A Secret History of Dissent in the All-Volunteer Military

The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan: Tomgram: Dahr Jamail

The All-Volunteer Force (AVF) exists for a reason captured in a study by Colonel Robert D. Heinl, Jr., author of the "definitive history of the Marine Corps," published in Armed Forces Journal in 1971. The U.S. military in Vietnam was at that moment at the edge of chaos. As Colonel Heinl put it, it was experiencing "widespread conditions... that have only been exceeded in this century by the French Army's Nivelle mutinies of 1917 and the collapse of the Tsarist armies [of Russia] in 1916 and 1917."

In fact, statistics flowing back to Washington about the American war machine in Vietnam then pointed toward an unimaginable nightmare. Drug use was rampant; desertions stood at 70 per thousand, a modern high; small-scale mutinies or "combat refusals" were at critical, if untabulated, levels; incidents of racial conflict had soared; and strife between "lifers" and draftees was at unprecedented levels. Reported "fraggings" -- assassination attempts -- against unpopular officers or NCOs had risen from 126 in 1969 to 333 in 1971, despite declining troop strength in Vietnam. According to Colonel Heinl's figures, as many as 144 antiwar underground newspapers were being published by, or for, soldiers. And most threatening of all, active duty soldiers in relatively small numbers (as well as a swelling number of Vietnam veterans) were beginning to actively organize against the war.....>>>>>Rest found here

The book: "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan"

For more,closer to the present Iraq and Afghanistan or on Vietnam, than just the above, about the history of dissent, visit IVAW - Iraq Veterans Against the War, VVAW - Vietnam Veterans Against the War or even Sir! No Sir!. There are other sites, some personal, some on the underground G.I. newsletters, some on the groups and much more.

"Capture the Flag"

‘Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism’

The flag is not powerful in spite of its ambiguity; it is powerful because of its ambiguity. It has stood, at different times, for radical democracy, opposition to immigration, the abolition of slavery, unregulated capitalism, segregation, integration, and a hawkish war policy, among many other things.

Read a selection from the introduction of "Capture the Flag: A Political History of American Patriotism" by Woden Teachout

A winter wind swept across New York Harbor on a late after noon the day after Christmas in 1971. Tourists riding the last two ferries from Manhattan to the Statue of Liberty huddled against the bulkheads, sheltering themselves from the gusts. Among the passengers were clusters of long-haired adults in well used army-surplus clothing, looking for all the world like hippies taking in the world-famous landmark. The mission of these fifteen men, however, went far beyond tourism.

Immediately upon docking at the island, the men performed a quick reconnaissance. They wedged open a few doors and then took refuge from sight; some crouched behind the massive supporting columns in the base of the statue. Some found storage closets and tucked themselves away......................Read Rest Here

Description

Americans honor the flag with a fervor seen in few other countries: The Stars and Stripes decorate American homes and businesses; wave over sports events and funerals; and embellish everything from politicians’ lapels to the surface of the moon.

But what does the flag mean? In Capture the Flag, historian Woden Teachout reveals that it has held vastly different meanings over time. It has been claimed by both the right and left; by racists and revolutionaries; by immigrants and nativists. In tracing the political history of the flag from its origins in the American Revolution through the present day, Teachout demonstrates that the shifting symbolism of the flag reveals a broader shift in the definition of American patriotism.

A story of a nation in search of itself, Capture the Flag offers a probing account of the flag that has become America’s icon.

James Patterson, author of "Brown v. Board of Education: A Civil Rights Milestone and Its Troubled Legacy"
“Displaying a fine eye and narrative skill in recounting key episodes—among them the Revolution, nativist riots, the bombardment of Fort Sumter, civil rights activism, and the New York City hard hat riot of 1970—Woden Teachout reminds us of how important the American flag has been as a symbol for a wide variety of patriotic causes.”

Back in December 2006 I posted about this and than again in December 2008 a repost with some added material Distress: December 26th 1971 and December 26th 2008

In that one I started it out with some words and this repost part:

December 26, 1971
Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.


We've now had many years of not one but two Invasions and Occupations better known as Wars of Choice, though soldiers and those occupied are still dying in one it has become a stagnant theater on a hair trigger, the other rapidly ramping up in deaths and destruction, both are and have been recruiting actions for what we now call 'International Terrorism', Criminal Terrorism that will rear it's head, with no boundries, over and over for decades, as the number of those who will carry out these acts have greatly increased due to own terror forced on others!


Below is the '06 post with little change, to remember that shoutout of Distress on it's Anniversary, and as a call for Thought of what we now are facing. Still two occupations of others, this time those serving are doing so over and over and over.............., and to eight years of extremely failed policies and total incompetence as well as multiple corruptions and crimes, in and out of government, but also to the crimes against humanity this country has allowed and seems unwilling to face nor call accountability for!

If you visit this you will find the rest of the 2006 post as well as a few more clips with links and a bigger photo, of the one directly above, of the Distress Flag flying from the crown of the Statue.

While wrapping ourselves in 'Old Glory' we as a Nation are moving further apart under the manipulation of changing political ideologies or the twisting of their meanings, in fear by the voices of the few.

Aaron at Erbil

On CAN TV Chicago cable tv Channel 19:
Thurs., April 30, 9:30 pm
Fri., May 1, 4:30 pm
Thurs., May 7, 9:30 pm
Fri., May 8, 4:30 pm

On Evanston Cable Channel 6:
Mon., May 11 , 5:30 pm
Wed., May 13, 9:00 pm
Sat., May 16, 12:30 am
Mon., May 18, 5:30 pm
Wed., May 20, 9:00 pm
Sat., May 23, 12:30 am

On March 13-14 an important International Labor Conference was held in Erbil, Iraq, which is in the Kurdistan region. Along with the 200 delegates from Iraqi trade unions and international unions, attending was a delegation from the U.S., comprised of representatives of U.S. Labor Against the War, and 2 representatives from Iraq Veterans Against the War. Among those IVAW attending was Aaron Hughes, the subject of this 25 minute video. Aaron explains why he attended the Conference, and places his return to Iraq as an anti-war veteran in the context of a similar visit by Vietnam Veterans Against the War to North Vietnam. At the center of Aaron's experience in Erbil is his short speech to the delegation apologizing for his role in the US military in oppressing the people of Iraq. This video is a documenting of that speech and the reactions of the audience, as well as Aaron's anxiety about what the reactions would be. The work of the Conference is also summarized by Aaron, enhanced with footage from Iraq Peacetv in Japan and Aaron's own footage of the event. The experience of the Conference provides the basis of the IVAW delegate's re-dedication of their goal of war reparations for the people and workers of Iraq.

Labor Beat is a CAN TV Community Partner, for Info

Distress: December 26th 1971 and December 26th 2008

Back on December 26th 2006 I put together a post, for my site and a few others, in remembrance of an anniversary of a day my fellow Vietnam Veterans made a statement to our country, a statement of a Country in Distress, Our Country!


A shoutout about not only our War of Choice but what our society was going through, Civil Rights Movement, care of the returning Vets, civil disobedience for the many failed policies, and more, the statement wasn't really taken seriously except by the minority, as is usually the case, the country itself just dug deeper into it's apathy and never came to terms with our War and Occupation and still hasn't!


December 26, 1971
Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam. They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.


We've now had many years of not one but two Invasions and Occupations better known as Wars of Choice, though soldiers and those occupied are still dying in one it has become a stagnant theater on a hair trigger, the other rapidly ramping up in deaths and destruction, both are and have been recruiting actions for what we now call 'International Terrorism', Criminal Terrorism that will rear it's head, with no boundries, over and over for decades, as the number of those who will carry out these acts have greatly increased due to own terror forced on others!


Below is the '06 post with little change, to remember that shoutout of Distress on it's Anniversary, and as a call for Thought of what we now are facing. Still two occupations of others, this time those serving are doing so over and over and over.............., and to eight years of extremely failed policies and total incompetence as well as multiple corruptions and crimes, in and out of government, but also to the crimes against humanity this country has allowed and seems unwilling to face nor call accountability for!


