Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for March 2011

[Tony Nuspl]

Truth in Recruiting - "Don't Believe the Hype!"


Lead Story from the past month's news, a rare human interest story, from Reuters:

Report: Afghan war kills two children daily

Father wipes away tear from his injured child's face, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, Nov 2010.
Photo credit:  Peter Andrews, Reuters

facts & figures: NATO forces are responsible for at least 17% of those deaths, according to a human rights group. A United Nations report late last year found that civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose 20 percent in the first 10 months of 2010 compared with 2009, with NATO forces responsible for at least 25% of civilian casualties.

more coverage:
Afghan Probe Confirms: NATO Killed 65 Civilians in Kunar Offensive, including 50 Women &am...


Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-NC pushes for end to Afghanistan War
--caucus of anti-war Republicans in Congress is growing slowly but surely

quote:
"I’m tired of seeing our young people getting killed and getting their arms and legs blown off,” said Jones. "What do you say to the mother, father, wife of our military killed there — that we support a corrupt government in a fight we can’t win?’”

US Coalition Directly Killed Over 11,000 Innocent Civilians in Iraq in Five Years
— King's College London Study Reveals Grim Toll

facts & figures:
U.S. and U.K. occupation forces, on an average day, killed six innocent civilians per day, in Iraq.  How is a British or American soldier supposed to live with themselves, after having participated in this slaughter?

file under: getting out more difficult than getting in
Midshipman, Then Pacifist: Victory for a Conscientious Objector, Given Leave from the U.S. Navy
--Shortly after Michael Izbicki, now 25, graduated from the Naval Academy in 2008, he decided that his Christian beliefs would not permit him to take part in war. Mr. Izbicki won his discharge only by taking his petition to federal court.

follow up: raped by fellow soldiers
Lawsuit Says Military Is Rife With Sexual Abuse
— A federal lawsuit accuses the Department of Defense of allowing a military culture that fails to prevent rape and sexual assault, and of mishandling cases that were brought to its attention, thus violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.


file under: socialized medicine for veterans
U.S. Army purposefully destroyed medical records for combat soldier...
--units were told to destroy their records since there was no room to ship the paperwork back to the states

file again under: socialized medicine for veterans
For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results
--treatment for PTSD leads to "death by misadventure" for 3 veterans

facts & figures:
By some estimates, well over 300,000 troops have returned from Iraq or Afghanistan with P.T.S.D., depression, traumatic brain injury or some combination of those.

sidebar:
Navy spent $450,000 of taxpayer money on Super Bowl flyover... when the stadium roof was shut
file under: the militarization of civilian life

from the archives: featured song/video
Tommy Smothers Shocks Vegas audience with SERIOUS anti-war song

link to YouTube video of performance: Who do I have to hate to be your friend?

(Thank you Mark Manley, former Democratic candidate in state district 23 (East Tulsa), for bringing the above video/song to our attention, here at TPF)

page 2

update on U.S. "death squad" - acts of terror committed by Americans abroad
U.S. soldier accused of killing Afghans for sport will face military trial
--the ringleader, Spc. Michael Wagnon II, is up on charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit assault and assault with a dangerous weapon

more coverage:
Sgt. says soldier's dad reported plot to kill civilians
-- An Army staff sergeant confirmed to investigators that he received a phone call from a worried father last year warning that soldiers in his son's platoon were deliberately killing Afghan civilians.
-- The soldier's father was worried his son would be bullied into going along with it

facts & figures:
Christopher Winfield of Cape Coral, Fla., warned the U.S. army that soldiers in his son's platoon had already killed one civilian and were planning to kill more.

file under: what?! there are rules in times of war?
Md. soldier faces court-martial for wanton killing of unarmed Afghan civilian in his custody
--a decorated soldier who has deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, shot an unarmed Afghan man in the head at close range

follow up: risk of sexual assault in the military
Is This How We Treat Our Female Soldiers? Families seek answers about daughters' "Non-Combat" deaths
--Army Spc. Morganne McBeth lived to jump out of high-flying aircraft. But after she mysteriously died in Iraq in the summer of 2010, the military implausibly said she "stabbed herself".

