GI SPECIAL: Pilots Get Shit On For Rescuing Hurricane Victims: Pissed Sailors Cut Off Their Patches

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME; BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW

Army Chaplain Capt. Daoud Agbere, right, a Muslim cleric, prays for an American soldier after he was pronounced dead upon arrival at a military hospital in Baghdad, on Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2004, despite the efforts of Army Nurse supervisor Patrick McAndrew, left, to revive him. The soldier was fatally wounded in a Baghdad firefight with insurgents.

Click here for embedded links and photos:

http://www.militaryproject.org/article.asp?id=680

Helicopter Pilots Get Shit On For Rescuing Hurricane Victims:

Pissed Sailors Cut Off Their Search/Rescue Patches

COMMENT:

[Thanks to PB and PG who sent this in. Notice that the pilots asked for and received permission from their base to perform the rescues once they could make contact. Notice the despicable asshole in command ignores that fact. If any readers have ever wondered what led troops in Vietnam to rebel wholesale against the political and military idiots in command and stop the war, you get a big hint here of the kind of command arrogance that leads decent, honorable members of the armed forces to snap. Nobody on this base is going to forget or forgive what Commander Dickwad Shithead did. Payback will come. T]

Lieutenant Udkow, who associates say was especially vocal about voicing his disagreement to superiors, was taken out of the squadron’s flying rotation temporarily and assigned to oversee a temporary kennel established at Pensacola to hold pets of service members evacuated from the hurricane-damaged areas, two members of the unit said.

September 7, 2005 By DAVID S. CLOUD, The New York Times

PENSACOLA, Fla., Sept. 6 - Two Navy helicopter pilots and their crews returned from New Orleans on Aug. 30 expecting to be greeted as lifesavers after ferrying more than 100 hurricane victims to safety.

Instead, their superiors chided the pilots, Lt. David Shand and Lt. Matt Udkow, at a meeting the next morning for rescuing civilians when their assignment that day had been to deliver food and water to military installations along the Gulf Coast.

"I felt it was a great day because we resupplied the people we needed to and we rescued people, too," Lieutenant Udkow said. But the air operations commander at Pensacola Naval Air Station "reminded us that the logistical mission needed to be our area of focus."

Only in recent days, after the federal response to the disaster has come to be seen as inadequate, have large numbers of troops and dozens of helicopters, trucks and other equipment been poured into to the effort.

Early on, the military rescue operations were smaller, often depending on the initiative of individuals like Lieutenants Shand and Udkow.

The two lieutenants were each piloting a Navy H-3 helicopter - a type often used in rescue operations as well as transport and other missions - on that Tuesday afternoon, delivering emergency food, water and other supplies to Stennis Space Center, a federal facility near the Mississippi coast. The storm had cut off electricity and water to the center, and the two helicopters were supposed to drop their loads and return to Pensacola, their home base, said Cmdr. Michael Holdener, Pensacola’s air operations chief.

"Their orders were to go and deliver water and parts and to come back," Commander Holdener said.

But as the two helicopters were heading back home, the crews picked up a radio transmission from the Coast Guard saying helicopters were needed near the University of New Orleans to help with rescue efforts, the two pilots said.

Out of range for direct radio communication with Pensacola, more than 100 miles to the east, the pilots said, they decided to respond and turned their helicopters around, diverting from their mission without getting permission from their home base. Within minutes, they were over New Orleans.

"We’re not technically a search-and-rescue unit, but we’re trained to do search and rescue," said Lieutenant Shand, a 17-year Navy veteran.

Flying over Biloxi and Gulfport and other areas of Mississippi, they could see rescue personnel on the ground, Lieutenant Udkow said, but he noticed that there were few rescue units around the flooded city of New Orleans, on the ground or in the air. "It was shocking," he said.

Seeing people on the roofs of houses waving to him, Lieutenant Udkow headed in their direction. Hovering over power lines, his crew dropped a basket to pick up two residents at a time. He took them to Lakefront Airport, where local emergency medical teams had established a makeshift medical center.

Meanwhile, Lieutenant Shand landed his helicopter on the roof of an apartment building, where more than a dozen people were marooned. Women and children were loaded first aboard the helicopter and ferried to the airport, he said.

Returning to pick up the rest, the crew learned that two blind residents had not been able to climb up through the attic to the roof and were still in the building. Two crew members entered the darkened building to find the men, and led them to the roof and into the helicopter, Lieutenant Shand said.

Recalling the rescues in an interview, he became so emotional that he had to stop and compose himself. At one point, he said, he executed a tricky landing at a highway overpass, where more than 35 people were marooned.

Lieutenant Udkow said that he saw few other rescue helicopters in New Orleans that day. The toughest part, he said, was seeing so many people imploring him to pick them up and having to leave some.

"I would be looking at a family of two on one roof and maybe a family of six on another roof, and I would have to make a decision who to rescue," he said. "It wasn’t easy."

While refueling at a Coast Guard landing pad in early evening, Lieutenant Udkow said, he called Pensacola and received permission to continue rescues that evening. According to the pilots and other military officials, they rescued 110 people.

The next morning, though, the two crews were called to a meeting with Commander Holdener, who said he told them that while helping civilians was laudable, the lengthy rescue effort was an unacceptable diversion from their main mission of delivering supplies. With only two helicopters available at Pensacola to deliver supplies, the base did not have enough to allow pilots to go on prolonged search and rescue operations.

