Veterans Oral History Project Reveals Cost of Combat to Soldiers

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Team VCS

July 31, 2008 – Research at the University of Arkansas suggests that the very training that prepares soldiers to react quickly in combat leaves the individual vulnerable to a variety of emotional and psychological problems upon return to civilian life. Conditions in Iraq have produced particularly traumatic effects among troops.

“What we learned talking to soldiers and mental health professionals affirms the findings of the Department of Defense Health Board Task Force on Mental Health, particularly regarding the stigma attached to psychological problems and the shortcomings in available treatment,” sociologist Lori Holyfield said.

Holyfield led a team of researchers in the Veterans Oral History Project. They collected oral histories of returning veterans of the war in Iraq as well as mental health professionals, both those who were active in the field and those who work in U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) facilities.

She then analyzed the oral histories along with other accounts by soldiers and mental health professionals from military blogs, documentary films and news coverage. Holyfield and graduate student Crosby Hipes will present the results in a paper titled “Emotions and Edgework in the Military: Construction of a Post-Combat Self” on Saturday, Aug. 2, at the annual meeting of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction in Boston.

Holyfield used what sociologists have learned about emotions and “edgework” as a framework for analyzing data about the soldiers’ experiences. Edgework is what sociologists call voluntary risk-taking behavior involving a negotiation between danger and safety in life-and-death situations. Certain fields, such as search-and-rescue units, engage in occupational edgework. However, the researchers wrote, “The inability to retreat in combat places combat on the far end of the continuum of edgework.”

There are four stages in edgework: preparation involves confidence-building, performance is marked by suppression of emotions, completion allows a release of emotions, and maintenance is a time for redefining emotions.

During the preparation stage in basic training, soldiers develop strong bonds with each other – a sense of brotherhood – and a new identity: their combat self. They prepare for combat, for “kill or be killed” situations in which they must be able to react without reflecting.

Typically, the performance stage of edgework is marked by hyper-arousal and the suppression of emotions. This stage is particularly intense in Iraq, where all soldiers exist constantly in a combat zone. They exercise emotional control while under constant alert.

“In Iraq, even the most benign occupation – a cook or a company clerk – is under threat,” Holyfield said. “There is no delineated frontline, and soldiers are always vulnerable.”

The soldiers interviewed consistently reported feelings of hyper-arousal. One soldier described how he felt after his unit survived an ambush: “There was exuberance and a massive adrenaline rush. … I never experienced anything like that before. Because you were scared, but never felt so alive.”

While many emotions are suppressed, the constant threat can lead to extended states of anger or rage. Anger, Holyfield said, “is seen as an allowable emotion for venting around fellow soldiers,” since soldiers cannot leave the edgework arena.

The anger often resurfaces in the completion stage of edgework. As one soldier said, “I was either angry or extremely excited, the whole time I was over there. Anger is good. Being excited is good. Being sad and all that can just be swept off to the side.”

In the maintenance phase of edgework, when soldiers return home, they must establish control of their emotions and reconcile their feelings and their actions. But, the researchers write, when basic emotions have been continually repressed, “the ability to get a perspective on one’s self is blocked.”

Soldiers are especially vulnerable during the transition phase as they return to civilian life. Some soldiers deal with this phase, the researchers found, by redefining their emotions in hyper-masculine ways, such as toughness or self-sacrifice.

“The hyper-masculine approach that supported edgework in combat also renders the post-combat self more precarious,” the researchers wrote. “Emotions that were considered necessary in combat become problematic once soldiers return.”

Soldier interviews confirmed the findings of the Department of Defense task force that reporting psychological problems still leads to stigmatization or reduced security clearance, a problem that is compounded by a lack of accessibility to mental health workers. These actions leave little incentive for soldiers to be honest about their emotional and psychological needs. Mental health problems among returning soldiers are at a crisis level, with high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and increasing rates of suicide, substance abuse and alcoholism. The numbers of mental health workers per soldier are declining in Iraq. Meanwhile, the VA is working to increase its mental health staff and reach out to young soldiers in hopes of assuring them that the VA is no longer just “their father’s resource.”

“Military training by its very nature subordinates the self to that of the collective identity of the group, persuading soldiers to accept and follow orders given by superiors, regardless,” the researchers wrote. “Occupational edgework is costly and thousands of soldiers are returning with a post-combat self that reflects this reality.”

Holyfield is an associate professor in the department of sociology and criminal justice in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Arkansas. Her research colleagues at the University of Arkansas were Mindy Bradley, assistant professor in sociology and criminal justice, and graduate students Hipes and Melodie Griffis.

The Veterans Oral History Project was partly funded by a grant from the University of Arkansas Women’s Giving Circle and is conducted in partnership with the Library of Congress and the Pryor Center for Visual and Oral History, a part of the special collections department of the University Libraries.

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Veterans Groups Appalled at White House Veto Threats

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Team VCS

August 1, 2008, Washington, DC – A coalition representing millions of America’s veterans today expressed outrage at a White House claim that Congress is overspending on veterans programs and has threatened to veto any of the remaining 11 spending bills that exceed the President’s request unless Congress finds $2.9 billion in offsets elsewhere in the federal budget.

Under the fiscal year 2009 Military Construction-VA Appropriations bill, the Department of Veterans Affairs would receive $47.7 billion, which is $4.6 billion above the 2008 funding level and $2.9 billion more than the President requested.

As the House of Representatives prepared to debate the measure, the four Independent Budget veterans service organizations told Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi that they “vigorously defend the crucial increases in VA funding” which the Administration has underfunded in its budget requests for the past several years.
In their July 31 letter to Speaker Pelosi, AMVETS, Disabled American Veterans, Paralyzed Veterans of America and the Veterans of Foreign Wars said, “This budget, a budget that intends to bind the wounds of war and to care for those who have worn the nation’s uniform, should never be used as a political lever to force policies of one branch (of government) on the other.”

