The Uncounted

News Release from Bethesda Naval Hospital: Post-War Suicides May Exceed Combat Deaths

These deaths are not part of the "official" casualty count, and have not surpassed those of Vietnam veterans, but are near-to-topping the current official combat death toll in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every death connected to the illegal occupation of Iraq and the poorly-directed fight in Afghanistan, is tragic. The Bush administrations 'new math' method of counting which obfuscates the true death and injury toll, is criminal. The American people are far too disconnected from the effects of these conflicts, and the cooked accounting of the true human toll only adds to the lack of attention paid by the 99% of Americans who don't have a dog in this fight.

In all past wars, Americans shared the burdens of war. During the draft, most people had or knew someone serving. During other conflicts, there was rationing, war industry staffed by American women, sacrifices being shared. At the very least, everyone saw the coffins coming home which this administration forbids. BushCo keeps the impact as far away from the public as possible; their idea of support:go shopping.

With the economy being front and center of most American's attention, the chances of this story seeing any light of day or stirring public outcry is negligible.

The Six Trillion Dollar Man

AND THE 4000 DEAD SOLDIERS...not quite a fairytale

Darth Cheney is the real bionic man with his implanted electronic pacemaker and all the human warmth of an oil derrick, but between him and Chimpy, the true estimated cost of the war/occupation will be six trillion dollars. And how many more dead soldiers?

Economist Joseph Sitglitz latest book gives details, conservative estimates on,

"...the economic cost of the war to the U.S. to be $3 trillion, and the costs to the rest of the world to be another $3 trillion – far higher than the Bush administration's estimates before the war.

The Bush team not only misled the world about the war's possible costs, but has also sought to obscure the costs as the war has gone on."

The Toronto Star has an article by Dr. Stiglitz detailing some of those costs.

To make matters worse, Iraq and its human costs have fallen off the radar for the majority of Americans. The Pew Research Center's latest survey finds that only 28% of Americans know the American military death toll which today stands at 3993 according to the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count.

Ranger Against War has posted on this as well, and it's worth a read.

More Shock, Less Awe

The sad news that Admiral Fallon, CentCom commander, has resigned came down yesterday. White House correspondent Martha Raddatz talks to Charlie Rose giving background and some conclusions about the departure of one of the only men keeping us from yet another "pre-emptive attack" but this time, on Iran.

Fucking shrub won’t be happy until he blows up Iran. God help us. The more it looks like a dem will win the WH, the more likely he is to do something to force a suspension of the election. The specter of more war looms large.

Why We Fight (and why I hate the Bush Administration)

An incredible, must-see documentary by Eugene Jarecki. I saw Why We Fight, last year on HBO. Now the BBC has released it and YouTuber Eurasure has put it up. This documentary on the commerce of war, how the military industrial complex profits from war, and how it must continually create wars to continue the growth of its business, relevance and outrageous expenditure of public money. Required viewing for ALL Americans. Each part is about 20 minutes. Keep in mind while you watch, the same arguments for invading Iraq are being trotted out again to preemptively bomb Iran.

This documentary is stirring, poignant, prescient and right-on-target current in its message and content. Please watch it. Send it to others. Send it to your congressperson and senators. Please. We must stand together NOW.

I have posted this film previously and written related posts. If you have time, take a look at the past posts and the comments. There's still time if we join together against this fascist bush regime.


Graphic courtesy of Old American Century.org

If You're Not Angry, You're a Moron

Reposted via AltBrainEx, via Skippy, who got it on Craig's List and now here at DeepCon. A heartfelt, angry diatribe from a widow, Veteran, Marine who lost her unborn baby's father in this sick fucking, illegal invasion/occupation in Iraq: Date: 2007-04-10, 1:00PM PDT

I'm having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I'm going to write this while I'm pissed off enough to do it right.

I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you're all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you're right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you've been there, you don't know a god damn thing about it. It you haven't been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are "Supporting our Troops" and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I'll tell you why. I'm a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he's coming home in a box.

You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.

And you know what the most fucked up thing about this Iraq shit is? They don't want us there. They're not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We fucked up their lives even worse than they already were and they're pissed off. We didn't help them and we're not helping them now. That's what our soldiers are dying for.

