True to their newest stand, right wing blogger smears family of murdered soldier.

Predictably, falling right in line with Tony Snow and his *2,500 is a number* statement on June 15, followed one day later by the fiercely *patriotic* Rush *I'dLoveToServeMyCountryButCan'tBecauseOfThisPimpleOnMyButt* Limbaugh, reminding them that aborted fetuses are more important than murdered American soldiers (as was posted on the *other* board on June 16), all the while publicly declaring that all liberals who post on this board don't care about our troops.  *Profound* indeed.

http://www.prospect.org/horsesmouth/2006/06/post_134.html#002858 

• True to their newest stand, right wing blogger smears family of murdered soldier. - PK
  • The right has the market cornered on disrespect ...sm - Democrat
    • Yeah, and also I wonder how these soldiers would feel...sm - Democrat

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I hope this family is able to effect a change in this. This would be something worth quitting your job and marching for change.  I'm heartbroken reading of the audacity of the military to ship a fallen soldier as freight.  This has to be a mistake. Pinch me I'm dreaming...Democrat. 

Family Upset Over Soldier's Body Arriving As Freight

Bodies Sent To Families On Commercial Airliners

I'm sure there will be many more to come. 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/vp/30395296#30395296

In other words, they knew it was torture, they knew it was illegal and were warned that it was illegal, but went on with their plans anyway.

when they don't come from reliable sources.  Show me the tape from months and months ago where Michelle was suppose to have referred to "whitey."  It never materialized  Now show me the L.A. tape which was first talked about months ago but has just now become an issue.  Show me PROOF that Obama was in cahoots with Ayers and the list goes on.  I like to deal in FACTS and I have seen no facts (other than the preacher Wright) that impress me and THAT does impress me.  Otherwise....smears. 

Thanks for the vote for my intelligence...there are others who don't agree.  LOL

so give it all a rest would you. 

She is Sarah Palin.
She don't have to talk to you.
Just replay her Big Convention Speech
If you want her point of view.

Her new pals from dear John's campaign
They said she should lie low.
It's not to their advantage now
To compare her with "that Joe".

Why should she answer questions
When it's already been made clear.
She's for guns and nuns and moose in buns
No choice, No voice, No fear.

Don't ask her about the Middle East.
Don't ask her about Tibet.
Don't ask her about the housing crisis
Don't ask her about the Debt.

Don't ask her about the Shiites
Don't ask her about the Sunnis.
From her personal perspective
They are all a bunch of loonies!

Don't ask her who world leaders are.
It's hard to keep them straight.
Is that cute Tony Blair still there somewhere?
Isn't Putin a head of State?

Yes, she is Sarah Palin!
She need not be interviewed.
She's just much more content you see
To be cheered rather than boo'd !

P.S. to gt: Hi! 

I don't know this guy's politics and I don't care.  He is imbedded with the 82nd Airborne.  At any rate, it seems to be just the unvarnished truth with no slant in either direction that I can see.  There is a bit of language because he directly quotes some of the soldiers...but I think this is a positive story and I am sure there are many like it that never see the light of day.  Thanks in advance for looking at it.

July 24, 2007

In the Wake of the Surge

By Michael J. Totten

BAGHDAD – 82nd Airborne’s Lieutenant William H. Lord from Foxborough, Massachusetts, prepared his company for a dismounted foot patrol in the Graya’at neighborhood of Northern Baghdad’s predominantly Sunni Arab district of Adhamiyah.

“While we’re out here saying hi to the locals and everyone seems to be getting along great,” he said, “remember to keep up your military bearing. Someone could try to kill you at any moment.”

I donned my helmet and vest, hopped into the backseat of a Humvee, and headed into the streets of the city with two dozen of the first infantry soldiers deployed to Iraq for the surge. The 82nd Airborne Division is famous for being ready to roll within 24 hours of call up, so they were sent first.

The surge started with these guys. Its progress here is therefore more measurable than it is anywhere else.

Darkness fell almost immediately after sunset. Microscopic dust particles hung in the air like a fog and trapped the day’s savage heat in the atmosphere.

Our convoy of Humvees passed through a dense jungular grove of palm and deciduous trees between Forward Operating Base War Eagle and the market district of Graya’at. The drivers switched off their headlights so insurgents and terrorists could not see us coming. They drove using night vision goggles as eyes.

Just to the right of my knees were the feet of the gunner. He stood in the middle of the Humvee and manned a machine gun in a turret sticking out of the top. I could hear him swiveling his cannon from side to side and pointing it into the trees as we approached the urban sector in their area of operations.

