Veterans for Common Sense

April 13, 2008 – The war in Iraq has been labeled many things: a mission, an occupation, a controversy, a black hole. But last week, it officially became something else.

An inheritance.

With President George W. Bush’s decision to leave troop levels where they are, he ensured that Iraq would be someone else’s problem in January. Unlike the Persian Gulf War, Kosovo or even World War I, Iraq soon will straddle two American presidencies.

That seems somehow unfair. This is Bush’s war. He started it in his first term and continued it in his second. There is no end in sight. And he seems uninterested in exploring one. Instead, he will hand it off, like a baton, while he goes home to Texas and a rich, quieter life.

Now, I am not one of those people who think we should pack our bags and flee Iraq tomorrow. Like someone stuck on a flight he didn’t want to take, I recognize the consequences of bailing out — regardless of how little I wanted to be there in the first place.

But if last week was Bush’s final door slam on an ending, then it warrants a look back on where this thing began.

One misstep after another
We went into Iraq to get the weapons of mass destruction. Except there were no weapons of mass destruction.

We went in to stop Al Qaeda’s terror operations in Iraq. Except there were no Al Qaeda terror operations in Iraq — until we got there.

We went in to take out Saddam Hussein, a tyrant in the region. Except we took him out, and now we fret over Iran, the new tyrant in the region.

We went in to protect and control a major oil supply. Except oil is now well over $100 a barrel and we are as enslaved to it as ever.

We went in to be greeted as liberators. But we are seen by most as occupiers.

We went in with the world’s sympathy. We stay there with the world’s scorn.

If you took this list of mistakes and changed objectives and squeezed it into a three-month time frame, Americans would be screaming over the failure. Screaming. Howling mad.

But the biggest danger of a long, prolonged war is how used to the morass you can get. How accustomed you grow to setbacks, negative reports, minimal progress or, worst of all, 140,000 of our sons and daughters stationed over there.

And now a new president will have to finish what Bush started.

Where would you begin?

The words of war
Remember, this president stood before a banner that read “mission accomplished.” Later he said, “Stay the course.” Last week he told reporters that Americans had been worried about “failure in Iraq” but today things were better. The fact that the president even acknowledged the word “failure” showed you how far across the table this plate had skidded.

Here is what hasn’t changed since the day we arrived: You can’t make people love democracy. You can’t make them implement it. You can’t get feuding sects that have battled each other for hundreds of years to suddenly forget it in a matter of months. And you can’t tip the whole of the Arab and Muslim world by clamping down on one tiny part of it. Bush, always tone-deaf to the region, said of Iraq, “If we fail there, Al Qaeda would claim a propaganda victory,” and “Iran would work to fill the vacuum.”

Which made the cynical listener wonder whether these problems wouldn’t go away with an Iraqi dictator who could frighten Iran and want nothing to do with Al Qaeda.

Which brings us back to where we started.

They say we can’t leave or the place will fall. But they don’t say it won’t fall no matter when we leave. They call it war, but it doesn’t play like war. There are no moving tanks, no land to capture — just hidden bombs in fruit stands and on highways, plucking a soldier here and a soldier there.

Last week, Bush said, “While this war is difficult, it is not endless.” Four years ago, an Al Qaeda newsletter told its readers: “This war has been going on since there first were the faithful and the unfaithful.”

As we enter the sixth year, which best describes it?

April 14, 2008 – In the Persian Gulf region, the presence of American forces, along with British and French units, has become a semi-permanent fact of life. Though the immediate mission of those forces is to enforce the no-fly zones over northern and southern Iraq, they represent the long-term commitment of the United States and its major allies to a region of vital importance. Indeed, the United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

– “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century,” PNAC Report September 2000, p. 26.  Let’s recap.

Before delivering his State of the Union address in January of 1998, President Clinton received a letter containing one explicit demand: invade Iraq immediately and overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein.

“The only acceptable strategy,” read this letter, “is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy. We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration’s attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam’s regime from power.”

The letter was written by a group called the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a right-wing organization originally formed by William Kristol, Republican pundit and son of neoconservative movement founder Irving Kristol, and by long-time GOP think-tanker Gary Schmitt. PNAC’s original sources of funding in 1998 included notorious far-right groups such as the Scaife Foundations, the Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation.

Nobody had ever heard of PNAC in 1998, and thanks to the assertions and demands written in their January letter to Clinton, nobody really took them seriously after hearing of them. Invade Iraq? Were they serious? The very same year this PNAC letter was delivered to Clinton, a book co-authored by former President George H. W. Bush and his NSA Director Brent Scowcroft, articulated the consensus foreign policy opinion on the matter, specifically by explaining their decision not to occupy Iraq and topple its government during the first Gulf War.

