I'll Leave You To Judge {UPDATED}

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition they had this report:

Iraq Vets Charged with Murder of Fellow Soldier

A soldier who had survived two tours in Iraq and had been sent home after suffering traumatic brain injury was murdered in December in Colorado Springs near Fort Carson, Colo. Army Spc. Kevin Shields was killed, according to police, by three fellow soldiers who had served with him in Iraq.

Army Spc. Kevin Shields was laid to rest on Dec. 15th. 2007

If you do a search of the names you'll find more information.

But at the above link you'll be able to read, and listen to, this mornings report.

You'll also find much more, like their MySpace page links, discussed in the report, as well as other information.

My first question was, especially after hearing one statement:

The AK-47 is not issued by the U.S. military, but it is commonly used by Iraqi insurgents. "This is a weapon that should have been turned over to higher commanders and stored," De Yoanna said.

Relating to 'Real Life'

Defendant Bastien told police that he saw Eastridge fire at Iraqi civilians with an AK-47 to make it seem like enemy fire. The Army's Criminal Investigative Division has investigated and so far has not been able to substantiate that charge. Eastridge earned a Purple Heart while in Iraq.

was, how many innocent Iraqi's did he, and or the others Kill for no reason, if statement is true, i.e. Atrosities, with little or no concern for their fellow soldiers lives, from the Blowback, thus getting one or more killed or maimed!

Experiance from 'Nam, as any Combat/Theater Vet from any conflict can tell you, Atrosities happen, and some are Intentional!

March 13-16 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans will gather in Washington DC to witness and tell their stories and experiences about U.S. foreign policy in both countries. The nation will hear directly from those who have been there on the ground. This gathering will be in the tradition of the 1971 Winter Soldier investigations held by Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Not since that original event has the American public had such an important opportunity to hear the truth about the brutality of war and the nature of U.S. foreign policy.

Update:
Sniper unit leader tells of ordering shooting
At a trial for one of his soldiers, the U.S. Army team leader says he ordered an Iraqi civilian killed 'to shut him up.

After Janabi's 17-year-old son, Mustafa, discovered them and was briefly detained by the sniper unit, Hensley said he decided he had no choice but to kill Janabi.

He described the decision on May 11 as one of many hard choices in a counterinsurgency campaign in Jarf Sakhr, 35 miles southwest of Baghdad.

But they let the Son go, think on that, as to their reasoning for killing the father.

Hensley said he had planted an AK-47 assault rifle on the body after Vela had shot Janabi, which he described as a common procedure.

James Culp, Vela's civilian defense attorney, said this was the third case he had been involved with in which soldiers had planted weapons on bodies to boost their cases for "kills" in Iraq.

To all those who've joined the ranks of us Combat/Theater Veterans Atrosities Happen some are even policy from the top of the chain, some are intentional by one or more individuals, most are accidental.

But they do happen and when they do they endanger the rest in possible 'Blowback', that's War.

They only happen because of the actions of the Few but they are perceived by the Invaded and Occupied as Acts Of Murder and other Human Rights Crimes and Retaliated as such, and the Invaded Populace Perception is the only one that matters!

We Condemn others for the same and if we don't prosecute, right to the Top, we loose our Morality as a Nation and People!

Waterboarding, as Torture, is now front and center, but what other forms are we Condoning and Practising!

We are now the Face of Terrorism, as a Nation, for we are Terrorizing Millions!

And what is Extremely Dangerous and Much more than simple Sad, we have Many, here in this Society, that want us to sink even lower into this abis we've created!!

Update: Army Surgeon General Lied!

Back on the 29th I put up a post about an NPR Morning Edition report Army Blocks Disability Paperwork Aid at Fort Drum, the link is to my sites post which I put up on a few others with some added content..
Here is the link to that NPR report.

A soldier described his first briefing with the VA office on base:

According to the soldier, the VA official told a classroom full of injured troops, "We cannot help you review the narrative summaries of your medical problems." The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA's help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.