This was all purely defensive. The battalion I’m embedded with here in Baghdad hasn’t suffered a single casualty – not even one soldier wounded – since they arrived in the Red Zone in January. The surge in this part of the city could not possibly be going better than it already is. Most of Graya’at’s insurgents and terrorists who haven’t yet fled are either captured, dormant, or dead.

A car approached our Humvee with its lights on.

“I can’t see, I can’t see,” said the driver. Bright lights are blinding with night vision goggles. “Flash him with the laser,” he said to the gunner. “Flash him with the laser!”

A green laser beam shot out from the gunner’s turret toward the windshield of the oncoming car. The headlights went out.

“What was that about?” I said.

“It’s part of our rules of engagement,” the driver said. “They all know that. The green laser is a warning, and it’s a little bit scary because it looks like a weapon is being pointed at them.”

We slowly rolled into the market area. Smiling children ran up to and alongside the convoy and excitedly waved hello. It felt like I was riding with a liberating army.

Graya’at’s streets are quiet and safe. It doesn’t look or feel like war zone at all. American soldiers just a few miles away are still engaged in almost daily firefights with insurgents and terrorists, but this part of the city has been cleared by the surge.

Before the surge started the neighborhood was much more dangerous than it is now.

“We were on base at Camp Taji [north of the city] and commuting to work,” Major Jazdyk told me earlier. “The problem with that was that the only space we dominated was inside our Humvees. So we moved into the neighborhoods and live there now with the locals. We know them and they know us.”

Lieutenant Lawrence Pitts from Fayetteville, North Carolina, elaborated. “We patrol the streets of this neighborhood 24/7,” he said. “We knock on doors, ask people what they need help with. We really do what we can to help them out. We let them know that we’re here to work with them to make their city safe in the hopes that they’ll give us the intel we need on the bad guys. And it worked.”

The area of Baghdad just to the south of us, which the locals think of as downtown Adhamiyah, is surrounded by a wall recently built by the Army. It is not like the wall that divides Israel from the West Bank. Pedestrians can cross it at will. Only the roads are blocked off. Vehicles are routed through two very strict checkpoints. Weapons transporters and car bombers can’t get in or out.

The area inside the wall is mostly Sunni. The areas outside the wall are mostly Shia. Violence has been drastically reduced on both sides because Sunni militias – including AL Qaeda – are kept in, and Shia militias – including Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi Army, are kept out.

Graya’at is a mixed Sunni-Shia neighborhood immediately to the north of the wall.

We dismounted our Humvees and set up a vehicle checkpoint on the far side of the market area. Curfew was going into effect. Anyone trying to drive into the area would be searched.

Dozens of Iraqi civilians milled about on the streets.

“Salam Aleikum,” said the soldiers and I as we walked past.

“Aleikum as Salam,” said each in return.

They really did seem happy to see us.

Children ran up to me.

“Mister, mister, mister!” they said and pantomimed the snapping of photos. I lifted my camera to my face and they nodded excitedly.

A large group of men gathered around a juice vendor and greeted us warmly as we approached. A large man in a flowing dishdasha spoke English and, judging by the deference showed to him by the others, seemed to be a community leader of some sort.

Kids pulled on my shirt as Lieutenant Lord spoke to the group about a gas station the Army is helping set up in the neighborhood. Gasoline is more important to Iraqis than it is to even Americans. Baghdad is as much an automobile-based city as Los Angeles. They also need fuel for electric generators. Baghdad’s electrical grid only supplies one hour of electricity every day. It is ancient, overloaded, in severe disrepair, and is sabotaged by the insurgents. The outside temperature rarely drops below 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the summer, even at night. Air conditioners aren’t luxuries here. They are requirements. No gasoline? No air conditioner.

“The gas station on the corner should be opening soon,” the lieutenant said to the group of men. “Do you think the prices are fair?”

The fat man understood the question. Our young interpreter from Beirut, Lebanon, who calls herself “Shine,” translated for everyone else.

Most gasoline in Iraq has to be purchased on the black market for four times the commercial and government rate partly because there is an acute lack of proper places to sell it. A new gas station in this country is actually a big deal.

The men thought the price of gasoline at the station was reasonable. The conversation continued mundanely and I quickly grew bored.

Everyone was friendly. No one shot at us or even looked at us funny. Infrastructure problems, not security, were the biggest concerns at the moment. I felt like I was in Iraqi Kurdistan – where the war is already over – not in Baghdad.