“Trying to eliminate Saddam,” Bush Sr. and Scowcroft wrote in 1998, “extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in ‘mission creep,’ and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs … We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well.”

“Under those circumstances, furthermore,” they continued, “we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.’s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different – and perhaps barren – outcome.”

Sane people in all areas of government agreed with this analysis, leaving PNAC to wriggle in ridiculed obscurity for another two years. A trio of events transpired upon the advent of this new millennium, however, that served to catapult PNAC into power and prominence. First, the group delivered its flagship policy argument in September of 2000, in a report titled “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century.” Three months later, the Supreme Court delivered the White House into the hands of both GOP presidential candidate George W. Bush and his vice president, Dick Cheney. Third, the attacks of 9/11 delivered the United States and the world into the hands of madmen, all of whom turned out to be PNAC alumni.

Among these were:
 * Bush’s current vice president, Dick Cheney;
 * Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby;
 * Bush’s former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld;
 * Bush’s former deputy defense secretary, Paul Wolfowitz;
 * Bush’s former special assistant and senior national security adviser, Elliot Abrams;
 * Bush’s former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad;
 * Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage;
 * Bush’s former UN ambassador, John Bolton;
 * Bush’s former assistant defense secretary and member of the Defense Policy Board, Richard Perle;
 * Bush’s former deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick; and,
 * Bush’s former defense policy adviser, Eliot Cohen.

The Republican Party’s 2000 presidential platform was eerily similar in both tone and content to PNAC’s September report of that year, and the Bush administration’s national security policy doctrine, published just after the 9/11 attacks, almost copied the precepts of that PNAC report wholesale.

What specifically did this September 2000 PNAC report argue in favor of? As stated on p. 26 of “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” the Hussein regime in Iraq provided a ready excuse for, but not reason for, invasion and occupation. “While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification,” argued the report, “the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

The removal of Saddam Hussein and the establishment of an American protectorate in Iraq, by way of American military attack, actually served three larger PNAC purposes: 1) restructure America’s budgetary priorities by stripping funds from myriad domestic policies and redistributing those funds into a massive increase in military spending; 2) establish a massive and permanent American presence in Iraq by building several US military bases within that occupied nation; and, 3) use these bases as the staging area for the invasion and overthrow of other Middle Eastern regimes, including allies of the United States.

PNAC stalwart Richard Perle, while serving on Bush’s Defense Policy Board, gave a Powerpoint slide presentation titled “A Grand Strategy for the Middle East” to a number of ranking Pentagon officials in 2002. In that presentation, Perle described Iraq as “the tactical pivot,” leading to Saudi Arabia as “the strategic pivot,” and concluding with Egypt as “the prize.”

Another PNAC signatory, author Norman Podhoretz, laid bare the ideological impetus behind the third aspect of PNAC’s grand plan in the September 2002 issue of his politics and policy journal, “Commentary.” Podhoretz noted the regimes “that richly deserve to be overthrown and replaced, are not confined to the three singled-out members of the axis of evil. At a minimum, the axis should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as ‘friends’ of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority, whether headed by Arafat or one of his henchmen.” Podhoretz concluded his argument by framing an Iraq invasion as being part of “the long-overdue internal reform and modernization of Islam.”

Joshua Micah Marshall authored an essay for the Washington Monthly in April of 2003, titled “Practice to Deceive,” which explained the larger goals sought by the members of PNAC. “In their view,” wrote Marshall, “invasion of Iraq was not merely, or even primarily, about getting rid of Saddam Hussein. Nor was it really about weapons of mass destruction, though their elimination was an important benefit. Rather, the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East.”

It has been more than ten years now since PNAC first introduced itself by way of its letter to Clinton. Over this decade, PNAC’s ideology and foreign policy mandates became the center of gravity for America’s military and diplomatic practices and priorities. Those same PNAC members listed above were instrumental in the formulation of false arguments for an attack and invasion of Iraq, and for the execution of same.

To many, the current situation in Iraq represents a prime example of the folly and failures of George W. Bush and his administration. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. From the PNAC perspective, their presence within US government and control over US policy has been a great success. They achieved the massive increase in military spending they sought in 2000, much of which became and continues to be a multi-billion dollar payout to friends and political allies. They have their permanent bases in Iraq. And if the tea leaves are being read correctly, they might just get an attack on Iran, which represents one more step towards their goal of region-wide regime change in the Middle East.

Ten years on, the Project is doing quite nicely, thank you. Failure is only in the eye of the beholder, and if the beholder is getting everything he wants with a tidy payday to boot, “failure” is not what they are going to see. As far as PNAC is concerned, this has been a decade filled with astonishing achievements. In other words, it’s all about priorities and perspective, especially for those who don’t give a damn for the dead.

