Vietnam: U.S. MIA Remains Returned

Vietnam to hand over more US MIA remains

The remains of what are believed to be US servicemen who died in the Vietnam War will be handed over to the US government on September 12 in the 111th repatriation ceremony held by the two nations.

Sunday, September 13, 2009

The remains to be handed over at Hanoi’s Noi Bai International Airport include those recovered by a

Vietnamese excavation team in central Vietnam, as well as remains turned over by Vietnamese citizens. The exact number of persons the remains account for will be released at the ceremony, according to the US Consulate in Ho Chi Minh City.

US Ambassador to Vietnam Michael Michalak and US Army Lieutenant Colonel Todd G. Emoto will represent the US government at the ceremony.

So far, the remains of 909 Americans have been identified in and around Indochina since US troops officially left Vietnam in 1973: 645 in Vietnam, 230 in Laos, 31 in Cambodia and three in China, according to the US Embassy in Hanoi.

There are 1,737 Americans still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War, including 1,322 in Vietnam, the embassy said in a statement.

Quagmires: 8yrs. After 9/11

Public Views Shifting on War in Afghanistan

Jeffrey Brown speaks with editorial page editors about the public's view on the war in Afghanistan and increasing doubts over sending more troops.

JIM LEHRER: The prospect of expanding the American presence in Afghanistan ran into new opposition today. It came as the nation marked the anniversary of 9/11, the event that triggered the war in Afghanistan.

Ray Suarez has our lead story report........Rest of Transcript Here

Afghanistan stopped having anything to do with 9/11 as soon as the drums of war of choice started beating louder and louder to invade Iraq, a country and people who had nothing to do with any attack nor threat on the United States! We're still in Iraq, stalemated, after destroying their country, killing their citizens, creating huge numbers of refugee's from and causing the ongoing rising again sectarian violence!

Now we return to Afghanistan with growing troop numbers and deaths after leaving it occupied with sparse US/UN troop numbers, not enough to secure and start the promised rebuilding, and pulling out the promised rebuilding monies after the fall of the Taliban! We attack, with robot armed planes, drones, into Pakistan killing innocents creating a growing number of Taliban and al Qaeda insurgents, those who live in the whole region.

It's now a War/Occupation with no reason except so called containment of a ghost organization of insurgent criminal terrorists called al Qaeda, ghosts because any group seeking retaliation and blowback from the policies set forth, even before 9/11 but especially since, will use that banner to organize and cause criminal terrorist acts under, no border guerrilla warfare. Creating the hatreds that will now last for decades to come!

Many here still think that we can be the only ones who should continue seeking vengeance on those that were a part of 9/11, even those that had nothing to do with those acts, yet the leaders of are still not caught, and condemn those who now have been witness to much more destruction and deaths from our long running vengeance! They feel those in these countries should bow to our power and have no right to feel the hate they do, the same hatreds some still feel towards them, most of whom are innocent citizens living in the countries of their births. Those that still seek this vengeance shouldn't be surprised if any Blowback from the terror we waged on their countries develops from their daily 9/11's!!

This was all left to a new administration in the U.S., as well as other Western Countries, along with collapsing economies, called for as a goal by the leaders of this ghost group al Qaeda after 9/11. Collapsing because of the costs of our occupying and the greed and arrogance embedded within these economies in many area's of, and a whole host of negative problems for a once leading country on this planet, many of the people of wanting to lead by example, example of the positive not of a negative destructive force creating hatreds towards it!

It is up to the people to come together and try and create the positive among themselves in order to minimize the extreme negatives of the small groups bent of their own vengeance or power and wealth grabbing!

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Added Report of Recent NATO Bombing


Victims' families tell their stories following Nato airstrike in Afghanistan

'I took some flesh home and called it my son.' The Guardian interviews 11 villagers

At first light last Friday, in the Chardarah district of Kunduz province in northern Afghanistan, the villagers gathered around the twisted wreckage of two fuel tankers that had been hit by a Nato airstrike. They picked their way through a heap of almost a hundred charred bodies and mangled limbs which were mixed with ash, mud and the melted plastic of jerry cans, looking for their brothers, sons and cousins. They called out their names but received no answers. By this time, everyone was dead.