Oh while I'm good and worked up, the government doesn't even have the decency to help out the soldiers whos lives they ruined. If you really believe the military and the government had no idea the veterans' hospitals were so fucked up, you are a god-damn retard. They don't care about us. We're disposable. We're numbers on a page and they'd rather forget we exist so they don't have to be reminded about the families and lives they ruined while they're sipping their cocktails at another fund raiser dinner. If they were really concerned about supporting the troops, they'd bring them home so their families wouldn't have to cry at a graveside and explain to their children why mommy or daddy isn't coming home. Because you can't explain it. We're not fighting for our country, we're not fighting for the good of Iraq's people, we're fighting for Bush's personal agenda. Patriotism my ass. You know what? My dad served in Vietnam and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

So I'm pissed. I'm beyond pissed. And I'm going to go to my husband funeral and recieve that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he's older. But I'm not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidty of the American government. I'm going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that's all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn't care about him at all.

Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.

I stand without comment.

Had enough? Sean Becker's family has...

H/T to Watertiger and Sean in Alaska for the link.

Beyond the Call of Duty

The Center for American Progress has posted an excellent article on the readiness of our troops and the current crisis in the American military. A Comprehensive Review of the Overuse of the Army in the Administration's War of Choice in Iraq.

Four years ago this month, President Bush led our country into a war of choice against Iraq. Today, there are 135,000 American troops in Iraq and the president is now escalating this war, proposing to send an additional 30,000 combat and support troops. In addition to the costs in American lives and treasure, this war now places an enormous strain on our all-volunteer Army, stretching it to the breaking point.

But how bad is it overall? Although there has been much public debate about the overall readiness of the Army, only anecdotal evidence has been reported in the press. A composite picture is needed to inform that debate, and in fact this information should be readily available from the Department of Defense. But when the Center for American Progress approached the Pentagon our researchers were told this information is “classified” (the quotation marks were added by Defense Department officials)—even though this information is known by the families of individual troops deployed abroad...

In response, the National Security Team at the Center undertook a massive research project to identify, brigade by brigade, the number and duration of deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan by the active Army. Our research team compiled the following facts through an extensive review of available information about individual brigade deployments in local news reports and elsewhere. Although we have high confidence that the information presented is accurate, we openly acknowledge that some pieces of information may be inaccurate or incomplete.

Possible errors or discrepancies could not be helped given the nature of the task and the fact that some brigades have changed designations or name since the war began due to the ongoing transformation of the Army. We have no doubt, however, that the overall picture of strain and fatigue that emerges is accurate. We expect to maintain and update this database and welcome corrections and additions from those who have more complete information.

The facts summarized below, and in our underlying data, reflect what we were able to learn. In some cases, the bottom-line totals would be worse if we had complete information (for instance, we could only count the tour extensions that we uncovered; very likely there are more). It is also important

to note that our research focused on the combat brigades of the active Army, not the deployments of other services such as the Marines, the Air Force, the Navy, and the National Guard and Reserves. We have no doubt that many of these services have units that have also been overtaxed by this war.

As our full report describes in great detail, beginning on page 7, the focus of our research revolved around the concept of readiness for combat troops. Readiness requires:

* Personnel: Readiness requires that a given unit has an adequate number of personnel, that the personnel are appropriately trained using the equipment they will use in battle. Moreover, Army policy recommends that after serving 12 months in theater, troops come home to recuperate and retrain for 24 months before being returned to theater.
* Training: Readiness requires that Army troops are adequately trained to perform the duties they will be assigned to perform in theater and will be trained on the equipment they will use in combat.
* Equipment: Readiness requires that troops have a sufficient supply of appropriate equipment for combat and that the equipment be in good working order.

Alas, the active Army today is recklessly stretched far beyond recommended use, ultimately hurting our troops and dangerously depriving our country of the strategic reserves necessary to respond to true crises. The administration has done this for four years now in a war of choice. Here is a snapshot of the current state of our 41 combat brigades and three Cavalry Regiments in the active Army.