April 14, 2008 – Austin, TX — A call from a parent stationed in a war zone has landed a Texas high school student in hot water, and his mother is asking the school to ease up on the punishment.

The Copperas Cove High School sophomore received an urgent call from his father and was suspended after taking the call during class.

Master Sgt. Morris Hill is a world away in Iraq, so he had no idea that a simple call from the battlefield to his son, Brandon, would land the 16-year-old in a heap of trouble.

“He called me during class, because that’s the only time that he could,” said Brandon Hill, suspended for using a cell phone. “I answered the call as I was walking out of class. The teacher followed me out and said, ‘Oh what are you doing?’ I said my dad was calling from Iraq, and I know he needs to talk to me.”

At the high school, which is 85 miles from Austin, students are not allowed to carry cell phones.

Yet Pat Hill said before her husband left for Iraq, he made a special arrangement with the assistant principal.

“He had spoken with Mr. Fletcher,” said Pat Hill. “He thought there was an agreement understood that if he called either Joshua or Brandon at school, that everything was fine.

Brandon Hill was sent to the office and suspended for two days for answering his father’s call.

“It’s crazy with everything that’s going on,” Brandon Hill said.

“If this would have been the last phone call from my husband, and he’s in trouble for it and then has to deal with something happening to his dad that would be even harder,” Pat Hill said. She added that she was outraged her son was suspended, and then it took a week to get a meeting with the principal.

In a written statement to KXAN Austin News, Kathy Blake, the secretary to the Copperas Cove district superintendent, said: “In an emergency situation there are procedures in place to address those individual situations. This is true for all of the students in our district. The incident in question occurred almost two weeks ago and has been resolved.”

Brandon Hill has returned to school, but he still has the black mark on his record. His mother said she wants it removed and for the school to recognize the special needs of military children.

“These schools have to stop and realize, especially when you are in a military community, we support our soldiers, we support our troops,” Pat Hill said. “What about them when they are in Iraq trying to reach their family?”

Yet Pat Hill said the school will not address her request to have the suspension removed from her son’s record, a battle she is fighting here while her husband is away.

April 10, 2008 – Salem, OR — The notion of becoming a U.S. Marine is a huge one for any young person standing at the recruiter’s door. You have to be very committed and driven to succeed and even make it through basic training, let alone the life of a Marine at war.

A Marine recruit guide is shown at the far left carrying the platoon guide.

This is a story about a Marine guide and a country that needs to back up its rhetoric when it comes to supporting veterans. Words after all, are almost as cheap as bumper stickers.

This is also a story of repeated tragedy for the American combat vet, particularly Marines, who often feel as supported in our society as a member of the Manson Family.

What we seem to be learning is that in spite of all the flag waving, people in this country are often against Marines. Southern California is the tip of the spear and we aren’t talking about war protesters or hippies or “liberal” people.

No way, the first group to turn on that honorable military service is frequently the police. But society in general rejects the nation’s most elite warriors also. The movies show the hardcore sacrifice that accompanies a Marine life: (WWII – Flags of our Fathers) (Vietnam – Full Metal Jacket) (Iraq – The Four Horsemen) but only a Marine really knows.

Medical Marijuana is an answer for PTSD

Washington and Jefferson were both hemp farmers, the Constitution is written on hemp or “marijuana”paper, it is time to move forward. He told me I should quit taking all the pills, and quit drinking. I started using medical cannabis and I quit drinking, taking pills and smoking cigarettes all at once. I started to feel like I might actually get a normal life back. The medical marijuana worked, but was very expensive. I read a beginner’s guide to CBD oil and learned how to get it cheaper. It’s obvious to me now why the prices are kept so high and by whom. Well you can buy weed online in affordable price for good health.

The CBD Chocolate UK craze about the globe has exploded and being liked by millions and the top 1{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} are trying to use their cash and also power to reject the already been oppressed compound. The late 1800’s very early 1900’s it was at the center of many cure-all mixtures up until the advancement of modern regulated, as well as exclusively monetized Pharmaceuticals.

Simply before the all new CBD change there has actually been other plant based compounds with many comparable wellness association’s being checked off for its efficiency by leading Medical Scientists.

Maybe you have listened to tales concerning Turmeric and also it’s phytochemical “curcuminoids” as a growing number of research studies as well as testimonials are disclosed. You can find CBD crystals powder for sale online here.

California law (CA Health & Safety 11362.7) allows a patient to grow their own medicine. Northcutt began investigating different methods to grow medical cannabis. He says he intended to remain legal in all aspects, but in a state that doesn’t respect, follow or even know its own laws, he joined a large number of peaceful, non-violent non-criminal people under fire by their own government for using a natural plant that the voters said was OK. Growing marijuana plants takes many months and he wanted to try one method that yields faster, but in very small comparative amounts.