What followed is one of the more macabre scenes of this or any war. The grief-stricken relatives began to argue and fight over the remains of the men and boys who a few hours earlier had greedily sought the tanker's fuel. Poor people in one of the world's poorest countries, they had been trying to hoard as much as they could for the coming winter.

"We didn't recognise any of the dead when we arrived," said Omar Khan, the turbaned village chief of Eissa Khail. "It was like a chemical bomb had gone off, everything was burned. The bodies were like this," he brought his two hands together, his fingers curling like claws. "There were like burned tree logs, like charcoal.............

"Saffron Dreams" post 9/11

Austin author attempts to convey essence of Islam, post 9/11

"There was a time before Sept. 11 when I could jaywalk down Sixth Street and blend in with the locals," said Abdullah, 38. "I was colorless, stripped of ethnicity, even faceless at times. The day after 9/11, I woke up to a new America –– the one where we were no longer regarded as locals but outsiders and lumped together with the fundamentalists."

Her second book, "Saffron Dreams," tells the story of Arissa, a Pakistani writer who is widowed when her husband, Faizan, dies during the Sept. 11 attacks. He worked at a restaurant in one of the World Trade Center towers, Windows on the World. The book was published in February and made the local bestseller list compiled by the Arboretum Barnes & Noble in the spring....................

Austin author Shaila Abdullah's "Saffron Dreams"

On The Eve Of 9/11, Could It Have Been Prevented? {Added Video Report}

According to an FBI informant Yes!
FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta
Undercover Operative 'One Million Percent Positive' Attacks Could Have Been Prevented

This was just on the ABC World News, video report not yet up, but is one more of the Brian Ross Investigative Unit.

On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.

Snip

According to Assaad, Shukrujumah, whose father ran the mosque, invited the undercover FBI operative to meet him at his home, but the FBI told him to stay away. Instead, Assad says the agency assigned him to set up and sting what he calls wannabe terrorists, ending any hope of infiltrating the real al Qaeda terrorists.

Former national security official Richard Clarke, now an ABC News consultant, said the case is "yet another example of the way the system broke down prior to 9/11."

"If the system had worked," Clarke said, "we might have been able to identify these people before the attacks."

This all started going down in early 2001

former undercover operative Elie Assaad says he spotted and became suspicious of Atta in early 2001, when he was sent by the FBI to infiltrate a small mosque outside Miami. Atta was there with Adnan Shukrujuman, an al Qaeda fugitive who now has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.

Which means to me that not only weren't they not paying attention, in the White House, to the intelligence reports they were given and getting, someone in the FBI Administration wasn't paying attention, or worse, to what was coming in from the field of operations by the informants and operatives.

"I was right, I was a hundred percent right," Assaad says of his suspicions. He says that when he learned that Atta was one of the 9/11 hijackers, when the FBI asked if he could identify any of the attackers, he was "very upset, angry" and cried.

"I curse on everybody," Assaad says. "I destroyed half of my furniture. Uh, I went crazy."

The FBI's focus on stings, which Assaad has worked in at least 10 states and overseas since becoming an operative in 1996, are being questioned by many counter-terrorism authorities, who wonder what the true value of the stings are. Since 9/11, the stings have largely targeted people that are more aspirational than operational.

Which if above is true, it seems to show they were being ordered to go after soft targets and not hard intelligence even after 9/11.

After a 2006 sting, then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez praised Assaad – who was still unnamed at the time – for disrupting a group preparing a violent attack, resulting in the indictments of seven men on terror charges.

Snip

Another video of a later meeting shows Assaad counting out $1000 for the leader of the Miami group.

After three trials, including two mistrials, five of the seven men were convicted.

With the increase of hatreds now, towards not only our countries policies but our countries people, and with the new administration, lets hope policies across the spectrum have changed and tightened to the reality. As we now have to work harder, with other countries, on the growth in the threat of criminal terrorism, while we still have two ongoing occupations, creating even more wide spread hatreds!