It was an edgy “Kurdistan,” though. Every now and then someone drove down the street in a vehicle. If any military-aged males (MAMs as the Army guys call them) were in the car, the soldiers stopped it and made everybody get out. The vehicle and the men were then searched.

Everyone who was searched took it in stride. Some of the Iraqi men smirked slightly, as if the whole thing were a minor joke and a non-threatening routine annoyance that they had been through before. The procedure looked and felt more like airport security in the United States than, say, the more severe Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank and Gaza.

“What are you guys doing out after curfew?” said Sergeant Lizanne.

“I’m sorry, sorry,” said a young Iraqi man in a striped blue and tan t-shirt.

“There is no sorry,” said Sergeant Lizanne. “I don’t give a s**t. The curfew is at the same time every night. I don’t want to have to start arresting you.”

“Why are you stopping these guys,” I said to Lieutenant Lord, “when there are so many other people milling around on the streets?”

“Because they’re MAMs who are driving,” he said. “We’re going easy on everyone else. We’ve already oppressed these people enough. They have a night culture in the summer, so if they aren’t military aged males driving cars we leave them alone. We were very heavy-handed in 2003. Now we’re trying to move forward together. At least 90 percent of them are normal fun-loving people.”

“Do they ever get p****d off when you search them?” I said.

“Not very often,” he said. “They understand we’re trying to protect them.”

“This is not what I expected in Baghdad,” I said.

“Most of what we’re doing doesn’t get reported in the media,” he said. “We’re not fighting a war here anymore, not in this area. We’ve moved way beyond that stage. We built a soccer field for the kids, bought all kinds of equipment, bought them school books and even chalk. Soon we’re installing 1,500 solar street lamps so they have light at night and can take some of the load off the power grid. The media only covers the gruesome stuff. We go to the sheiks and say hey man, what kind of projects do you want in this area? They give us a list and we submit the paperwork. When the projects get approved, we give them the money and help them buy stuff.”

Not everything they do is humanitarian work, unless you consider counter-terrorism humanitarian work. In my view, you should. Few Westerners think of personal security as a human right, but if you show up in Baghdad I’ll bet you will. Personal security may, in fact, be the most important human right. Without it the others mean little. People aren’t free if they have to hide in their homes from death squads and car bombs.

In another part of Graya’at is an area called the Fish Market. Gates were installed at each entrance so terrorists can’t drive car bombs inside. The people here are extraordinarily grateful for this. Businesses, not cars, are booming now at the market. Residents feel free and safe enough to go out.

“The kids here do seem to like you,” I said to Lieutenant Lord.

“They do,” he said. “In Sadr City, though, they throw rocks and flip us off.”

The American military is staying out of Sadr City for now. The surge hasn’t even begun there, and I don’t know if it will.

I wandered over to the man selling juice at a stand. An American soldier bought a glass from him.

“Have you tried this juice?” the soldier said to me. “It’s really good stuff. Here have a sip.”

He handed me the glass. It was an excellent mixture of freshly squeezed orange juice and something else. Pineapple, I think.

The kids kept pulling my shirt.

“Mister, mister!” they said, wanting me to take their picture.

The same kids kept pestering the soldiers, as well. They seemed to get a big kick out of it.

A small group of soldiers continued talking to the locals about community projects they’re helping out with.

I tried to listen in but the kids wouldn’t leave me alone. Finally one of the adults took mercy on me and shooed the children away so I could listen and talk to the grownups. The conversation, though, was mundane. The soldiers were talking and acting like aid workers, not warriors from the elite 82nd Airborne Division.

“Man, this is boring,” one of them said to me later. “I’m an adrenaline junky. There’s no fight here. It won’t surprise me if we start handing out speeding tickets.” So it goes in at least this part of Baghdad that has been cleared by the surge.

“When we first got here,” said another and laughed, “s**t hit the fan.”

It was all a bit boring, but blessedly so. I knew already that not everyone in Baghdad was hostile. But it was slightly surprising to see that entire areas in the Red Zone are not hostile.

Anything can happen in Baghdad, even so. The convulsive, violent, and overtly hostile Sadr City is only a few minutes drive to the southeast.

“Want to walk past your favorite house?” Lieutenant Lord said to Sergeant Lizanne.

“Let’s do it,” said Sergeant Lizanne.

“What’s your favorite house?” I said.