You can listen to the report here - NPR media player

A spokesperson for the Army Surgeon General had this to say:

Cynthia Vaughan, spokeswoman for the Army surgeon general, says the VA was not doing anything wrong by helping soldiers at Fort Drum.
"There is no Army policy on outside help in reviewing and/or assisting soldiers in rewriting their narratives during the 10-day period which they have to review them," Vaughan says.

They layed the blame on a:

"Tiger Team"— an ad-hoc group assigned to investigate, in this case, medical disability benefits.

Well Ari Shapiro, who gave us the first report, followed it up this morning with this: Document Shows Army Blocked Help for Soldiers, and starts it out with the following:

A document from the Department of Veterans Affairs contradicts an assertion made by the Army surgeon general that his office did not tell VA officials to stop helping injured soldiers with their military disability paperwork at a New York Army post.
The paperwork can help determine health care and disability benefits for wounded soldiers.

You can listen to this report here - NPR media player, I suggest you listen to the first report than this one, especially if you didn't catch that first one. Than this one if you didn't hear the show this morning.

Here is the PDF of the memo being reported on in this morning followup report.

Now, NPR has obtained a four-page VA document that contradicts the surgeon general's statement to McHugh. It was written by one of the VA officials at Fort Drum on March 31, the day after the meeting. The document says Col. Becky Baker of the Army Surgeon General's office told the VA to discontinue counseling soldiers on the appropriateness of Defense Department ratings because "there exists a conflict of interest."

In this report they speak with one of the "Tiger Team" personal, Dr. Alan Janusziewicz, who retired as deputy assistant surgeon general for the Army in October.

They also talk to Rosie Taylor, who recently retired as Fort Drum's Disability Program manager.

Who had this to say:

The document says one soldier was bedridden for three days without a change of clothes or meal. Taylor says nobody listened to her complaints until the Walter Reed scandal.
"Every time I walked into a meeting before, it was like 'Oh my God, there goes $70,000.' And after Walter Reed hit the fan, it was like I was getting phone calls, 'Rosie we're doing over a building and we need your advice on access,'"

I went way over 'Outrage' long ago as these reports started coming out Finally, "Where was the Funding and Enhanced Budgets, for Military and VA Care, as the Drums Of War were being beat Louder and Louder, by the Republican Controlled Congress and Administration, meaning also the Department Heads and Cabinet appointed and under Republican Control, as we went to War and well after"!

These reports should not even be, everything should have been at the Top of the List in their lust for War! Instead we get, after the Walter Reed story broke, "Well it's going to close in a couple of years.". Which means, hey it's closing so don't dump any money into that facility as we send the Maimed Troops, returning from Afganistan and Iraq, into it for the Care They Need, we need the money for the War and the Private Contractors, oh and our pockets!

Why 'Outraged', because many of us knew Exactly what was going to happen if this Country followed the Inept Leadership, and their spin meisters, into the invasion of Iraq, A War Of Choice!, an invasion on Innocent People, and we were Speaking Out!

And not one of the above were Listening nor Speaking, nor were their talking heads, nor their supporters, nor the media........................................................!

They were all to busy calling us 'Focus Groups', 'Unpatriotic', 'Unamerican', 'Giving aid and comfort', you name it we were called it, and many of us are Veterans of our last Fiasco and have way over 30yrs. of Experiance of what happens to those who serve This Country, in Wars of Choice, than return to it's Apathedic Society!

I want to make one thing Perfectly Clear, and Rosie Taylor states very well in the above report:

But she will say this about Fort Drum's VA workers: "They stand on their heads for soldiers. They put their jobs on the line for soldiers. They don't care if they're not supposed to do something; if a soldier needs something done, they do it anyway."

Whenever you read or hear one of these reports, They Are Not Focused On The Workers, they are about what this Country calls 'Leadership', those we hire and the ones Hired by them, to Work for Us, being Paid by Us, for the benefit of the Societies true Needs, Not Their Own!

The workers are just like you and me, good days and bad, and in the case of the VA Hospitals and Clinics they tend to go well beyond their required job billets. And in almost every Facility the many who Volunteer, young to old, disabled and veteran, are what keeps the workers sane in an almost insane system, underfunded and overworked!