We have the ability to change some of what is happening, even as the economy is collapsing and bringing down other economies, but we can't take back nor be forgivin for bthe deaths and destruction we've wrought on others, we can minimize the blowback, but blowback there will be, destructive and economic, for years to come!


VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation


Six Vietnam veterans founded the VVAW in New York City in 1967 when they marched in a peace demonstration. Organized for returning troops to voice their opposition to the war that was still taking place in Indochina, the VVAW continues to grow, with over 30,000 members, according to the VVAW web Site.


The VVAW {Vietnam Veterans Against the War} focuses mainly on achieving better benefits for all veterans.



Vietnam Veterans take the Statue of Liberty, December 26th 1971. Two dozen members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War "liberated" the Statue of Liberty with a sit-in to protest resumed U.S. aerial bombings in Vietnam.They flew an inverted U.S. flag from the crown as a signal of distress.
Peace History December 25-31 by Carl Bunin


THE STATUE OF LIBERTY: MONUMENT TO AN EXPANDING SET OF IDEALS

Tim MacCormick of New Jersey and fourteen other members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, on the afternoon of December 26, 1971, arrived on Liberty Island by the Circle Line boat along with other tourists. But, when the last return ship to Manhattan sailed that evening, the veterans were not aboard. Instead, just before closing time, they hid among the exhibit partitions, building materials, and storage closets which were lying about the monument's base while work was being finished on the American Museum of Immigration. When NPS personnel made their 7:30 evening check-up of the statue, they found that the veterans had seized control of the landmark and barricaded the three ground floor entrances. The men inside refused to speak to or admit any Park Service people, but on the door they posted a typewritten statement addressed to President Richard M. Nixon:

Each Vietnam veteran who has barricaded himself within this international symbol of liberty has for many years rationalized his attitude to war. . . .We can no longer tolerate the war in Southeast Asia. . . .Mr. Nixon, you set the date [for leaving Vietnam], we'll evacuate. {13}

On December 27, twenty-one National Park police flew to Liberty Island from Washington where they were joined by New York City police and Coast Guardsmen. These security forces stood by while the government attempted to reach a peaceful compromise with the occupiers. They were told that they would be permitted to picket and protest on the island if they would simply vacate the statue, allowing it to reopen to visitors. The veterans rejected the offer, flew the United States flag upside down from the statue's crown, and waited. Law enforcement officers also waited. During that day thousands of disappointed tourists were told at the Battery that they could not go out to the statue. Congresswoman Bella Abzug (Democrat-New York) sent a telephone message of support to the demonstrators.



Members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War leaving the Statue of Liberty, which they had occupied for two days. The demonstrators emerged in response to a court order, December 28, 1971.
(Source: Photograph Collection of the American Museum of Immigration, Liberty Island, U.S. Department of the Interior, NPS)


Meanwhile, United States Attorney Whitney North Seymour, Jr., went before District Court Judge Lawrence Pierce to request an injunction directing the veterans to open the doors, leave the statue except during regular visiting hours, and permit Park Service personnel and tourists to enter. On the morning of December 28 Judge Pierce issued a temporary restraining order, instructing the protestors to leave the statue "forthwith." Two hours later, after conferring with their lawyers, the veterans removed the barricades from the entrances and emerged with "clenched fists raised." They had cleaned up their debris and caused no significant damage to the property. The monument was reopened to the public, with the first ferry-load of visitors arriving at 2:15 that afternoon.
Tim MacCormick issued a statement to the press explaining why they had picked this particular target:

The reason we chose the Statue of Liberty is that since we were children, the statue has been analogous in our minds with freedom and an America we love.
Then we went to fight a war in the name of freedom. We saw that freedom is a selective expression allowed only to those who are white and maintain the status quo.
Until this symbol again takes on the meaning it was intended to have, we must continue our demonstrations. . . . {14}

The Story of a Vietnam Vet

In the 1970s, when the Department of Veterans’ Affairs cut off about 7.9 million troops’ benefits, the VVAW took over the Statue of Liberty, covering her eyes with protest banners.


“This was the second time that the VVAW had taken over the Statue of Liberty. This would be an 18-hour takeover before the park police finally came and removed us,” Davis recalls. “I was one of those people inside that statue. I was the national coordinator for the (VVAW) at the time.”


There’s a glimmer in Davis’ gray-blue eyes as he tells this story.


“The New York Post carrying a front-page story about how we ruined these poor tourists’ opportunities to see the Statue of Liberty, and we weren’t very sympathetic,” he says.


Davis says that one of the things he hears the most about the VVAW is that it is simply a negative, anti-war organization, but he says that its main goals have been to provide benefits and counseling in order to help veterans.


As Davis trudges through his memories, he recalls that upon coming back, what was harder than seeing his society altered was dealing with how much he had changed.


It’s impossible for anyone who has never been in combat to understand the emotional baggage that soldiers come back with. For those who remain at home, it seems that soldiers are simply away for a while; meanwhile, the soldiers themselves are going through some of the most horrifying and gruesome experiences of their lives, and they are never the same, even when they do come back.


But men like Davis and organizations like the VVAW continue to try making life more livable for returning soldiers.


“We’ve had to do it for ourselves, and once you learn to do it for yourself, you learn to do it for other people,” Davis says. “Modern war brings a lot of horrific images. You don’t ever get over that, you just learn to deal with it.”

Stop Crying: We won our War


Disillusioned with war and plagued by nightmares back in the U.S., Romo and Davis looked to the government for psychological counseling and found nothing.


Next, they turned to the only people they knew they could trust: other war veterans.


“One of the first things we discovered pretty quickly,” said Davis,“was that if we were going to survive, we needed each other to do it.”


But interactions between the Vietnam veterans and veterans’ groups such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and American Legion were strained, if not belligerent, Davis and Romo recalled.


“There was tremendous hostility from older veterans,” Davis said. “Many of those American Legion types and VFWs said that we were just a bunch of crybabies.”


The VVAW is Formed


But while Davis and Romo were in basic training, six Vietnam vets marched together in a 1967 New York City peace demonstration and founded Vietnam Veterans Against War (VVAW). The VVAW stood in stark contrast to the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.


According to Davis, the America Legion represented only a small, selective group of veterans.


Davis describes the Veterans of Foreign Wars as a more egalitarian veterans’ group with the same patriotic function as the American Legion; however, neither focused on benefits. When soldiers from Vietnam began arriving home physically and psychologically damaged, Davis and Romo felt that both groups looked the other way.


From Malaise to Action


On December 26, 1971, sixteen VVAW demonstrators seized the Statue of Liberty in New York City to call attention to what Vietnam vets termed “post-Vietnam stress disorder” as well as the lack of promised programs and benefits.


“In the 1970s, because we were getting nowhere on the issue of stress disorders associated with Vietnam, we declared war on the Veterans Affairs Administration,” Davis said. “Some of us adopted the slogan that we were like ‘no deposit, no return’ bottles … Once the government had emptied us out, they chucked us.”


To assist veterans with post-Vietnam stress, the VVAW gained national recognition in the 1970s for setting up public “rap” therapy groups to help vets deal with painful memories.


We Will not be Ignored


The VVAW took over the Statue of Liberty a second time in 1976, raising even more awareness of veterans’ issues. Since that time, post-Vietnam stress disorder has been formally diagnosed and renamed by the medical community as post-traumatic stress disorder.


Now a group of over 30,000 members, the VVAW works to expose poor and under-funded care in VA hospitals, draft legislation to improve educational job programs and argue for the amnesty of war resisters and vets with questionable dishonorable discharges. During the 1980s, the VVAW publicized the Veterans’ Administration’s attempt to conceal the harmful effects of chemical defoliants like Agent Orange used during Vietnam and the Gulf War.


