As previously posted here, I'm working on a documentary about women in the military. This is a trailer for what we've got so far. Please feel free to post it or link to it on your blog or website. Also if you'd like to be a part of this, please contact me. We're looking for females from all branches with different opinions. . .and you don't necessarily need to be a veteran. We plan to shoot more in August--likely in the New York and Washington, D.C . areas, and possibly in California. (If you're not from these areas but are interested, please email me. Maybe we can work something out.)
Originally I was going to postup on a report out of Vietnam, that I received, as to 'Agent Orange', a few days back.
But War brings alot of negative results, very few positives, especially in conflicts of choice built on lies and the occupations that result, often having the invading country placing a supportive government in place as they remain the occupiers.
I'll get to the information on Agent Orange in a moment, but before that I'd like to update some other news on the Remnants of War.
The VA rejected an Afghanistan veteran's disability claim for PTSD last month, citing his membership in VoteVets.org as a reason for the denial.
That Veteran is Staff Sergeant Will King who goes by the user name at Vet Voice as sandrat
Brandons post was on the 12th of June, on the 14th Sargeant Will King put up a post subject PTSD Ranch Sargeant King, who suffers from PTSD from his experiances in Afganistan, along with his Mother apparently have been talking about:
Last year me and my mother came up with the idea of a veterans ranch. The ranch would be open to all vets, and would pay for itself.
Even before I finished reading his short post I went over to my site and quickly grabbed some information there, I had posted awhile ago.
That information pertained to Nadia McCaffrey who's son was killed in Iraq. Nadia's son Sgt Patrick R. McCaffrey Sr was killed in Iraq in June of 2004. Since his death Nadia, along Patrict's Wife and two Young Children has started the Patrick McCaffrey Foundation & Veterans Village to help Veterans of our present conflicts as Patrick helped his fellow soldiers In-Theater, as a Memorial in Patricts Memory. You can find out more about Veterans Village at the link directly above.
I replied to Will, in his post, with the information on Nadia and that he and his mother may want to contact her as they're both of the same mindset as to the needed help for the soldiers returning home from these occupations and especially Multiple Tours and Stop Loss.
Will replied back that he had talked to Nadia and:
She is trying to set up a conference for everyone who working on a veteran resort or thinking about it.
Roughly 30% of soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from post traumatic stress disorder. The U.S government is not doing enough to ensure that they get adequate care. Veteran's Village was founded by Nadia McCaffrey, mother of fallen American soldier Patcik McCaffrey, to give American vets a healing oasis so they can truly come home.
I posted a reply to David and in it I had this:
If the VA, once again, doesn't take the lead in PTSD and TBI than, once again, it's left to the private sector and more people are getting involved, Finally. But this Country needs to Help Fund These Projects in a wide veriaty of ways Including Some of the Funding!!
And by the VA I also mean this Country and All of us Citizens! The Country should have started doing Much More through our Government and in Our Names right after Vietnam when there started to be a much better understanding of PTSD, as it was given that name, a reality that happens to not only soldiers in War Theaters, and those Innocents and fighters in those theaters, but to many who live through a life changing Traumatic Experiance, especially the children!
Use the links above to find out more about Veterans Village and give Support to it and Nadia in Honor to Patrict, and as Staff Sgt. King (retired) moves forward on his project hopefully we will be able to find out more and offer our collective help as well, please keep us posted Will.
Cluster Bombs
I was going to post up some information on a WMD that this country uses Heavily in it's Wars and Occupations but you can find out more in a very good recent post by Truong Son Traveler who posted the following UXO - Still Killing After All These Years on a number of these boards.
And that they do, they're Still Killing and Maiming in Vietnam After All These Years!
And this Country, which Condemns Others and went to War against another small country on the rigged intelligence it had WMD's, Refuses To Sign On, with most of the World, To Ban These Weapons Of Mass and Long Time Destruction, as we improve, develope, stockpile, and use in Iraq and Afganistan along with a whole host of WMD's in our Arsenal, Depleted Uranium included!!
Visit the link to Truong's post to read more, and take action if requested to petition Our Government to Ban Them.
I planned on a more indepth post on Agent Orange using this Vietnamesse Press report, but with the above added, I'll make this much shorter with pertinant links and a few of their photo's.
A recent US Congress hearing has put the plight of victims still suffering from the devastating effects of the herbicide Agent Orange back under the public spotlight. Long Pham reports.