“It had its up and downs, and I learned as I went,” Northcutt said. “I learned a method called Sea-of-Green, which allows one to grow many small plants in a short period of time (100 days), as opposed to a few large plants over nearly a year. You yield less this way, but the cycles are shorter so I could grow enough medicine to sustain me permanently.”

He says he learned that if you want to grow herbal medicine, you cannot use chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Wanting to maximize the healthy side since that is what it is all about, Northcutt says he began to grow organically, and other patients he had worked with before decided to grow with him and they started a cooperative.

Far from sinister, the cooperative is a common approach used by legal growers in the state of California. But soon after starting it, he was arrested.

“I was pulled over with less than an ounce divided into two jars. Less than an ounce in California is a misdemeanor citation. I openly told the officer I had the cannabis. I showed my medical cannabis cards from the Oakland Cannabis Cooperative and the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers Cooperative. I am a member if several co-ops.”

According to Northcutt, the officer stated that she thought medical marijuana patients were allowed “to have only one joint” or cigarette in their possession. In truth, with under an ounce he was in violation of no law at all and the matter should have ended right there, but instead he was the victim of a Long Beach Police officer’s ignorance and lack of training.

“She had no idea what she was talking about. I asked for someone form Narcotics who might actually know the law as it pertains to medical marijuana. She told me she was going to pull me out of the car and search me.” Even probable cause seems a hard to swallow concept when considering that Northcutt did everything to comply and was in violation of no laws.

Phil Northcutt, Sergeant of Marines

Phil Northcutt of Long Beach, California was a sergeant of Marines in Iraq, one of the few and the proud who fought in Ramadi and lost many friends.

His sacrifice is not important in his home town apparently, where a judge says he would rather lock Northcutt up in a third world facility called LA County Jail than let him use the only medicine that allows him to battle the demons of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, delivered in full strength from the experiences of fighting a bloody war overseas for his country. No human being should be locked up in LA County Jail, based on the stories I have heard in my life. Humanity is supposed to be a hallmark of Americans, but LA County is where the worst side of corruption continues.

His story begins in 1998, when Phil Northcutt was trying to make a go of it as a music promoter in the LA area.

The real deal: Phil Northcutt in Iraq”In 1998, after finding little satisfaction as a music promoter, I joined the Marine Corps looking for a job that would take me to 3rd world countries and see first-hand the conditions that other humans lived in and maybe to help them in some way. I often thought of Ronald Reagan’s statement about Marines not having to wonder if they made a difference in the world.”

After joining the Marines and graduating from the recruit depot in San Diego, Phil served with Marine Corps Security Forces where he learned Military Operations Urban Terrain, hostage rescue, Special Asset Recovery (nukes), etc.

He said, “We learned about combatting ‘Terrorism’ before it was a daily catch-phrase on CNN.”

Northcutt served with full honor all over the world, and after 4 years got out, moved to Lake Tahoe, and then to Santa Rosa, California, where he enrolled in school to take advantage of the GI Bill. That is when his past came knocking at the door, again.

“Once enrolled, I got a call from the Marines Corps. It was a Presidential Emergency. They needed Marines to participate in the Combat Casualty Replacement Program. They needed volunteers. This was before they recalled the IRR. I volunteered.”

He told the Marines that if they needed gate guards at Camp Pendleton, he wasn’t interested.

“If a Marine could come home because I took his place, then I would do it. It was a one-year non-extendable tour.” Or so he thought it would be.

Courtesy: 2ndbn5thmarines.com/He went to Camp Pendleton and was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines. The Marine Corps’ most decorated unit.

“We ended up in Ramadi, Iraq. The Sunni Triangle, in the legendary Al Anbar Province. We saw action nearly every day. Some days we would have several firefights, lasting for hours. After our Dismount Squad Leader was injured in an IED attack, I stood in… for the rest of my tour.”

I can not attest to Iraq but I can tell you that in Afghanistan Marines like Northcutt live a hard life; they are the backbone of our fighting force along with the U.S. Army Security Forces. These are the “Trigger Pullers” as my son Nate would say. He served two combat infantry tours in Iraq around the same time as Northcutt. These are situations that many average Americans could never imagine, Northcutt says.

“I can’t describe the all horrible things I saw, because some of them are literally indescribable. Body parts that looked half ear, half penis. Injured and dead humans. Not just insurgents and Marines. People: men, women, children, animals.”