“It’s a house we walked past one night,” said Sergeant Lizanne. “Some guys on the roof locked and loaded on us.”

Gun shots rang out in the far distance. None of the Iraqis paid much attention but the soldiers perked up and stiffened their posture like hunting dogs.

“Gun shots,” Lieutenant Lord said.

“I heard,” I said. “You going to do anything about it?”

“Nah,” he said and shrugged. “They were far away and could be anything, even shots fired in the air at a wedding. A lot of these guys are stereotypical Arabs.”

The gun shots were a part of the general ambience.

*

We walked along a narrow path along the banks of the Tigris River in darkness. “The house,” as they called it, where someone locked and loaded a rifle, was a quarter mile or so up ahead.

“What will you do when you get to the house?” I asked Lieutenant Lord.

“We’ll do a soft-knock,” he said. “We’re not going to be dicks about it.”

I couldn’t see well, but I could see. Even my camera could see if I held it steady enough.

The soldiers had night vision goggles. They could see perfectly, if “green” counts as perfect. One of them let me borrow his for a few minutes.

Putting on the goggles was like stepping into another world. The soldiers’ rifles come with a laser that shoots a light visible only to those wearing the goggles. It helps soldiers zero in on their target. It also lets them “point” at things in the terrain when they talk to each other. Some used the green rifle laser to point out locations in the area the way a professor points at a chalk board with a stick.

We walked in silence and darkness toward “the house.” I could just barely make out the silhouettes of the soldiers’ helmets and rifles and body armor in front of me.

“Where should I be when this goes down?” I quietly said to the lieutenant.

“Just stay next to me,” he whispered back.

We stopped in front of the house. It was shrouded in total darkness on the bank of the river.

Lieutenant Lord quietly signaled for half his platoon to go around to the other side of the house. I scanned the roof looking for snipers or gunmen, but didn’t see anyone. Still, I still decided to step up to the outer wall of the house so no one could shoot me from the roof.

We waited in silence for ten minutes. The area was absolutely quiet and still. The curfew was in effect and we were away from the main market area where pedestrians were allowed out after dark.

Feeling more relaxed, I stepped away from the house and toward the river. Once again I checked the roof for snipers or gun men. This time I saw the black outlines of two soldiers standing up there and motioning to us below.

It was time to walk around to the other side, to the front door, and go in. I stayed close to the lieutenant.

The other side of the house, the front side of the house, was lit by street lights. Children laughed and kicked around a soccer ball.

Gun shots rang out in the night, closer this time.

“Take a knee,” Lieutenant Lord said to one of his men.

The soldier got down on one knee and pointed his weapon down the street in the direction of the gunfire. The children kept playing soccer as though nothing had happened. I casually leaned against the wall of the house in case something nasty came down the street.

We heard no more shots. It could have been anything.

A soldier pushed open the gate and moved up the stairs toward the front door. I followed cautiously behind the lieutenant to make sure I wouldn’t get hit if something happened.

Up the stairs was an open area in the house that hadn’t yet been finished by the construction workers.

Lieutenant Lord had gotten far ahead of me. I found him speaking to an old man and his family. He, his military age son, his wife, and some children were herded into a single small room where everyone could be watched at the same time.

“We’re not going to be dicks about it,” he had said, and he lived up to his promise. The family was treated with utmost respect. The old woman blew kisses at us. The children smiled. This was not a raid.

I stepped into the room and noticed a picture of the moderate Shia cleric Ayatollah Sistani on the wall. It suddenly seemed unlikely that this family was hostile. Still, someone in the house had locked and loaded on patrolling American soldiers.

“We have tight relationships with some of the people whose sons are detainees,” Lieutenant Colonel Wilson A. Shoffner had told me earlier. “They don’t approve of their children joining Al Qaeda or the Mahdi Army. The support for these groups really isn’t that high.”

Perhaps the man’s son was the one who had locked and loaded.

The old man handed Lieutenant Lord an AK-47. The lieutenant pulled out the clip.

“Do you have any more guns,” he said. Our Lebanese interpreter translated.

“I have only one gun,” he said. “I am an old man.”

“I have a pistol,” said the man’s son.

“If you go down into Adhamiyah do you take your pistol with you?” said the lieutenant. Adhamiyah is a Sunni-majority area, and this family was Shia.

“No,” he said. “Of course not.”

“Someone here locked and loaded on me when we did a foot patrol along the river a while ago,” Lieutenant Lord said. “Who was it?”

