Veterans for Common Sense

July 4, 2008, San Francisco, CA – You could hear the joy in Patrick Campbell’s voice as he reflected on U.S. President George W. Bush’s signing Monday of a new GI Bill of Rights for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s hard to actually picture that it’s done,” the legislative director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America told IPS. “There are veterans all across this country and in Iraq and Afghanistan who are dreaming bigger dreams now. When we were in Iraq we were always talking about what we were going to do when we got home and I know that now they’re over there thinking ‘I can go to any college I want to now. I can go to the best school I can get into not just the school that I can afford’.”

The new law, which is modeled on the widely popular GI Bill available to soldiers returning from World War II, guarantees Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, and any U.S. citizen who serves in the military for at least three years, a full scholarship at any in-state public university, along with a monthly housing stipend and a stipend for books and materials. It more than doubled the value of education benefits from 40,000 to 90,000 dollars.

Campbell, who served in the National Guard in Iraq while obtaining a law degree from Catholic University in Washington, noted the GI Bill will allow veterans to graduate from school debt-free, changing the arcs of their careers. “I have over 100,000 dollars in student loans that I have to worry about paying back and that’s going to dictate what kind of jobs I can have in the future,” he said. “Future veterans won’t have that problem. Now veterans can go into public service jobs and dedicate themselves to service and not have to worry about having to pay back these crushing student loans.”

The Bush administration had initially opposed the GI Bill, warning it would cost tens of billions of dollars and prove cumbersome to administer. Bush also argued that if education benefits were improved, soldiers might leave the military when their terms were up rather than re-enlisting for another tour in the war-zone.

But that position proved difficult to hold once veterans were able to bring media attention to it. Newspapers across the country ran opinion pieces against the president’s position. Among the most scathing was a May 28 editorial from the New York Times. “Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform,” the editorial read. “So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.”

Another problem for Bush was that Democratic leaders in Congress folded the GI Bill into a massive 162-billion-dollar war spending bill, which allowed him to continue fighting the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no strings attached. If Bush wanted to continue those wars, he would need to sign the GI Bill too and on Monday signed the new law into effect.

Speaking in the Oval Office, the president praised the expanded GI Bill for paying “a debt of gratitude to our nation’s military families” which “will help us to recruit and reward the best military on the face of the Earth.”

But even as Bush signed the new GI Bill, Iraq war veterans received a significant piece of bad news from a federal judge in San Francisco. After two months of deliberations, U.S. District Court Judge Samuel Conti ruled against the group Veterans for Common Sense, which had launched a national class action lawsuit against the Bush administration for failing to provide proper medical care and disability compensation for veterans wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Over the course of the trial, the Department of Veterans Affairs was forced to release a series of damning documents which showed, among other things, that 18 U.S. war veterans commit suicide every day.

In one e-mail made public during the trial, the head of the VA’s Mental Health division, Dr. Ira Katz, advised a media spokesperson not to tell reporters 1,000 veterans receiving care at the VA try to kill themselves every month.

“Shh!” the e-mail begins.

“Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among the veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?” the e-mail concludes.

Another set of documents showed that in the six months leading up to Mar. 31, 2008, 1,467 veterans died waiting to learn if their disability claim would be approved by the government. A third set of documents showed that veterans who appeal a VA decision to deny their disability claim have to wait an average of 1,608 days, or nearly four and a half years, for their answer.

In his 83-page opinion released Jun. 25, Judge Conti, a World War II veteran appointed to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, said he found the statistics “troubling”, but that the groups “did not prove a systemic denial or unreasonable delay in mental health care” in their lawsuit.

Veterans for Common Sense has vowed to appeal.

“What you have with the president signing the GI Bill for the 21st century is the start of desperately needed massive overhaul of the Department of Veterans Affairs,” the group’s director, Paul Sullivan, told IPS. “The VA needs an overhaul because today there are 600,000 veterans of all wars waiting on average more than six months to get disability benefits. And, according to VA’s own internal records, about 25 percent of VA’s 5 million patients wait more than a month to see a doctor.”

“We hope that with the president changing his position on caring for veterans that he will now instruct the Department of Defence and Department of Veterans Affairs to also overhaul the healthcare and disability benefits programmes for our veterans as he has just done for education with his signing of the GI Bill,” he said.