The stories that a Marine like Northcutt has under his belt are not a matter of choice; they are a matter of assignment. The PTSD that affects so many veterans of war is born from unimaginable things witnessed in war while a person is trying to stay alive and keep their friends alive. He says in some cases it is like a stain you can never wash away.

“We carried a dead insurgent in the trunk of our Humvee for two days. You never forget those smells. I don’t have any idea how many people I killed or maimed.”

Northcutt’s saga is the story of so many Marines and soldiers who have served in Iraq. They are raised in the best American homes, told they are doing the right thing, and then completely dumped on by that same nation and society when the game ends. The United States could work to be more accepting, it should be.

U.S. Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 5th MarineRegiment search for insurgents in Ramadi, Iraq.during a mission February ’04 courtesy: DoD.There was not a doubt that these warriors were being viewed as damaged goods. He says that even before the fighting ended, they were a matter of concern “We lost a lot of guys. They sent a Navy Full-bird psych (Navy Captain is the same as a Marine Colonel) out to see us and a lot of us were diagnosed with Chronic PTSD, right there on the spot: Camp Hurricane Point, Ramadi, Iraq.”

For Northcutt, things did not get better. After his platoon’s .50 cal gunner was sent home from Iraq, he took his place.

The .50 caliber machine gun is terrifying if you are simply standing near it when it fires. The receiving end is always an aftermath of destruction. It is so loud it can permanently damage your hearing if you don’t wear ear protection, and it is probably the single most ferocious machine gun used in modern time.

In each military “Humvee” there is a turret. A machine gunner is in that turret whenever the vehicle is on the move. I saw some gunners who had good turrets and some who fought them constantly in Afghanistan. Phil Northcutt’s body would be permanently impacted by a bad turret and a very long firefight.

“I crushed my L4-L5 discs operating the turret which, due to up-armor, was extra massive. The crank was broke and while on a 16 hour patrol of heavy engagements I fell right asleep when I got to my rack.” He says the next morning he had trouble just trying to walk.

At first the doctors wanted to send Sergeant Northcutt to Germany for treatment. His simple answer was “no.” He remembers telling them that he could walk, and he was going back to his unit.

“I knew I could never live with myself if I left. I thumbed a ride back to my unit, hitching on helos. I stayed with my unit and finished my tour. Maybe not the smartest decision, medically, but its a decision that I can live with.”

-End Part One-
-Begin Part Two-
In part one of this special three-part series report, we learned that Marine Corps Sergeant Phillip Northcutt of Long Beach, California, began his enlistment in the Marines in 1998 as the platoon “Honorman” or “Guide” – the one recruit selected from the platoon who works with the drill instructors to help the 100 or so young Marine Corps hopefuls actually become U.S. Marines.

Courtesy: content.answers.comIt is the hardest job in one of the most difficult programs created to train warriors. Marine Corps boot camp lasts for months, it is a grueling experience, and the platoon guide has more responsibility than anyone else in the recruit ranks.

After serving four years, Northcutt was honorably discharged from the Marine Corps. He returned to Southern California and attended college on the GI Bill.

Life was great until the Marines called him and told him he was needed to offset the tremendous numbers of casualties, and he agreed as long as this meant he would go to Iraq to actually help other Marines.

He ended up as a .50 caliber machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee at Ramadi, Camp Hurricane. On his last day of combat Northcutt was injured and evacuated from Iraq.

Coming home

When Sgt. Phil Northcutt returned home from Iraq, his one-year non-extendable tour was extended over his battlefield injuries. The combat vet had PTSD and could barely walk. He says he just wanted to go home.

“I had promised my wife one year and no more. She had enough and decided the Marine Corps was my real wife and left me. After much debate, he was finally allowed to go home to Long Beach to await orders.”

Because he was on active duty, Northcutt could not go to the VA for medical care even though it was only a mile from his house. Instead he had to get treatment at Camp Pendleton. Anyone who knows Southern California traffic also knows that the trip between Camp Pendleton and Long Beach is a long and slow journey.

Even worse, is Northcutt’s claim that in spite of all the inconvenient traveling, he never got the treatment he needed.

“Every time I went for some help they gave me more pills. I was so medicated I couldn’t drive myself to my appointments. My wife left me, so I was on my own. I ended up missing many appointments, which were giving me no relief and I began to drink heavily. I stayed in hotels so I could go right to the hotel bar when I woke up. This lasted for about 6 months.”

During this time the PTSD overtook Northcutt, and soon he began racking up speeding tickets, he also crashed his car and motorcycle. That is about the time that Phil visited a new doctor.

Police should know the law

But overreaction is the mark of many police officers and deputy sheriffs in LA and Orange County, and there does often seem to be an anti-Marine Corps bias almost built into the law enforcement community there. I speak from the experience with many run-ins with police as a young Marine in Southern California in the 1980’s. Perhaps some of the overreaction is understandable in such a hardened place for many of these cops, but it seems unlikely that it fits the bill here.