"We all want to be the guys who rescue people," Commander Holdener said. "But they were told we have other missions we have to do right now and that is not the priority."

The order to halt civilian relief efforts angered some helicopter crews.

Lieutenant Udkow, who associates say was especially vocal about voicing his disagreement to superiors, was taken out of the squadron’s flying rotation temporarily and assigned to oversee a temporary kennel established at Pensacola to hold pets of service members evacuated from the hurricane-damaged areas, two members of the unit said.

Lieutenant Udkow denied that he had complained and said he did not view the kennel assignment as punishment.

Dozens of military aircraft are now conducting search and rescue missions over the affected areas.

But privately some members of the Pensacola unit say the base’s two available transport helicopters should have been allowed to do more to help civilian victims in the days after the storm hit, when large numbers of military helicopters had not reached the affected areas.

In protest, some members of the unit have stopped wearing a search and rescue patch on their sleeves that reads, "So Others May Live."

Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed services. Send requests to address up top.

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

ONE SOLDIER KILLED IN ACCIDENT

September 7, 2005 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS Release Number: 05-09-08C

LSA ANACONDA, BALAD, Iraq - One 56th BCT Soldier was killed in a non-combat related accident at about 6:30 p.m., Sept. 7, at Camp Taqaddum, Iraq.

The Soldier was taken to a Coalition Forces medical treatment facility where he died of his wounds.

Bomb Kills Eagle River Soldier

September 7, 2005 By KATIE PESZNECKER, Anchorage Daily News

A young, lifelong Alaskan was killed this week in Iraq during his second combat tour in the Middle East, his family’s pastor said Tuesday.

Sgt. Matthew Charles Bohling, 22, of Eagle River served four years in the Army. He enlisted just after graduating from Chugiak High School, the Rev. Brad Rud said in an interview late Tuesday, speaking on the family’s behalf.

Bohling was with the A Company of the 69th Armored Regiment in the 3rd Infantry Division based in Fallujah, Iraq.

Bohling volunteered for his first tour of duty in the Persian Gulf, according to information his parents gave the Daily News in 2003.

Bohling returned from that tour, though Rud didn’t know the specifics. He said Bohling went back for a second stint in the Mideast and had been gone all year.

But he was home in Alaska just weeks ago on leave.

"Oh, yeah, he was fishing and having a great time," Rud said. "He only had a week and a half, 10 days, from Iraq and then right back to Iraq."

In 2003, Bohling’s father wrote that his son "loves the typical Alaska lifestyle and is happy with gun or rod in hand. Fun is at its best for him if a four-wheeler is involved."

Bohling’s father is active in the Army National Guard. Bohling’s brother Joshua enlisted in the Army six months ago and is training in Florida, Rud said.

In addition to his parents and brother, Bohling leaves behind his younger sister and brother-in-law, Sarah and Josh Tudor.

Three U.S. Soldiers Wounded By Baghdad IED

9.7.05 CNN

Iraqi police Wednesday said a U.S. Army Humvee was seen burning along the Mohammed al-Qasim highway in eastern Baghdad.

A spokeswoman with the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division said three U.S. soldiers were wounded when their convoy was hit by an improvised explosive device. At least one of the injured was in critical condition and medevaced to a field hospital.

Three Tennessee Soldiers Wounded

7 September 2005 WCYB

Some soldiers with the 278th Regimental Combat Team from Bristol, Tennessee are recovering from injuries after an explosion in Iraq.

Sgt. Chris Cartwright and Sgt. Leon Brimm were hurt when a car bomb blew up next to their vehicle just outside of Baghdad early Monday morning. Both men received minor injuries.

278th soldier Specialist Jamie Smith from Church Hill was also injured and is being transferred to a hospital in Germany.

The soldiers are expected to return home in early November.

"U.S. National" Wounded By Baghdad Car Bomb

9.7.05 Reuters

BAGHDAD - Iraqi police said six people were injured, including a U.S. national, after a parked car blew up next to a sports utility vehicle, often used by contractors and officials in southern Baghdad.

Four U.S. Mercenaries Killed Near Basra

Four American mercenaries were killed when a bomb targeted a US diplomatic convoy in Basra. (AFP/Essam Al-Sudani)

9.7.05 By STEVEN R. HURST, Associated Press Writer & Middle East Online & CNN & Aljazeera

A roadside bomb killed four American security guards, targeting a US diplomatic convoy.

Wednesday’s roadside bombing in southern Iraq was noteworthy because attacks against Americans in the region of Basra, Iraq’s second-largest city, are rare. The U.S. has only a minimal presence in the area.

The bomb flipped the guards’ white SUV onto its roof in a ravine alongside a highway near Basra. The improvised explosive device detonated at the foot of the Ghazyza bridge about 8:30 a.m. (0430 GMT).

Three contractors were killed on the spot, the official said. One was flown to a hospital and later died of injuries.

"All four individuals worked for a private security firm supporting the regional U.S. Embassy office in Basra," U.S. Embassy spokesman Peter Mitchell said in a statement.

AP Television News videotape showed the overturned SUV with two bodies, wearing bullet-proof vests, lying nearby and six British Army Land Rovers, with Iraqi police cars and two civilian ambulances parked nearby. British soldiers loaded a body from the SUV into a military ambulance.