Passing the Torch


Davis and Romo consider themselves very lucky compared with many of their fellow veterans. Both have held steady jobs for the last 20 years and lead what they describe as normal lives with loving families.
As national coordinators for the VVAW, Davis and Romo both speak regularly at veterans’ events and meeting as well as high schools to instill the wisdom they once so desperately lacked to veterans returning today from Iraq and Afghanistan.


“We’re trying to be like mentors to the new vets,” Romo said. “Basically, we’re doing what other vets didn’t do for us.”

One Vet's Vigil


Christmas reminds Paul Fichter of Miss Liberty takeover 35 years ago

By Tim Blangger Of The Morning Call
December 24, 2006

Referance: Vietnam Veterans Against the War

The Statue of Liberty is among the best known monuments in the world. ... to take-overs by Vietnam veterans and other activists in the 1970s and 1980s. ...PDF


Vietnam Veterans Against the War

Veterans For Peace

Iraq Veterans Against the War

Iraq and Afganistan Veterans of America

Veterans for America



Military Families Speak Out

Veterans For Peace

Bring Them Home NOW


Once a soldier takes the Oath that Oath stays with him or her for life, it's engrained as are the experiances

Oath of Enlistment
I, (name), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (So help me God.)

Oath of Office is a solemn oath taken by officers of the United States Uniformed Services on commissioning
I, [name], do solemnly swear, (or affirm,) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. (So help me God.)

Veterans To Commemorate Detroit Winter Soldier Hearings

Members of Veterans For Peace and the Vietnam Veterans Against the
War will commemorate the 1971 Winter Soldier hearings on Saturday,
March 15th at 2pm at the original hearing site, 2921 West Grand
Boulevard in Detroit. The Detroit commemoration is being held at the
same time Iraq veterans are holding their own Winter Soldier hearings
in Washington, DC.

The "Winter Soldier Investigation" was a gathering sponsored by the
Vietnam Veterans Against the War intended to
publicize war crimes and atrocities by the United States Armed Forces
and their allies in the Vietnam War. The VVAW challenged the morality
and conduct of the war by showing the direct relationship between
military policies and war crimes in Vietnam. The three-day gathering
of 109 veterans and 16 civilians took place in Detroit from January
31-February 2, 1971. Discharged servicemen from each branch of
military service, as well as civilian contractors, medical personnel
and academics, all gave testimony about war crimes they had committed
or witnessed during the years of 1963-1970.

On Thursday March 13 to Sunday March 16, 2008, the Iraq Veterans
Against the War will hold their own Winter
Soldier hearings. The event will feature testimony from U.S. veterans
who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, giving an accurate account
of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground. The
four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country
to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and
present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be
panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to
give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything
from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for
veterans' health benefits and support.

The original Winter Soldier hearings were held at the Howard
Johnson's New Center, which was torn down in the late 1990's. The
commemoration event in Detroit on March 15th will be at the site of
the Howard Johnson's hotel, on the corner of West Grand Boulevard and
3rd Street, which is now a parking lot. The event will consist of
veterans reading the names of the first 100 soldiers killed in both
the Vietnam and present Iraq war, along with statements by veterans
about the parallels between Iraq and Vietnam. The public is invited.

The event is being sponsored by Veterans For Peace – Michigan.

Lead Up To Winter Soldier II - SOLDIER'S STORIES

On Sunday, 3-9-08, a fundraiser was held at the First Congregational Church of Long Beach for Iraq veterans eager to talk about the war they saw; a war rife with death, anger, courage and lies. The fundraisers intent was to help defray the costs needed to send the same vets to speak in Washington D.C. at Winter Soldier II, to be held from Thursday March 13 to Sunday March 16, prior to that The District Weekly of Long Beach asked several of them to tell them their stories.

Below you will find some snips about each and what they had to say, with the link above taking you to the rest.

“IT’S BEYOND ME” | SPECIALIST WENDY BARRANCO, COMBAT MEDIC | ARMY

Wendy Barranco was 19 when she served as an anesthesia technician at a Tikrit field hospital—from October 2005 to July 2006. She was just out of high school, like so many of her patients, including the first one she saw die.
Now she is 22, a full-time student and anti-war activist
Barranco still sounds young, with the sleepy voice of a teenager. She’s deferential, too—true to her military training—and wonderfully patient as she spells out every acronym and explains every bit of army shorthand. Her poise falters occasionally: When describing three badly burned Iraqis, she suddenly stops speaking, pausing for a full 12 seconds to steady herself. And certain aspects of the military experience are so ludicrous as to absolutely require the strongest of obscenities.
There are also moments of emotional disconnect: She talks about a “guy” with a chronically infected leg, but it soon becomes clear that she is speaking of a child who may be as young as eight.
With all of this in mind, I thank her for her time and willingness to engage in a conversation that must be very difficult—either because the stories are so gruesome and terrible, or because frequent retellings have rendered the subject so tiresome that she feels as if she’s going to go out of her mind if she has to go over it one more time. “Both,” she says.

“HOW WOULD I BE ABLE TO LOOK MYSELF IN THE MIRROR?” | SGT. JASON LEMIEUX | MARINES

“I got to Marine Corps boot camp in Parris Island, South Carolina, on Sept. 10, 2001. Boot camp is a media blackout so we didn’t realize the gravity of what was going on. The drill instructor told us the country had just been attacked by terrorists. But for all we knew he could have been exaggerating to scare us into submission.
“My first deployment was to Kuwait on Jan. 21, 2003, in preparation for the invasion. I was part of a huge boot drop. That’s not official terminology—boot drop—but it’s what they call dropping fresh infantry school graduates straight into combat. Our boot drop comprised 50 percent of the manpower of the unit we were joining. Normally they wouldn’t put so many fresh, inexperienced soldiers together in combat, but that’s the way they’re doing it in this war. I invaded Iraq on March 21, 2003, and went all the way to Baghdad. Most of the units we were supposed to attack fled when they found out we were coming. After the invasion we moved down to Karbala, the safest city in the country at the time. We supported the local businesses with our money, and were welcomed for our ability to maintain order. I came home in September.
“My second deployment was to Husaybah, from February to September of 2004. It was a meat grinder, incredibly violent, a whole different world than the Iraq I had left five months before.

“I SWORE TO THE HOLY FAMILY” | SPEC. EDGAR CUEVAS | ARMY

Edgar Cuevas hated the Iraq war long before he landed in Tikrit where, 24 hours into his first Iraq assignment, he watched medics haul in two soldiers injured in a roadside bombing.
“From the beginning of the war, I was like, ‘Why are we even invading?’ There was no connection between Iraq and 9/11,” Cuevas says.
He grew up in Burbank, joining the Army out of high school, in January 2001.“At that time I didn’t think we’d be in a war, so I thought it was good timing,” he says.
The Army sent Specialist Cuevas to Schweinfurt, with tours in the Balkans—“police actions,” he calls them. “Both the Serbs and Albanians were really happy we were there,” he says. “We helped them and they helped us. Nothing there made me say, ‘I don’t like this, I want to get out.’”
Then, in Nov. 2003, just 12 days from the end of his service, the Army hit Cuevas and thousands of other military men and women with a stop-loss order.
“If you remember the election of 2004, John Kerry was talking about the ‘backdoor draft.’

“WE DON’T GO ANYWHERE” | SGT. JABBAR MAGRUDER | ARMY NATIONAL GUARD

“I joined the Army National Guard in 2000. I was a high school kid who wanted to learn a trade while serving my country. The day of September 11, I called my National Guard unit and asked them, ‘Are we going to get involved, are we going to go anywhere?’ And they told me, ‘We’re the National Guard. We don’t go anywhere.’

Visit The District Weekly to Read the Rest of the interviews.