July 4, 2008 – People nationwide will celebrate our nation’s independence this weekend. There will also be hundreds of thousands of U.S. Servicemen and women hunkered down in Afghanistan and Iraq this Fourth of July. While life on the war-front is harrowing and unpredictable, the transition back to civilian life is one of the most difficult things about military service. In this latest installment of our series “This Weekend in 1968,” two veterans of two different wars discuss their experiences of serving in, and returning to home from an unpopular war.

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Ed Vick: I’m Ed Vick, I’m a Vietnam vet. I served with the navy’s river patrol force in Vietnam in 1968.

Paul Reickhoff: My name is Paul Reickhoff. I served with the U.S. Army in Iraq from 2003 to 2004 as a rifle platoon leader in the 3rd Infantry in the 1st Armored Divisions.

Ed Vick: The Fourth of July in Vietnam was just like every other day. You know, when you’re there in the middle of it, it’s not so much about patriotism. Things like the Fourth of July… just had a lot less meaning than they would have to a civilian.

Paul Reickhoff: Fourth of July in Iraq sucked. A lot of days in Iraq sucked, but I think holidays are especially tough. Because you know so much is going on back home and you’re stuck, sweating your butt off in a war zone getting shot at. So it was especially tough in my unit because we were told after the invasion that we’d we home by the Fourth of July. So I remember writing a letter to my brother saying “Hey, Fourth of July’s coming up. We’ll get together, go to a Yankee game, you know, check out the fireworks.” I didn’t think it would be the same type of fireworks I ended up seeing in Baghdad for the next couple of months.

Ed Vick: Every day and every night was a huge stress mentally, just like it is, I think, for these guys and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, we would go out at dusk in these 35-foot patrol boats. And we would usually set up our boats and shut everything down and stay there all night long by the light of the stars. Pretty much everywhere you were you were at risk. The whole river bank erupts in gunfire and you just never know where it’s coming from. You’re going out at night and the sun’s going down and it’s getting dark and you just sort of go through your mind, I wonder if I’m going to die tonight. And then you just sort of go “What the hell. Let’s go.”

Paul Reickhoff: Our days in Iraq were pretty chaotic. If there was an average day, it was usually spent working 18-20 hour days, looking for insurgents, doing a ton of searches through homes and businesses looking for weapons caches and thinking about all the possibilities that can happen, so you’re prepared, whether it’s a car bomb or a sniper, or a kid with a grenade in his hand. You’re just trying to think about all of the possibilities constantly. One of my old soldiers told me once that just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not trying to kill you. My lasting memory of the average day in Iraq is walking with my guys through the narrow streets, sweating, with a ton of gear, waiting to get blown up.

Ed Vick: I remember getting ready to go out on a patrol one day and this petty officer comes out and says that one of his guys just can’t go out. The officer said “What do you mean he can’t go out?” “He just can’t go out. He just can’t do it.” It was viewed as a disgrace, he got no treatment whatsoever. He was mustered out of the service and got no treatment whatsoever. And he got a discharge other than honorable. And that’s what happened in those days to these guys who today would be known as having post-traumatic stress.

Paul Reickhoff: There were a couple of moments that were really tough emotionally, but on Christmas Eve, our sergeant major was killed in a roadside attack. The sergeant major is an enlisted guy for a couple hundred folks and he is kind of like the Grandpa Bear for all the soldiers in the unit. And that was really a tough hit on morale. And my unit had been extended to I don’t know, three or four times already. The number of divorces in my unit stacked up. Guys were getting wounded, the insurgency was really starting to grow and we had had enough. It was time to be out of there.

I think part of the emotional impact of this war that’s unique is that you don’t know when you’re coming home. You hope your higher headquarters will at least tell you, amidst all of this chaos and carnage and frustration and the flood of emotions, that at least you could at least pick a day when you could come home and start planning the rest of your life. And I think it’s an especially tough part of this war that’s unique and that’s different from Vietnam.

When we found out that we were coming home we didn’t believe it at all. I mean, we had been told we were coming home, five, six times prior to that and the rug had got jerked out from under us. So when we finally got to that point where we were flying out of Baghdad the guys were giddy, it was like they all smoked weed before they got on the plane or something. I remember at some point, a pillow fight broke out. Like the most random thing, we were on the corkscrew plane going up and the guys just started throwing pillows at each other, these cheap airline pillows that somehow the Air Force got, and then it just kind of sank in. But when you come home it’s just a total overwhelming flood of emotion. You know the families are waiting for you there at the parade field and it’s almost surreal.

