The forgotten American victims of the Bush wars

And so they are starting to trickle home, these men and women, many of whom enlisted in the military after the 9/11 attacks with the purest of motives -- what they believed to be a fight to both avenge the attacks and to dismantle the groups that made such an attack possible. Those missing legs, arms, and eyes come home as soon as they are well enough to travel after injury. But sometimes there are invisible injuries that are just as serious, and they are coming home to a country whose government offers little to help them, and nothing to help the forgotten new victims of these wars -- the people who love them and now care for them, who, in this Ron Paul paradise in which our veterans live, they have to rely on private organizations (NYT link):

Since Mr. Marcum came back in 2008 from two tours in Iraq with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder, his wife has quit her job as a teacher to care for him. She has watched their life savings drain away. And she has had to adjust to an entirely new relationship with her husband, who faces a range of debilitating problems including short-term memory loss and difficulties with impulse control and anger.

“The biggest loss is the loss of the man I married,” Ms. Marcum said, describing her husband now as disconnected on the best days, violent on the worst ones. “His body’s here, but his mind is not here anymore. I see glimpses of him, but he’s not who he was.”

Ms. Marcum has joined a growing community of spouses, parents and partners who, confronted with damaged loved ones returning from war who can no longer do for themselves, drop most everything in their own lives to care for them. Jobs, hobbies, friends, even parental obligations to young children fall by the wayside. Families go through savings and older parents dip into retirement funds.

Even as they grieve over a family member’s injuries, they struggle to adjust to new routines and reconfigured relationships.

The new lives take a searing toll. Many of the caregivers report feeling anxious, depressed or exhausted. They gain weight and experience health problems. On their now-frequent trips to the pharmacy, they increasingly have to pick up prescriptions for themselves as well.

While taking comfort that their loved ones came home at all, they question whether they can endure the potential strain of years, or even decades, of care.

“I’ve packed my bags, I’ve called my parents and said I’m coming home,” said Andrea Sawyer, whose husband has been suicidal since returning from Iraq with post-traumatic stress disorder. “But I don’t. I haven’t ever physically walked out of the house.”

Those attending to the most severely wounded must help their spouses or adult children with the most basic daily functions. Others, like Ms. Marcum, act as safety monitors, keeping loved ones from putting themselves in danger. They drive them to endless medical appointments and administer complicated medication regimens.

One of the most frustrating aspects of life now, they say, is the bureaucracy they face at the Department of Defense and the Department of Veterans Affairs, from problems with the scheduling of medical appointments to being bounced around among different branches of the system, forcing them to become navigators and advocates for their loved ones.

A variety of care services are offered to the severely injured. But many family members do not want their loved ones in nursing homes and find home health services often unsatisfactory or unavailable.

Despite Ms. Marcum’s cheerful manner and easy laugh, she has started taking antidepressants and an anti-anxiety medication when needed. She has developed hypertension, takes steroids for a bronchial ailment that may be stress related and wears braces to relieve a jaw problem.

“I just saw all of my dreams kind of vanishing,” she said.

Over the past few years, advocacy organizations like the Wounded Warrior Project lobbied Congress to enact a law providing direct financial compensation and other benefits to family caregivers of service members. In 2010 they succeeded, and by mid-September, the veterans agency had approved 1,222 applications, with average monthly stipends of $1,600 to $1,800. Caregivers can also receive health insurance and counseling.

“We know it doesn’t replace full lost income,” said Deborah Amdur, who oversees caregiver support for the agency. “It’s really a recognition of the kinds of sacrifices that are being made.”

Read the linked article, and then think about recent Republican rhetoric about lazy people who don't work, and about how we simply cannot ask the people whose interests these men and women went to protect, to pay even one thin dime more towards their care, and about how the needy should depend on charity instead of the government. What kind of a country are we that we would let these people get away with rhetoric like this, let alone seriously consider them as presidential timber? How can we be proud of a country that uses its young men and women like this and then brings them home and throws them on the trash heap of history while at the same time using the threat of terrorism to justify continued military spending on everything BUT the care of those who actually fight? Where is the yellow ribbon magnet crowd now? Why aren't they clamoring for better care for these people?

But we're supposed to believe our Iraq veterans would never, ever even CONSIDER joining up with the militia movement

Casualties of War:

An American Army sergeant shot and killed five fellow soldiers following an altercation at a counseling center on a military base in Iraq Monday, officials said. The attack drew attention to the issues of combat stress and morale among soldiers serving multiple combat tours over six years of war.

The suspect had been disarmed after an earlier incident at the center but returned with another weapon, according to a senior military official in Washington, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation into the shootings was ongoing.

Guys like this Army sergeant and the soldiers he killed yesterday were sent off to a war based on lies, a war based on ginned-up information. And they've been there ever since, for six fucking years. Stop-lossed nearly to death, being given tainted food and water and electrocuted by greedy corporations affiliated with Dick Cheney, the only surprise is that more Iraq veterans haven't gone off the deep end like this.

Somehow I don't think you're going to hear Sean Hannity talk about the anger issues that our returning veterans are dealing with; anger issues that could very well make them susceptible to the revenge fantasies of the militia movement. Of course we don't know what this particular soldier's motivation was, nor do we know that he in particular would have been targeted for recruitment by the eliminationists in this country. But just as we did the men returning from Vietnam no favor by ignoring the psychic wounds they suffered as the result of fighting in an unnecessary war, so do we do the veterans of George Bush's Iraq Adventure no service by ignoring the wounds they are bringing back. We can only hope that back stateside they can continue to get the help they may need so that they don't decide that killing Jews and other "nonwhites" to save the white race is a good course of action.

While Republicans are styling themselves as the responsible guardians of the purse, where is their outrage over this?