The old man laughed. “It was me!” he said and laughed again. He couldn’t stop laughing. He even seemed slightly relieved. “I thought it might have been insurgents! It was dark. I couldn’t see who it was. All Americans are my sons.”

Lieutenant Lord looked at him dubiously.

“What did you see?” he said. “Tell me the story of what you saw.”

“I heard people walking,” said the old man. “I did not see Americans. I looked over the roof and heard who I guess was your interpreter speaking Arabic.”

“Sergeant Miller,” Lieutenant Lord said.

“Sir,” Sergeant Miller said.

“Does that sound right to you?”

“Sounds right to me, LT,” he said.

“If this is a nice neighborhood,” Lieutenant Lord said, “why did you lock and load?”

“I thought maybe there were insurgents down there,” the old man said.

“Are there insurgents here?”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I don’t think here, no.”

“Then why lock and load?”

The old man mumbled something.

“Sergeant Miller, I want to separate the old man from his family,” Lieutenant Lord said. “Keep an eye on them.”

The lieutenant walked the old man to the roof. I followed.

“I’m very concerned about what you’re telling me,” he said. “Who is making you live in fear?”

“I’m a good guy,” said the old man.

“I’m not saying you aren’t,” said the lieutenant. “I’m just very concerned that you are afraid of somebody here.”

“It was the first time. It was dark. I couldn’t see. I’m very sorry.”

“It’s okay,” said the lieutenant. “You don’t need to be sorry. You have the right to defend yourself and your home. Just be sure if you have to shoot someone that you know who you’re shooting at. Thank you for your help, and I am sorry for waking you up.”

The old man hugged the lieutenant and kissed him on his both cheeks.

The family waved us goodbye.

“Ma Salema,” I said and felt slightly guilty for being there.

We walked back to the Humvees.

“Do you believe him?” I said to the lieutenant. I have no idea how to tell when an Iraqi is lying.

“I do,” he said. “I think he’s a good guy. His story matched what happened.”

“He didn’t want to answer your question, though,” I said, “about who he is afraid of.”

There are terrible stories around here about the masked men of the death squads. Sometimes they break into people’s houses and asking the children who they’re afraid of. If they name the enemies of the death squad, they are spared. If they name the death squad itself, they and their families are killed. It’s a wicked interrogation because it cannot be beaten – the children don’t know which death squad has broken into the house.

“He didn’t want to say who he’s afraid of because he’s afraid,” Lieutenant Lord said. “If the insurgents find out he gave information to us, or that he helped us, he’s dead.”

I was particularly impressed with the fact that this battalion had suffered no casualties, even wounded, in 7 months.  That is an improvement, no matter how you look at it, and there are obviously Iraqis who are still glad we are there.  That is what I meant in previous posts.  The plain old everyday Iraqis like you and me; not the militants, the insurgents, the militias...just everyday folks like you and me.  Those are the ones who will suffer most if we pull out en masse, too quickly.  That is all I was ever trying to say.

 

The unmarried mother's story about giving birth to a child diagnosed as terminally ill in the womb hit a major nerve on the Internet.

Every night for the last two months, thousands of abortion opponents across the nation logged on to a blog run by the suburban Chicago woman who identified herself only as "B" or "April's Mom."

People said they prayed that God would save her pregnancy. They e-mailed her photos of their children dressed in pink, bought campaign T-shirts, shared tales of personal heartache and redemption, and sent letters and gifts to an Oak Lawn P.O. box in support.

As more and more people were drawn to her compelling tale, eager advertisers were lining up. And established parenting Web sites that oppose abortion were promoting her blog -- which included biblical quotes, anti-abortion messages and a soundtrack of inspirational Christian pop songs.

By Sunday night, when "April's Mom" claimed to have given birth to her "miracle baby" -- blogging that April Rose had survived a home birth only to die hours later -- her Web site had nearly a million hits.

There was only one problem with the unfolding tragedy: None of it was true.

Not the pregnancy, and not the photos posted on the blog of the supposed mother and Baby April Rose, swaddled in white blankets. The baby was actually a lifelike doll, which immediately raised the suspicion of loyal blog-followers.

"I have that exact doll in my house," said Elizabeth Russell, a dollmaker from Buffalo who had been following the blog. "As soon as I saw that picture, I knew it was a scam."
--
She had expected only a handful of friends to read it, but when her first post got 50 comments, she was hooked.

"I've always liked writing. It was addictive to find out I had a voice that people wanted to hear," Beushausen said.