Following the report, from today, there was this one:

Alabama Community in Shock After Tornadoes

What does this have to do with the above, well this:

Members of the Alabama state defense force pick through the remnants of a brick home that was flattened and spread a hundred yards across a front yard. Part of its wooden roof is perched high in a tree across the street.

"This is a national guardsmen's home," says First Lt. Will Wright, who is coordinating the cleanup. His team finds a good conduct medal.

"He served in Iraq, and we're trying to find his box of ribbons," he says. "Trying to help the family find as much as we possibly can. He was in the Alabama Department of the military, just like we are, and we're going to do what we can for him."
The former guardsman, Ray Coleman, his wife Rebecca, and their 19-year old son, Garrett , were all killed.

Rebecca's father, James Devaney, says Ray Coleman was a humvee driver who had survived an attack in Iraq and came home suffering from post traumatic stress. Ray and Garrett had been working as plumbers. Rebecca was a cashier at the local grocery store.

"it's a shock, big shock," Devaney says. "Appreciate your family till they not with ya anymore. That's the way I look at it.

You can listen here - NPR media player, but if you visit the title link above you'll find a Photo Gallery of the damaged area!

Update:
General Eric B. Schoomaker answers back:
Army Blames 'Miscommunication' in Fort Drum Flap

The Army Surgeon General says he was mistaken when he denied that the Army had told the Veterans Affairs Department not to help injured soldiers challenge their disability ratings.

You can listen here - NPR media player

"Veterans - all their benefits are mere gratuities,"

WTF are this Gang Of Criminals, Thieves, War Mongers, War Profitteers, Twisted Ideologies, that this Country REFUSES doing anything about, Thinking?

Veterans not entitled to mental health care, U.S. lawyers argue

They took Complete Advantage over an Extremely Tragic Event, that they should have Stopped in it's Tracks, Unless, if they paid one little iota to the Intelligence given to them, and Invaded a Country, Destroyed and Killed, that had Absolutely Nothing To Do With the Extremely Tragic Event, 9/11!

So many Lies in justification, when one would fall another would quickly rise, from their spin meisters, So Many Lies!

They sent tens of thousands of our Sons, Daughters, Fathers, Mothers, Neighbors......................................., to another small Country, this time to take out another one of Our Installed Dictators and once Good Friend to the powerful!

And in return those sent get this:

Veterans have no legal right to specific types of medical care, the Bush administration argues in a lawsuit accusing the government of illegally denying mental health treatment to some troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Huge taxcuts for the wealthy, transfer of funds from the treasury to private hands under the guise of taxcuts for the rest of us, and Our Military Personal, fighting foes on Two Now Long Running Fronts are told this:

The argument drew a sharp retort from a lawyer for advocacy groups that sued the government in July.
"Veterans need to know in this country that the government thinks all their benefits are mere gratuities," attorney Gordon Erspamer said. "They're saying it's completely discretionary, that even if Congress appropriates money for veterans' health care, we can do anything we want with it."

Everything one has learned from childhood changes once one is sent into a War Theater, especially one built on the lies of their civilian leadership and likeminded military officers!

Some, because of the nature of their duty and their inner morality, snap under those changes and are haunted by what they may have done and all they've seen!

Some feel they can no longer live any type of normal life in 'The Real World', I have known many of my 'Nam Brothers who felt exactly that and a few, back than, who volunteered to return to that hell saying that was their reason, coming back in Flag Drapped Coffins!

In these times little Volunteering is needed for that, they are Returned, Over and Over, in many cases to Both Theaters on Extended Tours and Stop Lossed!

Think on this:

The plaintiffs say that the department has a backlog of more than 600,000 disability claims and that 120 veterans a week commit suicide.

And from Your Governments lawyer:

"This court should not interfere with the political branches' design, oversight and modification of VA programs," the government lawyers argued.

Veterans for Common Sense brought the Lawsuit against the Veterans Administration.