Added ABC News Video Investigative Report

Think Vietnam Vets Were Screwed?

Wait Until You See How Many Veterans of Bush's Wars End up in Jail

By Penny Coleman

Master Sgt. Hawk Randolph lost his legs during the Gulf War and became homeless when he returned. (Photo: Keith-e / flickr)

Far too many soldiers end up behind bars while the rest of us are free to ignore the human evidence of what our military ventures really cost.

As all the other justifications for the U.S. invasion of Iraq have fallen by the wayside, it is ironic that the one that remains is "freedom," because in the name of someone else's freedom, we train our own soldiers to behave in ways that may very well cost them their own.

Gordy Lane is a retired Syracuse police detective who served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War. As a cop, it was his job to put lawbreakers behind bars, but as a veteran, he understands that when you go to war, "you come back a little different than when you went over there."

"Listen," he says, "you pop up out of a foxhole, and you blow a guy's head open like a watermelon. The other two guys in the foxhole start patting you on the back and saying, 'Good job!' because you just did the worst thing that you can do to another person. How do you translate that into civilian life?"

For far too many soldiers, the simple answer is, you don't.........Read Rest Here

Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, "Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War", was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her Web site is Flashback.

Iraq Labor Tour

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Sept 8, 2009

Iraqi Labor Reps Speak on East Coast Tour on Their Way to National AFL-CIO Convention

Iraqi Labor leaders hope to make their case about the lack of labor rights in Iraq to audience of U.S. union reps and war veterans in Philadelphia, New York City, and Washington, D.C.

In celebration of Labor Day, Five Iraqi labor federation leaders (bios below) representing the largest unions in Iraq will make their case for expanded labor rights in their country to U.S. Labor leaders, war veterans and peace groups. During the tour, they also will collect signatures on a petition to Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, calling on her to speak out about Iraqi labor rights and press the Iraqi government to respect and protect the rights of workers and unions. The tour is being hosted by U.S. Labor Against the War and Iraq Veterans Against the War.

TOUR SCHEDULE

The 'terminator', Spits on Us 'Nam Vets

The 'terminator' same same as the 'rambo', and the heroes to the 'kombat keyboarder chickenhawks', as they emulate the tough talking and gun toting non-reality, in their fantasy world of saving us all as they vegetate at their keyboards!

Once more we're 'Spit' on!!

Schwarzenegger vetoes bill honoring Vietnam veterans

"I dare the governor to veto this bill," said Assembly Majority Leader Alberto Torrico, D-Newark, before the close of Tuesday's session.

Shortly afterward, Schwarzenegger accepted the dare and vetoed Assembly Bill 264.

"Our state is facing significant challenges, including the need for comprehensive changes in our policies on water, energy, and corrections and the need to take meaningful steps to stimulate the economy and rein in the rising levels of unemployment," Schwarzenegger wrote in his veto message. "This bill does nothing to address any of these issues. I look forward to considering this measure when these other major issues are addressed."

Snip

Assemblyman Paul Cook, R-Yucca Valley, a Vietnam veteran who co-authored AB 264 and wears a Marine Corps pin on his lapel, said he was "dismayed and angry."..........Read Rest at Source or at McClatchy lead in

A Popular Comment

"I'm extremely patriotic and supportive of all our troops, past and present, and while I, too, would have liked to see him pass the bill honoring Vietnam Veterans, I understand the point he is making. We have so many important, pressing issues that need to be addressed, and the legislators need to focus on them, not spend precious time on bills that, while honorable, don't deal with our economic crises at hand."

-- Acegirl

Wonder if this 'acegirl' gives thought to Iraq and Afghanistan? Or how about

aces928

As a veteran who had six uncles in Vietnam I say, "VETO"!

Or:

rocketman

yes Arnold did all his defending of our country in fake movies and weightlifting with steroids. Stupid move Arnold but what else would we expect from someone who has to have it his way or he smashes everything else. One ore year and then .. no more Arnie.. Watch the backlash is going to set up Gov Moonbeam perfectly for another run at us. Repubs seem to have a real political death wish.

