What's New
| Congressman Mitchell: Pausing to Consider People Who REALLY Matter |
Chairman Harry Mitchell is a Hero to Veterans Nationwide August 20, 2010 (Arizona Republic) - It's been a month since I spoke to Rep. Harry Mitchell about suicides among military veterans and I'm just getting around to writing something. |
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| What Obama Won't Say Tonight About US Withdrawal from Iraq |
| August 31, 2010 (ConsortiumNews) - President Barack Obama’s aides say his speech this evening marking the end of "combat operations" in Iraq will avoid the vainglorious aspects of President George W. Bush’s infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech in 2003. We’ll see. |
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| Lawsuit Update: Prudential's Half-Billion in Dirty Secret Profits |
Families of Dead Soldiers Sue Insurer Over Its Handling of Survivors’ Benefits August 29, 2010 (New York Times) - Vickie Castro’s only child was killed six years ago just before Christmas, when a suicide bomber blew himself up inside an Army mess tent in Mosul, Iraq, killing more than 20 people. |
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| Op-Ed: Cost of War Must Also Include Caring for Our Veterans |
Overlooked Cost of Iraq / Afghanistan Wars: Our Veterans' Healthcare and Benefits August 15, 2010 (San Francisco Chronicle) - Two years after an Army specialist saw half his platoon torn apart in Iraq, he hanged himself in a California backyard. |
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| VA Secretary Shinseki's Open Message to Gulf War Veterans |
| August 11, 2010, Washington, DC (VA Press Release) - August 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the beginning of the Gulf War, launched with Operation Desert Shield and followed by Operation Desert Storm. VA honors this milestone with a renewed commitment to improving our responsiveness to the challenges facing Gulf War Veterans. |
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Editorial Column: Promises Broken on Torture, Transparency
Written by San Francisco Chronicle
Friday, 14 August 2009 09:03
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August 14, 2009 - The Obama administration has chosen to pursue some of the Bush administration's policies on torture and transparency. Right now the administration is fighting - in three courts, no less - to conceal information about the treatment of a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner.
The prisoner's name is Binyam Mohamed. A 30-year-old Ethiopian refugee and British resident, he was allegedly carrying a false passport when he was arrested in Pakistan in 2002. Mohamed claims he was tortured over the course of two years - in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before being transferred for more rough stuff in Guantanamo Bay. Rather than taking on the U.S. government directly, Mohamed's lawyers decided to sue Jeppesen Dataplan, a San Jose subsidiary of Boeing, for its alleged role in transporting Mohamed at the direction of the CIA. The Obama administration has endorsed the Bush administration's original arguments in the case, claiming that it poses a threat to national security. The administration even threatened Mohamed's lawyers with jail time after they wrote a letter asking Obama to release evidence of their client's treatment. The case has caused a minor scandal in the United Kingdom, where it appears that British intelligence service agents sat on their hands while Mohamed was allegedly being tortured in Morocco - at the request of the United States. And last month, a British government lawyer said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton threatened to curtail the U.S. intelligence-sharing program with Britain if it released details about Mohamed's treatment. We've yet to see any evidence that any of this has improved safety for Americans or the British. Obama campaigned on a promise to end the Bush administration's dangerous and reprehensible policies on torture. He should keep his word.
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