The Sunday Times Magazine, March 1, 2008 The veterans are not against the military and seek not to indict it – instead they seek to shine a light on the bigger picture: that the Abu Ghraib prison regime and the Haditha massacre of innocent Iraqis are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “bad seeds” as the military suggests, but evidence of an endemic problem. They will say they were tasked to do terrible things and point the finger up the chain of command, which ignores, diminishes or covers up routine abuse and atrocities.
Some see it as their responsibility to speak out – like Jason Washburn, a US marine who did three tours in Iraq; Logan Laituri, a US Army forward observer in Iraq; and Perry O’Brien, an army medic deployed to Afghanistan in 2003. They believe that, as veterans, they are the most credible sources of information. They say they were put in immoral and often illegal positions. They will speak about what they saw, and what they were asked to do.
Read the article from the London Sunday Times

Winter Soldiers march to Valley Forge
Dozens of members of IVAW participated in a 25-mile march in Philadelphia from March 1-2, starting at the Constitution Center and ending at Valley Forge. In spirit, Valley Forge is the first Winter Soldier event. "230 years ago, a group of soldiers gathered at Valley Forge to stand up against oppression on behalf of their people. And we aim to do the same here today," said Steve Mortillo, president of the Philadelphia chapter of IVAW and former Calvary Scout in Iraq.
Read the Philadelphia Daily News' coverage of the Valley Forge March

Iraq Veterans Against The War-Winter Soldier

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.

When: Thursday March 13 to Sunday March 16

For those interested in watching or organizing around the proceedings at Winter Soldier, there will be a number of ways to watch and listen to the event.

**Live television broadcast via satellite tv, accessible through Dish Network as well as public access stations that choose to carry our broadcast - Friday and Saturday only

**Live video stream on the web - Thursday through Sunday { no site url given, as yet, on this video stream }

**Live radio broadcast via KPFA in Berkley California and other Pacifica member stations - Friday through Sunday

**Live audio stream via KPFA's website - Friday through Sunday

Please return to the IVAW website for specific details in the coming weeks.

You can find out more at the IVAW - Winter Soldier - Site, on the left you will find links to the needed information, as well as some embedded links in page text.

Winter Soldier Preview

Winter Soldierizing

The following comes from Jack Dresser, Ph.D., Behavioral Scientist, Co-founder, Lane County Veterans for Peace: Capt., US Army (psychologist, Vietnam era)
Squadron 13 ; Veterans Against Torture via G.I. Special-Military Project, Volume: 6B Issue: 16 Ft. Dix, you can read it in Word or in PDF for the rest of the News Letter.

****************

In the winter of 1777-78, after suffering three terrible defeats by the much larger British force and marching hundreds of miles, the 11,000-man Continental Army retreated to a winter headquarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Food was in desperately short supply, 2,000 men were without shoes, and many were without blankets. Typhoid fever, dysentery, malnutrition and exposure claimed some 2,500 lives that winter.

American Patriot morale had declined severely and whole militia companies had deserted to return home. Those that remained to weather the arduous winter formed powerful bonds that led them to eventually prevail in our war for independence.

Of these men and the 700 women who fed, nursed and warmed them through that winter, political activist and revolutionary thinker Thomas Paine wrote, “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of all men and women.”

Those that endured have come to be called the “winter soldiers.”

As veterans, we once swore to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” We do not foreswear that oath upon removing the uniform.

Two Vietnam Veterans visit the My Lai Memorial, Vietnam.

Upon that basis in 1971, following prosecution of Lt. Calley for the My Lai massacre in Vietnam, over 150 honorably discharged, many very highly decorated members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War {VVAW} gathered in Detroit to share their stories. Remaining faithful to their oath beyond their obligated service and harkening back to Paine’s words, they named this the “Winter Soldier Investigation.”

Atrocities like My Lai had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions.
The members of VVAW testified at that time on the systematic brutality and war crimes they had witnessed and inflicted upon the people of Vietnam, stating that unspeakable atrocities such as “free fire zones” were in fact US government policy, violating the Geneva Conventions and other international treaties which are defined by Article VI of the Constitution as “the supreme law of the land.”

Asked by Chairman William Fulbright to present their findings before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Lt. John Kerry delivered ringing testimony on behalf of the group. He explained, “We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.”

Kerry concluded his testimony, “We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more... And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say ‘Vietnam’ and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.”

But thirty years have passed and America has failed to turn.

Thirty-two years later, America launched another equally brutal, equally mindless, equally unjustified attack on the nation of Iraq, again in violation of international treaty laws - the UN and Nuremberg Charters - that prohibit wars of aggression, and once more violating Article VI, the “Supremacy Clause,” of our Constitution. So once again winter soldiers are needed.

Thankfully, a current generation of outraged veterans is arising and a Winter Soldier II investigation is scheduled for March 13-16 in Washington, DC, where members of Iraq Veterans Against the War {IVAW} will replicate the model of their VVAW predecessors. All other peace organizations nationwide have been asked to suspend public events during that time so that media attention can be focused on this testimony. Information about the event may be found on the group's Web site.

“Over 30 years later,” IVAW states, “we find ourselves faced with a new war, but the lies are the same. Once again, troops are sinking into an increasingly bloody occupation. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming 'a few bad apples' instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.”

IVAW is planning to provide live broadcasting of the sessions for those who cannot hear the testimony firsthand.

Our blue-and-white Veterans for Peace bus, “Squadron13 Deployed,” will be there - our gas budget willing - following a 3,400 mile coast-to-coast awareness raising tour taking the southern route around the Rockies.

We will film and post on YouTube as we go and as we witness.

Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan

On the 22nd 'War Comes Home' posted a DKOS diary on Information on Live Streaming Audio Feed to 'Winter Soldier II' on KPFA with feed available at the War Comes Home website as well.

More is now up at the Iraq Veterans Against The War-Winter Soldier website:

Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan will feature testimony from U.S. veterans who served in those occupations, giving an accurate account of what is really happening day in and day out, on the ground.

The four-day event will bring together veterans from across the country to testify about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan - and present video and photographic evidence. In addition, there will be panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists to give context to the testimony. These panels will cover everything from the history of the GI resistance movement to the fight for veterans' health benefits and support.

When: Thursday March 13 to Sunday March 16

For those interested in watching or organizing around the proceedings at Winter Soldier, there will be a number of ways to watch and listen to the event.

**Live television broadcast via satellite tv, accessible through Dish Network as well as public access stations that choose to carry our broadcast - Friday and Saturday only

**Live video stream on the web - Thursday through Sunday { no site url given, as yet, on this video stream }

**Live radio broadcast via KPFA in Berkley California and other Pacifica member stations - Friday through Sunday

**Live audio stream via KPFA's website - Friday through Sunday

Please return to the IVAW website for specific details in the coming weeks.

You can find out more at the IVAW - Winter Soldier - Site, on the left you will find links to the needed information, as well as some embedded links in page text.

Winter Soldier I site page.

In February 1971, one month after the revelations of the My Lai massacre, an astonishing public inquiry into war crimes committed by American forces in Vietnam was held at a Howard Johnson motel in Detroit. The Vietnam Veterans Against the War organized this event called the Winter Soldier Investigation. More than 125 veterans spoke of atrocities they had witnessed and committed.

With Video Trailer and much more.

In the leadup to the present Winter Soldier we get words from one who participated in the one of the past.

Joe Bangert, Smedley Butler VFP, Star of "Winter Soldier" and "Sir! No Sir!" speaks at the Moonakis Cafe, Falmouth, Mass- 2/9/08- film by Paul Rifkin and David Souza:

Joe Bangert, a Vietnam Vet, of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, who gave testimony at the 1971 Winter Soldier Hearings, lays the groundwork for Winter Soldier 2.

JOE BANGERT, WINTER SOLDIER


Visit IVAW-Iraq Veterans Against The War and Support These Brave Soldiers who have Served for You!

Nixon, and the government agencies under his control, tried to stop and slander the Soldiers of 'Winter Soldier I' and that continues today by his loyalist and those still bent on the twisted ideologies, from the very top to the tv and radio talking heads to the print media and today to the internet.