Ed Vick: I’ll tell you how I came home. I was patrolling up near the Cambodian border, and we were in a night patrol and we had some contact with some North Vietnamese, a little bit of a firefight, it wasn’t anything terrible. The sun was coming up and we took our boats in. Took a shower, got my gear packed, and a chopper came and took me to Saigon and within 24 hours, I was in Philadelphia. And that was it.

When I got back, I couldn’t get a job. I was a highly educated naval officer and nobody cared. I could barely get a job. I moved to Texas because I thought that I would be more respected there because it’s more of a right-wing state, and I got a job, finally, as a bill collector. It was about the best I could do. I went to graduate school. I went to Northwestern. The very first day I drove on campus there was a demonstration. They were burning books and desks right in the street and they were protesting the war. So I knew enough to not talk about having been in Vietnam.

My first day in class, a professor was going around saying, “OK, everybody, let’s everybody introduce themselves. Tell a little bit about yourself.” So we went around, did that. I said where I had gone to college and that’s about all I said. He was a reserve naval officer himself, so he said, “Oh, you’re forgetting something. Tell us about where you were for the past year.” So I sort of said something like, well, “I was in Vietnam for a year and I just got back.” And there was sort of silence around the room. And for several months thereafter, no one in this class would speak to me. No one would say hello, no one would say goodbye. I was completely ostracized by people I didn’t even know for no reason other than that I had been a Vietnam veteran.

Paul Reickhoff: My first week we were in Georgia at Fort Stewart and we had about a week of out-processing. I knew that if I came right back to New York City, it would be too much for me. I needed some time away from my family. I needed some time to just unwind my mind. My girlfriend drove my jeep down to Fort Stewart where she met me and we spent about a week-and-a-half staying in little hotels by the beach and just trying to absorb being home.

I remember wireless Internet was something that didn’t exist before I left. I came back and blogs, and all this new music and stuff had happened while I was gone. It just seemed like I was Rip Van Winkle and I just woke up and all of this stuff had been going on.

I remember that the week that I got home, the biggest story in America was Janet Jackson’s exposed breast at the Superbowl. It was kind of jarring to come home and see, “Wow, this is what people are focused on. This is what people are talking about.” The apathy is really what hits me in the gut.

I have a good friend got home in 2004 and called me two weeks ago and said, “I am really messed up. I need to see somebody.” It took four years and his girlfriend left him and he said, “I never realized it. I never realized how much pain I was in. I never realized how much I was going through until four years after coming home.” Thank God he got to that point, for some people it might take 40 years.

Ed Vick: Most Iraq Veterans say “I don’t want to be another Vietnam Veteran.” It’s hard for me to hear that, because for all of my experience, I’m a relatively high-functioning Vietnam veteran, and I know exactly what they mean. Because I’ve spent a lot of time trying to help those kind of Vietnam veterans. And what I think when I hear one of them say it is “God, I hope you’re right.” I hope you don’t end up like the stereotypical Vietnam veteran and I’ll do everything that I can to help make that be the case.

July 4, 2008, Champaign, IL – Fireworks, parades, barbeque all help us celebrate independence day. But to veterans the holiday means so much more. They’re quick to tell you a joke or a tall-tale but ask a Veteran about America and it’s no laughing matter. This holiday is about a lot more than fireworks.

Hanging around with the veterans here in Champaign can mean a lot of laughs and good times. But when you sit down and ask them about what Independence day means to them you feel the pride and patriotism in an instance. 
 

Veteran, Chuck Zelinksky said,  “This is the day that says “Happy Birthday America”

Veteran, Richard Carder had similar thoughts,  “You celebrate the independence that the veteran’s fought for.”

These men and women meet at their local veterans chapters to be a part of a bigger all American family.

Veteran supporter and president at American Legions, Nancy Phalen, knows why veterans meet at the American Legion, “Camaraderie they sit around and tell stories, some true some not.” “

Veteran, Daryl Hottman said, “Now that you get older you realize it means a lot mroe to you.”

“If it weren’t for them we would not be here, period,” said Phalen.

And that freedom comes at a price,  “Just coming home to your family, military service you’re gone away from your family and you come home,” remembers Hottman.

Zelinsky wants us all to remember the true meaning of of the July 4th celebration,  “We oughta stop and reflect sometime of the day what this is all about, we out to think about the flag, the flag that’s a symbol for our country and the freedom and the people that fought for it.”