file under: Milo Minderbender redux
U.S. Marine gets 6-year prison term for fraud while stationed overseas
--The captain pleaded guilty to skimming nearly $1.7 million from government contracts in Iraq

sidebar:
U.S. Air Force Abandons Its Threats Against Servicemembers’ Families
--Backs Off Threat to Try Average Americans as Spies for Reading Wikileaks
file under: public domain

file under: corruption in procurement
Two charged in Navy kickback scheme
--civilian program manager for Naval command involved in $10 million scheme

backpage

file under: still in Japan, 60 years later
U.S. Marines from Okinawa, Japan, spark protest after live-fire drill
--Local Net Oita Hijudai, a civic group protesting against the drills, has set up a cabin to watch the Marine Corps

file under: Pentagon waste, military fraud & corruption in procurement
Report: Wartime Contractors Waste, Steal Tens Of Billions -- Then Come Back For More
--Congressional committee slams the use of mercenaries, private contractors and war profiteers

quote:
"Some of the largest service contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan have checkered histories of misconduct, including instances of shooting civilians, false claims against the government, violations of the Anti-Kickback Act, fraud, retaliation against workers' complaints, and environmental violations."
~Scott Amey, general counsel for the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight (POGO),

related event:

Tulsa Peace Fellowship

presents monthly

PEACE VIGIL / ANTI-WAR DEMONSTRATION

Saturday, 5th March 2011, 12noon to 2pm

corner of 41st & Yale, in Tulsa
theme: "U.S. Out of Afghanistan"
support Bradley Manning, Prisoner of Conscience

always on the first saturday of the month

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The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for March 2011
lead story

Report:  Afghan war kills two children daily

KABUL, Afghanistan — An average of two children per day were killed in Afghanistan last year, with areas of the once peaceful north now among the most dangerous, an independent Afghan rights watchdog said Wednesday.

The Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report that, of the 2,421 civilians the group registered as killed in conflict-related security incidents in 2010, some 739 were under the age of 18.

Civilian and military casualties hit record levels in 2010, with violence at its worst since the Taliban were overthrown by U.S.-led Afghan forces in late 2001.

Civilian casualties in NATO-led military operations, often caused by air strikes and night raids, have long been a source of friction between the Afghan government and its Western partners.

Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/41486101/ns/world_news-south_and_centra...

more coverage:
Afghan Probe Confirms: NATO Killed 65 Civilians in Kunar Offensive
by Jason Ditz, February 25, 2011

Following up quickly on the reports of the massive civilian death toll in last week’s Kunar Province offensive, the Afghan government confirmed today that its probe found 65 civilians were killed by NATO troops during the offensive, with 50 of them either women or children.

The report appears to have been largely in keeping with the provincial government’s reports, which said they were told 64 civilians had been killed in the remote portions of the border province.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/25/afghan-probe-confirms-nato-kille...

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The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for March 2011
page 1


Rep. Walter B. Jones, R-NC pushes for end to Afghanistan War

February 13, 2011
By Sue Book, for Freedom ENC

Jones, who handily won reelection to an eighth District 3 House term in 2010 in an area that includes or abuts military bases including Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point and Seymour Johnson, was initially a strong supporter of U.S. military action after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

But in 2005, he joined three other congressmen in introducing a resolution to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq beginning in October 2006. He said he realized that there had been little reason to go to war and that his early support had been based on selective intelligence supplied to Congress.

Slow but growing support among his House Republican colleagues is now encouraging Jones in his push to bring the U.S. military home from Afghanistan, too.

“A year ago there were probably seven or eight Republican representatives who feel as I do about getting out,” he said. “Now with the new group coming in, we’ve got 10 who won office while saying we need to get out.

“There is a small movement developing, still small if we had to vote, but even the number of conservatives who want to get our troops out is growing. Here we are talking about staying in Afghanistan, and 72 percent of the people are saying bring them home” according to a Gallop poll.