Who will be the first to Attack the Soldiers of 'Winter Soldier II', which 'chickhawk' will try to Slander their Service and their Testimony on the Realities of War, take your pick, plenty to choose from!!

By Dennis Serdel, Vietnam 1967-68 (one tour) Light Infantry, Americal Div. 11th Brigade, purple heart, Veterans For Peace 50 Michigan, Vietnam Veterans Against The War, United Auto Workers GM Retiree, in Perry, Michigan
****************
Bridging The Gap

There is a broken bridge that they call America
between the people and their government.
Stressed out cracked TV's, broken fractured newspapers
with jagged concrete facts that they call Iraq.

There's a broken bridge between our Soldiers
and what they were told they were fighting for.
There is a broken bridge across the Euphrates river
like a broken bridge across the Mississippi too.

Rivers of darkness and light that flow
a lightning bolt currents dark and dangerous,
pieces of humans lay at the bottom and who is responsible,
who does not care at all as the rain and sand
fall like teardrops trying to see through the murky waters,
trying to find a way out, trying to stop the bleeding,
trying to kill the cause and Americans
stand and watch the horror of civilization
pounded by combat boots, they want to stop it
but they doubt it like by voting the war away.

Captain Amerika still acting like superman,
the Statue of Liberty is cracking like the economy,
who cares about a war debt, put it on a Chinese credit card,
green back dollars going down and down drowning
another bridge falling into the water.

To the energy poor depression crashed civilians
of a war wreck they once called America,
the Answer is within our Soldiers
when they come back from another tour.

The Answer is within Americans
when they stand behind the Soldiers
when they refuse to deploy on a no way next tour.

Pete Seeger to Winter Soldiers



VVAW Dec 26th \'70
Once again Country living in Distress!

“ Every war, when viewed from the undistorted perspective of life's sanctity, is a "civil war" waged by humanity against itself."
- Daisaku Ikeda

Some Powerful Articles like 'Pentagon Breaks with White House'

Greyhawk had this posted at ePluribus about the Military breaking ranks with the White House on the propaganda about the Successful Surge with only this one snippet

"Don't let the quiet fool you," a senior defense official says. "There's still a huge chasm between how the White House views Iraq and how we [in the Pentagon] view Iraq. The White House would like to have you believe the 'surge' has worked, that we somehow defeated the insurgency. That's just ludicrous. There's increasing quiet in Iraq, but that's happened because of our shift in strategy - the 'surge' had nothing to do with it."

And just a few sentences, so I followed the link. Here's abit more to hopefully get you to drop over to the Asia Times online and read the rest.

According to them this is Part 1

and we also find this

Moreover, these officers contend, the insurgency might not have put down roots in the country after the fall of Baghdad if it had not been for the White House and State Department - which undermined military efforts to strike deals with a number of Iraq's most disaffected tribal leaders. These officers point out that the first contact between high-level Pentagon officials and the nascent insurgency took place in Amman, Jordan, in August of 2003 - but senior Bush administration officials killed the talks.

A second round of meetings, this time with leaders of some of al-Anbar province's tribal chiefs, took place in November of 2004, but again senior administration officials refused to build on the contacts that were made. "We made the right contacts, we said the right things, we listened closely, we put a plan in place that would have saved a lot of time and trouble," a senior Pentagon official says. "And every time we were ready to go forward, the White House said 'no'."

I'll leave you with those, the rest you can find here

After you come back from the above report you might want to pay a visit to this Counter Punch editorial by By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS The Empire That Must Be Obeyed asking this question "What Gives the US the Right to Claim a Moral Monopoly Over the World?" and leading off with this:

"The first use of nuclear weapons must remain in the quiver of escalation as the ultimate instrument to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction."
Five Western military leaders.

I read the statement three times trying to figure out the typo. Then it hit me, the West has now out-Owellled Orwell: The West must nuke other countries in order to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction! In Westernspeak, the West nuking other countries does not qualify as the use of weapons of mass destruction.

Got ya wondering? Than trip on over and read, he's also got a link to the statement by these five western military leaders!

Then there's a great writeup on the upcoming Iraq Veterans To Testify at Their Own 'Winter Soldier'
Organizers Model Event After Vietnam Investigation


Vietnam veteran John Kerry testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.

But while the investigation itself may have made little immediate impact, its disclosures would reverberate for decades. “We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals,” a 27-year old Navy veteran, John Kerry, told the Senate about what Winter Soldier uncovered. The bitterness that testimony sowed in other Vietnam veterans, who felt betrayed by Winter Soldier, stayed alive through 2004, when the so-called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth falsely maligned Kerry’s service record as payback. Now, with another intractable conflict proving to be another defining moment in American history, some veterans of the Iraq war intend to take up the Winter Soldier banner. On March 13, Iraq Veterans Against the War, an organization inspired by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, will convene at the National Labor College just outside of Washington to say, in so many words, that it’s all happening again.
“What’s happening now is no different than over the past five years,” said Geoff Millard, 27, the president of the group’s Washington chapter. “It’s the result of systematic problems in the way we fight an occupation. It’s not that we’re going to outline these huge atrocities. It’s how the systematic nature of occupation is oppression.” This time around, Winter Soldier will have what its predecessor didn’t: digital video to back up the charges.

Organizers estimate that perhaps 45 to 55 Iraq veterans, and some from Afghanistan, will testify to such “terrible things” at Winter Soldier. Liam Madden, 23, a Marine veteran of Iraq who’s now a student at Northeastern University, came up with the idea for a second Winter Soldier in late 2006 with his fellow IVAW members Aaron Hughes in Chicago and Fernando Braga in New York. “The people I’ve talked to who are testifying are going to talk about their experiences in Iraq, how they’re put in positions to harm the people of Iraq and harm the image of America because of the position they’re put in, and the complete injustice involved in that,” Madden said. “Other people will talk about how a run-of-the-mill day in Iraq is. It adds up to a checkpoint here, a house raid there, a house raid there, a house raid there, to a population of Iraqis who can’t tolerate you any longer.”
The project’s interview and verification committees are just getting started. But glimpses of the expected testimony are beginning to emerge. One of the early interviewees, a medic, told IVAW about treating a two-year old shot in the thigh by U.S. soldiers, and witnessing “the mutilation of the dead,” according to Jose Vasquez, 33, a former Army sergeant who heads Winter Soldier’s verification team. The public should expect to hear about “unnecessary killing of noncombatants on the battlefield,” said Vasquez, an anthropology graduate student at the City University of New York. (Vasquez himself filed as a conscientious objector after finding himself unable to participate in the Iraq war.) Indeed, a frequent theme among group members in interviews has been the intensity of manning checkpoints, where Iraqi civilians can die for simply not approaching a checkpoint slowly enough to reassure an apprehensive soldier who doesn’t speak their language.

Now the organizers have this to say:

Yet the organizers of Winter Soldier will consider the event a failure if it appears to blame soldiers and Marines for the war.

It's the Occupation not the Military Personel, except for the Extreme Few, as it was in 'Nam and any Conflict, many devestating incidents are Not Atrosities or War Crimes, but it really doesn't matter how We Define Anything after we invade and occupy, it's the Perception of those we Invaded and their lands we Occupy, just as it would be if it were us!

This report gives you an insight to both sides of thought about this upcoming event of Winter Soldier, you can also get more over at Vet Voice in a post by ArmySergeant, he's Active Duty and one of the organizers.

While you're over there you might want to read this one as well PTSD Is Brought On By Days Like These, it's of an incident that might just bring a shiver to your spine!

And don't miss this one at Vet Voice as well Homeless and Facing Prison: An American Tradition, as a matter of fact you should pay a daily visit for some Great insight from Active Military personal and Veterans, this sight is growing and many of the reads are well worth it.