July 2, 2008 – “I can’t find the right words to describe when you are homeless,” says Iraq war veteran Joseph Jacobo. “You see the end of your life right there. What am I going to do, what am I going to eat?”

Jacobo is one of an increasing number of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who come home to life on the street. The Department of Veterans Affairs is fighting to find them homes.

Veterans make up almost a quarter of the homeless population in the United States. The government says there are as many as 200,000 homeless veterans; the majority served in the Vietnam War. Some served in Korea or even World War II. About 2,000 served in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The VA and several nongovernmental organizations have created programs that address the special needs of today’s veterans returning from war. In addition to treating physical and mental injuries, there are career centers and counseling programs. But the VA still expects the homeless rate among the nation’s newest veterans to rise because of the violent nature of combat seen in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Officials say many more Iraq and Afghanistan veterans suffer post-traumatic stress disorder than veterans of previous wars. The government says PTSD is one of the leading causes of homelessness among veterans.

“They come back, and they are having night trauma, they are having difficulty sleeping. They are feeling alienated,” says Peter Dougherty, the director of homeless programs for the VA.

The VA says 70 percent of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan saw some form of combat, either through firefights, rocket attacks or the most common strikes on troops — roadside bomb attacks on their vehicles.

That is three times the rate of combat experienced by Vietnam veterans, according to the VA.

Jacobo spent more than a year as an Army mechanic in Iraq between 2004 and 2006. He saw many of his fellow soldiers killed during attacks on his base. He suffers from PTSD and found himself homeless after being discharged from the Army in 2006, but recently moved into a VA-funded shelter in Washington.

Until he found the VA facility, he was sleeping in laundry rooms and washing himself in fast food restrooms until he would be kicked out.

Jacobo says he speaks to many veterans from Vietnam who say that if the programs veterans receive today were available to them, they would most likely not be homeless.

“Where would I be if it was not for this place? Where would I get a job to give an address to an employer? They have phones here where you can make calls, so this is the step every veteran needs to have. A place for an address, a phone where you can be contacted and this is really good,” says Jacobo.

The VA and organizations that help veterans are trying to reach out to those who may not know there is help available or are not interested in assistance. Social workers walk the streets and scour soup kitchens looking for vets who might need help, working with organizations that offer shelter or medical assistance.

“Because we are convinced, and we know that the earlier the intervention happens, particularly when it is related to PTSD, the better the prognosis is for recovery,” Dougherty says.

“Unfortunately, we have learned much to our detriment when we didn’t recognize PTSD as an illness that people suffer with it for decades, and when they tried to get it addressed, it was a much longer and more difficult process to get that readjustment,” Dougherty says.

While the VA is prepared for a rise in homeless veterans, it is taking a measured approach. Based on statistics from around the country, the number of homeless veterans is increasing slowly, which the VA attributes to the programs already in place.

Dougherty says the outlook is good for future veterans.

“We are also increasing significantly the level of services we provide, not only in homeless programs, but we are really focused more on the prevention of these veterans from ever becoming homeless in the first place,” he said.

July 2, 2008, Camp Casey, South Korea – Pfc. Stephen Wanser’s typical Saturday breakfasts were the same as his Friday night dinners: 16 Coricidin Cough and Cold pills, water or soda optional.

Wanser and his roommate, Pfc. Gary Cooper, 22, remained in a hallucinatory daze most of the weekend before crashing on Sundays.

Even when Wanser thought he nearly choked to death after taking the pills — a sign from God, the deeply religious 24-year-old believed — it was only enough to keep him off the drug for a month.

Coricidin contains more dextromethorphan, also known as DM or DXM, than most cold medicines.

In small doses, DXM relieves a cough. But large doses produce abnormally elevated moods and hallucinations typically associated with drugs like PCP and LSD.

Although there are few, if any, military studies on dextromethorphan abuse, medical and 2007 sales data from Camp Casey’s post exchange stores attest to the drug’s popularity.

In a place where all soldiers receive free health care and prescriptions, Army and Air Force Exchange Service stores sold as many as 300 boxes of Coricidin and its generic equivalent in one week, according to a paper presented at a national medical conference in May.

Area I stores restricted Coricidin, also known as “Triple C,” and its generic equivalent last October and soon pulled the pills from their stock entirely at the urging of Camp Casey doctors.