From Paul Sullivan, Executive Director of Veterans for Common Sense:

Clearly, VA’s troubling court filings are an admission by the Administration that VA lacks the funds to provide care for our newest war veterans, including those who are suicidal.
This Thursday, Feb. 7, VCS will be testifying before the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee and expressing our outrage that VA would rather fight against veterans than ask for more money to treat our veterans.

You may want to read this PDF, supplied by Paul, of an Interview-PDF by the Prestigious Magazine Proceedings, published by the U.S. Naval Institute, about the broken 'transition' process from DoD to VA.

More information on this Class Action Lawsuit

You will find this link, at above link, for The Pivotal Court-filed Documents as well as one for Relevant News Articles

I leave you with this reality:

Conservative Idea of 'Strong on National Defense':

Enhance more Hatreds anywhere possible, through propaganda, destruction, mass death, in order to Continue threats against from similar Failed Policies of Past!

Those Hatreds lead to 'Blowback' by recipients of the many Failed Policies called 'Criminal Terrorism'!

Take the word 'Terrorism', while practising same, and paste it on any group needed to Enhance the Fear in Populations causing Perpetual Conflicts and Huge Profits for any Military Industrial Complex and Control by same for Further Policies set up to Fail!

And when 'Johnny and Jane' come Marching Home, Dump Them {that one cuts across all Political Ideology and This Society }

It's Not 'Strong on National Defense', it Destroys 'National Defense' and brings about more and more 'Conflicts of Choice' for Greed and Power!

If we don't hold those Responsible for the Wrath of Failed Policies instituted than in the eyes of the World 'We Have Excepted All That Has Been Done In Our Names' and are thus Just As Guilty!!

.

And This:

Blood Wealth - War Profitteering

Deficient Kevlar in Military Helmets

Twelve days before the settlement {note:2mil} with the Justice Department was announced, the company, Sioux Manufacturing of Fort Totten, was given a new contract of up to $74 million to make more armor for helmets to replace the old ones, which were made from the late 1980s to last year.

Still 'Undecided', Obama vs Clinton

Still not decided on who you might cast your ballot, or whatever, for?

Well The Real News have a few interviews with Jonathan Schell on his take on the candidates and their possible Foreign Policy Directions.

Who is Jonathan Schell, if you didn't already know:

Based in New York City, USA, Jonathan Schell is a renowned anti-nuclear activist, prolific journalist, lecturer and best-selling author. He is a frequent contributor to The Nation, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine and Atlantic Monthly. He is also the author of The Fate of the Earth, nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Schell is a board member of IWT - The Real News.

Two are already up on YouTube:

Obama vs Clinton on war and peace


Obama vs Clinton on nuclear weapons


And two aren't as of yet:

Obama vs Clinton on the Middle East

Obama vs Clinton on Pakistan and Afghanistan

Visit The Real News for more coverage on a veriaty of Important Subjects!

The above interviews may or may not help you decide, but more important, as you are the Employer, if you find anything you might disagree with you can start building a reasonable way to help change their minds on the directions they may be heading, and/or positives/negatives of the directions they may set forth if elected, i.e Hired!

And I leave you with this to not ponder, for it's been realized in these past few years, but to possibly use in helping others see the direction that has been set and Must Be Changed:

Conservative Idea of 'Strong on National Defense':
Enhance more Hatreds anywhere possible, through propaganda, destruction, mass death, in order to Continue threats against from similar Failed Policies of Past!

Those Hatreds lead to 'Blowback' by recipients of the many Failed Policies called 'Criminal Terrorism'!

Take the word 'Terrorism', while practising same, and paste it on any group needed to Enhance the Fear in Populations causing Perpetual Conflicts and Huge Profits for any Military Industrial Complex and Control by same for Further Policies setup to Fail!

And when 'Johnny and Jane' come Marching Home, Dump Them {that one cuts across all Political Ideology and Society }

It's Not 'Strong on National Defense', it Destroys 'National Defense' and brings about more and more 'Conflicts of Choice' for Greed and Power!

If we don't hold those Responsible for the Wrath of Failed Policies instituted than in the eyes of the World 'We Have Excepted All That Has Been Done In Our Names' and are thus Just As Guilty!!