They blanch at spending money to reconstruct the American economy, but when our government and its cronies were stuffing their pockets with taxpayer cash and telling us that it was for the reconstruction of Iraq, I didn't hear any Republicans squawking:

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn (£88bn) in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme.

"I believe the real looting of Iraq after the invasion was by US officials and contractors, and not by people from the slums of Baghdad," said one US businessman active in Iraq since 2003.

In one case, auditors working for SIGIR discovered that $57.8m was sent in "pallet upon pallet of hundred-dollar bills" to the US comptroller for south-central Iraq, Robert J Stein Jr, who had himself photographed standing with the mound of money. He is among the few US officials who were in Iraq to be convicted of fraud and money-laundering.

Despite the vast sums expended on rebuilding by the US since 2003, there have been no cranes visible on the Baghdad skyline except those at work building a new US embassy and others rusting beside a half-built giant mosque that Saddam was constructing when he was overthrown. One of the few visible signs of government work on Baghdad's infrastructure is a tireless attention to planting palm trees and flowers in the centre strip between main roads. Those are then dug up and replanted a few months later.

Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. In 2004-05, the entire Iraq military procurement budget of $1.3bn was siphoned off from the Iraqi Defence Ministry in return for 28-year-old Soviet helicopters too obsolete to fly and armoured cars easily penetrated by rifle bullets. Iraqi officials were blamed for the theft, but US military officials were largely in control of the Defence Ministry at the time and must have been either highly negligent or participants in the fraud.

American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the programme to rebuild Iraq, according to The New York Times, which cites interviews with senior government officials and court documents. Court records reveal that, in January, investigators subpoenaed the bank records of Colonel Anthony B Bell, now retired from the US Army, but who was previously responsible for contracting for the reconstruction effort in 2003 and 2004. Two federal officials are cited by the paper as saying that investigators are also looking at the activities of Lieutenant-Colonel Ronald W Hirtle of the US Air Force, who was senior contracting officer in Baghdad in 2004.

As I write this, I'm watching Section 60, an HBO documentary about the part of Arlington National Cemetery where soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan are buried. I look at these families -- these mothers, fathers, wives, brothers, husbands, sisters; the children who will probably not be able to remember the parent who is gone once they too are grown. I'm listening to them talk about their children who only wanted to be soldiers, their children asking if the dead goldfish is now with Daddy, the wives wishing they could talk to their husbands just one more time. I look at these people who are guilty of nothing other than their belief in this country and their belief that their government is the caretaker of the symbols like the flag that they hold so dear. The Bush Administration took the trust of these people and took a giant, eight-year-long dump all over it because Dick Cheney is a ghoul who feeds on human souls and George W. Bush has father issues, and there are people in this country for whom a war based on nothing but lies meant an excuse to stuff their pockets.

The Bush Administration is gone now, but its toxic legacy lives on. And it will live on forever in the lives of these families shattered by a corrupt government that betrayed everything these people hold dear. It remains to be seen whether the Obama Administration can, or even wants to, extricate itself from George W. Bush's military adventures. But for these Americans buried in Section 60, their blood is on the previous Administration's hands. And while Congressional Republicans are as willing and eager to allow the nation to spiral down into economic ruin because they think it will help them regain power, somehow I don't think we're going to hear any outrage from them over the opportunism of American officials who paid their respect to the dead by stealing money meant for the reconstruction for which these Americans died.

CNN's Rick Sanchez points this out to a Republican fembot:

THIS is why it IS "important", Senator McCain

You callous bastard. This is why the idea that how long soldiers stay in Iraq is "not important" is so repellent:

Maj. Lance Waldorf took pride in what he did during two tours in Afghanistan as a civil affairs officer, helping villagers build schools, roads and hospitals.

And, his wife said, he was looking forward to a third tour in Africa in the coming months. As she prepares for his funeral, set for Saturday, Lana Waldorf is comforted by the good her husband did while deployed and her deep Christian faith.

Lance Waldorf, 40, was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head Monday at the Great Lakes National Cemetery in Holly Township. A note, his will and family photos were nearby. While he exhibited signs of depression, Lana Waldorf, 51, said her husband seemed to be doing better in recent days. He was in the U.S. Army Reserves.

"The appeal of being at peace in heaven was greater than the thought of enduring the pain he was in," Waldorf said Thursday from her Bingham Farms home. "I know Lance is at peace with the Lord. I'm not angry with him. I have forgiven him."

Waldorf said she supports military efforts in Afghanistan. And one of her husband's proudest moments in Afghanistan came in 2004, at the end of his first tour, when he was with a group of soldiers feted by villagers.

They feasted on a whole cow, an honor, and a village elder gave Lance Waldorf his ring.

"The man wept openly," Lana Waldorf recounted. "He said his children and his children's children would remember what Lance did for his people.

"He made a tremendous difference there."

But while her husband shared positive stories of his time in Afghanistan, he kept the darker, more difficult tales to himself.

"I saw some symptoms" of depression, she said. "But what I didn't know were the details of what he was experiencing emotionally or psychologically."

Officials from the Michigan State Police said a handgun was found near Lance Waldorf's body. Waldorf, who was part of the 414th Battalion out of Southfield, was wearing a camouflage military uniform.

His struggles are not unique. Last month, U.S. military officials released a report that there were 115 suicides in 2007 by active duty and reservist troops, a 13% increase over 2006.

Five years ago today

Since that day, 4308 soldiers have died in Iraq and Afghanistan.

4000

Yes, the surge is working fabulously, as George W. Bush would say. So fabulously that yesterday we reached the grim and depressing milestone of 4000 American soldiers killed in a war without reason, a war based on lies, a war without end, a war about which far too many Americans have forgotten or about which they no longer care.

After all, Bush isn't going to get us out of there, and there's college basketball to watch.