Prior to that, at least six DXM overdoses came through the emergency room within a year. The doctors say they think that’s just a fraction of the abuse that’s going on.

A search for spirituality

Wanser and Cooper say they want to tell their story of abuse in the hope it will prevent others from taking the same path.

It began early last year, when Wanser arrived in South Korea after a violent tour as a truck convoy gunner in Iraq with the 1st Battalion, 17th Field Artillery Regiment, 75th Fires Brigade out of Fort Sill, Okla.

Wanser remembers finding information about the drug on the Internet, though he can’t remember the first time he got high. He and Cooper would pick up the drugs at the post exchange, return to their barracks and take them. And wait.

“Two hours later, you throw up,” Wanser said. “But you’re still tripping at that point. A couple hours later, we would split another box. We would basically be tripping all night.”

They would sleep in a half-conscious daze.

“You don’t want food at all the next day,” Wanser continued. “It seems like food is for other creatures than you.”

They would be tired for the next couple of days afterward. It seemed like mood swings to those around them.

“Everyone else in our barracks thought we were weird as [expletive],” Wanser said.

Sometimes they would go hiking around Camp Casey’s nearby mountains after popping the pills.

They would often read the Bible while tripping, discussing Solomon, heaven, hell and their place in the world.

Wanser said he felt closer to God during those times.

But he acknowledges that taking potentially fatal doses of drugs is a bad way to get there.

He experienced hyper-religiosity, a relatively common phenomenon among mania-prone users of psychedelic drugs, said Area I support psychiatrist Maj. Christopher Perry.

“As people become more manic and grandiose in their thinking, religion plays a larger role in their life,” Perry explains.

Perry said he has had patients addicted to mind-altering substances who thought they were Jesus, Elijah, St. Paul or merely someone with a special hot line to God.

Wanser never had such delusions and had always been religious, but he never felt the urge to spread his views until he began taking Triple C.

A little too smart

Wanser says he nearly choked to death after a pill came back up into his throat over the Memorial Day 2007 weekend. Cooper videotaped the incident (see accompanying story and go to Stripes.com to see the video).

But after a brief break their drug use continued and by August, the pair were mixing drugs with alcohol.

The drugs, combined with other experiences, led them to challenge their superiors multiple times.

“You feel like you know more than they do,” Cooper said. “[Triple C] makes you feel like you’re smarter.”

In one instance while coming down from his trip, Wanser began waving a knife during an early morning alert because he felt it wasn’t realistic enough, thanks to his Iraq experiences.

Wanser talked his way out of punishment that time, he says.

It was a 9 a.m. encounter in August with two majors at the Thunder Inn dining facility that signaled rock bottom for Wanser.

Cooper and Wanser had both taken drugs and drunk vodka. While they waited for food, Wanser began questioning the majors’ right to order him around, using a Scripture from Corinthians about humility and others on pride to bolster his argument.

The majors found a sergeant, who ordered Wanser back to his room to cool off, but Wanser left for the post exchange after an hour to get more liquor.

When another sergeant who spotted him told him to go back to his room, Wanser demanded to see his first sergeant and then his battery commander, Capt. David O’Leary.

When O’Leary threatened him with Article 15 punishment, Wanser questioned O’Leary’s right to have control over his life.

“I pretty much stopped listening at that point,” said O’Leary, who was ready to kick Wanser out of the Army.

After Wanser’s blood test came back showing extreme intoxication, he was referred to the Army’s Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program.

Back to reality

Wanser, who was demoted from specialist to private first class for his behavior, didn’t tell Perry for months about his drug use.

Since the symptoms of cold medicine abuse can mirror personality disorders, Wanser took anti-psychotic medication for months before admitting his drug use to Perry. The medication caused Wanser to gain about 20 pounds.

Wanser spent those months with the threat of a discharge hanging over him.

Cooper, however, has never faced punishment, because he never did anything illegal under the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

Article 134 bars soldiers from intoxication on drugs or alcohol, but not while they are in their barracks. While the pair said they know their actions left them unprepared in the event of war, they insisted that they never used the drugs while on duty.

“The article would apply only to duty,” said Capt. Mike Eaton, Camp Casey judge advocate.

Nor would wrongful use of a controlled substance apply, Eaton said.

It’s possible a soldier could be tried under related federal code, but Eaton says it would be a tough case to win.