Long Beach, California Police arrestedNorthcutt. Photo: lahomelessblog.orgPhil Northcutt lived in a tough part of California and he was on the waiting list for a concealed weapons permit. Unfortunately it had not arrived yet.

“I always carried an HK P7 9mm pistol. I was on the waiting list for my CCW permit. I informed her that I had a weapon and that I would keep my hands on the wheel where she could see them. She and her training officer just disappeared without a word.”

He says he looked in the rear view mirror, and could see them hiding behind the police car’s doors, crouching. They called for back-up and when it arrived, he remembers the Long Beach officers yelling, “He’s military and he’s got a gun.”

The Marine was surrounded and arrested, in spite of his best effort at disclosing fact and being honest and forthright; qualities not just learned in the Corps, but driven into your soul.

The arrest led to a warrant being served on Phil Northcutt’s residence. The police believed that he was growing marijuana that was packaged for sales… in two mason jars.

“I was staying at my grandmother’s in the guest house. They found my lease and electrical bill for my business, a commercial space in the warehouse district. They also claimed to have found 5 ecstasy tablets. They issued a warrant for my business and found my medical garden.”

The court case

A modern court building in Long Beach that sendsIraq combat vets into illicit, sub-human conditions.  comThe police destroyed Northcutt’s garden and seized or destroyed everything in the warehouse. Detectives would later testify on the stand that he had grown it to sell, and they were sure of it, and that the 400 plants, would yield hundreds and hundreds of pounds.

The truth of the matter is that in this process, every 100 plants would yield about 2 pounds when using the Sea-of-Green technique. Phil Northcutt says the detectives did not even know what Sea-of-Green was, while the techniques can be found in ANY book on growing marijuana. They might after all, have learned that they were wrong, and that doesn’t seem to be the spirit of the operation there.

“So here they were not even knowing the most common methodology used to grow medical cannabis stating that they were experts on the topic, and that that I was obviously selling it,” he added.

An independent medical cannabis expert was brought in to testify and attempt to eliminate some of the ignorance, he said. They even attempted to use DEA guidelines to establish a scientifically based yield for the garden, but the judge would not allow it.

“There was no evidence whatsoever of me selling it. Not even baggies! They later testified that they had NEVER once seen marijuana SOLD in mason jars. The jury acquitted me of all sales charges, all ecstasy charges, all weapons charges.”

In the end, they prosecuted this combat veteran for growing marijuana, which is legal in California. His status as a combat vet who laid everything he had on the line in service of his country meant nothing at all in the eyes of the LA County judge.
-End Part Two-
-Begin Part Three-
In part one of this special three-part series report, we learned that Marine Corps Sergeant Phillip Northcutt of Long Beach, California, began his enlistment in the Marines in 1998 as the platoon “Honorman” or “Guide” – serving with honor during a volunteer one year “recall” tour of duty, and was injured in Iraq. In Part 2 it was revealed that police in Southern California like to arrest Marines, and that they don’t know their own legal system.

This is part 3 in a special series on Marine Corps Sergeant Phil Northcutt, whose life went from Marine combat hero in Iraq, to homeless felon in California, simply because he used the only thing that helped him deal with Post traumatic Stress Disorder: legal medical marijuana.

While the DEA remains on point as anti-marijuana crusaders, Southern California law authorities seem to have it in for the Marines, and there are a great many of us who have suffered the wrath for our association with the eagle, globe and anchor in both LA and Orange Counties. It makes little sense, but is still the case. The marijuana element just aggravates an already volatile relationship.

It is all part of the false rhetoric from people who do not support those that fight for our country, and it extends from the ranks of officers on the streets of cities like Long Beach, straight into the court system. The bottom line is that the LA County Jail is not fit for animals. The ACLU knows it, anyone unfortunate enough to ever have to venture inside knows it, and it sure as hell isn’t a fit place to put a national hero like Phil Northcutt.

He served a year in combat in Iraq as a volunteer. Northcutt asked to return to the Marines after he was honorably discharged. While he was serving in Iraq, this combat was injured.

A “one year extension” did not end at one year because the military does not like to discharge injured veterans a day before they have to, it reduces their financial liability in many cases, saves the feds a few bucks.

In the end Phil Northcutt’s s biggest enemy is ignorance. He was allowed no slack while fighting enemy forces in Iraq as a Sergeant of Marines, but in Long Beach, police officers apparently are not required to know about the laws they enforce. Long Beach PD arrested Phil Northcutt when he had violated no law at all, and they have collectively done their best to ruin his life in the ensuing years and months.