Change?
Real Change
By William Rivers Pitt
I put a dollar in one of those change machines. Nothing changed.
- George Carlin

Also if you have a Blog or Website you may want to add An Eternal Flame Widget to it:

Follow This Link
to the Eternal Flame that you can leave on your blogs or sites Until The Troops Are Home and All Are Taken Care Of.

It was made by "notlightnessofbeing" who posts at a few of these sites as well as maintaining a blog.

Visit link and Copy the Code to Paste into your sites, as I put it on mine and our VFP Chapter site, and that's where it'll sit, Till We Bring Them Home and Take Care Of Them!!

Dave Cline 1947-2007

Red Hill Films
54 min 25 sec - Jan 15, 2008

RIP Brother


A Documentary film on the life of peace activist Dave Cline by Andrew Courtney and Emily Perry Red Hill Films

You can find out more about Dave, that I have put together Here, collected from various sources after Dave passed away.

Saturday Jan. 12th Radio Tribute to Dave Cline

RADIO ON SATURDAY

Tune in to the radio tribute to David Cline on WBAI 99.5 FM in New York on Saturday, January 12, Noon - 3 PM EST {WBAI is streamed live over the Internet in multiple formats:
MP3: 24K or 64K or .ram
OGG: 24K or 64K

See WBAI Stream


Expected guests: Paul Zulkowitz, Michael McPhearson, Thomas Brinson, Ken Dalton, Jerry Hassett, Steve Hayes, Stephan Smith, Bryan-David Kee, Marcy J. Gordon, Sue Schnall, Jesse Myerson, Jose Vasquez, Joe Cross, Cindy Sheehan, Eric Laursen, Clark Kissinger, Lori Purdue, Medea Benjamin, David Swanson

IN PERSON ON SUNDAY

A Tribue to Dave Cline
(January 8, 1947 - September 15, 2007)
Antiwar Activist, Labor Organizer, Humanitarian, Vietnam Veteran Against the War, Veteran For Peace

Medal "For Peace and Friendship between Nations" awarded to David Cline by Vietnam Union of Friendship Association

SUNDAY, January 13, 2 - 6 PM

Featuring: STEPHAN SAID aka SMITH, RANDY CREDICO, BRYAN & MARCY, PAT SCANLON, BRIAN JONES as 'Dave Cline', and The Bush Chain Gang; MCs John McDonagh of WBAI & Michael McPhearson of Veterans For Peace; Lori Purdue, Joel Landy, Ron King, Steve Bloom, Jackie Sheeler, Sue Schnall, Sgt. Geoff Millard, Joe Cross, Yonathan Shapira, Video by Andrew Courtney

FREE Refreshments/Cash Bar & Menu Service/Auction & Raffle

CONNOLLY'S
121 West 45 Street, New York NY 10036
(Between Broadway & Sixth Avenue)
SUBWAY: #1, 2, 3, 7, N, Q, R, Shuttle to Times Square Station
PARKING GARAGE: Manhattan Parking, 137 West 45 Street, 212-944-5118

DONATION SUGGESTED
Donations to Veterans For Peace will go toward antiwar events in David Cline's honor.

RSVP & INFO: zool at zoolTheArtandPolitics@hotmail.com or 646-549-1615

David Cline was a highly decorated, disabled Vietnam War combat veteran. A leading member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Dave is prominently featured in 'Sir, No Sir!' an award-winning documentary about GI resistance. As President of Veterans For Peace, David oversaw tremendous growth in membership and helped found Iraq Veterans Against the War. A true humanitarian, David Cline was a co-founder of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign.

Veterans For Peace, founded in 1985, is a 501(c)3 national membership organization and an official NGO represented at the United Nations.

AUCTION ITEMS STILL NEEDED!

Dave Cline plays "Touch a Name on The Wall" by Joel Mabus

PTSD Forum - Fort Drum - Watertown NY - Video and Audio Reports

Back on December 2nd I posted about a Forum on PTSD {this link to my site} on a few important sites.

This Forum took place on December 6th, six days before the House held a Public Hearing on Military Suicides at which Ilona Meagher, of PTSD Combat: Winning the War Within testified.

Well, as promised in another post, there is more to pass on about the Fort Drum - Watertown NY PTSD Forum which you will find below.




The Forum took place at the:

Differant Drummer Cafe - Watertown New York

Our cafe is designed to provide active duty and reserve military personnel and families at Ft. Drum with an inviting, comfortable, and warm place to socialize, listen to music and enjoy other live entertainment. Soldiers will also have access to legal counselling, a bookstore, and a regular program of film showings and discussions on current issues.

Check out all the great upcoming events

And hosting the Forum were:
*Dean Anthony, MSW and Trauma Therapist

*Joe Gregory, Mexico, N Y, father of an Iraq combat vet who was killed after returning home because the VA failed to treat his PTSD.

*Marty Webster, VVAW Natl. Coordinator, and a Vietnam vet who still suffers from PTSD.

*Tod Ensign, attorney for Sgt Brad Gaskins, arrested by Ft Drum police as he sought to return to Ft Drum for mental health care. A two tour Iraq combat vet, Gaskins went AWOL when he was refused treatment for his PTSD.


There is now a Video, a Must See, from the Forum on the Tompkins County & Ithaca Against the War web site put together and provided by Cris McConkey
View the Video

The video shows the four hosts, listed above, giving their opening statements. I haven't tried to contact Cris yet so don't know if a further video will be coming, do know he was one of two camera's filming the forum.



Here is some further coverage

News 10 Now television coverage.
Soldier calls PTSD an “ugly demon” by Amy Ohler

Another report of the event in the National Weekly, “Socialist Worker”
Supporting veterans' rights

Also check out this article that also is running in the current issue of Socialist Worker
The story of the GI coffeehouses


North Country Public Radio also did a four day Series: Post-traumatic Stress Disorder at Fort Drum

PTSD at Drum, pt.1: What the military does 12/11/07

Listen to Audio

Download Audio

Last month, 3500 soldiers returned to Fort Drum from a 15-month tour in Iraq. According to Army studies, a quarter of them, or almost one thousand men and women, will bring home mental problems associated with post-traumatic stress disorder. Their depression, anxiety, sleeplessness, and substance abuse, if not properly treated, can deeply scar themselves, their families, and the communities they live in. But study after study finds the military’s mental health system in disarray: a backlog of PTSD-related claims, a shortage of licensed psychologists, a need for an overhaul of the entire system. Today we begin a 4-part series on post-traumatic stress disorder at Fort Drum. We’ll hear from soldiers who feel they’ve been neglected, and we’ll visit a café in Watertown that provides them refuge. But first, David Sommerstein reports on how Fort Drum identifies and treats soldiers for combat-related mental illness.

Resources from the military-run National Center for PTSD

More resources from Iraq Veterans Against the War

PTSD at Ft. Drum, pt.2: A soldier speaks out 12/12/07

Listen to Audio

Download Audio

If you hear one complaint from soldiers about how the Army handles post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s about a bureaucracy that doesn’t seem to care. The military officially recognized PTSD as a medical illness almost 30 years ago. Yet soldiers still complain of not getting the help they need. Mountains of paperwork, a backlog of claims, a shortage of licensed psychologists, and a dearth of scientific research all get in the way. In part two of our series on treating PTSD at Fort Drum, David Sommerstein has the story of one soldier who says Fort Drum’s mental health system failed him again and again.

CORRECTION TO ORIGINAL STORY: This story first reported that the military requires three letters from commanders documenting that a soldier was in a traumatic combat situation. A Fort Drum spokesman e-mailed to say that one letter is required. The audio has been changed accordingly.