There's three pages of comments, but I'll bet little 'aces928' isn't what is being passed off as online!

The work of war

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Marines walk into insurgent 'trap' in Afghanistan; 4 die

Four U.S. Marines died Tuesday when they walked into a well-laid ambush by insurgents in Afghanistan's eastern Kunar province. Seven Afghan troops and an interpreter for the Marine commander also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle, which lasted some seven hours.

Three American service members and 14 Afghan security force members were wounded.

It was the largest number of American military trainers to die in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion..............

'We're pinned down:' 4 U.S. Marines die in Afghan ambush

We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.

"We will do to you what we did to the Russians," the insurgent's leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.

Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.................

To 'drunk' or 'hungover' to Answer Questions???

Afghan alcohol ban after Nato staff were 'too hungover' to give explanation for airstrike that killed 70 civilians

Alcohol has been banned from Nato's headquarters in Afghanistan in the wake of an airstrike that killed up to 70 civilians.

US General Stanley McChrystal, head of the International Forces in Afghanistan (Isaf), decided to bar boozing after launching an investigation into the bombing in northern Afghanistan.

Staff at the Kabul headquarters were 'either drunk or too hungover' to answer his questions..............

Yep, we remember that "Winning Hearts and Minds" meme, and how occupations Don't!!

Get them out and bring them home! We are creating the hatreds that will last for decades and some will seek the retaliations, borders ignored!!

Accountability?

Spanish Judge Resumes Torture Case Against Top Bush Administration Lawyers

The Spanish newspaper Público reported exclusively on Saturday that Judge Baltasar Garzón, who sits on the Criminal Court of Spain, is pressing ahead with a case against six senior Bush administration lawyers for implementing torture at Guantánamo.

Snip

former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former lawyer in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, who played a major role in the preparation of the OLC’s notorious “torture memos”; Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy; William J. Haynes II, the Defense Department’s former general counsel; Jay S. Bybee, Yoo’s superior in the OLC, who signed off on the August 2002 “torture memos”; and David Addington, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff.

Snip

On Saturday, however, Público reported that Judge Garzón had accepted a lawsuit presented by a number of Spanish organizations — the Asociación Pro Dignidad de los Presos y Presas de España (Organization for the Dignity of Spanish Prisoners), Asociación Libre de Abogados (Free Lawyers Association), the Asociación Pro Derechos Humanos de España (Association for Human Rights in Spain) and Izquierda Unida (a left-wing political party) — and three former Guantánamo prisoners (the British residents Jamil El-Banna and Omar Deghayes, and Sami El-Laithi, an Egyptian freed in 2005, who was paralyzed during an incident involving guards at Guantánamo). The newspaper reported that all these groups and individuals would take part in any trial.............Read Rest Here

Andy Worthington is the author of "The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 759 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison"

Vietnam and U.S. Meet...

US, Vietnam open annual Agent Orange meetings

Vietnam urged the U.S. to do speed funding for Agent Orange victims today at start of the fourth annual meeting on joint efforts to clean up areas that American forces contaminated with the toxic herbicide during the Vietnam War.

U.S. troops sprayed Agent Orange on jungles to deprive Vietnamese troops of ground cover. Vietnam says from 1 to 4 million of its citizens may have suffered serious health consequences because of the poisonous spraying.

So far, clean-up efforts have focused on the airport at Danang, a former U.S. air base in central Vietnam where American troops stored, mixed and loaded Agent Orange onto planes during the Vietnam War.

Snip

Studies by a Canadian environmental consultant have identified seven Agent Orange hot spots, but Vietnam says there are as many as two dozen that need to be cleaned up.

As this week's meetings opened, the Vietnamese side urged the U.S. to speed up disbursement of money to help the disabled, saying they weren't getting help quickly enough.