Despite the lack of punishment, Cooper says he has learned from the experience and won’t touch DXM again.

Once he was clean, Wanser impressed O’Leary by taking full responsibility for his actions.

His statement following his Article 15 punishment was brief; he said he deserved to be punished.

He regularly attended counseling and put in a hard day’s work.

“It got to the point where his job performance began to shine through,” O’Leary said. “The same guys calling for him to be kicked out … were the same guys who said, ‘you might want to reconsider.’ “

Wanser will remain in the Army, he says. He has no desire to use DXM again. Whenever he passes cold medicine in a store, he shivers and feels nauseated.

“It should not be on the shelves anywhere,” Wanser said. “Ultimately, it will destroy your life.”

July 1, 2008 – Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain “a prisoner of its energy dilemma” as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.

That April 2001 report, “Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,” was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations at the request of Vice President Dick Cheney.

In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world’s second largest oil reserves.

“Iraq remains a de-stabilizing influence to the flow of oil to international markets from the Middle East,” the report said.

“Saddam Hussein has also demonstrated a willingness to threaten to use the oil weapon and to use his own export program to manipulate oil markets. Therefore the U.S. should conduct an immediate policy review toward Iraq including military, energy, economic and political/diplomatic assessments.”

The advisory committee that helped prepare the report included Luis Giusti, a Shell Corp. non-executive director; John Manzoni, regional president of British Petroleum; and David O’Reilly, chief executive of ChevronTexaco.

Those companies now stand to earn tens of billions of dollars in no-bid contracts in a U.S.-brokered deal that was recently announced to drill Iraq’s untapped oil fields.

James Baker, the namesake for the public policy institute, was a prominent oil industry lawyer who also served as Secretary of State under President George H.W. Bush and was counsel to the Bush/Cheney campaign during the Florida recount in 2000.

Ken Lay, then chairman of the energy-trading Enron Corp., also made recommendations that were included in the Baker report.

At the time of the report, Cheney was leading an energy task force made up of powerful industry executives who assisted him in drafting a comprehensive “National Energy Policy” for President George W. Bush.

A Focus on Oil

It was believed then that Cheney’s secretive task force was focusing on ways to reduce environmental regulations and fend off the Kyoto protocol on global warming.

But Bush’s first Treasury Secretary, Paul O’Neill, later described a White House interest in invading Iraq and controlling its vast oil reserves, dating back to the first days of the Bush presidency.

In Ron Suskind’s 2004 book, The Price of Loyalty, O’Neill said an invasion of Iraq was on the agenda at the first National Security Council. There was even a map for a post-war occupation, marking out how Iraq’s oil fields would be carved up.

O’Neill said even at that early date, the message from Bush was “find a way to do this,” according to O’Neill, a critic of the Iraq invasion who was forced out of his job in December 2002.

The New Yorker ‘s Jane Mayer later made another discovery: a secret NSC document dated Feb. 3, 2001 – only two weeks after Bush took office – instructing NSC officials to cooperate with Cheney’s task force, which was “melding” two previously unrelated areas of policy: “the review of operational policies towards rogue states” and “actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.” [The New Yorker, Feb. 16, 2004]

By March 2001, Cheney’s task force had prepared a set of documents with a map of Iraqi oilfields, pipelines, refineries and terminals, as well as two charts detailing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a list titled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts,” according to information released in July 2003 under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch.

A Commerce Department spokesman issued a brief statement when those documents were released stating that Cheney’s energy task force “evaluated regions of the world that are vital to global energy supply.”

There has long been speculation that a key reason why Cheney fought so hard to keep his task force documents secret was that they may have included information about the administration’s plans toward Iraq.

‘Conspiracy Theory’

However, both before and after the invasion, much of the U.S. political press treated the notion that oil was a motive for invading Iraq in March 2003 as a laughable conspiracy theory.

Generally, business news outlets were much more frank about the real-politick importance of Iraq’s oil fields.

For instance, Ray Rodon, a former executive at Halliburton, the oil-service giant that Cheney once headed, said he was dispatched to Iraq in October 2002 to assess the country’s oil infrastructure and map out plans for operating Iraq’s oil industry, according to an April 14, 2003 story in Fortune magazine.