It is vital for Congress to provide funding necessary to meet the health care needs of veterans and to do so in a timely manner. Unfortunately, continued delays in VA funding demonstrate that reform is needed to the current funding process to make veterans health care sufficient, timely and predictable.
A complete analysis of the President’s budget and assessment of VA’s funding needs is included in The Independent Budget, which provides a roadmap for Congress and the Administration to ensure that veterans’ needs are fully and properly met. To view or download a copy of this year’s The Independent Budget, please visit www.independentbudget.org.

AMVETS — a leader since 1944 in preserving the freedoms secured by America’s Armed Forces — provides not only support for veterans and the active military in procuring receipt of their earned entitlements, but also community services that enhance the quality of life for this nation’s citizens. ( www.amvets.org)
The 1.4 million-member Disabled American Veterans, a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 and chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1932, is dedicated to one, single purpose: building better lives for our nation’s disabled veterans and their families. ( www.dav.org)

The Paralyzed Veterans of America, a veterans service organization chartered by Congress, has for more than 61 years served the needs of its members, all of whom have catastrophic paralysis caused by spinal cord injury or disease. ( www.pva.org)

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Exclusive: To Provoke War, Cheney Considered Proposal to Dress Up Navy Seals as Iranians and Shoot At Them

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Team VCS

July 31, 2008 – Speaking at the Campus Progress journalism conference earlier this month, Seymour Hersh – a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist for The New Yorker – revealed that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran.

In Hersh’s most recent article, he reports that this meeting occurred in the wake of the overblown incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when a U.S. carrier almost shot at a few small Iranian speedboats. The “meeting took place in the Vice-President’s office. ‘The subject was how to create a casus belli between Tehran and Washington,'” according to one of Hersh’s sources.

During the journalism conference event, I asked Hersh specifically about this meeting and if he could elaborate on what occurred. Hersh explained that, during the meeting in Cheney’s office, an idea was considered to dress up Navy Seals as Iranians, put them on fake Iranian speedboats, and shoot at them. This idea, intended to provoke an Iran war, was ultimately rejected:

HERSH: There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build – we in our shipyard – build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up.

Might cost some lives. And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of – that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

Hersh argued that one of the things the Bush administration learned during the encounter in the Strait of Hormuz was that, “if you get the right incident, the American public will support” it.

“Look, is it high school? Yeah,” Hersh said. “Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.”

Transcript:

HERSH: There was a meeting. Among the items considered and rejected – which is why the New Yorker did not publish it, on grounds that it wasn’t accepted – one of the items was why not…

There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build – we in our shipyard – build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives.

And it was rejected because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. That’s the kind of – that’s the level of stuff we’re talking about. Provocation. But that was rejected.

So I can understand the argument for not writing something that was rejected – uh maybe. My attitude always towards editors is they’re mice training to be rats.

But the point is jejune, if you know what that means. Silly? Maybe. But potentially very lethal. Because one of the things they learned in the incident was the American public, if you get the right incident, the American public will support bang-bang-kiss-kiss. You know, we’re into it.

…What happened in the Gulf was, in the Straits, in early January, the President was just about to go to the Middle East for a visit. So that was one reason they wanted to gin it up. Get it going.

Look, is it high school? Yeah. Are we playing high school with you know 5,000 nuclear warheads in our arsenal? Yeah we are. We’re playing, you know, who’s the first guy to run off the highway with us and Iran.

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Editorial Column: The 10 Idiocies of the General Election

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Team VCS

August 4, 2008 –

The Surge: Working Overtime

“The surge is working.” It’s an incessant mantra, forever on the lips of politicians and “journalists” these days. It’s as if they can simply will it into truth. Yes, there has been a reduction in violence in Iraq, if the stats are to be believed. But it’s a mistake to think that’s primarily due to an increase in troop strength. What is working in Iraq is the Awakening, a movement of Sunni tribes against al Qaeda in Iraq (which, while a franchisee of the al Qaeda trademark, is really an entirely separate group). Essentially what has happened is that the Sunni Arabs have grown weary of al Qaeda’s tendency to wantonly murder their own people, and to start civil wars and stuff like that. So they’ve started taking money from the Pentagon instead of bin Laden, and things have quieted down somewhat. This change was bound to occur, and preceded the surge. In fact, if Bush had eschewed the surge, and instead sent the equivalent amount of money for bribes and salaries, it would have been much more effective.

What seems long forgotten is the original rationale for the surge, which was not simply to quell violence but to establish Iraq’s ability to govern itself, setting the stage for American withdrawal. That would constitute true “success,” although leaving has already been designated “surrender” by both Bush and McCain. But the real reason for the surge has always been to indefinitely prolong the conversation about withdrawal that was made inevitable by the 2006 elections. And in that sense, the surge has been an unparalleled success.

The New Yorker Cover

This was really one of the strangest cartoon controversies yet, revealing just how humor-challenged people really are. Admittedly, if the same cover had been on the Weekly Standard, it might have pissed me off too, but context is everything. What I find most alarming is the apparently widespread notion that satirists are required to present only jokes that are immediately obvious to every gump alive, and couldn’t possibly be subject to misinterpretation. That’s the death of comedy, right there. The rush to condemn the cover came at least in part because it didn’t take seriously enough the smears against Obama that it mocked. It rightly said, “Look at this. Isn’t this fucking ridiculous?” And it is. It is ridiculous, and it is fit to be ridiculed. But to see The New Yorker maligned as a “right wing rag” by pea-brained bloggers was probably the funniest thing about this whole controversy.