* Of the Army’s 44 combat brigades today, all but the First Brigade of the Second Infantry Division, which is permanently based in South Korea, have served at least one tour. Of the remaining 43:

– 12 Brigades have had one tour in Iraq or Afghanistan

– 20 Brigades have had two tours in Iraq or Afghanistan

– 9 Brigades with three tours in Iraq or Afghanistan

– 2 Brigades with four tours in Iraq or Afghanistan

* Army policy recommends that after 12 months of deployment in a war zone, combat troops should come home for 24 months for recuperation and retraining before returning to combat. The Army has been forced to violate this policy many times.

* Army policy recommends that troops return home after 12 months of deployment in a war zone. Due to overextension, the Army has been forced to violate this policy many times.

* Because each brigade has ongoing rotations of individual troops, the fact that a given brigade has deployed three or four times does not necessarily mean that a particular soldier has also deployed that many times. Nonetheless, the number of troops that have served in Iraq—and who have served more than one tour—is staggering:

– 1.4 million military (Army and other service) troops have served in Iraq or Afghanistan; 650,000 Army soldiers have been deployed to these countries

– More than 420,000 troops have deployed more than once; 170,000 Army soldiers have been deployed more than once

– 169,558 Marines have deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan more than once

– More than 410,000 National Guard and Reservists have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan since 2001, for an average of 18 months per mobilization; of these, more than 84,00 have been deployed more than once

– Stop-loss (a policy that prevents troops whose enlistment end date has arrived from leaving) has been imposed on over 50,000 troops

There is a clear cost on the troops as a result of the multiple deployments:

– An Army survey revealed that soldiers are 50 percent more likely to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder if they serve more than one tour.

– The suicide rate among troops deployed to Iraq hit an all-time high in 2006

In the analysis that follows, the incredible strain of all of these repeat deployments on our men and women in uniform reveals just how misguided the president’s escalation strategy in Iraq truly is for our all-volunteer Army. It is clear, after crunching the numbers, that the president’s strategy is beyond the call of duty.

Casualties of War

Minstrel Boy has a chilling photo and a number of excellent posts up at his place. He writes with passion and experience bringing to the discussion a point of view that only someone who has lost someone in Iraq can express. Caution: Graphic Image.

More CA Guard Troops to Deploy to Iraq

LAT reports that 800 California National Guardsmen are to be deployed to Iraq in order to satisfy Junior's "urge to surge". Hmmm, I thought the point of the National Guard was to guard the nation. Silly me for thinking.

Pentagon Whistle-Blower on Iran

Truthout's James Harris interviews Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski, USAF(ret.). If you watched the award-winning documentary, "Why We Fight" you may remember her as the outspoken critic of the pentagon who gave insider information about the 'fluffing' of pre-war intelligence on Iraq. Since her retirement, she has become prolific in her writings condemning the war in Iraq and in this interview comments how the same 'cherry-picking' may be going vis-a-vis Iran. Oftentimes I skip over reading pieces regarding the 'intel' coming out of Iran when it comes from BushCo, because I basically assume it's a pack of lies. The Bush that cried "wolf" so to speak. But Lt.Col. Kwiatkowski is someone I've read for a while and I don't agree with all of her positions (she calls herself a Libertarian), but I do think she speaks truth to power. In this short excerpt, Kwiatkowski remembers comments from a General discussing the intentions for Iraq which provides a 'set-up' for attacking Iran

We will be in Iraq, and the American people need to get with this program, we will be in Iraq like we were in the Philippines for anywhere from 20 to 30 more years. That's the time frame that we're looking at. And that is the life span of the bases that we've constructed there. Yeah, we are not leaving these bases, and a Democratic president, I don't care who they are, will keep those basses there. They will justify them and they will use them and we love that. We love it. So it's not about what the American people think is right or wrong, it's not about if we got lied to, what matters is, they did what they wanted to do, and as bush says, and as Cheney says, “it's quite the success.” And this is very frightening. Because none of this has ever been admitted to the American people, it's only been hinted at by people that know. And of course the facts speak for themself. The facts are, we are in Iraq, we have the finest military installations in the world, the newest military installations in the world, and we're not leaving them. We're not turning them over to a Shiite government, we're not turning them over to a Sunni government, we're not turning them over to a Kurdish government. We're not doing that. They are American bases. We've got our flag there. And this is kind of the way they used to do things, I guess back in the Middle Ages. Maybe the Dark Ages. A king decided he wanted to go do something, he went and did it. And this is George Bush. We call him an elected president. I mean, he's operating much as kings have operated in the past.