And this is in the Green Zone, which is supposed to be "safe":

Rockets and mortars pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone, underscoring the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups despite an overall lull in violence.

The attacks on the Green Zone probably stemmed from rising tensions between rival Shiite groups and were the most sustained assault in months against the nerve center of the U.S. mission.

The soldiers with Multi-National Division — Baghdad were on a patrol when their vehicle was struck at about 10 p.m. in southern Baghdad, the military said. Another soldier was wounded in the attack — less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the conflict

Identities of those killed were withheld pending notification of relatives.

Navy Lt. Patrick Evans, a military spokesman, expressed condolences to all the families who have lost a loved one in Iraq, saying each death is "equally tragic."

"There have been some significant gains. However, this enemy is resilient and will not give up, nor will we," he said. "There's still a lot of work to be done."

The deadliest attack of the day was in Mosul when a suicide driver slammed his vehicle through a security checkpoint in a hail of gunfire and detonated his explosives in front of an Iraqi headquarters building, killing 13 Iraqi soldiers and injuring 42 other people, police said.

Iraqi guards opened fire on the vehicle but couldn't stop it because the windshield had been bulletproofed, said an Iraqi army officer. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information.

Mosul, Iraq's third largest city about 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, has been described as the last major urban area where the Sunni extremist al-Qaida group maintains a significant presence.

In Baghdad, rockets and mortars began slamming into the Green Zone about sunrise, and scattered attacks persisted throughout the day, sending plumes of smoke rising over the heavily guarded district in the heart of the capital.

A U.S. public address system in the Green Zone warned people to "duck and cover" and to stay away from windows.

At least five people were injured in the Green Zone, a U.S. Embassy statement said without specifying nationalities. The zone includes the U.S. and British embassies as well as major Iraqi government offices.

A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to release the information, said those injured included an American and four third-country nationals, meaning they were not American, British or Iraqi.

Iraqi police said 10 civilians were killed and more than 20 were injured in rocket or mortar blasts in scattered areas of eastern Baghdad — some of them probably due to misfired rounds.

Also in the capital, seven people were killed and 14 wounded in a suicide car bombing Sunday in the Shiite area of Shula in the capital, police reported. Such attacks are the hallmark of Sunni religious extremists.

Gunmen opened fire on passengers waiting for buses in a predominantly Shiite area in southeastern Baghdad, killing at least seven men and wounding 16 people, including women and children, according to police.

Police also found the bullet-riddled bodies of 12 people — six in Baghdad, four in Mosul and two in Kut, scene of clashes between government troops and Shiite militiamen.

No group claimed responsibility for the Green Zone attacks, but suspicion fell on Shiite extremists based on the areas from which the weapons were fired.

Right now John McCain is ahead and national polls. He's ahead because Hillary Clinton is getting into the gutter as she tries to hang on to a nomination she assumed would be a cakewalk for her and because Joe Scarborough, the talking heads of Faux Noise, and the Fox-wannabes at CNN have decided that the angry rantings of Barack Obama's now-retired pastor are the most important factor on which to evaluate a presidential candidate (sort of like the way George H.W. Bush's 1988 campaign convinced Americans that the Pledge of Allegiance was a major campaign issue). John McCain promised not just more of the same in Iraq for the next 100 years, but also bomb-bomb Iran. Where do people think he's going to get the skin to fight for another 100 years? Is this so-called war hero who understands the military going to send today's soldiers on fifth and sixth and seventh and eighth tours of duty? Or once he's safely ensconced in his likely one term, is he going to institute a draft, so that the children of all those people paying more attention to the Tarheels and Dancing with the Stars end up spilling blood for this folly?

Veteran's Day- The Graphic Truth

The warning on HuffPo is that the images may be too graphic for us to look at; and they are. But how can we NOT look? The comments say it all.
Do we need to know how many have died on our side?
Do we need to know that this war was unnecessary? Experts, Former Presidents, and the former US representative to Iraq, all agree, and have for years. There are too many of these to link to.

The crime that must be remembered on this and every Veteran's Day is that these horribly injured soldiers who fought for nothing more than a lie and the enrichment of a certain group of old white men in the war and oil businesses, will come to find that there are not adequate support systems in place for any of our veterans, much less those who have a new type of injuries that have been born of this war. Head injuries and PTSD might not be as spectacularly horrible looking as these photo-oped ones that the Bush administration have sent out to the world, but they will flood our already overburdened system.

Our veterans are the brave heroes, who have put their lives on the line for freedom, whether it was a lie or the truth is not the issue. They went and they fought for us and for our ideals. That's why it is so important for us to support them. That is why I cringe at the photo-op of these brave people being pimped out by Bush and his publicity team.

So, I don't cringe because the injuries tell a story of pain that we could not imagine and lives that are changed forever, that they are too graphic for my delicate sensibilities, but because this guy...this President of ours has the balls to look these brave soldiers in the eye and pretend that they will be able to get care for the rest of their lives.

Here is the NY Times Editorial Page's answer to the fallacy that Bush projects every time he appears in public:

November 12, 2007
Editorial
The Plight of American Veterans

As an unpopular, ill-planned war in Iraq grinds on inconclusively, it can be a bleak time to be a veteran.

There is little outright hostility toward returning military personnel these days; few Americans are reviling them as “baby killers” or blaming them for a botched war of choice launched by the White House. Indeed, both Congress and the White House have been hymning their praises in the run-up to Veterans Day. But all too often, soldiers who return from Iraq or Afghanistan — and those who served in Vietnam or Korea — have been left to fend for themselves with little help from the government.

Recent surveys have painted an appalling picture. Almost half a million of the nation’s 24 million veterans were homeless at some point during 2006, and while only a few hundred from Iraq or Afghanistan have turned up homeless so far, aid groups are bracing themselves for a tsunamilike upsurge in coming years.