Another attack came later Wednesday, when a bomber blew up his explosives-laden car outside a takeout restaurant in a Basra market, killing at least 10 people and wounding 15, police said. Two police vehicles were destroyed in the blast.

The felafel restaurant is in the Hayaniyah district market, a Shiite section of the city, Lt. Col. Karim al-Zaidi said.

Southern Iraq, where about 8500 British troops are deployed, has been mostly calm since US and British forces occupied Iraq more than two years ago. However, violence has increased there in the past two months.

Mercenary Training Occupation Cops Blown Up

Sep 7, 2005 By GEOFF ZIEZULEWICZ, The Beaufort Gazette

A former Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office deputy working for a private security company in Iraq suffered multiple injuries last week when a vehicle he was riding in hit a roadside bomb, according to representatives with the security company.

Tim Newman has been working for DynCorp International as an Iraqi police trainer and was in one of three motorcade vehicles when the explosion occurred, said Gregory Lagana, vice president of communications for the company.

The accident [What "accident"? This is a war.] occurred Friday in Baghdad, not far from the compound where some DynCorp International employees live, he said.

Along with Newman, Leon Vincent Kimbrell, a former Spartanburg police officer and DynCorp International employee, was killed in the blast, Lagana said.

Two other occupants of the vehicle were treated and released, he said.

Newman, 41, had been with the Sheriff’s Office for about 16 years before signing on with DynCorp International and heading to Iraq last summer, Sheriff P.J. Tanner said.

Tanner said Newman suffered extensive injuries from the blast, including the loss of a leg and third-degree burns on his body.

"He’s in very bad shape," he said.

Tanner said he’s seen about a half-dozen of his personnel go work for private security companies like DynCorp International, which often pay far more than the public sector.

"His salary was well over $100,000 for the first year," Tanner said of Newman’s time with the company. "It’s tough making $45,000 a year, when you have an opportunity to make $100,000."

Newman "re-upped" for another year this summer, the sheriff said.

"They wanted him for another year; they sweetened the pot," Tanner said. "Obviously, he took it, and unfortunately, he was severely injured."

Tanner said he tries to discourage deputies from signing with private security companies doing work in Iraq.

"(Newman) saw an opportunity, which I tried to talk him out of, to go to work with them because it was good money," he said. "I understand that they’re trying to triple their salary, and that’s extremely important to them and their families, but you’re introducing them to the violence in that country."

The company had revenues of nearly $2 billion as of the fiscal year ending March 31.

MORE:

Attacks Taking High Toll Of Mercenaries

9.7.05 USA Today

Attacks on contractors working on U.S.-funded projects in Iraq are at high levels. Insurgents killed seven contractors and injured 11 last month. Sixteen more contractors were suspected or confirmed kidnapped.

TROOP NEWS

CINDY SHEEHAN IN ATLANTA

SATURDAY, SEPT. 10, 7 - 9 PM

VICTORY CHURCH

1170 N. Hairston Rd., Stone Mountain GA 30083

Easy to reach: 15 minutes east of downtown Decatur

East 78 (Stone Mt. Expressway):

Exit Mt. Indust. Blvd; R 1.4 miles (Mt. Indust. becomes N. Hairston)

East I 20: Exit Moreland Ave. North;

R .1 mi; R on Memorial Dr. 10 mi, L on N. Hairston .8 mi.

Camp Casey Comes to Atlanta Program

Members of Military Families Speak Out, Gold Star Families

for Peace, and Veterans for Peace will share the

truth about Iraq and inspire us to take action:

More than ever, we say Bring the Troops Home Now!

Money for Hurricane Relief, Not War and Occupation!

See http://www.georgiapeace.org/ for more information.

See http://www.bringthemhomenowtour.org/ for national tour information.

All Heart:

Pentagon Sends General To Tell Louisiana Guards Who Have Lost Everything:

"Why Don’t You Join The Regular Army?"

Byrne and his Pentagon comrades laid out options for the Louisianans, recommending that rather than return quickly to a disrupted civilian life, they remain on active duty at Fort Polk and bring their families there to stay. Byrne said the soldiers could also enlist in the regular Army.

Sep. 07, 2005 JIM KRANE, Associated Press

CAMP VICTORY, Kuwait - Hundreds of soldiers from a New Orleans National Guard unit begin leaving Thursday to return to the devastation left by Hurricane Katrina. Guard officials said 80 percent lost homes or jobs and some had not heard from relatives since the storm.

Speaking Wednesday to 150 soldiers sitting on plywood benches in a tent billowing in the wind, Brig. Gen. Sean Byrne told them that if their homes are gone and their families scattered and homeless, the Army will help. [Help kill them, that is: "Hey, how about another tour in Iraq? You can be RA this time."]

Over the next two weeks, the 3,700 soldiers of the Louisiana Guard’s 256th Brigade Combat Team will be flown to a former military airport in Alexandria, La., and then travel to nearby Fort Polk.

The brigade has 545 soldiers "drastically" affected by the disaster, and almost 300 of those are in the artillery battalion, said Lt. Col. Debbie Haston-Hilger, U.S. military spokeswoman in Kuwait.

Fifty battalion soldiers still hadn’t been able to contact some relatives as of Monday, Haston-Hilger said. Some family members are thought to have perished.