McCain’s War on Reality

The guy has referred to “Czechoslovakia” at least four times this year, after it was already a minor gaffe for him in 2000. He’s called the Sudan “Somalia.” He’s referred to “President Putin of Germany.” He’s worried about the “Iraq/Pakistan border” — perhaps an oblique reference to Iran? He doesn’t know Shiite from Sunnis, and thinks the Iranians are helping al Qaeda. He thinks the surge caused the Awakening. All of these mistakes would be deeply damaging to a less coddled candidate. But McCain is an elderly war hero, and there is a natural tendency to hold back on blasting him for his poor information retention.

But what about the football story? McCain has been telling a story, at least since he wrote it in Flags of our Fathers in 1999, of substituting the names of the Green Bay Packers defensive line for his squadron mates when pressed by Vietnamese interrogators. It’s a great story, as All-American as can be. He discussed it in 2005, when A&E did a movie version of the book, including the inspirational scene. Again in 2005, McCain used the story to illustrate how torture yields bad information. On July 9th, McCain told the story again at a press conference in Pittsburgh—only this time is was the Steelers defensive line.

Setting aside the rank stupidity of destroying a great piece of image work for a cheap hometown shoutout to a regional media market, this fib stabs at the heart of McCain’s straight-talking war hero mythology. It’s a breathtakingly brazen and completely unnecessary lie, at least as bewildering as Hillary Clinton’s “sniper fire” silliness, except that, Hillary wasn’t running as a special forces agent. It calls into question every unconfirmed detail about McCain’s POW years—how many other stories is he just making up? And what kind of man would sully his service with such pointless embellishments? But, dissimilarly to Hillary’s sniper snafu, McCain’s Packers/Steelers switcheroo slid by largely unnoticed, chuckled at by the media momentarily and tossed away. And they’re in the tank for Obama?

Shilling and Drilling

It’s amazing what the PR industry can do to divert an issue. While the truth that carbon emissions are going to alter our planet in unpleasant ways in the near future is more and more well established, somehow the topic has been changed from reducing the use of fossil fuels to “independence from foreign oil.” So now, after a few-week push, Americans are ready to start drilling offshore and in Alaska. You’ve gotta hand it to the oil industry; only they could take multiple crises for which they are responsible and turn them into a win for their agenda. Never mind that it will take years to have what will ultimately be a negligible effect on the price of oil. Gas is expensive, and people are easy to fool, especially if you play to their moronic fears of all things foreign. Meanwhile, it turns out that American oil burns just as dirty as it does anywhere else, and no meaningful emissions regulation is on the horizon. Get yourself some flood insurance.

Gramm: Crackers?

John McCain’s recently-fired principal economic adviser Phil Gramm’s comments about America being a “nation of whiners” in a “mental recession” are worthy of forced drowning. This golden asshole, drafter of the Enron loophole, Vice President at the disgraced and near-defunct Swiss bank UBS, and emitter of similarly foul, wealth-arrogant quotations about not feeling sorry for destitute 80-year-olds (“Most people don’t have the luxury of living to be 80 years old, so it’s hard for me to feel sorry for them,”says Gramm), thinks the economic downturn is all in your head, and has nothing to do with the collapse of the mortgage and credit industries or the unsound practices that were encouraged by an anarchist regulatory philosophy of which Gramm himself is a huge proponent. McCain and Gramm have been tight for years, and although he had no choice but to dump Gramm for the duration of the campaign, fellow money-saturated dickhead Steve Forbes assures us Gramm will be back, to help combat the whining poor and their paranoid delusions about hunger and homelessness.

We’re Winning What Now?

McCain and Bush continually iterate their will to “win” in Iraq. But what is winning in this context? After all, we are not looking to colonize Iraq, at least not officially. In other words, there is no winning or losing in Iraq—only staying or leaving. Neither constitutes victory, but one is a hell of a lot cheaper.

Penniless Elitists

A common complaint among Democrats is that it makes no sense to label Obama (or whatever politician is the target du jour) an “elitist,” since so many Republicans, including McCain and Bush, are children of wealth and power, and have considerably more money than Obama, while both Obama and his wife come from humble origins and attained their status through their own hard work. On the surface, this seems to make sense, but it’s a misapprehension of what the elitist label has truly come to signify: education and intellect. McCain and Bush may be of the upper crust, but it’s clear to all who observe them that they’re not very bright. Obama, on the other hand, clearly was paying attention at Harvard. That’s why the label sticks to him. Excessive intelligence is a liability in American political campaigns; there can be no doubt of that, and when people speak of Obama as “not one of us,” that is, at least in part, what they’re talking about. It’s anti-intellectualism that brought us eight years of Bush, as well as eight years of Reagan. Americans love a simple-talkin’ good ole boy, even if he does lower their wages and spend their retirement. Luckily for Obama, McCain is such a stiff that this factor will be somewhat mitigated.

Soundbitten

Take a moment to recall Wesley Clark’s supposed slander against McCain’s military service from last month. Here’s how the exchange went on “Face the Nation”:

SCHIEFFER: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean…

Gen. CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.

Of course, virtually none of the abundant, breathless stories which ensued bothered to mention that the “getting shot down” construct was Bob Schieffer’s, and that Clark was merely repeating it. Nope, the story was that Clark said, “I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.” Obviously, this sounds much worse, as if Clark is criticizing McCain’s piloting skills. I don’t love Wesley Clark, but it seems pretty damn unfair to put words in his mouth like this and then pretend the phrase was his own invention. Now, this doesn’t mean the press is on McCain’s side; they just know a sensational story when they see it, and this one was much more outrageous when amputated from the context of Schieffer’s preceding statement.

This is something to remember when you see unfair coverage of either candidate: The media bias isn’t usually left or right; the bias is toward profit. If a half-assed story is more appealing than a full examination, then half-assed it’ll be. If, one the other hand, a news source risks alienating its audience—by, say, questioning McCain’s POW narriative a la the Packers/Steelers gaffe, they’ll shy away.