“From behind the obsidian mirrors of his wraparound sunglasses, Ray Rodon surveys the vast desert landscape of southern Iraq’s Rumailah oilfield,” Fortune’s story said. “A project manager with Halliburton’s engineering and construction division, Kellogg Brown & Root, Rodon has spent months preparing for the daunting task of repairing Iraq’s oil industry.”

“Working first at headquarters in Houston and then out of a hotel room in Kuwait City, he has studied the intricacies of the Iraqi national oil company, even reviewing the firm’s organizational charts so that Halliburton and the Army can ascertain which Iraqis are reliable technocrats and which are Saddam loyalists.”

At about the same time as Rodon’s trip to Iraq – October 2002 – Oil and Gas International, an industry publication, reported that the State Department and the Pentagon had put together pre-war planning groups that focused heavily on protecting Iraq’s oil infrastructure.

The next month, November 2002, the Department of Defense recommended that the Army Corps of Engineers award a contract to Kellogg, Brown & Root to extinguish Iraqi oil well fires.

The contract also called for “assessing the condition of oil-related infrastructure; cleaning up oil spills or other environmental damage at oil facilities; engineering design and repair or reconstruction of damaged infrastructure; assisting in making facilities operational; distribution of petroleum products; and assisting the Iraqis in resuming Iraqi oil company operations.”

In January 2003, as President Bush was presenting the looming war with Iraq as necessary to protect Americans, the Wall Street Journal reported that oil industry executives met with Cheney’s staff to plan the post-war revival of Iraq’s oil industry.

“Facing a possible war with Iraq, U.S. oil companies are starting to prepare for the day when they may get a chance to work in one of the world’s most oil-rich countries,” the Journal reported on Jan. 16, 2003.

“Executives of U.S. oil companies are conferring with officials from the White House, the Department of Defense and the State Department to figure out how best to jump-start Iraq’s oil industry following a war, industry officials say.

“The Bush administration is eager to secure Iraq’s oil fields and rehabilitate them, industry officials say. They say Mr. Cheney’s staff hosted an informational meeting with industry executives in October [2002], with Exxon Mobil Corp., ChevronTexaco Corp., ConocoPhillips and Halliburton among the companies represented.

“Both the Bush administration and the companies say such a meeting never took place. Since then, industry officials say, the Bush administration has sought input, formally and informally, from executives and industry experts on how best to overhaul Iraq’s oil sector.”

Guarding the Oil Ministry

Despite the Bush administration’s denials about oil as a motivation for war, the Bush administration’s focus on Iraqi oil was firmly set.

On April 5, 2003, Reuters reported that the State Department’s “Future of Iraq” project headed by Thomas Warrick, special adviser to the Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs, held its fourth meeting of the oil and energy-working group.

Documents obtained by Reuters showed that “a clear consensus among expert opinion favoring production-sharing agreements to attract the major oil companies.”

“That is likely to thrill oil companies harboring hopes of lucrative contracts to develop Iraqi oil reserves,” the news agency reported. “Short-term rehabilitation of southern Iraqi oil fields already is under way, with oil well fires being extinguished by U.S. contractor Kellogg Brown and Root …

“Long-term contracts are expected to see U.S. companies ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco and ConocoPhillips compete with Anglo-Dutch Shell, Britain’s BP, TotalFinaElf of France, Russia’s LUKOIL and Chinese state companies.”

After U.S. troops captured Baghdad in April 2003, they were ordered to protect the Oil Ministry even as looters ransacked priceless antiquities from Iraq’s national museums and stole explosives from unguarded military arsenals.

Now, the long-held dreams of U.S. dominance over the Iraqi oil spigot now seem close to fulfillment.

Last weekend, The New York Times reported that State and Commerce department officials have been secretly working with Iraq’s Oil Ministry in drawing up contracts between the Iraqi government and Western oil companies to develop Iraq’s oil fields.

Unacceptable Options

This outcome for U.S. and other Western oil companies now appears to have been foretold by the Baker Institute report more than seven years ago.

In April 2001, the report laid out a series of unacceptable options, including helping Iraq under Saddam Hussein extract more oil by easing embargoes that were meant to hem Hussein in.

“The U.S. could consider reducing restrictions on oil investment inside Iraq,” the report said. But if Hussein’s “access to oil revenues was to be increased by adjustments in oil sanctions, Saddam Hussein could be a greater security threat to U.S. allies in the region if weapons of mass destruction, sanctions, weapons regimes and the coalition against him are not strengthened.”