"Soon I was getting 100,000 hits a week, and it just got out of hand," she said. "I didn't know how to stop. ... One lie led to another."

So the lie isn't the problem, but the fact that she got addicted to blogging made her continue on. What a sad and disgusting tale. Using a phony story to whip up the anti-choice movement is pretty vile. A woman has the right to choose in this country, but the religious right will do anything it can to try and take that right away. You never hear them talk about the mother in any of their debates. It's like the woman is only a "vessel" to carry a child and doesn't exist in any other manner. "Bring the vessel here." "How dare the vessel speak out."

September 7, 2005

Women were Being Raped, Babies were Being Killed, Alligators were Eating People, But Where the Hell was the National Guard?
How We Survived the Flood
By CHARMAINE NEVILLE

  This is a transcription of an interview Charmaine Neville, of New Orleans's legendary Neville family, gave to local media outlets on Monday, September 5.

I was in my house when everything first started. When the hurricane came, it blew all the left side of my house off, and the water was coming in my house in torrents.

I had my neighbor, an elderly man, and myself, in the house with our dogs and cats, and we were trying to stay out of the water. But the water was coming in too fast. So we ended up having to leave the house.

We left the house and we went up on the roof of a school. I took a crowbar and I burst the door on the roof of the school to help people on the roof.

Later on we found a flat boat, and we went around the neighborhood in a flat boat getting people out of their houses and bringing them to the school.

We found all the food that we could and we cooked and we fed people. But then, things started getting really bad.

By the second day, the people that were there, that we were feeding and everything, we had no more food and no water. We had nothing, and other people were coming in our neighborhood. We were watching the helicopters going across the bridge and airlift other people out, but they would hover over us and tell us Hi! and that would be all. They wouldn't drop us any food or any water, or nothing.

Alligators were eating people. They had all kinds of stuff in the water. They had babies floating in the water.

We had to walk over hundreds of bodies of dead people. People that we tried to save from the hospices, from the hospitals and from the old-folks homes. I tried to get the police to help us, but I realized they were in the same straits we were. We rescued a lot of police officers in the flat boat from the 5th district police station. The guy who was in the boat, he rescued a lot of them and brought them to different places so they could be saved.

We understood that the police couldn't help us, but we couldn't understand why the National Guard and them couldn't help us, because we kept seeing them but they never would stop and help us.

Finally it got to be too much, I just took all of the people that I could. I had two old women in wheelchairs with no legs, that I rowed them from down there in that nightmare to the French Quarters, and I went back and got more people.

There were groups of us, there were about 24 of us, and we kept going back and forth and rescuing whoever we could get and bringing them to the French Quarter because we heard that there were phones in the French Quarter, and that there wasn't any water. And they were right, there were phones, but we couldn't get through to anyone.

I found some police officers. I told them that a lot of us women had been raped down there by guys, not from the neighborhood where we were, they were helping us to save people. But other men, and they came and they started raping women and they started killing, and I don't know who these people were. I'm not gonna tell you I know, because I don't.

But what I want people to understand is that, if we hadn't been left down there like the animals that they were treating us like, all of those things wouldn't have happened. People are trying to say that we stayed in that city because we wanted to be rioting and we wanted to do this and, we didn't have resources to get out, we had no way to leave.

When they gave the evacuation order, if we could've left, we would have left.

There are still thousands and thousands of people trapped in their homes in the downtown area. When we finally did get into the 9th ward, and not just in my neighborhood, but in other neighborhoods in the 9th ward, there were a lot of people still trapped down there... old people, young people, babies, pregnant women. I mean, nobody's helping them.

And I want people to realize that we did not stay in the city so we could steal and loot and commit crimes. A lot of those young men lost their minds because the helicopters would fly over us and they wouldn't stop. We would make SOS on the flashlights, we'd do everything, and it really did come to a point, where these young men were so frustrated that they did start shooting. They weren't trying to hit the helicopters, they figured maybe they weren't seeing. Maybe if they hear this gunfire they will stop then. But that didn't help us. Nothing like that helped us.

Finally, I got to Canal St. with all of my people I had saved from back there.

I don't want them arresting nobody else. I broke the window in an RTA bus. I never learned how to drive a bus in my life. I got in that bus. I loaded all of those people in wheelchairs and in everything else into that bus, and we drove and we drove and we drove and millions of people was trying to get me to help them to get on the bus, too.