Irreconcilable Deferences

It turns out white Americans don’t like Michelle Obama as much as they like her husband. Why? A big factor in Mrs. Obama’s unpopularity is that, unlike her husband, she is culturally African-American. She reminds whites of stereotypes that are specific to black women: too loud, too rude, too pushy—not dainty at all. They much prefer a dead-eyed robo-spouse like Laura Bush or Cindy McCain, because it implies a domineering, controlling, in-charge man, just the type they imagine to be suited to running a global empire. If Obama’s deferential to his wife, how will he handle the Iranians? And what kind of table settings will she pick out for dinner with the Putins? I hear grown women expressing their distaste for enduring eight years with “that woman” in the White House, as if her skin color will rub off on the walls. It’s goddamn revolting, but that’s America.

Bomb Bomb Iran

Even as we discuss ways of extracting ourselves from the disaster we’ve created in Iraq, we find ourselves moving inexorably closer to attacking Iran, or at least supporting an Israeli attack on Iran. Amazingly, we hear the same bullshit WMD justifications coming from the same people who so expertly fooled us into invading Iraq, and even more amazingly, it seems to be working again. Personally, I never understood how Iraq hawks like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer were ever able to find work after the WMD hoax ran its course, but they are more prominent than ever somehow. It’s almost as if they were being rewarded for playing their roles convincingly. But even now, after rejecting the idea that weapons inspectors should complete their work in Iraq sealed our fate there, the very idea that Obama might go so far as to talk to the Iranians before bombing the crap out of them is seen as naïve. Iran is not like Iraq in one way, though: They have a real military and they will not be content to just let us in and take occasional potshots at us. They will fight back. And we will once again find ourselves overextended in a war we didn’t really want, but were convinced by known liars to start. And then we will…probably still not learn our lesson.

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Would Obama Prosecute the Bush Administration for Torture?

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Team VCS

August 4, 2008, Washington, DC – On the campaign trail in April, Barack Obama was asked whether, if elected, he would prosecute Bush administration officials for establishing torture as American policy. The candidate demurred. “If crimes have been committed, they should be investigated,” he said. But he quickly added, “I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of the Republicans as a partisan witch hunt, because I think we’ve got too many problems to solve.”

People who have given advice to the Obama campaign say they see little political advantage in the candidate discussing during a general election campaign how his administration might investigate or prosecute Bush administration officials for torture. Other than the response above, prompted by a question from Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News, he has said little about his plans. But behind the scenes, a slate of foreign policy and human rights experts with various degrees of connections to the Obama campaign, some of them likely to occupy positions of authority in an Obama administration, have begun to discuss that very issue, and in great detail. What they’re likely to recommend to Obama, should he become president, won’t fulfill the dreams of those who’ve hoped for immediate criminal accountability for Bush administration officials.

Members and advisors of the administration-in-waiting have formed largely informal working groups to take up a whole host of issues related to the Bush administration’s legacy, like what to do about the Guantánamo detainees. While they have not been asked to develop a formal recommendation for Obama on the question of criminal accountability for torture, those who are weighing the issue, a group that includes some of the 300 people the New York Times recently described as Obama’s “mini State Department,” are moving toward consensus on some key points. Specifically, don’t hold your breath waiting for Dick Cheney to be frog-marched into federal court. Prosecution of any officials, if it were to occur, would probably not occur during Obama’s first term. Instead, we may well see a congressionally empowered commission that would seek testimony from witnesses in search of the truth about what occurred. Though some witnesses might be offered immunity in exchange for testimony, the question of whether anybody would be prosecuted would be deferred to a later date — meaning Obama’s second term, if such is forthcoming.

While there are certainly participants in these discussions who believe that top-level administration officials deserve to be hauled before a judge, even the harshest critics of the current administration’s torture policies don’t think there will be an immediate effort by the next president to prosecute anyone from the Bush administration. “I don’t sense the political appetite for it,” said Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director at Human Rights Watch, who is involved in the informal discussions about what Obama could do about investigating torture. “I don’t think the next president will do that no matter who he is.”

Attorneys say successful prosecutions would be tough anyway. The Justice Department approved the abuse and Congress changed the War Crimes Act in 2006 to make prosecutions more difficult. There is also speculation that any end-of-term presidential pardons by Bush might include some of the likely torture defendants.

But the avenues of investigation being discussed don’t necessarily rule out at least an attempt at prosecuting Bush officials at some later date. The nonpartisan presidential commission that Malinowski and other people involved in the discussions are advocating would have considerable power, granted by Congress, to force cooperation. The commission would ultimately deliver recommendations to the president that would include, among other things, whether or not Cheney deserves that walk up the courthouse steps.

The first order of business, however, would be learning the truth. “I think a lot of us feel that the American people are entitled to the whole truth,” said another person who knows about the discussions. “The American people are entitled to [an investigation] from an official body that has access to the classified documents that makes as much public as it can,” that person added.

The commission would focus strictly on detention, torture and extraordinary rendition, or the practice of spiriting detainees to a third country for abusive interrogations. The panel would focus strictly on these abuses, leaving out any other allegedly illegal activities during the Bush administration, such as domestic spying.

It would also try to confirm or debunk, once and for all, the claims of high-level Bush administration officials that the use of abusive interrogations worked and resulted in significant intelligence gains.

This might include claims made by the president. In a Sept. 6, 2006, White House address, Bush admitted to a network of secret CIA prisons and the use of “tough” interrogation techniques by the agency. He then ticked off a treasure trove of intelligence he said the CIA pried out of Abu Zubaydah, a suspected al-Qaida operative captured on March 28, 2002, by intelligence agents from the United States and Pakistan.

But FBI agents initially interrogated Zubaydah using tried and true, noncoercive techniques, reportedly with success. The CIA later took over and used coercive methods that included waterboarding. Controversy lingers over claims about the effectiveness of the CIA’s methods, particularly in comparison to the FBI’s approach.