Tens of thousands of reservists and National Guard troops, whose jobs were supposedly protected while they were at war, were denied prompt re-employment upon their return or else lost seniority, pay and other benefits. Some 1.8 million veterans were unable to get care in veterans’ facilities in 2004 and lacked health insurance to pay for care elsewhere. Meanwhile, veterans seeking disability payments faced huge backlogs and inordinate delays in getting claims and appeals processed.

The biggest stain this year was the scandalous neglect of outpatients at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center and a sluggish response to the needs of wounded soldiers at veterans clinics and hospitals. Much of this neglect stemmed from the Bush administration’s failure to plan for a long war with mounting casualties and over-long tours of duty to compensate for a shortage of troops.

Thus far, more than 4,000 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan, many more than died in the almost-bloodless Persian Gulf war, but only a fraction of the body counts in Vietnam (58,000) or Korea (36,000). A higher percentage of wounded soldiers are surviving the current conflicts with grievous injuries, their lives saved by body armor, advances in battlefield medicine and prompt evacuation. A study issued last week estimated that the long-term costs of their medical care and disability benefits could exceed the amount spent so far in prosecuting the war in Iraq.

To their credit, Congress and the administration have poured billions of added dollars into veterans’ programs and streamlined procedures in a scramble to catch up with the need. That is only appropriate. The entire burden of today’s wars has been carried by a voluntary military force and its families. The larger public has not faced a draft, paid higher taxes or been asked to make any other sacrifice. The least a grateful nation should do is support the troops upon their return.

We all need to look at the graphic truth of this war. This is our war; we own it along with the casualties and crimes that come along with it. So, while some people avert their eyes, lets remember that this is America, and we are only as strong as our weakest citizen...only as healthy as these guys are.

Lets just hope that those veteran's programs continue to grow and be funded properly. lets just hope that not even one brave soldier falls between the cracks of this flawed system. And lets demand that we pull out of Iraq as quickly and safely as humanly possibly.
I hope that Bush and Cheney and their cohorts will be held fully accountable for their crimes. But no matter what, the record will reflect what we will be yelling about forever...the truth is that we have all been bamboozled and we have to take care of our soldiers while we search for justice.

C/P RIPCoco

This is what George W. Bush's Praetorian Guard is doing in our name

Blackwater: haven for really sick fucks. This is what George Bush's mercenary Army is doing in our name, being paid by our tax dollars:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Haythem could only recognize his oldest boy from his tall and slim physique as well as what was left of his shoes. His son's head had been blown away, his body charred beyond recognition. His wife of more than 20 years was torn apart.

"Only part of her neck and jaw remained," Haythem told CNN. The rest of her was covered by a body bag.

Choking back tears, he said, "Killing them was not enough, blowing up their skulls, they burned them and disfigured them."

Haythem's wife, Mahassen, and his 20-year-old son, Ahmed, were among the 17 Iraqi civilians killed and 27 others wounded in a hail of gunfire September 16 in Baghdad.

[snip]

Haythem, 46, a doctor who specializes in blood diseases, spoke from his temporary home in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood where he is living with his mother and two remaining children -- daughter Maryam, 18, and son Haidar, 17.

While he spoke, his mother sat in a corner of the room, moaning and sobbing, rocking back and forth on a couch. She wore all black.

All Haythem and the family know about the final moments of their loved ones is what two Iraqi police officers who witnessed the shootings have told them -- that Ahmed was shot as he was driving his car in Nusoor Square and his mother clutched him tight as he was bleeding.

"Those who witnessed the incident say that my son's head was scattered and my wife held him and hugged him," Haythem said. "She was screaming, 'My son, my son! Help me! Help me!' "

The car slowly rolled forward until Blackwater guards unleashed more shots that turned the vehicle into a fireball, according to the witnesses.

"They understood the call for help. They sprayed her with bullets," he said.

Blackwater has not discussed specifics about the case, saying the FBI is investigating the matter. Blackwater CEO Erik Prince told CNN Sunday one of the Blackwater vehicles was damaged by small arms fire and that his guards committed no "deliberate violence."

Haythem's wife also was a doctor and his son was attending medical school with hopes of becoming a surgeon.

"They destroyed my family and they killed my beloved wife, my better half," Haythem said calmly. "They deprived me of my eldest son who I have raised into a strong, young man. They deprived him of fulfilling his dream to be a doctor and a surgeon. They planted pain and misery in the hearts of my two younger kids."

His daughter and son live in fear that he too will be slain on the streets of Baghdad, leaving them as orphans.

Blue Girl reports on how Blackwater CEO Erik Prince, a man who calls himself a Christian, is a fucking liar.

How many dead Iraqis makes us "even"?

The die-hards who still believe that we're in Iraq because of the 9/11 attacks can answer this one:

How many deaths till we're "even"?

Over 2900 people were killed in the 9/11 attacks. Add to that the 3700+ American soldiers killed just in the Iraq war. How many Iraqis have to die before these bloodthirsty, vindictive people think we're even? How many dead Iraqis avenge each American death? Ten? Twenty? One hundred and seventy eight?

Because that's what the death toll of Iraqi civilians is going to be:

A car bomb blew up in the capital's Shiite Muslim neighborhood of Sadr City on Thursday, killing at least four people, as a new survey suggested that the civilian death toll from the war could be more than 1 million.

The figure from ORB, a British polling agency that has conducted several surveys in Iraq, followed statements this week from the U.S. military defending itself against accusations it was trying to play down Iraqi deaths to make its strategy appear successful.

The military has said civilian deaths from sectarian violence have fallen more than 55% since President Bush sent an additional 28,500 troops to Iraq this year, but it does not provide specific numbers.

According to the ORB poll, a survey of 1,461 adults suggested that the total number slain during more than four years of war was more than 1.2 million.