Byrne and his Pentagon comrades laid out options for the Louisianans, recommending that rather than return quickly to a disrupted civilian life, they remain on active duty at Fort Polk and bring their families there to stay. Byrne said the soldiers could also enlist in the regular Army. [What, he doesn’t have any slave ships handy to offer?]

The 82nd Airborne Sgt. Gets It

September 07, 2005 By Cain Burdeau, Associated Press

NEW ORLEANS - Soldiers coaxed some of Hurricane Katrina’s stubborn holdouts from their homes Wednesday after the mayor ordered all 10,000 or so residents still in this ruined city evacuated - by force, if necessary - because of the risk of fires and disease.

As of midday Wednesday, there were no reports of anyone being removed by force.

Patricia Kelly, 41, sat under a tattered, dirty green-and-white-striped patio umbrella in front of an abandoned barber and beauty shop in the devastated Ninth Ward. Her home was flooded; she was not able to get back in, but did not want to leave the neighborhood.

"I’m going to stay as long as the Lord says so," Kelly said. "If they come with a court order, then we’ll leave. I hope it doesn’t get to the point where we’re forced out."

Sgt. Joseph Boarman of the 82nd Airborne, standing on a corner, said he understood the reluctance to leave: "It’s their home. You know how hard it is to leave home, no matter what condition it’s in."

Got That Right

Sep 6, 2005 By Pamela Hess (UPI)

BALAD, Iraq:

From 8,000 miles away, U.S. troops in Iraq are watching footage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina with awe, concern and a little shame.