Like the 9-11 Commission, Congress could grant this panel the authority to issue subpoenas to compel witnesses to cooperate and leverage the production of documents. The panel might also have the power to grant witnesses immunity from prosecution in exchange for cooperation.

Immunity, in fact, remains one of the thorniest issues in the ongoing discussions about how to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation program. A recent Newsweek piece by Stuart Taylor Jr. suggested that Bush “pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution” for torture during the Bush years. Taylor argued that this would encourage those individuals to testify freely in front of some sort of truth commission.

That indemnity arrangement is more reminiscent of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the 1990s-era investigation aimed at unearthing the sins of apartheid. But blanket indemnity would not be part of the commission under discussion. “A lot of people think that that is not something that goes over well with the American people,” said the person familiar with the discussions. “What we have much more of a tradition of is presidential fact-finding commissions.”

Instead of offering a blanket amnesty, the fact-finding commission would delay any decisions on whether or not to attempt to prosecute any Bush administration officials for their transgressions. Given the time it would take for a commission to do its work, any such decision would probably not take place till Obama’s second term. That would be in accord with what Obama said in April, in what seems to be his lone statement on the issue of accountability, about not wanting his first term to be taken up by what critics would try to characterize as political retribution.

“Something like this would be unprecedented in the American experience and I think it would be absolutely necessary,” Kenneth Kitts, author of “Presidential Commissions and National Security: The Politics of Damage Control,” said when informed of the rough plans for the commission. “We’ve had panels that have looked at scandals. We’ve had panels that have looked at intractable political problems,” said Kitts, a political science professor at South Carolina’s Francis Marion University. “But nothing in terms of looking at an issue that has this array of legal, moral and even spiritual questions attached to it.”

Ben Rhodes, a foreign policy advisor to the Obama campaign, did not respond to Salon’s request for comment by press time.

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Ragtag Taliban Show Tenacity in Afghanistan

Posted on August 4, 2008 by Team VCS

August 4, 2008, Kabul, Afghanistan – Six years after being driven from power, the Taliban are demonstrating a resilience and a ferocity that are raising alarm here, in Washington and in other NATO capitals, and engendering a fresh round of soul-searching over how a relatively ragtag insurgency has managed to keep the world’s most powerful armies at bay.

The mounting toll inflicted by the insurgents, including nine American soldiers killed in a single attack last month, has turned Afghanistan into a deadlier battlefield than Iraq and refocused the attention of America’s military commanders and its presidential contenders on the Afghan war.

But the objectives of the war have become increasingly uncertain in a conflict where Taliban leaders say they do not feel the need to control territory, at least for now, or to outfight American and NATO forces to defeat them — only to outlast them in a region that is in any case their home.

The Taliban’s tenacity, military officials and analysts say, reflects their success in maintaining a cohesive leadership since being driven from power in Afghanistan, their ability to attract a continuous stream of recruits and their advantage in having a haven across the border in Pakistan.

While the Taliban enjoy such a sanctuary, they will be very hard to beat, military officials say, and American officials have stepped up pressure on Pakistan in recent weeks to take more action against the Taliban and other militants there. That included a visit last month by a top official of the Central Intelligence Agency who, American officials say, confronted senior Pakistani leaders about ties between the country’s powerful spy service and militants operating in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Pakistani officials say those ties, which stretch back decades, have been broken. But there is no doubt that the Taliban continue to use Pakistan to train, recruit, regroup and resupply their insurgency.

The advantage of that haven in Pakistan, even beyond the lawless tribal realms, has allowed the Taliban leadership to exercise uninterrupted control of its insurgency through the same clique of mullahs and military commanders who ran Afghanistan as a theocracy and harbored Osama bin Laden until they were driven from power in December 2001.

The Taliban’s reclusive leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, a one-eyed cleric and war veteran, is widely believed by Afghan and Western officials to be based in Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province in Pakistan, near the border with Afghanistan.

He runs a shadow government, complete with military, religious and cultural councils, and has appointed officials and commanders to virtually every Afghan province and district, just as he did when he ruled Afghanistan, the Taliban claim.

He oversees his movement through a grand council of 10 people, the Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahed, said in a telephone interview.

Mullah Bradar, one of the Taliban’s most senior and ruthless commanders, who has been cited by human rights groups for committing massacres, serves as his first deputy. He passes down Mullah Omar’s commands and makes all military decisions, including how foreign fighters are deployed, according to Waheed Muzhta, a former Taliban Foreign Ministry official who lives in Kabul and follows the progress of the Taliban through his own research.

The Taliban even produce their own magazine, Al Somood, published online in Arabic, where details of their leadership structure can be found, he said.

But while the Taliban may be united politically, the insurgency remains poorly coordinated at operational and strategic levels, said Gen. David D. McKiernan, commander of the NATO force in Afghanistan.

Taliban forces cannot hold territory, and they cannot defeat NATO forces in a direct fight, other NATO officials say. They also note that scores of senior and midlevel Taliban commanders have been killed over the past year, weakening the insurgents, especially in the south.

Three senior members of the grand council were killed in 2007, and others have been detained, Mr. Muzhta said. The military council has lost 6 of its 29 members in recent years, he said. Despite their losses, however, the Taliban repeatedly express confidence that the United States and its allies will grow weary of a thankless war in a foreign land, withdraw and leave Afghanistan open for a return of the Taliban to power.

The Taliban say they need little in the way of arms or matériel. “The Taliban are now mounting a hit-and-run war against their enemies,” Mr. Mujahed, the spokesman, said. “It doesn’t need much money or weapons compared to what the foreign troops are spending.”

Even so, Western officials say the Taliban have a steady stream of financing from Afghanistan’s opium trade, as well as from traders, mosques, jihad organizations and sympathizers in the region, and Arab countries.