A jail unfit for our nation’s enemies… LA County

“I fought it for 18 months. I spent 11 months in jail. The Marine Corps came to me in jail. ‘Sign here and we won’t prosecute.’ What choice did I have? I signed. They gave me a General Discharge, Under Other Than Honorable Conditions.”

Even for a battle hardened Marine Corps Sergeant, jail was a nightmare in and of itself. He says he couldn’t believe the treatment he witnessed human beings receiving.

He is even hesitant to talk about it for fear of repercussions he would possibly receive if he had to return to the Los Angeles County Jail. Fortunately we have this opportunity to at least document the highly unacceptable conditions there, and if anything ever happens to Phil Northcutt in the LA County Jail we will make it our mission to take those officials to task for the rest of their lives.

“They fed us food not fit for my dog. There was no real medical care. I am scared to detail the abuses I saw because I am on probation and could go back to their custody. I was personally threatened by a sergeant who ‘accidentally’ made me miss a court date for filling out complaint forms describing the inhumane treatment to American Civilian Prisoners.”

Fair treatment for a Marine Corps combat vet? I think not. The atrocities happening daily in California jails are off the radar for the most part, and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and others like them are some of the only ones who care and are trying to make a difference.

The ACLU made this recent statement in regard to LA County Jail and the myriad problems swirling around its operation:

“Civilian complaints about serious misconduct by L.A. police officers are downplayed by investigators, a recent citywide audit found for the third year in a row. Now the ACLU/SC has told the Police Commission, which oversees the department, that ‘three years is enough.’ The ACLU/SC called for civilian investigators or civilian supervisors to take over responsibility for investigation of serious complaints from police officers, who currently investigate themselves.”

Phil Northcutt’s trial lasted several days over a two week period as court dragged on. He says he was moved to holding cell after holding cell.

“They were packed with men. Cells made for 16 men had 50 in them with no water or food. I was shocked. I treated Iraqi detainees better than this and they had killed, or tried to kill, American troops.”

He says they kept saying, “Take the deal, then this will all end. You don’t want to go to trial. Just take the deal.”

As he went through the motions of the California justice system, he says he was subjected to sleep deprivation and persuasion, “just like I had been schooled about in the Marine Corps.”

Ongoing PTSD nightmare

Those who know people with PTSD are probably aware that many of these unfortunate sufferers deal with flashbacks and nightmares. Phil Northcutt survived one firefight after another in Iraq, but his psychological trauma is not strictly related to the battlefield.

The bars of an LA County Jail cell, courtesy: ACLU”I suffer from PTSD. I have flashbacks not just from the war but from my incarceration. I never really knew what a flashback was. Now I do. Its a flood of emotion, like fear and anxiety, panic, that results from a single memory that just randomly pops into my head. Its like one long nightmare that won’t end. Now my two separate nightmares, (War/Jail) just commingle into one.”

When he emerged from the nightmare of jail, Phil Northcutt was homeless.

“My girlfriend, and I had a son together while I was incarcerated. Upon my release she returned to California from Oklahoma. We had nowhere to go. We stayed at hotels and on friends floors or couches. We had no money for food and had to borrow from everyone who would talk to us. It was so humiliating. Here my friends had just seen me as a Sergeant of Marines, who some considered a hero. A man who owned his own screenprinting business. My friends and family were so proud of me.”

As a homeless, unemployed, convicted felon, Northcutt’s own 15-year old daughter won’t even speak to him. He says he wanted to just kill himself. “The only thing that kept me from doing it was knowing that no one would look out for my family. How would they eat? Where would they sleep?”

After 2 months on the streets, Phil got a job with a screenprinting company who had previously hired him as a print consultant.

“They knew my situation and hired me anyways. Like many Californians, they support medical marijuana and can’t understand why they would mess with someone like me.

So now, I work for about 1/3 of what I would usually make.”

Now this former Marine can barely pay his bills. He lives with his family in a friend’s studio apartment who is out of town. The problems working with the military continue.

“I have to miss work to go to the VA for my medical appointments so I lose money by going to my doctor. Then there’s the court appearances and probation. I have to test for drugs even though the only drug I’ve ever been convicted of anything for is medical cannabis. They tell me at 8pm if I’m testing the next day. I miss work again. My boss is really bummed because I’m never there. I’m bummed because I wouldn’t be making enough even if I was there. I missed an appointment this week because I didn’t have the bus money.”

Drug laws based on bad intelligence

Now the judge in Long Beach might put him back in jail for continuing the one medication that actually helps PTSD combat vets: medical marijuana, a simple natural plant that God put on the earth for some reason.

