up to be horribly maimed, and psychologically
damaged in a senseless and immoral war, is wrong and unpatriotic and
will not be tolerated by Berkeley -- or, for that matter, any town or
city in the United States.

The days of deceiving, manipulating and victimizing our young people are
over. We have had enough, and I strongly encourage all of you to use
every means of creative, nonviolent civil disobedience to stop military
recruitment all across our country.

I stand with you in this important and courageous fight, and I am
confident your actions in the days ahead will inspire countless others
across our country to do everything they can to end this deeply immoral
and illegal war.
(Note: This statement represents portions of several essays and writings
I have done over the past five years. -- R.K.)

Digg!
See more stories tagged with:
*civil disobedience
Vitenam
Iraq
Military recruitment*

Kovic was born in Ladysmith, Wis., and grew up in Massapequa, N.Y. His
autobiography, "Born on the Fourth of July," was adapted as an Academy
Award-winning film directed by Oliver Stone and starring Tom Cruise as
Kovic. Kovic received a Golden Globe for his screenplay adaptation of
his autobiography.

Kovic is an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.
_______________________________________________

vvawnet@vvaw.org
vvawnet mailing list
*************************************************************
Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc.
(773) 276-4189
e-mail: vvaw@vvaw.org

Fighting for veterans, peace and justice since 1967

Words of Wisdom From a Dear Friend

The embodiment of a true Patriot:

We believe the war in Iraq was wrong from the beginning because it is the wrong way to fight extreme ideology, which is never destroyed by missiles, planes, artillery, and tanks. We believe in resistance to terror and resistance to those who threaten the "blessings of Liberty", but refuse to give up our Liberties in the process. We do not believe the Iraqi war was necessary to secure our liberty but rather that our security resides in the strength of our Constitutional ideals and our willingness to preserve them.
Being an American patriot has always involved the pledge of "...our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor..." but it does not include the sacrifice of our blood on the altar of war profiteering and greed!

--Judson Malone

The War In Iraq: A Soldiers Perspective

From the page: "I think this is a must see video. It was created by U.S. Army Specialist Colby Buzzell and details the events of a battle in Iraq. His drawings are well done and his story well told."

Putting it in a shoe box may work for now... PTSD manifests itself in many ways. Sometime years later. This is an excellent animation video showing what it's like to 'go on a patrol' in Iraq. This needs to be put into a full feature production. Let's just hear it from their perspective, without all the propaganda for or against the war. We Americans owe our veterans the honor of understanding what they have and are going through over there. More importantly, to remember them when Congress votes to cut veteran's benefits.