At the same time, Taliban leaders can still exploit their position as moral authorities — Taliban means religious students — which gives them overarching power over the various commanders, bandits, smugglers and insurgents fighting around Afghanistan.

That aura is increasingly terrifying. Known for their harsh rule when in power, the Taliban have turned even more ruthless out of power, and for the first time they have shown great cruelty even toward their fellow Pashtun tribesmen.

The Taliban have used terrorist tactics — which include beheadings, abductions, death threats and summary executions of people accused of being spies — as well as a skillful propaganda campaign, to make the insurgency seem more powerful and omnipresent than it really is.

“The increasing use of very public attacks has had a striking effect on morale far beyond the immediate victims,” the International Crisis Group, a nonprofit group that seeks to prevent and resolve deadly conflicts, said in a recent report.

Some of that brutality may be attributed to the growing influence of Al Qaeda, but much of it has by now taken root within the insurgents’ ranks.

After the American-led invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, Al Qaeda and the Taliban both sought refuge in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which have since become a breeding ground where they and other foreign fighters have found common cause against the American forces in Afghanistan and have shared terrorist tactics and insurgent strategies.

Pakistan’s tribal areas along the border are now the main pool to recruit fighters for Afghanistan, General McKiernan said. Pakistani insurgent groups in the region — Pakistani Taliban — have also become a potent threat to the security and stability of Pakistan itself.

Jihad does not recognize borders, the Taliban like to say, and indeed much unites the Taliban on both sides of the border. They share a common Pashtun heritage, a longstanding disregard for the Afghan-Pakistani border drawn by the British and the goal of establishing a theocracy that would impose Islamic law, or Shariah.

In fact, the dispatches of the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, carry the symbol of the Islamic Emirate, the name the Afghan Taliban used for their government.

Mr. Mehsud and his cohort have sworn allegiance to the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, as well as to Jalaluddin Haqqani, a former minister in the Taliban government who now commands Taliban forces in much of eastern Afghanistan.

Western military officials often describe Mr. Haqqani as running a distinct network with close links to Arab members of Al Qaeda, but he and his followers have also proclaimed allegiance to Mullah Omar.

Even Mr. bin Laden has paid tribute to Mullah Omar as Amir ul-Momineen, or Leader of the Faithful, the paramount religious leader.

To avoid jeopardizing their sanctuary or their hosts, however, the Taliban have always maintained the pretence that their leadership is based inside Afghanistan and that the insurgency is made up entirely of Afghans.

The two Afghan Taliban spokesmen, Mr. Mujahed and Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, who speak regularly by telephone to local journalists, never reveal their whereabouts. They profess sympathy for their Muslim brothers, the Pakistani Taliban, but deny that there is any joint leadership or unified strategy.

They also claim that the Afghan Taliban broke with Al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks, which led to the fall of the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

The Afghan government dismisses those claims, however, and insists that the Taliban on both sides of the border are directed by Pakistani intelligence officials with the aim of destabilizing Afghanistan and maintaining some sway over their neighbor.

While the Pakistani government was one of the only supporters of the Taliban government when it was in power from 1996 to 2001, today the Pakistani authorities profess not to know the whereabouts of Mullah Omar or his colleagues.

But Afghan and NATO officials say the Taliban today operate much as the mujahedeen did in the 1980s, when they used Pakistan as their rear base, to drive out the Soviet Army, which had invaded Afghanistan.

Many members of President Hamid Karzai’s government, who were themselves mujahedeen, say the Taliban are even using some of the same contacts from 20 years ago, including a well-known trader in Quetta who handles logistics, housing and other supplies.

He was widely known to be the front man for the largest Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, according to one former mujahedeen commander who is now a senior official in the Afghan government.

Meanwhile, Taliban spokesmen dismiss the idea of negotiations or power-sharing deals with the Afghan government, even though Afghan officials say that more Taliban members have made overtures to talk in recent months.

“We carried out the fight to oppose the invaders,” one of the Taliban spokesmen, Mr. Ahmadi, said. “Now they are on the brink of humiliation. That’s the aim of our fight.”

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Aug 3, Energy Policy Alert: If This Video Doesn’t Get Us Off Oil, Nothing Will

Posted on August 3, 2008 by Team VCS

August 1, 2008, If we’re addicted to oil, our twelve-step program should begin with admitting that we have a problem. As the price of oil creeps higher, finding new energy sources is more important than ever. But the search for alternatives, combined with environmental disruptions, is putting new pressures on other essentials like food. There are some things that are going well in the world. Right now, the economy is not one of them.

Please view this video: or cut and paste this link: http://www.alternet.org/blogs/video/93598/if_this_animated_video_doesn{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}27t_get_us_off_oil{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}2C_nothing_will/

Note: Eighteen years after the start of the Gulf War, the U.S. is still fighting in Iraq.  Veterans for Common Sense has long held that our addiction to oil is a major cause of the war in Iraq.  We believe drilling for oil off our coast or occupying another country to steal their oil are short-sighted and counter-productive.  Rather, we need to think outside the box and find ways to conserve energy and find alternative sources that are not fossil fuels such as oil.

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Editorial Column: Not All Veterans Salute Senator McCain

Posted on August 3, 2008 by Team VCS

August 3, 2008, Palm Beach, Florida – The growing ranks of veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will have a lot to say about who becomes president. And what they are saying isn’t what you might expect.

In theory, John McCain, with his long record of service as a Navy pilot and prisoner of war story from Vietnam, should have the market cornered on the military vote.

Instead, he has drawn opposition from many veterans because of his voting record in the Senate. Sen. McCain has voted against bills that would have improved veterans’ benefits, particularly health care, or measures to ease the strain on active-duty troops and their families.

The disapproval among vets for Sen. McCain has fed surprising support for Barack Obama, who has voted for many of the veterans’ initiatives in the Senate that his opponent rejected.