"We all know that exposure to dioxin is the cause of serious suffering to the victims," said Nguyen Xuan Cuong, Vietnam's vice minister of natural resources and the environment............Read Rest Here

SIMPLE SONG OF FREEDOM

Labor Day: Real Labor {Responsibility} for Peace

As Battlefields Shift, Old Warrior for Peace Pursues the Same Enemy

The Rev. Carl Kabat inside the fence at a Colorado missile site before his recent arrest.

GREELEY, Colo. — It had been nearly 30 years since the Rev. Carl Kabat and a group of peace activists, including his fellow Catholic priests Daniel and Philip Berrigan, barged into a General Electric weapons plant outside Philadelphia. Known as the Plowshares Eight, they battered missile nose cones with hammers in an effort to disable some of the world’s most fearsome weapons, and sprinkled blood on classified documents to protest the cold war, before they were arrested.

Snip

“I thought, ‘What a beautiful place this is except for this damnable thing in the ground that could kill two or three million people,’ ” Father Kabat said later in an interview at the Weld County Jail, where he is being held on misdemeanor criminal mischief and trespassing charges. “It’s insane.”

Snip

“You can’t just kill babies and children and old people indiscriminately,” he said. “It should be unreasonable for every human person to accept nuclear weapons............

Death Row Inmate Receives Purple Heart

N.C. death row inmate receives medals earned in Vietnam

James Floyd Davis would never know freedom again.

Now 62 years old, slightly stooped with thick reading glasses and pasty skin, he looks far removed from the wild-eyed loner who snapped in a violent, bloody spree 14 years ago.

And he looks far removed from the tanned, wiry young man who traded an abusive home life for two tours in the jungles of Vietnam - and a chunk of shrapnel that still throbs in his thigh when the weather turns cold.

All of that past, all of that horror and hurt, stared through thick reading glasses at Jim Johnson as the retired Fayetteville therapist tried to discover who James Davis was.

Johnson, however, wasn't there because Davis was disturbed. He was there because Davis, like Johnson, was a soldier. Both had served in Vietnam during the maelstrom of the Tet Offensive.

Snip

The men also shared post-traumatic stress disorder, the result of battle stress during the war. Johnson, though eventually a lieutenant colonel and a successful therapist, struggled with its effects for decades. His condition gave him a unique perspective as a family and marriage counselor at Snyder Memorial Baptist Church.

The effects of PTSD on the already-fragile psyche of Davis were far more damaging. Although he reached the rank of sergeant, "He said the war just wore him out," Johnson said.

Snip

The Army was happy to send the medals. The prison was less enthusiastic about letting him receive them.

"They said no, like we expected," Rose said. "It was something that was just too unusual. It would take intervention by someone higher up the ladder."

Johnson found that someone in James French, a former warden of Central Prison and now deputy director of the state's correction system.

He also was a Vietnam veteran. He was wounded during the war and received a Purple Heart. Would he be willing to allow a fellow veteran the same honor?

French thought about it and agreed...............Read Rest Here

To both of our brothers, Thank You Jim for fighting for the well deserved recognition long overdue for Jim Davis, not only as to the Purple Heart but his other ignored medals and ribbons of service.

If the Country would have listened he may have gotten the Help Needed, after his two tours, to cope with the experiences of Wars of Choice and even his Childhood trauma's!

They didn't then nor for these next four decades until we were finally able to push the results of Wars of Choice, especially, into the mainstream conscious, Lessons Not Learned, as we waged two more long running occupations and many returning soldiers are fighting the demons of war and occupations. Once again the country is playing catchup, more Lessons Not Learned!

Army Times

Death row inmate gets Purple Heart from Vietnam

Guards took the shackles off death row prisoner James Davis and led him into a small room to get the Army medals he earned more than 40 years ago.

The North Carolina inmate slouched over as retired therapist Jim Johnson picked up the Purple Heart and the Good Conduct medals Davis earned in Vietnam, but never received.

But Johnson recalled that as he prepared to pin the medals on the triple-murderer from Asheville, Davis snapped to attention, hands cupped to the side. Johnson stepped back, and the two Tet Offensive veterans looked at each other. Davis then gave a textbook-sharp salute, Johnson said......Read Rest Here