ORB said it drew its conclusion from responses to the question about those living under one roof: "How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003?"

Based on Iraq's estimated number of households -- 4,050,597 -- it said the 1.2 million figure was reasonable.

1.2 million people. You'd almost think the Administration was TRYING to compete with Hitler's death toll.

Trying really hard not to don the tinfoil chapeau...

This is so tragic I just don't even know what to say:

Two of the seven soldiers who wrote the New York Times op-ed piece criticizing U.S. counterinsurgency strategy 3 ½ weeks ago have been killed in Iraq. Yance T. Gray and Omar Mora died Monday in a vehicle accident in Baghdad. The AP has reported on Yance Gray here, and KHOU, a Houston-area TV station has reported on Omar Mora here. Their families have been notified.

I have confirmed through a source in Iraq that these are indeed the same soldiers who penned the op-ed piece.

(via AJ at Americablog)

Enough. Just enough. Bring them all home. Now.

"Funding the war means killing the troops"

How's that surge going, anyway?

"The reports I'm hearing from people whose views I respect indicate that the Petraeus plan is in fact producing results." -- Dick Cheney, to Larry King, July 31, 2007

And here are those results:

Baghdad shook with bombings and political upheaval Wednesday as the largest Sunni Arab bloc quit the government and a suicide attacker blew up his fuel tanker in one of several attacks that claimed 142 lives nationwide.

The Iraqi Accordance Front's withdrawal from the Cabinet leaves only two Sunnis in the 40-member body, undermining Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's efforts to pull together rival factions and pass reconciliation laws the U.S. considers benchmarks that could lead to sectarian reconciliation.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of four more American soldiers, including three killed in Baghdad on Tuesday by a powerful armor-piercing bomb. Washington says these types of bombs are sent from Iran. The fourth soldier was killed by small arms fire on the same day. A British soldier also was killed Tuesday in a roadside bombing.

The American military announced it found a mass grave in Diyala province northeast of the capital. The grave contained 17 bodies of mostly Sunni Muslims — including women, children and elderly people — killed by al-Qaida in Iraq, the military said in a statement. U.S. forces did not say how they knew the attackers were al-Qaida in Iraq.

Altogether at least 142 Iraqis were killed or found dead, including 70 in three separate bombings Wednesday in Baghdad. The violence came after July ended as the second-deadliest month for Iraqis so far this year, but with the lowest U.S. death toll in eight months.

But as long as the dead are Iraqis, Americans really don't much care. And Dick Cheney sure as hell doesn't care.

Just so much cannon fodder, then just so much carrion

When a war becomes pointless, so do any efforts to bury its casualties with any kind of dignity:

FORT LEWIS, Wash. — Twenty soldiers deployed to Iraq from this Army base were killed in May, a monthly high. That same month, the base announced a change in how it would honor its dead: instead of units holding services after each death, they would be held collectively once a month.

The anger and hurt were immediate. Soldiers’ families and veterans protested the change as cold and logistics-driven. Critics online said the military was trying to repress bad news about deaths. By mid-June, the base had delayed the plan.

[Its commander, Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, was expected to decide Wednesday whether to go through with it.]

“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do, wait until the end of the month?” asked Toni Shanyfelt, who said her husband was serving one of multiple tours in Iraq. “I don’t know if it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”

Military historians and scholars say the proposal and its fallout highlight the tender questions facing the armed forces as casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan mount, and some soldiers and their families come to expect more from military bases than in past conflicts.

During Vietnam and Korea, the historians say, many bases were places for training soldiers and shipping them out, rarely to see them return, with memorial services uncommon. Now, in the age of the all-volunteer force, the base has become the center of community. The Army and other branches have fostered the idea that military service is as much about education, job training and belonging to a community as national defense.

“It wasn’t considered the Army’s business in any of the other wars to conduct these services,” said Alan H. Archambault, director of the Fort Lewis Military Museum, which is supported by the Army. “It was the hometowns of the soldiers that died that had these. Now I think the Army bases are trying to be the hometowns.”

Because this president has given so much lip service to American troops, using them as political props and political weapons with which to cudgel the American people into submission, it's hardly surprising that the families living on military bases expect their loved ones to be treated like the heroes they've been told they are. But you cannot exploit these men and women for political gain and then put them in the ceremonial equivalent of a mass grave. If this president wants to use the military for political gain, let him give these bases the resources so that these families can try to make some sense out of that which is senseless.

The ones the war hawks don't think about

Via PJ Sauter comes this story of what George W. Bush's war policy hath wrought:

He lies flat, unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling, tubes and machines feeding him, breathing for him, keeping him alive. He cannot walk or talk, but he can grimace and cry. And he is fully aware of what has happened to him.

Four years ago almost to this day, Joseph Briseno Jr. was shot in the back of the head at point-blank range in a Baghdad marketplace. His spinal cord was shattered, and cardiac arrests stole his vision and damaged his brain.

The 24-year-old is one of the most severely injured soldiers — some think the most injured soldier — to survive.

"Three things you would not want to be: blind, head injury, and paralyzed from the neck down. That's tough," said Dr. Steven Scott, head of the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Center at the Tampa VA Medical Center, where Briseno has twice been hospitalized for extensive care. In recent days, Briseno was hospitalized yet again, this time at the Washington, D.C., VA Medical Center.

As a high schooler, Briseno liked the Discovery Channel and CSI, and wanted to be a forensic scientist or investigator. He was 20, attending George Mason University, when he was called up from the reserves and sent to war.

After he was shot, he was flown to Kuwait and then to a military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany. His parents and two sisters rushed to his side.

"They told us, 'Prepare for his service.' That's how bad he was," said his father, Joseph Briseno Sr., a retired career Army man.