Read her insightful POV here.

2nd Trial Set for Objector Watada

The Army has set a second court-martial for July 16 for an officer who refused to deploy to Iraq and spoke out against the war and the Bush administration. Read more.

Final Mission:Updated

I posted the story a few weeks ago about an Army Captain who's last act on earth was to save a young Iraqi boy. Today an update comes in via the Washington Post regarding the Iraqi boy's current disposition. If this story doesn't break your heart, you don't have one. [H/T to Mary for the link.]

Watching Afghanistan and Walter Reed

Salon.com is burning up the wire with spot-on analysis and reports on the fall of Afghanistan and the continuing cover story the military spins about Walter Reed and the abusive treatment our servicepersons are receiving in the military hospitals and VAs paid for by our tax dollars. Talk about yer troop support...read all about it. also read the series done in 2005 by Salon trying to shed light on the situation at Walter Reed. Anyone wonder where the MSM was on this story before last week? H/T to Lotus for the link. Photo:Sergio Caro

Taliban Targets Cheney

Reuters reports the blast in Bagram, Afghanistan that killed 20 was targeted at Darth Cheney by the Taliban. Darth lives. Read it here.

Wounds of War

WaPo has ABC news anchor Bob Woodruff and his firsthand account of being a casualty of war. Woodruff delivers a scathing indictment of the military response to injured servicepersons. Read it here.

Saving Money for Bullets and Bombs

Graphic courtesy of Peace CentralMore reports from Walter Reed. Democracy Now! conducts in-depth interviews with a reporter, a soldier and a veteran about conditions at Walter Reed--not the horrific physical conditions of the facility which reporter Mark Benjamin calls a "red herring of mice and the mold" but the dangerous, abhorrent, total neglect of those with traumatic brain injury and the military refusal to provide adequate treatment. The DOD in charge of medical care for these service persons, is the same DOD that keeps them from proper care and fair compensation for their injuries.Watch it here.

9th Downed U.S. Helicopter in 5 Weeks

Can someone explain to me why I have to go to China to find this article that really should be on the front page of AMERICAN newspapers? Oh yeah, teh MSM and non-military people don't really care...

More Walter Reed Horror

The unbelievable, shocking repugnance continues at Walter Reed. At the very least, the mainstream media is giving it some light, for which I am grateful. Read "The Hotel Aftermath" at WaPo. When you're done with that give these articles a read, Wounded and Waiting," "The Forgotten Families," "Uninvited." "Hospital Investigates Former Aid Chief" and when you're finished, get angry and write your senator or congressperson a letter. Then seek out anyone who will listen and if they are Republican, all the better, and ask them how they are 'supporting the troops.' Do it. Remember every letter received represents the same opinion being shared by 10,000 other people who feel the same way but didn't write, or so say the marketing pros. Thanks from a Vet.

Criminals or Gays?

WTF. Could someone please tell the DOD to STFU and get a clue? Who would you rather have in a foxhole a convicted felon or someone Gay? Whatever. Steve Clemons writes it up at HuffPo.

Peace Train to Iran

A lovely video of pictures taken in Tehran, Iran. Who would Jesus bomb? Also check out the blog Neo Resistance, posts from an Iranian woman's point of view. H/T to Sandie and Naj.

A Not So Distant War

A touching oped by Ayub Nuri, a former reporter for the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, is a student at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

At school happy hours, while everyone was socializing and enjoying their drinks, I found myself having to explain the insurgency, the sectarian violence and what I thought would happen if American troops withdrew from Iraq. That was the question that troubled me most.
To me, it sounded like a question that only the defense secretary should be contemplating. Did people here feel entitled to ask it because they had voted for this government, and they therefore felt responsible for their government’s policies? I decided to think this was the reason, and it consoled me.

Read the rest...