That poll was eye-opening, he said, and he used it in the briefing on Thursday. The mid-January poll showed 86 percent of Democrats, 72 percent of Independents and 61 percent of Republicans polled want an escalated timetable for withdrawal, he said.

"“And we’re being told (military officials) want more time,” Jones said. “They can’t explain what victory looks like and how to achieve victory.  I’m tired of seeing our young people getting killed and getting their arms and legs blown off.”

"What do you say to the mother, father, wife of our military killed there — that we support a corrupt government in a fight we can’t win?’”

Jones said a retired general who advises him tells him that Afghanistan is a different world, one unchanged since Alexander the Great. The general also points out that al Qaida has moved to a different part of the world.

There’s also the issue of the money being spent on efforts in Afghanistan.

“The next budget for that action that we will vote on this spring calls for $120 billion. Here we are, can’t even balance our books and are spending this,” he said.

He worries that troops will be there four to five more years unless Congress votes to get them out.

“That’s what I’m trying to do with my colleagues of both parties,” he said.

http://www.enctoday.com/news/jones-87820-jdn-wounded-afghanistan.html

US Coalition Directly Killed Over 11,000 Innocent Civilians in Iraq in Five Years
King's College London Study Reveals Grim Toll
by Jason Ditz, February 15, 2011

King’s College London has released a study related to the Iraq Body Count (IBC) collection of data on civilian deaths, cross referencing it with information from hospitals, NGOs, and official figures to provide an overall picture of the source of “violent civilian deaths” over the first five years of the US-led occupation.

The IBC count puts the toll for that period at 92,614, with the vast majority related to gangs and sectarian violence. But the study also found 12 percent of the violent deaths of innocent civilians were caused by “coalition forces,” which virtually exclusively means US and British forces in the context of Iraq.

This means that the US and its allies, excluding the Iraqi government forces themselves, directly killed over 11,000 innocent civilians over that period. This means the occupation forces, on an average day, killed six innocent civilians.

That’s an unfathomable amount, indeed neither the Taliban nor the occupation forces in Afghanistan could lay claim to such a grim number of innocent victims. The 11,000 US-led killings were bolstered by another 10,000 or so slain directly by the Iraqi government forces.

Of course, when one discusses the IBC it must be pointed out that the toll provided by them is extremely conservative, covering only direct violent killings, and that other other studies have put the “excess deaths” in the period in the high hundred thousands or more. That includes those who died by virtue of the disastrousness of life post occupation Iraq.

http://news.antiwar.com/2011/02/15/us-coalition-directly-killed-ove...


Midshipman, Then Pacifist: Rare Victory to Leave Navy
By Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times
Published: February 22, 2011

NEW LONDON, Conn. — The question that changed Michael Izbicki’s life appeared on a psychological exam he took not long after graduating in 2008 near the top of his class at the United States Naval Academy: If given the order, would he launch a missile carrying a nuclear warhead?

Ensign Izbicki said he would not — and his reply set in motion a two-year personal journey and legal battle that ended on Tuesday, when the Navy confirmed that he had been discharged from the service as a conscientious objector.

In the process, Mr. Izbicki, 25, went from Navy midshipman in the nuclear submarine fleet here, studying kill ratios, to resident of a small Quaker peace community a few blocks from the Thames River, where he prays several times a day, studies Hebrew and helps with the organic garden.

He is one of only a few graduates of the nation’s military academies to be granted conscientious objector status in recent years. And while every case is deeply personal, his long struggle for an honorable discharge offers a glimpse of a rarely viewed side of military experience in the post-draft, all-volunteer era: the steep challenge facing any service member — and especially a graduate of a service academy — who signs up as a teenager to become a warrior and then changes his mind in adulthood about his willingness to kill.

The Navy fought his request hard, in much the same way that the Army contested the conscientious objector application of Capt. Peter D. Brown, a West Point graduate and an Iraq war veteran who was discharged in 2007 after a protracted court battle.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/23/nyregion/23objector.html?ref=nyre...