But he survived. From Germany, he went to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, then to McGuire VA Medical Center in Richmond, Virginia. In December 2003, he went home, to Manassas Park, Virginia, where his parents, Joseph Sr. and Eva, quit their jobs to care for him.

"All our savings, all our money, was just emptied ... the 401(k)s, everything," said Joseph Briseno, who took a new job a year and a half ago to make ends meet.

The family has help from VA-provided nurses, but not around the clock. Jay's mother and father often do overnight duty, making sure their son is turned every four hours so he does not develop bedsores, which can become infected and threaten his life. If they do not turn him and keep him on schedule, he does not sleep well and becomes agitated.

What happens to Joseph Briseno when his parents can no longer care for him? Will Joe Lieberman pay for his care? Will Willian Kristol pay for his care? Will Michelle Malkin empty his bedpans and bathe him? Of course not. Briseno may be one of the most seriously wounded soldiers, but he isn't alone. The maimed are the forgotten ones of this war. The dead are buried and promptly forgotten by everyone other than their families, while the war hawks continue to slap Chinese-made ribbon magnets on their SUVs and impugn the patriotism of the rest of us. George W. Bush gives speeches about the lives of embryos and cares naught about this young man or any of the others whose blood can never be washed from his hands.

All for greed and lies and oil.

And the Democrats sit in Congress and worry about appearances. And John Boehner goes on a crying drunk rant in Congress asking "When we're gonna go get 'em?" I wonder that too, only I have a different "them" in mind....and a different approach to getting rid of "'em" -- one codified in the U.S. Constitution; the one of which the Democrats are so frightened.

So...has the surge started yet?

Or does it only count as soon as things like this stop happening:

The U.S. military announced the deaths of 14 American troops, including five killed Thursday in a single roadside bombing that also killed four Iraqis in Baghdad.

Elsewhere in Iraq, a suicide truck bomber struck the Sulaiman Bek city hall in a predominantly Sunni area in northern Iraq, killing at least 13 people and wounding 70, an Iraqi commander said.
[snip]

The deadliest attack was a roadside bomb that struck a convoy in northeastern Baghdad on Thursday, killing five U.S. soldiers, three Iraqi civilians and one Iraqi interpreter, the military said.

A rocket-propelled grenade struck a vehicle in northern Baghdad about 12:30 p.m. Thursday, killing one soldier and wounding three others, another statement said.

Four other U.S. soldiers were killed and one was wounded Wednesday when their convoy was struck by a roadside bomb in a western neighborhood in the capital, the military said separately.

Southwest of Baghdad, two U.S. soldiers were killed and four were wounded Wednesday when explosions struck near their vehicle, according to a statement earlier in the day.

Two Marines also were killed Wednesday while conducting combat operations in Anbar province, west of Baghdad, the military said.

Bomber hits mayor’s office; 10 dead
Earlier, a suicide truck bomber struck a mayor’s office in northern Iraq, killing at least 10 people and wounding 40, an Iraqi commander said. Meanwhile, a barrage of mortar bombs hit Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, according to Reuters reporters.

The explosion in the north of the country, which occurred about 10:30 a.m. in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Sulaiman Bek, caused part of the government building to collapse and destroyed at least four vehicles at the site, said Brig. Gen. Anwar Hamah, commander of the Iraqi army’s 2nd Brigade.

Hamah said at least 10 people were killed and 40 were wounded but he expected the casualty toll to rise as people were pulled from the rubble.

In Baghdad, several plumes of smoke could be seen rising near buildings housing the Iraqi parliament and government offices.

On the other side of the river Tigris, a thick plume of black smoke could be seen near the area where a suicide truck bomb partly demolished a Shiite mosque and killed 87 people on Tuesday. The origin of the smoke was not immediately known.

Slamming mortars

At least seven mortar rounds could be heard slamming into the Green Zone, which houses many Iraqi government ministries as well as the U.S., British and other Western embassies.

It was unclear if there were any casualties.

Heckuva job, Georgie

Captain Codpiece's little adventure has created a refugee crisis as those who can get out of Iraq are doing so. Many are going to Syria. And this is what those refugees are reduced to:

Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.” She insisted on being identified by only part of her name — Umm Hiba means mother of Hiba.

For anyone living in Damascus these days, the fact that some Iraqi refugees are selling sex or working in sex clubs is difficult to ignore.

Even in central Damascus, men freely talk of being approached by pimps trawling for customers outside juice shops and shawarma sandwich stalls, and of women walking up to passing men, an act unthinkable in Arab culture, and asking in Iraqi-accented Arabic if the men would like to “have a cup of tea.”

By day the road that leads from Damascus to the historic convent at Saidnaya is often choked with Christian and Muslim pilgrims hoping for one of the miracles attributed to a portrait of the Virgin Mary at the convent. But as any Damascene taxi driver can tell you, the Maraba section of this fabled pilgrim road is fast becoming better known for its brisk trade in Iraqi prostitutes.

Many of these women and girls, including some barely in their teens, are recent refugees. Some are tricked or forced into prostitution, but most say they have no other means of supporting their families. As a group they represent one of the most visible symptoms of an Iraqi refugee crisis that has exploded in Syria in recent months.

According to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, about 1.2 million Iraqi refugees now live in Syria; the Syrian government puts the figure even higher.

Given the deteriorating economic situation of those refugees, a United Nations report found last year, many girls and women in “severe need” turn to prostitution, in secret or even with the knowledge or involvement of family members. In many cases, the report added, “the head of the family brings clients to the house.”

This president used to give a great deal of lip service to stopping human trafficking. Now his policies have forced people out of their own country and into the sex trade, just to survive. The article above refers to Syria as being a big sex trade destination for Saudis. I wonder how many of those Saudis are Bush family friends.