’If anything Im kind of embarrassed,' said an officer. 'We're supposed to be telling the Iraqis how to act and this is what's happening at home?' Have Some Ugly Numbers Sep 06, 2005 Phyllis Bennis and Erik Leaver and the IPS Iraq Task Force, A Study by the Institute for Policy Studies [Excerpt] More than 210,000 of the National Guard's 330,000 soldiers have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guard mobilizations average 460 days. Nearly a third of active-duty troops, 341,000 men and women, have served two or more overseas tours. Over 14,065 U.S. troops have been wounded, 13,523 (96 percent) since May 1, 2003. As of May 2005, stop-loss orders are affecting 14,082 soldiersalmost 10 percent of the entire forces serving in Iraq with no end date set for the use of these orders. Iraq's Oil Economy: Iraq's oil production remains stalled at levels lower than before the U.S. invasion. In 2003, Iraq's oil production dropped to 1.33 million barrels per day, down from 2.04 million one year earlier. In July 2005, oil production remained below pre-war levels. Iraq continues to import half its gasoline and thousands of tons of heating fuel, cooking gas and other refined products. NEED SOME TRUTH? CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER Telling the truth - about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington - is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance - whether it's in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you've read, we hope that you'll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers. http://www.traveling-soldier.org/ And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! (www.ivaw.net) Wounded Iraq Veteran Learning To Live With Disability; "I Didn't Want To Do It, But That Was My Job And I Accepted That" September 4, 2005 By Brian Bowling, Tribune-Review Media Service Joe Jenkins sometimes wishes the bullet that paralyzed his legs had taken his life instead. "I know the big crash is coming one of these days," said Jenkins, 37, of Lower Burrell, as he sat in his partially renovated home. Jenkins, a Verona native, is one of 15 severely disabled Iraq war veterans living in Western Pennsylvania. Many wounded soldiers return to duty. Jenkins is not one of those soldiers. Jenkins was a sergeant with the Army's 1st Battalion, 32nd Infantry Regiment of the 10th Mountain Division when the unit was ordered in April 2004 to hold two bridges west of Fallujah so that enemy fighters couldn't escape a Marine offensive. The enemy lobbed a couple of mortar shells at the unit on April 29, 2004, one missed and the other was a dud. Despite that aborted attack, the unit was relaxed. "That day, there was nothing major going on," Jenkins said. Then a group of enemy fighters attacked in an attempt to open a bridge Jenkins' unit was guarding. Standing on a rooftop with other soldiers, Jenkins opened fire. "The next thing I know, I was laying on the ground," he said. He could feel his legs were sticking up in the air, but he couldn't lower them. His arms felt like they were burning. "I knew I was paralyzed, but I didn't know where I was shot," he said. Jenkins had been shot in the neck. While he quickly would regain use of his arms, he remains in a wheelchair more than a year later. He almost destroyed his two-year marriage before learning to accept his disability. That the marriage survives is a testament to his wife, Peggy, Jenkins said. "We've been arguing for over a year," he said. In August 2004, he left her for two weeks because he felt like she was treating him like a baby. He now admits that she was just looking out for him. "Most wives probably would have walked away," he said. "I was taking my anger out, but I was taking it out on the wrong people." Jenkins joined the regular Army after nine years in the Pennsylvania Army National Guard with no steady civilian career. Joe met Peggy at a Pittsburgh night club in March 2003 when he was home on leave from Kosovo. With two days left on his leave, he offered to cover Peggy's wages if she would call in sick so they could spend the next day together. She said no. Instead, they began a long-distance courtship that led to marriage. The newlyweds had about four months together before Joe deployed to Iraq in January 2004. "I didn't want to do it, but that was my job and I accepted that," he said. Four months after that, he was on the phone telling his wife that he was paralyzed from the waist down. Now the couple is trying to get their new home livable for themselves and Peggy's three children from a previous marriage. Peggy said the remodeling has made everything harder because most of their furniture and other items are in upstate New York near Fort Drum, where they lived before the Iraq deployment. "We've been over a year trying to get it done," she said. Joe said the original contractor walked off the job, so friends are pitching in to finish the work. "All we want is our house -- then we can worry about having a life, doing things," he said. Some of those things include sled hockey, a version of ice hockey where players use their arms to propel themselves across the ice. Joe also wants to do more fishing and start hunting again. Eventually, he plans to get a computer and start attending college, but he's not sure what his major will be. "I just want to get back into doing what I was doing before -- just in different ways," he said. Bow Down Before The King: Bush Visit Stops All Treatment At Navy Medical Center 9.7.05 Raw Story SAN DIEGO, Aug. 30 -- The Naval Medical Center in San Diego's Balboa Park was shut down to accommodate a visit by President George W. Bush Aug. 30, RAW STORY has learned, forcing patients to cancel chemotherapy treatments and hundreds of scheduled patient visits. "The pharmacy is closed. The emergency room is closed. Even chemotherapy patients will not be allowed on base," the daughter of one patient told RAW STORY shortly before the President's arrival. "My mother is a patient...She was contacted and told that her appointment had been canceled and would be rescheduled later; civilian personnel and patients will not be allowed on base." War Profiteers Caught Supplying Defective Black Hawk Rotor Pins September 7, 2005 By David Rosenzweig, Times Staff Writer A San Fernando Valley manufacturing company pleaded guilty Tuesday to selling the Army and Air Force substandard rotor pins for their fleets of Black Hawk helicopters. Under the terms of a plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Apex Manufacturing Co. of Sun Valley is to pay $793,000 restitution and a $400,000 fine. The deal is subject to approval by U.S. District Judge Margaret M. Morrow, who set sentencing for Nov. 28. In exchange for the company's guilty plea to a fraud count, the government also agreed to drop its case, consisting of two fraud charges, against the company's owner, Jack Harootun, 51, of Glendale. The defects were discovered in 2000 when an Army medical unit in Hawaii reported that rotor pins on the UH-60 helicopters were failing flight inspections because of corrosion and cracking. The pin is used to secure the aircraft's four rotor blades. No mishaps occurred because of the faulty pins. Nevertheless, the military grounded its Black Hawk utility helicopters, built by Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., for inspection and replacement of the Apex-supplied pins. In a statement read into the court record Tuesday, Harootun acknowledged that hiscompany shipped 3,579 rotor pins to the military in 1998without disclosing that an aluminum alloy component had not been heat-treated to increase hardness and resistance to corrosion. Apex Manufacturing, which was located in North Hollywood at the time the offenses occurred, has relocated to Sun Valley. Under the plea deal, Apex can withdraw its admission of guilt if the judge rejects the proposed penalties. IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP Assorted Resistance Action 9.7.05 Middle East Online & By SINAN SALAHEDDIN (AP) & CNN & (Xinhuanet) Northeast of Baghdad, four Iraqi soldiers were killed and five others wounded when their checkpoint near Khalis, 80 kilometers (60 miles) from the capital, came under fire, a military source said. In a separate incident, the doctor said, armed fighters killed Col. Ammar Ismail Arkan, a top officer with Iraqi police commandos, and wounded four bodyguards in Baghdad's western Ghazaliyah district. In Baghdad, armed fighters shot and killed the director of the information department in the Defense Ministry Wednesday as he was leaving his home in Doura district early in the morning. The driver was only wounded. The attack in Baghdad Wednesday killed Maj. Gen. Hadi Hassan Omran, an Iraqi Defense Ministry director general, as he drove through the southern Dora neighborhood, said Dr. Muhanad Jawad at Yarmouk hospital. Resistance Cuts Pipeline To Baghdad Refinery 9.7.05 By SINAN SALAHEDDIN (AP) Elsewhere, insurgents bombed a pipeline carrying oil from a field near Khanaqin on the Iranian border Wednesday, interrupting a source of crude to Baghdad's Dora refinery, police said. A fire was burning and the full extent of the damage was not immediately known. The explosion occurred at a village not far from Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Iraqi Bomb Defuser Killed By Insurgents September 7, 2005 USA TODAY He was once flung back from the force of a roadside bomb that detonated prematurely, killing a colleague but slightly wounding him. In July, he carefully defused an explosives vest worn by a would-be suicide bomber outside the Green Zone, the fortified area housing U.S. and some Iraqi government offices in Baghdad. He earned the nickname "Robot" from U.S. advisers for his dogged disarming of insurgents' bombs and was profiled in USA TODAY in July. Asaad, an explosives expert with the Interior Ministry, was killed last week, not by bomb shrapnel but from a gunshot wound to the gut. Gunmen ambushed him down the road from his home in southern Baghdad on Aug. 30. Officials are investigating the incident but believe Asaad was targeted by insurgents because of his job, said Brig. Hussein Muhssin, his supervisor. Asaad was the eighth person in his unit killed either by bombs or insurgents. Each month, he would hand over to U.S. explosives experts about 120 munitions - including mortar and artillery shells - collected from defused roadside bombs, said Maj. Alayne Conway, a spokeswoman with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division, which worked with Asaad. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THE RESISTANCE END THE OCCUPATION FORWARD OBSERVATIONS The Spin That Causes Dizziness From: Mike Hastie To: GI Special Sent: September 07, 2005 Subject: The spin that causes dizziness I'm 60 years old, and I have seen so many lies in my life come full circle, I get dizzy from all the cover ups. Right becomes left, up becomes down, and black becomes white. So, if you are sitting and watching TV, while Bush is talking about Iraq or Hurricane Katrina, be careful when you get up. The dizziness you feel, are the lies that are activating your anger. Mike Hastie Vietnam Veteran Sad Day In October Approaches: "Remind The Bastards In The Whitehouse That We Are Watching" From: David Honish To: GI Special Sent: September 07, 2005 Subject: Sad Day in October Approaches It is estimated that the 2,000th KIA of a US service member in Iraq will occur about the 2nd or 3rd week of OCT 2005. The date can be determined from the coalition casualty tracking on the website http://icasualties.org/oif/ Plan now to mark this sad day in your community with a candle light vigil, or some other type of event. Select a highly visible venue for impact on the maximum number of people. Here in Denton Texas we plan to use an IH-35E overpass one block outside the main entrance of the University of North Texas. Be safe, impact traffic without disrupting it. Perhaps a local university or high school band member can bring a trumpet to your event to play "Taps?" Let us mark this day with an event in every community in the USA. Let us remind the bastards in the Whitehouse that we are watching, and we will never forget their lies and greed. David Honish Chapter 106 North TX Veterans For Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org "We're Using Our Soldiers As Bait" Fighting them over there is immoral for two reasons. First it means that we're fighting our war in someone else's home and they get to suffer for it. Second it means that we're using our soldiers as bait. From: Justin Gordon To: GI Special Sent: September 07 I'm Justin Gordon and I was a Captain with 2nd Battalion 4th Field Artillery during the invasion of Iraq. My active duty commitment to the military ended in May 2004. In January of 2003 I requested a transfer to this battalion to fill an officer vacancy because it was the first battalion from Fort Sill to mobilize during the pre-invasion build up. I, like the rest of us, still felt the deep emotions that followed 9-11. I was told of stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and links to Al-Qaeda. I wanted to do my part to protect American security. From March 20 2003 until May 12, 2-4 Field Artillery moved from Kuwait, through the Karbala gap, into Baghdad before the city capitulated, to Tikrit, and finally back to Kuwait. Along the way I saw first hand what death and destruction look like. I learned what it feels like to realize that your life may end in a few minutes, but my personal experiences back then pale in comparison to the violence that is currently happening in Iraq every single day. This is not why I oppose the war. I would do it again if my actions were protecting American citizens, but this is not what we are doing in Iraq. The justification for Iraq frequently changes, and since the weapons of mass destruction theory has been debunked, I have not heard a worthwhile nor just reason for staying the course. Prior to the invasion of Iraq, the administration currently in power told us that war was an absolute last resort, and then it did everything it could to fix intelligence and convince America and the rest of the world that our only course of action was to invade. After it was proven that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, our just cause magically changed. In his inaugural address on January 21st 2005, President Bush stated that "the best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world." Expanding freedom at gunpoint has great costs and may not yield the results one would want. Spreading freedom has cost the lives of 1,900 Americans and untold thousands of Iraqi civilians. It has cost us our credibility as a leader of the free world. It has also cost us 250 billion dollars so far. At the current rate of 6 billion a month, to stay the course for another 5 years would cost 11 thousand dollars to each American household. Even if we ignore the costs of spreading freedom, the outcome is still problematic. With reference to the recent draft of the Iraqi Constitution, there's a strong chance that we're going to spread Sharia Law and create an Islamic State that any Ayatollah would be proud of. A state where women and non-muslims have less freedom than they did under Saddam Hussein. When spreading freedom didnt seem to be working out too well, President Bush on June 28, 2005 stated that "there is only one course of action against them (terrorists): to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home." The fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here rationalization is illogical and immoral for several reasons. It makes an assumption that there are a finite number of terrorists and that at some point we will have killed them all. This is not so. Our presence in Iraq creates terrorists and jihadists faster that we could hope to kill them. Many terrorists and foreign fighters have arrived in Iraq to gain real life experience using American soldiers as targets. Two months ago, when terrorists detonated bombs in their transit system, the people of London realized that fighting them over there doesn't stop them from attacking your home. Are we any safer than the people of London? Are we any safer than we were four years ago? Recently Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc comparable to a worst case scenario for a terrorist attack. The only difference is that Katrina warned us days ahead of time whereas a terrorist will not. The lack of leadership in evacuating, delivering aid, and stabilizing the region following this catastrophe underlines how we have made no progress in protecting American lives since September 11th. Fighting them over there is immoral for two reasons. First it means that we're fighting our war in someone else's home and they get to suffer for it. Second it means that we're using our soldiers as bait. This is not what I call supporting our troops. The military is not a sports team, and war is not a football game. It's very real. As a nation we have to ask ourselves if what we're doing is right. Are we having a positive impact in the Iraq? Is our presence there protecting American citizens? The answers are overwhelmingly no, and this is why I cannot support the war in Iraq. America Will Never Be The Same After Katrina Hurricane Katrina has exposed one of the most important lies which the ruling class relies upon for social control -- the lie that it protects the safety of Americans. This is the entire rationale for the "War on Terror" after all. But now Americans know or are starting to learn that their nation's rulers couldn't care less about public safety. September 5, 2005 by John Spritzler, Spritzlerj.blogspot.com In this past week's wake of hurricane Katrina, the American ruling class saw how quickly it can become isolated from the public support it requires to rule. Even in sectors of society it routinely relies upon to protect it from the anger of poor and working class Americans, our rulers found themselves under attack, as individuals allowed their humanity to trump their role as corporate employees. The ruling class also lost something of immense value -- its credibility in claiming that it acts to protect the public safety of Americans, the claim which serves as the pillar of its entire "war on terrorism." Millions of Americans are learning that the people in control of our government don't give a damn about public safety. One striking example of humanity trumping capitalism