Charmaine Neville is a member of the third generation of New Orleans's legendary Neville musical family. She fronts the Charmaine Neville Band.

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, if you are given this story DO NOT REENLIST!

From: aaronb
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 10:42 PM
To: soldiers@michaelmoore.com
Subject: army con artist

Mr. Moore,

I would like to start by saying that I think what you are doing for the troops is probably the most supportive thing any one human being could do during this troubled time. I would like to tell you my story, and I hope that it can help other soldiers in my position.

I am a specialist in the US Army, I have served four years on active duty, and I am separating from the service later this month. Earlier this year my wife and I had a baby girl. Unfortunately, she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, which is a genetic disease which affects the lungs. Her life expectancy is about 30 years old. When she was born she required surgery which kept her in the hospital for about a month. As you can probably imagine, this was quite expensive. I wasn't worried about paying for it because I assumed military insurance (TRICARE) would cover it. I went along with that assumption for the next few months, but about 2 weeks before I was scheduled to ETS, I made a routine trip to the tricare office at the base hospital. When I arrived there and showed them an outstanding bill from the hospital where my daughter had the surgery, which showed an outstanding balance of 127,000 dollars, I was informed that that bill must be paid by me personally because I was required to pay 20% of any medical bill from any hospital or clinic not in the military system. When I asked the clerk what my options were for payment, she informed me that I either pay the bill in full, or reenlist and the bill would be paid for by the army. I couldn't believe what I was hearing, so I left the office without saying another word, went home, and called the 1 800 number for tricare. The representative assured me that the clerks statements were entirely false and that my insurance policy had a catastrophic cap of 1000 dollars. While I have no proof, I believe that the clerk from the office at the hospital (who was a civilian) was receiving some type of payment to try and con soldiers with exceptional family members into reenlisting. I am considering obtaining legal counsel on this matter, but I doubt I have a case. I just wanted to write this to make sure it never happens to anyone else. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE, if you are given this story DO NOT REENLIST! Contact the tricare hotline before doing anything based on what you are told. I hope that this has not happened to anyone else, but I fear that is not true.

Thank you for your help,
A soldier for peace

June 06, 2006 Lieutenant defies Army over ‘illegal’ war By William Cole The Honolulu Advertiser In one of the first known cases of its kind, an Army officer from Honolulu is expected to refuse to go to Iraq this month with his unit, citing what he calls the “illegal” and “immoral” basis of the war, his father confirmed. The officer, 1st Lt. Ehren K. Watada, 28, son of former state campaign spending commission executive director Bob Watada, is believed to be one of the first military officers to publicly take steps to refuse his deployment orders. “My son has a great deal of courage, and clearly understands what is right, and what is wrong,” Bob Watada said yesterday. “He’s choosing to do the right thing, which is a hard course.” Watada declined further comment until a news conference planned for 11 a.m. tomorrow at the state Capitol. His son is with a Stryker unit out of Fort Lewis, Wash., and is expected to participate by teleconference. Jeff Paterson, a former Kaneohe Bay Marine who refused to board a transport in 1990 heading to the Gulf War and now works as an anti-war activist with the organization Not In Our Name, said a second news conference will be held in Tacoma, Wash. On a Web site Paterson said was created by friends and family, the “Lt.” is quoted as saying: “I refuse to be silent any longer. I refuse to watch families torn apart, while the President tells us to ‘stay the course.’ ... I refuse to be party to an illegal and immoral war against people who did nothing to deserve our aggression. I wanted to be there for my fellow troops. But the best way was not to help drop artillery and cause more death and destruction. It is to help oppose this war and end it so that all soldiers can come home.” Ehren Watada apparently sought in January to resign his commission, and later asked again and was denied. Watada, who is not seeking conscientious objector status, but rather has moral objections to the Iraq war, faces the possibility of a court-martial, dishonorable discharge and several years in prison if he refuses the war orders. According to the GI Rights Hotline, a conscientious objector has a deeply held moral, ethical or religious belief that it is wrong to kill another human being in war. Some service members discover that opposition after joining the military, and are discharged, the organization said. Watada doesn’t qualify as a conscientious objector because he does not oppose all wars. Watada graduated from Hawaii Pacific University in 2003, joined the Army shortly after, went to Officer Candidate School, and incurred a three-year obligation. The Hawaii man is with the 5th Battalion, 20th Infantry, at Fort Lewis. The unit is part of a larger 3,600-soldier Stryker brigade combat team similar to a unit being developed in Hawaii with about 300 eight-wheeled armored vehicles. The Fort Lewis brigade is heading to Mosul in northern Iraq, and the soldiers are expected to leave this month and into July. At a farewell ceremony on Friday, I Corps and Fort Lewis commander Lt. Gen. James Dubik, a former Schofield Barracks commander, said that of 299 million people in the United States, only 2.3 million serve in uniform to defend the nation, the Olympian newspaper reported. “Less than 1 percent of the nation is carrying 100 percent of the burden of this war,” Dubik said. But in a sign of increased opposition to the three-year-old Iraq war, anti-war activists demonstrated at the Port of Olympia after Stryker vehicles drove there for shipment, the Olympian reported. Police used pepper spray on about 100 activists, and 22 people were arrested in one of the more volatile confrontations, the newspaper said. Paterson, 38, who in 1990 alleged that the Gulf War was about profits and oil in the Middle East and sat down on the tarmac at Kaneohe Bay instead of boarding a transport, said he’s not sure of the number of Iraq or Afghanistan war objectors. Cases that resulted in court-martial include a Navy sailor sentenced to three months of hard labor for refusing to board a ship headed to the Persian Gulf, a specialist in the National Guard given 120 days in a stand against fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a soldier sentenced to 15 months for refusing to deploy to Iraq a second time. Robert Arakaki, the 83-year-old president of the 100th Infantry Battalion Veterans group, who saw combat in Italy in 1945, yesterday said Watada “owes the country a lot.” There “should be some kind of good explanation” for why Watada wants out, he said, and Arakaki takes issue with claims of an immoral and illegal war. “Who determines what is legal or illegal? Him or our government? Not him,” Arakaki said. Retired Navy Cmdr. Jack Miller, past president of the Hawaii chapter of the Military Officers Association of America, said “there’s always been the problem of following orders. This time is no different.” “Being a Vietnam veteran, we went through this,” said Miller, 72. “The rest of the load had to be shared by those willing to follow orders and serve their country.” Dependable, loyal officers are needed, and “if one doesn’t fit that qualification, a bad apple will contaminate the barrel. He (Watada) should be punished in some way,” Miller said. “You don’t want someone over there in Iraq who’s not going to willingly follow orders. That’s dangerous.” Back to top Copyright © 2006 Use of this site signifies your agreement to the Terms of Service.