Lawsuit Says Military Is Rife With Sexual Abuse
By Ashley Parker
Published: February 15, 2011

WASHINGTON — A federal lawsuit filed Tuesday accuses the Department of Defense of allowing a military culture that fails to prevent rape and sexual assault, and of mishandling cases that were brought to its attention, thus violating the plaintiffs’ constitutional rights.

The suit — brought by 2 men and 15 women, both veterans and active-duty service members — specifically claims that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld, “ran institutions in which perpetrators were promoted and where military personnel openly mocked and flouted the modest Congressionally mandated institutional reforms.”

It also says the two defense secretaries failed “to take reasonable steps to prevent plaintiffs from being repeatedly raped, sexually assaulted and sexually harassed by federal military personnel.”

Myla Haider, a former Army sergeant and a plaintiff in the suit, said she was raped in 2002 while interning in Korea with the military’s Criminal Investigative Command. “It is an atmosphere of zero accountability in leadership, period,” she said an interview.

Though the suit, which was filed in Federal District Court in Virginia, seeks monetary damages, those involved with the case said their goal was an overhaul of the military’s judicial system regarding rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment.

“You should not have to be subjected to being raped or sexually assaulted because you volunteered to serve this nation,” said Susan L. Burke, the plaintiffs’ lead lawyer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/us/16military.html?_r=1&hp


Veterans of the first Gulf War can't get treatment
Army admits medical records were destroyed
Mike Deeson, WTSP news
9 Feb 2011

Tampa Bay - One solider trying to get help from the Veterans Administration for combat-related injuries says he has been turned down, because his records are missing. He says he has all the medical records for the time he was in the states, but the records for everything that happened outside of the country are gone.

A letter from Department of the Army -- that has never been made public before --  says after Desert Storm ended, units were told to destroy their records since there was no room to ship the paperwork back to the states. The letter goes on to say it was in direct contradiction to existing Army Regulations.

In the Army's letter, it says several years after soldiers began putting in medical claims, it was discovered all records below the brigade level no longer existed.

It's not just the after-action reports that have been destroyed or are missing. Files we've obtained show when some veterans come to the Veterans Administration to get help for service-related disabilities, there are records to show they served, but their medical records are nowhere to be found. That means when the vets make the claims, they have to be turned down.

Another Gulf War vet told us there is no recourse and what disturbs him the most.

This Gulf War veteran served 20 years in the Army. The Veterans Administration has documentation he served in the 82nd Airborne division as an Army ranger and made 125 parachute jumps. All of his claims, including hearing loss, ankle and back injury, have been denied because efforts to obtain service medical records for all potential sources were unsuccessful. He says all his medical records are gone.

The Department of Defense does have records and sent a letter telling this same soldier that he and others in his unit were in an area where exposure to nerve agents sarin and cycolossarin was possible, but they should not worry about any bad affects.

The vet is skeptical about the claim that the nerve agent won't harm him.

http://www.wtsp.com/news/mostpop/story.aspx?storyid=174296&prov...


For Some Troops, Powerful Drug Cocktails Have Deadly Results
By James Dao, Benedict Carey and Dan Frosch
Published: February 12, 2011

The New York Times reviewed in detail the cases of three service members who died from what coroners said were toxic interactions of prescription drugs. All were classified accidents, not suicides.

In his last months alive, Senior Airman Anthony Mena rarely left home without a backpack filled with medications.

He returned from his second deployment to Iraq complaining of back pain, insomnia, anxiety and nightmares. Doctors diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder and prescribed powerful cocktails of psychiatric drugs and narcotics.

Yet his pain only deepened, as did his depression. “I have almost given up hope,” he told a doctor in 2008, medical records show. “I should have died in Iraq.”

Airman Mena died instead in his Albuquerque apartment, on July 21, 2009, five months after leaving the Air Force on a medical discharge. A toxicologist found eight prescription medications in his blood, including three antidepressants, a sedative, a sleeping pill and two potent painkillers.

Yet his death was no suicide, the medical examiner concluded. What killed Airman Mena was not an overdose of any one drug, but the interaction of many. He was 23.