Helping hand: Children learn primary level education via sign language at Duc Ninh Centre in Quang Binh Province’s Dong Hoi town.The centre is home to 76 children with varying disabilities caused by the effects of Agent Orange. — VNA Photo Duong Ngoc
Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange/Dioxin (VAVA) vice chairwoman Dr Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong said early this week that the recent legal proceedings had made the public and the international community more aware of AO/dioxin and its continued effects.
The sorrow of war: Le Thi Mit holds her son Nguyen Van Truong, 17, in their house in Quang Tri Province’s Cam Lo District. The area was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange during the war. — VNS Photo Truong Vi
Two weeks ago, the hearing on AO/dioxin, Our Forgotten Responsibility: What Can We Do to Help Victims of Agent Orange, was convened by US congressman Eni F H Faleomavaega. Dr Phuong acted as a spokesperson for Vietnamese victims before the congressman and the Asia, Pacific and Global Environment Subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Bitter inheritance: Nurses carry out health checks for children living at Hai Duong Province’s Social Support Centre. All the children at the centre have parents or grandparents who were exposed to Agent Orange during the American War. — VNA Photo Trong Duc
Phuong said that the hearing was just a start for longer and broader discussions of responsibility and action. She suggested that there were two things the American government and people could do to help victims: support them in independent living and clean up remaining hazardous areas. Cleaning up the environment would stop residual chemicals from further affecting local inhabitants.
Providing support: 31-year-old Bui Thi Giang in Quang Tan Commune, Quang Xuong District, Thanh Hoa Province sits in the new wheelchair she received from VAVA’s provincial branch. — VNA Photo Duong Ngoc
Since 2004, VAVA has actively pursued legal channels for compensation from US chemical companies, which they argue had knowledge of the chemical’s effects. VAVA is taking the lawsuit to the US Supreme Court in August.
VAVA praises Agent Orange walkers
The meeting was held to mark the conclusion of the 1,700km walk. As of April, participants in the walk, including Vietnamese and Americans, passed through more than 20 provinces and cities nationwide. In each region, they visited victims and presented gifts worth between VND500,000 (US$31.25) and VND10,000,000 ($625).
There is more to that last blockquote as well as the article, visit and read as well as other News from Vietnam.
I left Vietnam some 37plus years ago, four years later the U.S. pulled out and the above is only part of what we left behind, along with the cluster bombs and other ordinance. Not only left behind but have been refusing to compensate the people and country we destroyed, all these years, who had done nothing to deserve what we did to them!
Now we are once again in long occupations built on lies, especially Iraq!
We aren't keeping our promises as we occupy and we won't when we leave, not only promises but responsibilities!
What long term legacies of Mass Destruction will be left behind, one known is our use of Depleted Uranium in our Ordinance. Reports are all ready coming forth about deformed babies being born, that's enough for me, if not DU than it's our other numorous weapons being used from our arsenals of WMD's and Destruction!
And in an Update to the McClatchy Series:"Guantanamo: Beyond the Law" which I posted and sent out yesterday we can add this today, if you missed it:
Tuesday the Senate will hold hearings on the origins of harsh interrogation techniques and last Thursday Guantanamo prisoners won the right to challenge their detention in federal courts. We take a look at how the post 9/11 detention and interrogation system was organized and what it's achieved. A new investigative series in McClatchy newspapers concludes that abuse and mismanagement led to the radicalization of innocent people caught in the effort to round up terrorists.
Guests Roy Gutman, foreign editor, McClatchy Newspapers; author "How We Missed the Story: Osama Bin Laden, the Taliban and the Hijacking of Afghanistan"
Col. Stuart Herrington, retired U.S. Army interrogator; reviewed detainee operations at Guantanamo and in Iraq for the U.S. Army
Matthew Waxman, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs (2004-2005); also held high ranking positions in the Department of State and National Security Council; currently, professor of law at Columbia University
Colby Buzzell, author of My War: Killing Time in Iraq one of the best Iraq memoirs out there--has been called up from the IRR and will be returning to Iraq. For reasons that I've specified in the past, this is utter horseshit. Our country is in sad shape when cowards like Matthew Continetti and Jason Mattera are allowed to refuse to serve--instead choosing to cheer from the bench--while people like Colby Buzzell are forced to go involuntarily again and again.
This is nothing less than a backdoor draft. And it's wrong. We need to either have a draft or not have a draft. But one way or the other, these IRR mobilizations need to stop.