PTSD at Ft. Drum, pt.3: A cafe for dissent 12/13/07

Listen to Audio

Download Audio


Since the war in Iraq began, the U.S. military has come under increasing fire for a mental health system that even top officials acknowledge needs a complete overhaul. Soldiers fighting combat trauma go untreated. Trained psychologists are in short supply. Funding for research into post-traumatic stress disorder is inadequate. Across the country, a growing number of soldiers are taking matters into their own hands. They’re compiling lists of resources for people who need help. And they’re organizing their own group therapy sessions. In part three of our series on PTSD, a café in Watertown has become a refuge for soldiers who are breaking rank and seeking help on their own. David Sommerstein reports.

PTSD, Pt.4: A war trauma counselor 12/14/07

Listen to Audio

Download Audio

This week we’ve been reporting on the struggles of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in getting help with combat trauma. Today we get a window inside their world from one of the North Country’s most respected experts. Nellie Coakley is a Vietnam veteran. She relies on her own experience in her work as a war trauma counselor. She’s worked out the region’s Vet Center since the 1980s. Vet Centers were created to give an alternative to Vietnam vets who didn’t trust the standard VA channels. Coakley counsels an increasing number of Iraq and Afghanistan vets, and she sees a similar mistrust. She says the American public needs to do more to understand post-traumatic stress disorder and help veterans re-enter society. The trouble is, soldiers coming home with PTSD find they can’t leave their warrior training behind. For them, Coakley told David Sommerstein, combat is life-changing.

North Country Public Radio comes to you from: St. Lawrence University, Canton, New York 13617-1475

A Tribute To A True American Veteran, Passionate Peace Advocate, and Friend

Going through this Touching Tribute Diary Anti-war Vet Dave Cline Is Dead
by lao hong han, that was posted last night, 9-15-07, and thankfully still sits in the recommend list, you will find some great reply's, from those who knew Dave and those who didn't, along with some links I have borrowed and placed here.

Adding to them a few pics, links to what Dave was passionately a part of, since his service in 'Nam, with hopefully giving all an idea of what this Man was all about.

This VetPax · Veterans Peace Coalition is the Yahoo Group Board of

The sponsoring organizations are the three metro area chapters of Veterans For Peace (New York City, Tappan Zee, and Northern New Jersey), the Clarence Fitch Chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Actvities have been endorsed by Black Veterans for Social Justice, Veterans for Common Sense, Citizen Soldier, New York City Labor Against War, September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and Gold Star Families For Peace.

That Dave was a member of. t's a moderated board so not sure if just anyone can read the posts, but there are a number of them there written by those who knew him best.

Much will be written, in the coming weeks, about Dave. Why, because in his quite way, except when leading cadence calls at Peace Rallies, or giving passionant speaches, Dave's dedication touched many in and out of the Veteran Communities Ranks. His name and memory, in history of true Patriots and Veterans, will be added to those who have passed on before him, for not only his dedication to this country but also his hard work and advocacy of the people of the country he and us invaded and served in, Vietnam, recognizing, as many of us did, how unjustified that conflict was. He gave back much to those we almost destroyed, and especially those who are still suffering from our sins, of the past, in this our present.


For those who may not recognize the name, you might recognize the face. Here is the URL for google photo's of the Dave Clines, a few below will help you seperate our Dave from the others.


David Cline has left us, but not our memories



As a patient dedicated peace advocate



And his early veteran activism in VVAW calling for peace and an end to that conflict built and sold on lies




Just one of the many VVAW actions taken back then, when they liberated 'Lady Liberty'



And hung the U.S. Flag in the 'Distress' position from her crown, a message of the way many felt of the wrongs we had done, at that time, and the legacy of those wrongs live on, never resolved nor understood.
Dec 26th 1970



I posted about the VVAW Anniversary-Dec 26th 1971-Statue of Liberty, Liberation on my site and a few others last year.


David was also the long time President of Veterans For Peace right up till recently which told me, as I haven't seen him in awhile, that the health problems he suffered from, many from his service in Vietnam, were catching up to him.


David was the

VFP STATEMENT OF PURPOSE

We, having dutifully served our nation, do hereby affirm our greater responsibility to serve the cause of world peace. To this end we will work, with others

(a) Toward increasing public awareness of the costs of war.
(b) To restrain our government from intervening, overtly and covertly, in the internal affairs of other nations
(c) To end the arms race and to reduce and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons
(d) To seek justice for veterans and victims of war
(e) To abolish war as an instrument of national policy.

To achieve these goals, members of Veterans For Peace pledge to use non-violent means and to maintain an organization that is both democratic and open with the understanding that all members are trusted to act in the best interests of the group for the larger purpose of world peace.

We urge all people who share this vision to join us.

He lived it and tried, as the rest of us do, to stand strong to those words!



Dave also gave back much to the people we once fought, especially the kids who even today are still being born, and living with, that which we condemned them to, the effects of defoliante contamiation, Agent Orange, and a few other colors of Weapons Of Mass Destruction!

American veterans delegation (l-r) David Cline, Ralph Steele, Joan Duffy, Frank Corcoran, Dan Shea behind Mrs. Vietnam 2005, Doan Thi Kim Hong, performing songs for Agent Orange affected children at hospice near Cu Chi.


You can find out more about what he, and Veterans For Peace, are involved in at this post
Second Vietnam Agent Orange Justice Tour

Or this post
Justice for Victims of Agent Orange

This one also
Justice for Victims of Agent Orange 2

And as one of the founders of
Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign


You can read about and watch Dave with the following links
Interview with Vietnam War Veteran David Cline: The Iraqis have a right to self-determination

David Cline speaks in Washington (1/27/07)


Not Dave but how we feel about him

Rita Martinson - Soldier We Love You - Sir No Sir - Trailer


And if you haven't seen 'Sir! No Sir!' Dave is one of the Vets interviewed in that important documentary.

Peace Has No Borders ~ David Cline


There isn't anything written at The VVAW Site as yet, but I'm sure there will be in the next couple of days as well as in their next publication of The Veteran, of which will be posted online.

Also there is nothing up at The Veterans For Peace Site, that to will change in the next couple of days.

Both those sites will be carrying Tributes by those who knew Dave very well, I'm sure!


You can find a very touching tribute at fellow Veteran Stan Goffs site
Dave Cline…

Dave was former President of Veterans For Peace, founding leader of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, and a founder of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign.

He was prominently featured in the film Sir, No Sir!, a film about GI resistance during the Vietnam occupation, reviewed recently by DeAnander on this site.

And a tribute to All Veterans from Tom Chelston, a recent Veteran, of Toms Songs

"VFP" Veterans For Peace



And This From Tom, a song that says it all!

I Miss You




If You Knew,or Met Dave, You'll Understand The Tributes To Come! If You Didn't You'll Find You Wish You Had!

Are We Still Missing the Point?

The following was printed in The Veteran. it's Spring 2007 issue. Title of the interview is subject line of this post.

First, what is The Veteran

THE VETERAN is the newspaper of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Inc. In 1971 and 1972 it was published as 1st Casualty. From 1973 to 1975, it was published as Winter Soldier. In 1975, it became THE VETERAN.
THE VETERAN was the first voice of Vietnam Veterans in America, and has consistently addressed issues of peace and justice. Original articles on Post Traumatic Stress and Agent Orange have appeared since its first year of publication.
THE VETERAN still continues publication two times a year.

I've added some links to the referances givin in the interview for those interested in finding out more, more is the Truth!

The Interview
By Dianne Ford Wood (interviewer)

This article originated as a review of Camouflage & Lace (Camo), an audio book about Diane Ford Wood's experiences with Willie Hager, VVAW and PTSD in the early 1970s. Vietnam vet Jerry Lembcke (The Spitting Image) also wrote about Hager related to the 1978 film Coming Home. This historical overlap revealed powerful ways that Vietnam veterans can support the post-traumatic struggles and understanding of today's returning veterans. The interview evolved from there.

Diane: What is your connection to the movie Coming Home?