was the way the network TV reporters in the field quite often spoke as human beings, not as corporate employees, when they expressed, often quite emotionally, their outrage and shock at the absolute failure of the government to provide help to people in need. One MSNBC reporter (Tucker Carlson, normally a right wing talk show host) on Thursday night, standing on a New Orleans street wearing "the same shirt I was wearing last night" said he could not understand why the Federal government had nobody on the scene. He said that MSNBC, like all the other media, had all of their people and equipment in New Orleans for days, that they had been following the weather tracking and knew beforehand that Katrina would most likely hit the city, and how could the Federal government not have known this as well? He said he never thought until today that MSNBC was more efficient than the Federal government. Another TV reporter around this time, in obvious emotional distress over what she was seeing, repeated over and over how unbelievably horrible conditions were for people at the convention center and how desperate people were for government help that was completely absent. This reporter was answering questions posed to her by another reporter who made a point of asking her about violence so she could reply by saying that she hadn't seen any and that people were just doing what they needed to do to survive. This was a direct rebuttal to the government's claim that they couldn't send in rescue teams because of violence against them. I got the impression that the network higher-ups were not able to rely upon their reporter-employees to protect the government from being exposed as they normally do -- not during this one week when the government's contempt for the safety of American citizens was just too obvious and horrifying for any human being witnessing it to ignore. There are other examples of people behaving as human beings instead of employees in a capitalist system. New Orleans policemen apparently have resigned in large numbers and two committed suicide, in despair at the absence of backup from higher ups which made it impossible for them to help people. There was the performance of rapper Kanye West during the live NBC "A Concert for Hurricane Relief" September 2. Comedian Mike Myers was paired with West for a 90-second scripted segment that began with Myers speaking of Katrina's devastation. The script called for the dialogue to go back and forth between the two, but West ignored the script and whenever he had the mike he attacked the government: "George Bush doesn't care about black people... (America is set up) to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible...I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food." The mayor of New Orleans also behaved as a human being instead of an aspiring politician. In an interview on Sept. 2 he replied to a reporter's question about the Federal government not being able to send help until formally requested by local authorities: "You know, did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important? And I'll tell you, man, I'm probably going get in a whole bunch of trouble. I'm probably going to get in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over." People in New Orleans by the tens of thousands said to hell with capitalist property relations and behaved as human beings instead of consumers in a capitalist society when they went into stores to take food and medical supplies that they needed to survive. George Bush condemned their behavior as "criminal," but lots of people in the media who are paid to defend the sanctity of capitalism abandoned their corporate responsibility by making a point of defending this "looting" as morally the right thing to do. Even the notorious right wing radio talk show guy, Michael Savage, argued that it wasn't obvious that taking food and medicine this way was wrong. Also interesting was the fact that Savage pointedly said that Rush Limbaugh's defence of the government ("People who chose to stay in New Orleans have no entitlement to government protection") was crazy "knee-jerk" conservatism because the people who stayed were the poor who had no choice and in a natural disaster the government's role is precisely to protect people who cannot protect themselves. I even heard one normally right wing talk show interview an academic about the "looting and violence" which the government was using as its excuse for not sending help. The academic pointed out that the so-called "bad looting" of TVs and so forth typically occurs during natural disasters in communities that had been exploited for years by a wealthy upper class and this "looting" was seen by these communities as the morally justified expropriation of wealth that had been stolen from them. Not your normal right-wing fare. Hurricane Katrina has exposed one of the most important lies which the ruling class relies upon for social control -- the lie that it protects the safety of Americans. This is the entire rationale for the "War on Terror" after all. But now Americans know or are starting to learn that their nation's rulers couldn't care less about public safety. Public opinion polls show that 91% of Americans are paying very close attention to the government's response to Katrina. Two-thirds in an ABC News/Washington Post poll say the federal government should have been better prepared to deal with a storm this size, and three-quarters say state and local governments in the affected areas likewise were insufficiently prepared. President Bush's contempt for public safety is now revealed by the fact that instead of appointing a professional with real experience to head FEMA, he selected Michael Brown, whose prior relevant experience was zilch. As one report describes it: "During the 1990s, Brown served as judges and stewards commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association. His job was to ensure that horse-show judges followed the rules and to investigate allegations against those suspected of cheating. 'I wouldn't have regarded his position in the horse industry as a platform to where he is now,' said Tom Connelly, a former association president. The reporters refer to Brown's stormy years with the horses as a 'rocky tenure.' But Brown knew Joe Allbaugh, President Bush's 2000 campaign manager. Allbaugh took over FEMA in 2001, and hired Brown as general counsel." New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, expressed what millions of people were thinking when she wrote in her September 3 column: "Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in the New Orleans Convention Center. Was he sacked instantly? No, our tone-deaf president hailed him in Mobile, Ala., yesterday: 'Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job.'" Our ruling class suffered a terrible blow last week from a hurricane that blew away the lies and credibility and respect which they need to enlist the support of better-off Americans in controlling the poorest. No ruling class like the American plutocracy of a few hundred extremely wealthy families can rule without the backing of people in the media, the military and police forces, local politicians and so forth. Last week we saw that our plutocracy cannot take this backing for granted. We got a glimpse of the potential for the plutocracy to be isolated, for humanity to trump capitalism, for ordinary Americans to make our society one based on the kind of solidarity which motivates people to come to the aid of the hurricane victims, not the greed and power-craving that motivates our ruling class. Some things will eventually go back to normal in the future months after Katrina. But some things will never be as they were. The Credibility Gap caused by our leaders' lying during the Vietnam War ended forever the WWII era faith in the honesty of our leaders. Likewise, the overwhelming failure of our leaders to take the most elementary steps to protect people in the path of danger has been exposed by Katrina, and no American President will ever again be able to pose as the defender of public safety the way George W. Bush once did immediately after the 9/11 attack. The world is not the same after Katrina. The potential to make a revolution and create a better society in the United States has never been more evident to more people than now. A woman's body lay at the corner of two roads in the lower Garden District of the storm smashed New Orleans. Unclaimed for days, people covered the corpse with blankets or plastic sheets. By last Sunday, a short wall of bricks had risen around the body, holding down a plastic canvas. On it, someone had spray-painted a cross and the fateful words, "Here lies Vera. God help us." September 5, 2005, Anwaar Hussain, Fountainhead Bush Takes Very Good Care Of His Own People 9.6.05 Michael Parenti, Globalresearch.ca [Excerpt] I recently heard someone complain, "Bush is trying to save the world when he can't even take care of his own people here at home." Not quite true. He certainly does take very good care of his own people, that tiny fraction of one percent, the superrich. It's just that the working people of New Orleans do not number among them. Dij Vu All Over Again