One of the last things the McCain campaign expected was to wind up in the cross hairs of angry veterans and having to fight off repeated attacks. But, then, that was also one of the last things the decorated veteran John Kerry expected in 2004.

The Internet has given rise to a new generation of veterans groups that line up from one end of the political spectrum to the other – Veterans for Peace at the left end and the Swift Boat Vets on the right.

Among the many misconceptions about running for president is that a military combat record makes a candidate more electable.

In fact, the converse is true, at least since the Vietnam War changed Americans’ perspectives about service in the armed forces.

None of the three presidents who have won two terms since the ’70s has done it on the strength of his military credentials.

As an Army officer during World War II, Ronald Reagan made government movies for the war effort while stationed in Culver City, Cal. Bill Clinton has no military record, and lingering questions about why he has none. George W. Bush made sure the skies were safe over Houston when he served on the homefront with the Texas Air National Guard during the height of Vietnam.

Presidential candidates with truly heroic service in World War II have been big losers in November: George McGovern was a decorated B-24 bomber pilot who flew dozens of missions over Africa and Europe; Bob Dole nearly died from wounds suffered in Italy, and lost the use of his right arm; George H.W. Bush earned the Distinguished Flying Cross after getting shot down during one of many bombing missions in the Pacific.

When it comes to winning support from veterans, Sen. McCain’s voting record on their issues is an imposing obstacle.

The Disabled Veterans of America gives him a 20 percent rating, compared with an 80 percent rating for Sen. Obama. The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America gives Sen. McCain a D and Sen. Obama a B+. The Vietnam Veterans of America say Sen. McCain has voted against them on 15 issues.

One of the most vocal and fastest-growing veterans groups to oppose the McCain campaign is VoteVets.org. Formed in 2006, the organization claims a membership of roughly 100,000, with a political action committee devoted to electing congressional candidates who oppose the handling of the Iraq war.

Especially galling to VoteVets.org is Sen. McCain’s opposition to the new, bipartisan GI Bill that increases education benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan vets. Sen. Obama voted for the bill when it passed 75-22 in May; Sen. McCain was on the campaign trail and did not vote.

The size of the veterans’ vote is easier to calculate than its direction. The nation has about 24 million veterans – a population the size of California – with 1.7 million of them in Florida. In 2004, roughly 80 percent of vets turned out to vote, compared with 64 percent of nonveterans. American veterans are 80 percent white non-Hispanic, 11 percent African-American, 6 percent Hispanic and 92 percent male. Their median age is 60, and 60 percent of them live in urban areas.

Veterans are politically and demographically diverse – a long way from a monolithic voting bloc. But Sen. McCain is running the risk of uniting them against him.

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Aug 2, Victory for Veterans, Chairman Hall’s Legislation to Expedite VA Disability Payments Passes House 429 to 0

Posted on August 2, 2008 by Team VCS

Veterans for Common Sense filed a lawsuit against VA and testified four times before Congress during 2007 and 2008 about the need to reform VA’s broken claims system at the Veterans Benefits Administration.  VCS also offered many progressive solutions.  The legislation is ” … a composite of a year’s worth of hearings and common sense suggestions,” Chairman John Hall said.  

Musician Lawmaker Pens First ‘Hit’ For Disabled Vets

July 31, 2008 – Disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs would reach veterans sooner, and with special swiftness for severely wounded veterans and their families, under legislation to upgrade the VA disability rating process unanimously passed by the House Wednesday (July 30).

The Veterans Disability Benefits Claims Modernization Act (HR 5892) is the first major bill that freshmen Rep. John Hall (D-NY) has led through the House as chairman of veterans’ affairs subcommittee on disability assistance.

In an interview, the 60-year-old Hall, a professional musician, was upbeat as though he had written and produced another hit song. In this case the reviews will come from veterans and their families; from Senate colleagues who also must embrace the bill’s 13 provisions if they are to become law; and, in November, from voters in his Hudson Valley district.

“I’m thrilled,” Hall said. “I’ve co-sponsored and worked on many other bills, but this is the first one I shepherded through committee and worked on for a year.  It’s my first major piece of legislation so, to have it pass with all green up on the board, was really exciting.”

As the 429-0 vote came in, Hall said he looked for Rep. Doug Lamborn (Colo.) on the House floor to thank the subcommittee’s ranking Republican for his contributions on the bill.

Hall’s bio shows he left college early to pursue a musical career. In 1972 he co-founded the band Orleans and co-wrote numerous popular songs including “Still the One” and “Dance with Me.” He recorded with other performers too including Bonnie Raitt, Chet Atkins and Linda Ronstadt.

But in discussing highlights of HR 5892, Hall sounded like a seasoned policy wonk comfortable discussing every detail. He said he is cautiously confident that the Senate, at a minimum, will include most of the bill’s provisions in their own omnibus VA benefits bill this fall.

“There are some very good things for veterans here, especially for severely injured veterans returning from Afghanistan and Iraq,” Hall said.

Here are highlights:

PARTIAL DISABILITY RATINGS – For veterans who suffered amputations, paralysis from spinal cord injuries, traumatic brain injuries or other indisputably severe conditions, VA would be required to issue partial disability ratings as soon as veterans or their families file claims.  It’s not right, Hall said, that some severely wounded veterans and their families still wait months for VA to begin paying compensation.

We require the VA to start paying from day one on a severely injured disabled veteran whose injury is not in dispute,” Hall said. “To take a graphic case, if you go to Iraq with two legs and come back with one, you might have eight other aspects to your claim –visual, auditory, shrapnel wounds, et cetera.  The average time right now to adjudicate an entire claim is over six months.  But why make a veteran wait for that part of the claim not in dispute, especially since we have record numbers of suicides, divorces and bankruptcies among veterans.”