Here is an email I received from my cousin.  Thought it interesting enough to put up here.  It is a letter written by a soldier in Afghanistan.

Paste this link or follow the link at the bottom of the post.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKdTUcZLSXw

U.S. Army Specialist Tomas Young has some questions for George W. Bush. He's never met with the Commander-in-Chief who sent him into Sadr City, Iraq in a canvass covered truck during a massive uprising in that city on April 4, 2004. The same city on the same day that Cindy Sheehan's son Casey was killed.

Tomas was lucky. He was only paralyzed from the chest down. Amongst other things he'd like to ask of Bush, is why he won't allow funding for stem cell research which might eventually restore the spine that he lost in Bush's War. A spine which apparently Bush has never had.

Tomas and his new wife Bree (also pictured), came to Crawford from Kansas City on their honeymoon to stand in support of Cindy Sheehan.

and murdered him justifies himself by saying it was not a murder; it was a justified killing.......    Our liberal media has been so hush hush about the murder of this solider, maybe they think they same thing!!  They sure have talked about the baby murderer's murder til I'm sick to death of hearing it!!! 

Too bad Obama thought discussing the tiller murder was more important than mentioning a soldier's murder in THIS country due to a sicko islamic convert within our own country....  speaks volumes to me...

and murdered him justifies himself by saying it was not a murder; it was a justified killing.......    Our liberal media has been so hush hush about the murder of this solider, maybe they think they same thing!!  They sure have talked about the baby murderer's murder til I'm sick to death of hearing it!!! 

Too bad Obama thought discussing the tiller murder was more important than mentioning a soldier's murder in THIS country due to a sicko islamic convert within our own country....  speaks volumes to me...

He is from my neck of the woods.   

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/awol-soldier-surrenders-after-19-months/20060901041609990017?ncid=NWS00010000000001

By right-wing rags I mean publications and internet souces.  the complaint was simply that you use these sources as the unassailable factual basis for your claims.  My point, as well as several other posters in the past, was that you need to use less partisan sources for the "truths" that you post on this board. 

that he is an athiest.  That holds about as much water as the people on this board who said he was DRUNK the other night with O'Reilly.

Show me something factual.