Here's part of Buzzell's take on his own situation (though you should go read the whole thing in the San Francisco Chronicle:
As far back as I could remember, I wanted to be in the Army. I don't know where it came from (my dad was a Navy veteran, after all), but I was enthralled by military history. I couldn't get enough of it. But it wasn't enough to simply read about the military. I wanted to be a part of it as soon as I could.
...I really was looking forward to applying my GI Bill to photography classes so I could learn how to take pictures. But now, thanks to not enough Americans volunteering for military service, I now have to worry about my picture appearing on the second or third page of my hometown paper with the words, "it was his second deployment" in my obituary.
That's at the very end of the article that deserves to be read in full by every single breathing American citizen. Buzzell expresses a sentiment felt by nearly every veteran I know: Americans have not only failed to pick up the slack of a two front war, but they've dumped all the hardship, responsibility, guilt, heartbreak and exhaustion onto less than %1 of the population - service members and their families. There's a word for that: serfdom.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates calls it "insensitive," I call it something else:
The Pentagon is recommending changes in the handling of troops' remains, after it was revealed that a crematorium contracted by the military handles both human and animal cremations.
For weeks, the US Army had a blockade around Sadr City to keep vehicles from entering or leaving the dangerous area. Residents of the besieged district complained of skyrocketing food prices, trash piling up in the streets, and claustrophobia from being trapped indoors. Several lawmakers staged sit-ins to protest the blockade. That blockade has been lifted, and residents are now being asked to leave.
SNIP
Now back to some of my own thoughts:
I Still Want To Know Why neither one of these youngsters is Serving, and any of their young guests for this weekends ceremony??
Daughters do look for the 'daddy feature', come from a 'chickenhawk' marry a 'chickenhawk'!!
Manufacturing Obedience
The greatest lie in American history was the Vietnam War.
The Iraq War is rapidly gaining ground.
Once you see the truth, you are reborn.
I did not serve in Vietnam with the U.S. Army,
I served in Vietnam with the R.C. Army,
The Ruling Class Army.
Thank God, I don’t live in a gingerbread house anymore.
Lying Is The Most Powerful Weapon In War.
Mike Hastie R.C. Army Vietnam 1970-71 May 5,
A Military Mom Writes to a Chicken Hawk A 'Gold Star Mom', for 'Mothers Day'
I write to you this Mother's Day as the mother of Lt. Ken Ballard, who was killed in Najaf, Iraq four years ago, fighting in a war that you have criticized but continue to fund.
I hope that this Mother's Day you are lucky enough to be surrounded by your children and grandchildren, to share thanks and hugs. But I also hope that you will think about the thousands of mothers of U.S. troops who will never see their children again -- and the tens of thousands of mothers of troops now serving in Iraq who live in fear every day of the phone call or the knock on the door telling them their child has been injured or killed.
Needs some Contacts made to our powers that be, or those that think they rule!!
After 'Nam
This BullS**t Has Got To Stop, though we said that in the 'Nam Years and it hasn't improved much at all!
This Country should have Heeded the Warnings and made the VA System the Best for Care, for Teaching, and for Research In The World, especially as the country Loves these Wars Of Choice and Occupations! They Didn't, Cost To High for those who Don't Serve!!
They didn't learn those lessons, they didn't learn the lessons of Guerilla Insurgencies, they didn't Learn a Damn Thing and now, once again, they Aren't Paying Any Attention!
Don't even see the Magnetic Ribbons anymore!
Welcome Home to the Deja-Vu world of Service To Country from Wars Of Choice!!
That information pertained to 
Helping hand: Children learn primary level education via sign language at Duc Ninh Centre in Quang Binh Province’s Dong Hoi town.The centre is home to 76 children with varying disabilities caused by the effects of Agent Orange. — VNA Photo Duong Ngoc
The sorrow of war: Le Thi Mit holds her son Nguyen Van Truong, 17, in their house in Quang Tri Province’s Cam Lo District. The area was heavily sprayed with Agent Orange during the war. — VNS Photo Truong Vi
Bitter inheritance: Nurses carry out health checks for children living at Hai Duong Province’s Social Support Centre. All the children at the centre have parents or grandparents who were exposed to Agent Orange during the American War. — VNA Photo Trong Duc
Providing support: 31-year-old Bui Thi Giang in Quang Tan Commune, Quang Xuong District, Thanh Hoa Province sits in the new wheelchair she received from VAVA’s provincial branch. — VNA Photo Duong Ngoc