[Thanks to Shirley H. Young for sending this in.]

Nowhere do "politicians" form a more separate and powerful section of the nation than precisely in North America.

There, each of the two major parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions.

It is well known how the Americans have been trying for thirty years to take off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and how in spite of it all they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption.

It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be.

Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. [Oh well, things do change over the course of a century. SY]

And nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends — and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality dominate and plunder it.

Frederick Engels, 1892 Introduction to Marx’s "The Civil War in France".

OCCUPATION REPORT

Welcome To Liberated Iraq:

Collaborator "Government" Shoots Iraqis Demonstrating For Better Water

9.7.05 Reuters

KALAR - One protester killed and 16 wounded in riots over failure to supply electricity and water, Dr Omar Aziz of Kalar’s general hospital said.

Several buildings set on fire including a children’s hospital, radio station, fire department, education ministry building. Seventy protesters detained in this town near Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya.

OCCUPATION ISN’T LIBERATION

BRING ALL THE TROOPS HOME NOW!

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

Steve Bell 2005 [Thanks to Z, who sent this in.]

New Orleans Scum Cops Told Storm Survivors To Show Breasts If They Wanted Rescue

[Thanks to D who sent this in.]

He added: "The American people saved us. I wish I could say the same for the American authorities."

September 6 Yahoo! UK Limited

A group of female hurricane survivors were told to show their breasts if they wanted to be rescued, a British holidaymaker has revealed. Ged Scott watched as American rescuers turned their boat around and sped off when the women refused.

The account was just another example of the horror stories emerging from the hurricane disaster zone.

Mr Scott, 36, of Liverpool, was with his wife and seven-year-old daughter in the Ramada Hotel when the flood waters started rising.

"At one point, there were a load of girls on the roof of the hotel saying ’Can you help us?’ and the policemen said ’Show us what you’ve got’ and made signs for them to lift their T-shirts," he told the Liverpool Evening Echo.

"When the girls refused, they said `Fine’ and motored off down the road in their boat."

Mr Scott also slated the rescue operation, saying police were more interested in taking snapshots of the devastation rather than rescuing the victims.

"I could not have a lower opinion of the authorities, from the police officers on the street right up to George Bush," he said.

"I couldn’t describe how bad the authorities were. Just little things like taking photographs of us, as we are standing on the roof waving for help, for their own little snapshot albums"

He added: "The American people saved us. I wish I could say the same for the American authorities."

Received:

409 Million Donated To Red Cross This Week:

Victims In Domes &Shelters

September 07, 2005 T Lee Buyea, Fla. News Service

The Chronicle Of Philanthropy reports: (September 6, 2005 story By Nicole Wallace)

Americans have given more than a half-billion to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. The pace of giving is unprecedented in recent American history.

Which is about $5,000 for each of 100,000 people or $25,000 each person for 20,000 people! (Or $20,000 to $100,000 per family of four) and these people are in Football Stadiums and Homeless Shelters?? !!

(And these are just the Red Cross Donations they will admit to so far.)

Here is the Red Cross email where you can ask/tell them these people should be in hotels with Your Donated Money! (Yes YOU Are News Media)

American Red Cross: http://www2.redcross.org/general/0,1082,0_124_,00.html

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