In the First Church of Jesus H. Bush, the numbers are what THEY want them to be

And the number of American dead in Iraq must always be less than the number killed in the 9/11 attacks. That's the rule:

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff dramatically underestimated the number of deaths of US Armed Service-members in the Iraq War. The gaffe came as General Peter Pace appeared on CBS News Monday morning to discuss Memorial Day.

"When you take a look at the life of a nation and all that's required to keep us free, we had more than 3,000 Americans murdered on 11 September, 2001. The number who have died, sacrificed themselves since that time is approaching that number," General Pace told CBS Early Show's Harry Smith. "And we should pay great respect and thanks to them for allowing us to live free."

General Pace's remarks were erroneous on several counts.

First, the website Iraq Coalition Casualty Count puts the number of US service-members killed since the beginning of the Iraq War in 2003 at 3,455. The Pentagon only lists it as 3,441, with 14 deaths not yet being confirmed by the Pentagon. With either number, the total number of fatalities long passed the count of victims who died on 9/11.

Second, the General overestimated the number of deaths on 9/11. The website September 11, 2001 Victims states that 2,996 died in the attacks, rather than "more than 3,000 murdered" that Pace cites.

Finally, many of the victims who died on 9/11 were not American citizens. The aforementioned website lists 209 of the victims as foreign nationals.

General Pace has previously referred to the number of fatalities in the war on terrorism surpassing the number of 9/11 victims.

"It's now almost five years since September 11, 2001...And the number of young men and women in our armed forces who have sacrificed their lives that we might live in freedom is approaching the number of Americans who were murdered on 9/11 in New York, in Washington, D.C., and in Pennsylvania," Pace said in August 2006, according to a September 2006 CNN news report when the number of troops killed in action in fact passed the number of 9/11 fatalities.

Soon they'll just have to stop counting.

The loss most of us can't even fathom

These are some of the faces of war that we don't see and that the Bush Administration, as they wave their flags and talk of valor and sacrifice and try to stoke the fears of Americans in order to continue to slake their bloodlust.

Deanna Salie, Iraq widow:

My husband was certain that he was going to die in Iraq.

Sgt. 1st Class David J. Salie had been an American soldier for almost 17 years. He'd deployed many times, and he'd been to war before. He'd parachuted into Panama with the 82nd Airborne Division, served in the Gulf War and gone to Haiti with the 25th Infantry Division. But he'd never been so certain that he was going to die that he prepared for death.

David told me that he wouldn't be coming back. I didn't believe him. I felt that he was just under so much stress thinking of our children and me, and about the 40 soldiers in his platoon who were his responsibility.

In the month before he left for Iraq with B Company, 2nd of the 69th Armor, 3rd Infantry Division, David went over his will with a fine-toothed comb, and he checked out his Survivor's Group Life Insurance, which provides protection for military people.

David even gave away some of his personal belongings. He also checked on the death benefits that a soldier's family receives.

My husband came home and proudly announced that if he died in Iraq, his family would be taken care of. I tried to tell him that he shouldn't worry about things like that. He said that every soldier going to war worries about his family and wants to make sure that if he's killed, his family will be taken care of just as they would be if he were still alive.

We were "all squared away," David told me.

I wish I could say that he was wrong about dying and right about the rest of it. Instead, he was correct in his premonition about his own death, but wrong in his belief that we were "squared away."

On the evening of Feb. 14, 2005, a little after 9 p.m., I heard a knock on the front door of our house at Fort Benning, Ga. I got up from the couch in the living room, where I'd been resting with a sick child, and I saw two soldiers in dress green uniforms standing on the front porch.

After making it through my husband's funeral, I was greeted with mountains of paperwork.

I was escorted from office to office by my casualty officer as my military identification card was changed and reissued; as I signed up for the Veterans Administration's Dependency and Indemnity Compensation and the military's Survivor's Benefit Plan.

I reviewed the paperwork after all of these appointments, and I was shocked to discover that David had been wrong: We weren't going to be cared for as if he were still alive.

My husband didn't know that dependents' compensation offsets the Survivor's Benefit Plan. If he'd known that, it would have made him very angry.

DIC is a payment made to widows, their children and some parents who've lost a husband, father or son. Widows are entitled to the benefit for the remainder of their lives, unless they remarry. DIC comes from the Department of Veterans Affairs.

SBP pays a deceased soldier's income, and it comes from the Department of Defense.

The offset, a dollar-for-dollar deduction, is supposedly intended to prevent double-dipping from two similar benefit plans.

But the Survivors Benefit Plan and Dependents Indemnity Compensation are provided for different reasons, and the offset leaves many military families with no survivors' benefits at all. Others receive only the pittance that's left over after the offset is deducted.

As we try to rebuild our shattered lives, the offset deals us a second blow. Grief and loss are hard enough to handle, but now we have more important worries, such as providing homes, food, clothing and schooling for our families.

This is not a partisan political issue. This is not a matter of whether you're for or against the war in Iraq. This is about those who died serving our country, standing between our enemies and us and believing that their families would be cared for if they gave their lives.

It's a shame that that isn't true.

Andrew J. Basevich, grieving father:

When my son was killed in Iraq earlier this month at age 27, I found myself pondering my responsibility for his death.

Among the hundreds of messages that my wife and I have received, two bore directly on this question. Both held me personally culpable, insisting that my public opposition to the war had provided aid and comfort to the enemy. Each said that my son's death came as a direct result of my antiwar writings.

This may seem a vile accusation to lay against a grieving father. But in fact, it has become a staple of American political discourse, repeated endlessly by those keen to allow President Bush a free hand in waging his war. By encouraging "the terrorists," opponents of the Iraq conflict increase the risk to U.S. troops. Although the First Amendment protects antiwar critics from being tried for treason, it provides no protection for the hardly less serious charge of failing to support the troops -- today's civic equivalent of dereliction of duty.