VA RATING SCHEDULE – VA would have to establish an 18-member advisory panel of disability experts to recommend how to overhaul the decades-old Veterans Affairs Schedule of Rating Disabilities (VASRD).  Revisions should raise compensation levels to cover loss of quality of life as well as lost earnings capacity, the sole yardstick today.  The revised schedule also should reflect advances in medicine and technology.  A plan and timeline for making changes should be submitted to Congress within three years.

“We’re requiring a first top-to-bottom reexamination of the rating system,” Hall said. The VA rating schedule today, he added, “differs greatly” from that used by Social Security, private insurers or medical institutions.

“It has not been examined thoroughly in 50 years” and so it fails to reflect “huge leaps forward” in medicine or “the kind of injuries one finds on the battlefield today,” Hall said.

VA RATERS’ WORK CREDITS – VA also would be directed to study and revise the system of work credits given raters and adjudicators of compensation claims. Credits toward “end-of-year bonuses,” Hall said, now emphasize to speed over thoroughness in claim processing.  That leads to more errors, more appeals and more reopened cases, he said.

The problem is most acute for severely injured veterans having eight-to-10 part claims.  Rather than base performance entirely on how quickly such claims are settled, Hall said, some performance credit should be given for how quickly compensation starts to these veteran even if processing the entire claim takes six months or longer.

“That goes hand-in-hand with the other section requiring immediate payment of the severe injury,” Hall said.

Another provision in the bill would force VA to improve information technology so its computers readily accept DoD medical reports recorded electronically from time of injury to discharge.

Others provisions aim to reduce claim processing times and improve consistency in decisions across VA regions for similar injuries and ailments.

Surviving spouses or children would be able to stand in for veterans who die during the claim process rather than having to file their own claims anew starting again in the VA regional office.

The bill also takes aim at the “hamster wheel” effect of claim appeals, urging administrative law judges to decide all relevant issues raised by claimants rather than turning back cases on select deficiencies while ignoring other arguments presented. VA also would be required to open up new “survivor affairs” offices so that survivors of veterans “don’t have to wade through the whole VA system to get their benefits,” Hall said.

“It’s a composite of a year’s worth of hearings and common sense suggestions,” he added.

To comment, send an e-mail to Tom Philpott at milupdate@aol.com

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DoD Offical Booted from Congressional Hearing About Rape in the Military

Posted on August 1, 2008 by Team VCS

Aug. 1, 2008 – The Pentagon’s No. 2 personnel and readiness official was admonished and dismissed from a House subcommittee hearing on sexual assault in the military Thursday after admitting that he had directed a key subordinate not to appear.

“Mr. Dominguez, I notice that Dr. Kaye Whitley is not in her chair,” said Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., and chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s national security and foreign affairs panel. “Is it under your direction that she has not shown for testimony this morning?”

“Ah, yes sir,” replied Michael Dominguez, principal deputy under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness.

“Do you have an executive privilege to assert?” asked Tierney.

“Ah, no sir,” Dominguez replied.

“Mr. Dominguez, this is an oversight hearing,” Tierney said. “It’s an oversight hearing on sexual assault in the military. As such, we thought it was proper to hear from the director of the Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office. … Inexplicably, the Defense Department – and you, apparently – have resisted.”

Tierney said Whitley would be subpoenaed and that Dominguez’s decision showed disrespect to the two women who had testified moments earleir – one a rape victim, one a rape/murder victim’s mother – as well as other victims and the subcommittee itself.

When Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the full committee chairman, asked for an explanation, Dominguez said that the decision was made “in consultation with the department’s leadership” – the assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs and the Defense Department general counsel.

Whitley “is available to the Congress … unfettered, unmuzzled by us,” and had previously appeared, Dominguez said.

But he added that “in this hearing format, we wanted to ensure and make the point” that he and his boss, Pentagon personnel chief David S.C. Chu, “are the senior policy officials, accountable to Secretary [Robert] Gates and to the Congress for the department’s sexual assault and prevention policies and programs.”

“That’s a ridiculous answer,” Waxman replied. “What is it you’re trying to hide? She’s the one in charge of dealing with this problem. We wanted to hear from her.”

Waxman said the Pentagon “has a history of trying to cover up sexual offense problems … I don’t know what you’re trying to cover up here, but we’re not going to allow it. I don’t know who you think elected you to defy the Congress of the United States. This is an unacceptable, absolutely unacceptable position for the department to take.”

“We decide who we want to have for witnesses at this hearing,” Tierney said. “So for now, Mr. Dominguez, you’re dismissed.”

Dominguez left the witness table for a seat in the audience; within a few minutes, he and his aides walked out of the hearing room.

Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., later said she would seek input from the defense secretary.

“My plan after this hearing is to call Bob Gates and see what light he can shed,” Harman said.

The squabble took up barely 10 minutes of a nearly three-hour hearing that featured testimony from the rape victim, a Red Cross worker who worked with the military, and the rape/murder victim’s mother over the mishandling of their cases; bipartisan expressions of concern over sexual assault in the military and ways to resolve it; and presentation of a Government Accountability Office report on the Defense Department and Coast Guard sexual-assault prevention and response programs.

The GAO found that occurrences of sexual assault may be exceeding the rates being reported. That, said GAO’s Brenda Farrell, suggests that the Pentagon and Coast Guard have only “limited visibility” over the incidence of such occurrences.

At the 14 installations GAO visited, investigators found 52 percent of service members who had been sexually assaulted over the preceding 12 months had not reported the assaults.

Had Dominguez offered his prepared testimony, he would have said that the Pentagon’s ability to deal with sexual assault has been “significantly upgraded” over the past three years. He also would have said that the department “strongly believes” that a “restricted reporting” policy instituted in 2005, which allows victims to confidentially disclose their assault without launching a criminal investigation, is responsible for the reports of 1,896 victims over the past three calendar years who otherwise might not have sought care.

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