Iraq is a “key swing producer turning its taps on and off when it has felt such action was in its strategic interest,” the report said, adding that there even was a ”possibility that Saddam Hussein may remove Iraqi oil from the market for an extended period of time” in order to drive up prices.

“Under this scenario, the United States remains a prisoner of its energy dilemma, suffering on a recurring basis from the negative consequences of sporadic energy shortages,” the report said. “These consequences can include recession, social dislocation of the poorest Americans, and at the extremes, a need for military intervention.”

The report recommended Cheney move swiftly to integrate energy and national security policy as a means to stop ”manipulations of markets by any state” and suggested that his task force include “representation from the Department of Defense.”

“Unless the United States assumes a leadership role in the formation of new rules of the game,” the report said, ”U.S. firms, U.S. consumers and the U.S. government [will be left] in a weaker position.”

Two years after the Baker report, the United States – along with Great Britain and other allies – invaded Iraq. Now, more than five years after that, with Hussein dead and a U.S. expeditionary force still occupying Iraq, the U.S. oil industry finally appears to be in a strong position relative to Iraq’s oil riches.

However, the price that has been paid by American troops, Iraqi civilians and the U.S. taxpayers has been enormous.

July 3, 2008 – Sgt. Sean Webster served two tours in Iraq, was awarded two Purple Hearts and was severely wounded by shrapnel from an explosion in 2005. Afterward, he endured more than 10 surgeries and relentless physical therapy, and was working to make sure other wounded veterans got the care they needed.

But after surviving a war zone, the 23-year-old Webster, a Charlottesville native and graduate of McLean High School, was found dead Saturday at Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base north of San Diego. Base officials declined to divulge the circumstances surrounding his death, citing an ongoing investigation.

A base spokesman, 1st Lt. Tom Garnett, said that Webster’s body was found about 2 p.m. in Area 27, a large area in the southeastern portion of the base that includes a naval hospital, barracks for wounded veterans where Webster was assigned, and Lake O’Neill.

Webster’s father, Kenneth Webster of Charlottesville, said he had been informed of the circumstances of his son’s death but declined to discuss them.

Sean Webster was stationed at Camp Pendleton as a barracks manager and police sergeant with Wounded Warrior Battalion West, a unit founded in March 2007 that is dedicated to helping wounded Marines and sailors and their families navigate the various stages of their recovery.

The elder Webster said his son was a dedicated Marine who knew by 17 that he would join the service.

“He came to us and said, ‘Mom and dad, I want to join the Marines,’ ” Webster said. “He said, ‘You send me to college, you know what, I’m going to fool around, I’m going to waste your money.’ I guess he talked to a Marine recruiter, and we thought it was a great idea.”

Webster pre-enlisted and joined up right after graduating from high school in 2003. A lover of physical challenges who grew up swimming, playing soccer and skateboarding, Webster picked the Marine Corps because “they were the toughest, they had the hardest boot camp, and they were the strongest and the best,” his father said.

After basic training, Webster was stationed at Camp Pendleton, where he was trained as an assault amphibious vehicle crewman. He was deployed to Iraq in 2004 for his first six-month tour.

In June 2004, a rocket exploded near the vehicle Webster was riding in, near the Syrian border. Webster escaped with only cuts to his face. The wound led to his first Purple Heart, an honor that “embarrassed” him, his father said.

“He thought it was too minor to ever have earned a Purple Heart,” Webster said.

In September 2005, during his second tour, an anti-tank mine exploded under Webster’s vehicle, tearing the skin off his thigh and shattering his right elbow. The decorated veteran spent the following years in physical therapy trying to regain full use of his arm, his father said.

Webster eventually returned to Camp Pendleton, where he continued to receive medical care. In 2007, he was one of the first Marines to enter the Wounded Warrior program and remained there to assist other veterans.

“He didn’t really talk much about his work, but he seemed to like it a lot, and he seemed to really have a sense of camaraderie with the guys who were there,” his father said. “He himself almost never complained about his injuries. The only thing I really heard him get angry about was he couldn’t put deodorant on . . . and he couldn’t really tie his boots.”

In addition to his father, Webster is survived by his mother, Michele McCarthy, and his sister, Jessica Scopelliti.

A viewing will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. tomorrow at Teague Funeral Home in Charlottesville. Funeral services will be 2 p.m. Saturday at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville. Interment, with an honor guard, will follow at Monticello Memory Gardens.