As a citizen, I have tried since Sept. 11, 2001, to promote a critical understanding of U.S. foreign policy. I know that even now, people of good will find much to admire in Bush's response to that awful day. They applaud his doctrine of preventive war. They endorse his crusade to spread democracy across the Muslim world and to eliminate tyranny from the face of the Earth. They insist not only that his decision to invade Iraq in 2003 was correct but that the war there can still be won. Some -- the members of the "the-surge-is-already-working" school of thought -- even profess to see victory just over the horizon.

I believe that such notions are dead wrong and doomed to fail. In books, articles and op-ed pieces, in talks to audiences large and small, I have said as much. "The long war is an unwinnable one," I wrote in this section of The Washington Post in August 2005. "The United States needs to liquidate its presence in Iraq, placing the onus on Iraqis to decide their fate and creating the space for other regional powers to assist in brokering a political settlement. We've done all that we can do."

Not for a second did I expect my own efforts to make a difference. But I did nurse the hope that my voice might combine with those of others -- teachers, writers, activists and ordinary folks -- to educate the public about the folly of the course on which the nation has embarked. I hoped that those efforts might produce a political climate conducive to change. I genuinely believed that if the people spoke, our leaders in Washington would listen and respond.

This, I can now see, was an illusion.

The people have spoken, and nothing of substance has changed. The November 2006 midterm elections signified an unambiguous repudiation of the policies that landed us in our present predicament. But half a year later, the war continues, with no end in sight. Indeed, by sending more troops to Iraq (and by extending the tours of those, like my son, who were already there), Bush has signaled his complete disregard for what was once quaintly referred to as "the will of the people."

To be fair, responsibility for the war's continuation now rests no less with the Democrats who control Congress than with the president and his party. After my son's death, my state's senators, Edward M. Kennedy and John F. Kerry, telephoned to express their condolences. Stephen F. Lynch, our congressman, attended my son's wake. Kerry was present for the funeral Mass. My family and I greatly appreciated such gestures. But when I suggested to each of them the necessity of ending the war, I got the brushoff. More accurately, after ever so briefly pretending to listen, each treated me to a convoluted explanation that said in essence: Don't blame me.

To whom do Kennedy, Kerry and Lynch listen? We know the answer: to the same people who have the ear of George W. Bush and Karl Rove -- namely, wealthy individuals and institutions.

Yes, we do now know. We always suspected, but now we know. So to whom do we turn to right the many, many wrongs that have been perpetrated upon America's soldiers, their families, and indeed the millions of American citizens in whose name our own government has committed such heinous crimes? To whom can we turn? How do we right the wrongs when every corner of our government is as rotten and putrid and filthy as the occupiers of the executive branch?

From an Angry Soldier

Hopefully this will make even one person think about that stupid fucking Chinese-made yellow ribbon magnet he has on his gas-guzzling SUV:

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.

I wonder if John McCain will read this?

(h/t: Beltway Bump via Fallenmonk)

UPDATE: Joe Sudbay reports at Americablog on Laura Bush's comment that "no one suffers more" than she and the Drunk-in-Chief about Iraq. I think the mother/widow/soldier quoted above might have something to say about that.

What about the dead in Iraq?

With the 24/7 newsotainment cycle only now beginning to emerge from its "All Virginia Tech, All The Time" coverage, is there any chance at all that Americans might start thinking about the young people who aren't college students -- the ones our president seems to have all but forgotten unless they can be used as political props?

Nine of them -- one-quarter of the Virginia Tech death toll -- died yesterday in a single suicide bombing:

A devastating suicide car bombing on Monday killed nine American soldiers near a patrol base in Diyala Province, the military announced early Tuesday morning.

It was one of the most lethal suicide bomb attacks on American troops in Iraq. Another occurred on Dec. 21, 2004, when a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a mess tent on an American base in Mosul and detonated his charge, killing 14 United States soldiers.

In the past six months, Diyala Province, where several Sunni Arab insurgent groups are active, has become one of the most dangerous places in Iraq for American soldiers.

Twenty soldiers and one Iraqi civilian were also wounded in the blast on Monday, the military said. Eight of the soldiers and the Iraqi civilian were evacuated to an allied medical center; the others returned to duty.

Later, three of the soldiers who were evacuated also returned to duty, according to a statement issued by the military. There was no other information available about the attack.

Other attacks in which large numbers of American military personnel have died include several instances in which insurgents shot down helicopters carrying numerous troops and one attack on United States marines serving in Anbar Province.

In that attack, on Aug. 3, 2005, a huge roadside bomb exploded near Haditha, killing 14 marines who were involved in combat operations and traveling in an amphibious vehicle.

On Monday, an American soldier also died in Muqdadiya when a roadside bomb exploded, the military said in a news release.

Across Iraq, five car bombs exploded Monday, killing a total of 22 people, and a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest walked into a popular restaurant near Baghdad’s fortified International Zone, formerly known as the Green Zone, and detonated his explosives, killing six people.

That's nine American soldiers and 22 Iraqi civilians killed just yesterday -- one less than the Virginia Tech death toll.

I'm not trying to take away from the tragedy of young people cut down while sitting in college classrooms, nor am I trying to equate the risk of attending college with the risk of fighting in a war. But over the last week we've seen a president who has never attended a single soldier's funeral and who let a city drown before visiting it drop everything to attend a memorial for the Virginia Tech students. We've seen flags flown at half-staff for the slain students, while no flag has ever flown at half-staff for the over 3300 Americans killed in this misbegotten war. This president has never expressed any regret for the tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives because he had to prove his manhood by invading a country that never attacked us. This president gives constant lip service to the sanctity of human life. But it's clear that the only human life he regards sacred is human life that benefits him politically.