Willie: As the VVAW regional coordinator in LA at the time, I was interviewed extensively for the movie. Screenwriter Waldo Salt asked me what was the hardest part of Vietnam. "Coming home," I told him. For me, that was far more painful than Vietnam itself. I was given a role as a technical advisor which wasn't a completely new experience. In 1976, I helped make Still at War {Google video, "Is Iraq Like Vietnam? PTSD and the Readjustment Blues - Willie Hager"}, one of the earliest documentaries on PTSD and mistreatment of paraplegic veterans on film. After Salt got informally sidelined, the new writers revised Bruce Dern's character (loosely based on my life) in the same way society revised us. In an insightful and compelling way—and with the benefit of having reviewed the original UCLA interview transcripts—Lembcke got this.

Coming Home began as a story about how a career Marine turns into an anti-war veteran organizer. Dern's character and the script took a completely different turn from Salt's original story premise; it became a foil for the administration's reframing program. Go figure! It wasn't the movie I had signed on to make. I probably wouldn't have become involved had I known how it was all to come out.

Jerry: When I was writing The Spitting Image, I came across interviews that screenwriter Waldo Salt did with Willie and other veterans for the script of Coming Home. Speaking of what was then called "post-Vietnam syndrome" (PVS), Willie told Salt that their Vietnam experience had taught veterans that American society was a lie and that that same society did not want to deal with them. I wrote that, in effect, the raised consciousness that men like Willie came home with was pathologized, beginning with the way Salt used Willie's story to construct the prototypical whacked-out veteran played by Bruce Dern in the film and later canonized by psychiatrists as the mental health problem, PTSD.

Images of spat-upon veterans and traumatized veterans constituted portraits of victimization. These portraits displaced from public memory the fact that their time in Vietnam was one of empowerment and politicization for many GIs. Reading books like Alan Young's The Illusion of Harmony: Inventing Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, I became aware of how the diagnostic category PTSD also functioned as a political and cultural concept.

With the Vietnam-era "anti-war warrior" screened out by the "victim-veteran," it was no surprise that the current wars began with both the pro-war Right and anti-war Left pledging to support the troops. It was no surprise either when the film Sir! No Sir! (about the GI anti-war movement during Vietnam) pulled that piece of history back into view. It inaugurated a new anti-war coffee house near Fort Drum; a petition campaign against the war by military personnel; and new stories of spat-on veterans. This redirected public attention to the televised images of battered veterans images heretofore banned from public consumption.

Diane: The Spitting Image talks about how Willie's experiences were misunderstood by the VA, the military, Hollywood, society and even those closest to him. Camo describes living this nightmare from a woman's perspective. Were we all too caught up in the moment to have any kind of overview? How could so many caring people miss the point?

Willie: We were living history. We were blinded by the light.

Jerry: Hollywood was a major player in displacing the story of the war itself with the story of GIs coming home to the country that had betrayed them and their mission. Coming Home, for which Willie's interviews were used, had powerful feminist and anti-war messages and was heralded as a contribution to the disability-rights movement. For those who needed a different story, it also helped construct a mythical betrayal narrative for why we lost the war.

Diane: When producing Camo, we enlisted the help of Vietnam-era veteran/musician Russ Scheidler and Vietnam veterans Steve Sherlock (Aid to Southeast Asia) and Doug Drews (Vets For Peace) to read the parts on tape. Russ and Doug say that the new cycle of returning veterans with PTSD seriously rekindles their own depression. Do you have these feelings?

Jerry: In Sir! No Sir! Bill Short recalls that one of his duties in Vietnam was to count the dead Viet Cong after a fight. The task revolted him and when he refused to do it any longer he was sent to the unit shrink for psychiatric evaluation. His resistance about to be pathologized as a mental health problem (he thinks), the psychiatrist turns instead and pulls from the shelf a copy of The New York Times with a full-page petition against the war signed by GIs. Bill needed a social movement, not treatment, and the same can be said for hundreds of troops and veterans today who are similarly disgusted with the war they've been sent to fight and depressed with the realization that there is no glory in inglorious war.

Willie: The devil is in the details: The more you know about PTSD, the more pissed you become. Sure I have those feelings, especially when it is all coming around again as a result of our combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. We need to eliminate PTSD as a "mental" disorder and address it for what it is: A psycho-social anomie arising from our service on behalf of a power-mongering government out for political, personal, and capital gain.

Diane: Jerry, you are a Vietnam veteran, presumably with some level of disillusionment. Yet you found your way in society to become a college professor. How have you managed to survive in a society with which you have such issues?

Jerry: Janice Joplin sang "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." That was the mindset I returned with from Vietnam. One of the veterans in Gerald Gioglio's book, Days of Decision (about in-service conscientious objectors) says he never had more clarity about life than during his days of resistance. This is the kind of clarity that comes when you're stripped-down to the essentials of life. That's the way I felt. I vowed never again to be entrapped by this society's materialism or to be bonded to what Willie described to Salt as "little bullshit jobs that don't really count." At about that time, I read Neil Postman's book Teaching as a Subversive Activity. I used it as a kind of playbook for a dialectical engagement with society—surviving within it while simultaneously working for its transformation into something beyond itself.

Diane: Willie, you and veterans like Calixto Cabrera ("Alfredo" in Camo) joined the military as patriots and believers. You turned down a presidential appointment to Annapolis to become a Marine. Yet ultimately, you chose the outlaw life after Vietnam. How do you feel about that choice now?

Willie: I am still a patriot and always will be. I joined the Marine Corps in 1959 as a result of patriotism. Ten years later, I left and joined VVAW in 1971 – also as a result of patriotism. It was a patriotic act to rally with the grassroots to maintain our Constitutional perspectives. We won. Nixon and his band of thugs were ousted from power and for a while, the government did the People's Business. Remember the Erich Fromm quote: "The successful revolutionary is a statesman, the unsuccessful one a criminal"? Given the context, and using this history as a criterion, I consider "outlaw" an honorable definition of character synonymous with "patriot." Oh, yes; and I still believe.

Diane: In the '60s and '70s, VVAW trail-blazed post-traumatic stress research using their own lives as collateral. Can this make a difference to today's returning vets?

Jerry: The movement of in-service resisters and Vietnam veterans against the war called attention to the human costs of that war and mustered the political support for increased services for the mentally and physically wounded. The needs of the current wars' many victims will be best served not by public lamentations on the costs of war and pledges to support the troops but by an anti-war movement inclusive of the men and women sent to fight the war.

Willie: Absolutely! But only if we don't allow the government to divide and conquer us as they did after our initial victories back in The Day. There is always a cost for speaking truth to power. For us, it was being shunned as Communist agitators and told that Vietnam wasn't a real war. Our service was questioned. We were labeled cry-babies and sissies for calling attention to inferior conditions at the VA (See Camo, Still at War, Winter Soldier and more). Some older veterans worried that the surge of new combat veterans might infringe on their lock on Congress and the VA and minimize their priorities and benefits. And we often experienced non-acceptance at VFW and American Legion Posts throughout America.

Hopefully we can be more supportive to the men and women coming home today. Vietnam veterans have never been a quiet group. The counsel and experience we offer is practically unprecedented in American history. But I'm afraid the recognition of that fact might take a very long time.

Jerry Lembcke is a professor at Holy Cross College in Worcester, MA.
The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam {2000} is available nationwide.

Willie Hager and Diane Ford Wood are principal organizers of PTSD-centered Vetspeak.org.
Still at War will soon be available at Wisbooks. Camouflage & Lace {Camo} {2005} is available at
CD Baby.

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Diane Ford Wood : Camouflage & Lace: My Journey with a Windbender

A powerful true story of love & revolution in the anti-war Vietnam era told on 2 CDs. You won't be able to get the 8 original songs out of your head. A flashback and an awakening -- could this happen today?

"Camouflage & Lace" {Camo} is an original audiobook, with 8 original songs, that tells the true story, of a young college woman among soldiers, California 1972. Words and music by Diane Ford Wood, songs arranged and played by Vietnam-era veteran Russ Scheidler.