Airman Mena was part of a military police unit that conducted combat patrols alongside Army units in downtown Baghdad. He cleaned up the remains of suicide bombing victims and was nearly killed by a bomb himself, his records show.

Gunnery Sgt. Christopher Bachus had spent virtually his entire adult life in the Marine Corps, deploying to the Middle East in 1991, Iraq during the invasion of 2003 and, for a short tour, Afghanistan in 2005. He suffered from what doctors called survivor’s guilt and came back “like a ghost,” said his brother, Jerry, of Westerville, Ohio.

Cpl. Nicholas Endicott joined the Marines in 2003 after working as a coal miner in West Virginia. He deployed twice to Iraq and once to Afghanistan, where he saw heavy combat. On one mission, Corporal Endicott was blown more than eight feet in the air by a roadside bomb, medical records show. He came home plagued by nightmares and flashbacks and rarely left the house.

Given the complexity of drug interactions, it is difficult to know precisely what killed the three men, and the Pentagon declined to discuss their cases, citing confidentiality. But there were important similarities to their stories.

All the men had been deployed multiple times and eventually received diagnoses of P.T.S.D. All had five or more medications in their systems when they died, including opiate painkillers and mood-altering psychiatric drugs, but not alcohol. All had switched drugs repeatedly, hoping for better results that never arrived.

All died in their sleep.

The Army and the Navy are also offering more treatments without drugs, including acupuncture and yoga. And they have tried to expand talk therapy programs — one of which, exposure therapy, is considered by some experts to be the only proven treatment for P.T.S.D. But shortages of mental health professionals have hampered those efforts.

Still, given the depth of the medical problems facing combat veterans, as well as the medical system’s heavy reliance on drugs, few experts expect the widespread use of multiple medications to decline significantly anytime soon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/13/us/13drugs.html

epitaph, for this edition of "Truth in Recruiting"

"The Pentagon has a long history of keeping embarrassing things secret.  If the average person had a better understanding of what ‘collateral damage’ really meant, if they understood better the depth of profiteering which takes place in Afghanistan on the backs of the American taxpayer and under the guise of democracy and freedom, it would be unconscionable for most to continue support."
~Matt Southworth, legislative director for the Friends Committee on National Legislation and a member of Iraq War Veterans Against the War

'collateral damage' : (U.S. military jargon) a euphemism for unintended civilian deaths, e.g. from bombing runs that kill indiscriminately

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The Tulsa Peace Fellowship's Counter-Recruitment Update/Digest, for March 2011
masthead

who we are:

The Tulsa Peace Fellowship is the activist wing of the peace movement in Eastern Oklahoma.  TPF offers citizens and community groups tools and resources to participate personally in our democracy, to help shape federal budget and policy priorities, and to promote peace, social and economic justice, and human rights.   TPF is a registered non-profit organization and a non-partisan civic-sector organization, loosely affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration, north side of Tulsa.

"Waging Peace One Person at a Time".

Through its counter-recruitment task force, TPF is a member of the National Network in Opposition to the Militarization of Youth (NNOMY) representing some 188 counter-recruitment groups in cities and towns across the country. On the web: http://www.nnomy.org/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&task=v... 

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further information

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Strength Through Peace:  Out of Iraq & Afghanistan
Accountability:  Indict & Imprison Bush & Cheney for War Crimes
JROTC: Out of Our Schools
Schools as Military-Free Zones
Alternatives to War:  Department of Peace & cabinet-level Secretary of Peace

THE 10 REASONS NOT TO ENLIST

Ten excellent reasons not to join the military:
a.. You May Be Killed, Even By Mistake
b.. You May Kill Others Who Do Not Deserve to Die
c.. You May Be Injured
d.. You May Not Receive Proper Medical Care
e.. You May Suffer Long-term Health Problems
f.. You May Be Lied To
g.. You May Face Discrimination
h.. You May Be Asked to Do Things Against Your Beliefs
i.. You May Find It Difficult to Leave the Military
j.. You Have Other Choices, including the Choice to Learn a Marketable Skill

for more info:
http://www.10reasonsbook.com/medcare.htm