Dr. Phil Leveque of Molalla, Oregon, a combat vet from WWII who has seen over 4,000 medical marijuana patients with many PTSD sufferers in the mix, says the VA keeps causing PTSD veterans to become addicted to pharmaceutical drugs that are “legal” yet deadly. As Northcutt said, they fill veterans with this legal poison and many veterans advocates say prescribing drugs mindlessly to people who don’t need them and then in need of treating addiction – borders on being criminal.

Marine Sgt. Phil Northcutt, shown in Ramadi, Iraq, deserves better.A small amount of marijuana has a minimal effect on a person in the larger sense, but it has the ability to reduce anxiety. Leveque says it is preposterous that marijuana is demonized endlessly because “it makes you feel good. What is wrong with feeling good?” he asks.

But somehow, some way, the U.S. government has been able to turn this very simple herb that has literally never killed a single person, and has been used medically for over 4,000 years, into something that place in a category with heroin and meth. Young people laugh at the laws and millions defy the same laws on a daily basis, while hundreds of thousands now smoke it legally for medical use.

And still the federal government refuses to budge, and the victims are good people like Phil Northcutt, former Sergeant of Marines, whom I am very proud to know. Like all former Marines, my belief is that he must continue to march forward, perhaps an attorney who reads this in the Los Angeles/Long Beach area will send us an email and take this case so Phil can get on with his life, that sounds like a good plan.

“I’m just tired. I’ve been fighting non-stop since 2004. I’m so fatigued I can’t stand it anymore. I just want some peace in my life. I just want to know I can take care of my family and that they don’t have to worry about where they’ll live or will we have money for food.”

Stories like Marine Sergeant Phil Northcutt’s need to be told, and antiquated laws and jails need to be torn down and rethought and when appropriate, rebuilt. Treating even criminals with decency is our obligation, but subjecting combat veterans to humiliation and needless punishments and brutality that conflict with their doctor’s orders is madness.

The growing number of war traumatized combat veterans can only be viewed as an undeniable fact in this country, and the positive interaction between PTSD and medical marijuana is another undeniable fact. We should not make criminals out of good, honorable people who have something to offer the world. Phil Northcutt agrees.

“I never asked for any of this. I was just trying to do the right thing. It makes me wish I had never gone to this bogus war.”

Marines are trained to be killers, that is true, and they are the best that have ever existed. But the discipline that is so legendary with respect to the Corps is often overlooked, and that is a mistake. That very discipline can be harnessed in the PTSD process, but only if we can keep the cops and politicians off the backs of these men and give them time to heal. If marijuana helps them, then for God’s sake give it to them. We need to those extra steps to take care of these warriors when they return. I don’t think it was supposed to go this way for our country, Phil Northcutt’s service to his nation should mean more.

This is not the first time Salem-News.com has written about Iraq combat Marines and medical marijuana. You might want to check out this story from June 11th, 2007: Marine Combat Vet Discusses Iraq, PTSD and Medical Marijuana. It is time the anti-marijuana crusaders own up to the fact that they are an enemy of today’s PTSD stricken combat vet.

Apil 12, 2008 – What’s the true cost of the war in Iraq? The total, long-term cost of everything from tanks and jet fuel and the interest on the money Washington is borrowing to the cost of caring for a double amputee for 40 years? It’s probably a lot higher than you think, but try about $3 trillion. That’s the round, stunning figure economist Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard public finance professor Linda Bilmes came up with after several years of digging up and crunching the official government numbers, which were buried or scattered in the Pentagon’s impossibly sloppy accounting books. The gruesome details can be found in their new book, “The Three Trillion Dollar War.” I talked to Professor Bilmes on Wednesday, April 9, by phone from Boston:
Q: What is your 60-second synopsis of your book and why did you write it?

A: We basically wrote the book for two reasons. First was to explain the full costs of the war, including the costs that are yet to come. Secondly, we wrote the book to show how the veterans have been shortchanged and to offer recommendations that would fix that. We really go through in the book the major cost categories and show how the war is affecting the economy. This is a book about the budgetary and economic costs of the war. But we also have three chapters about veterans’ issues, which I have been deeply involved in. We are donating 10 percent of the proceeds to veterans’ organizations. One of the purposes of the book was to really call attention to the veterans’ issues. The veterans’ issues in particular are fixable. When you think about the problems of Iraq, and some of them seem somewhat intractable and out of our control, that is a source of frustration for many Americans. But when you look at some of the situations of the returning veterans, that is something that is entirely within our ability to fix. So we were trying to call attention to those issues and how we could fix them.

Q: What does that $3 trillion price tag include?

A: It includes the cash costs of the war, which is the $600 billion that people are familiar with, which is basically the cost that we have spent to date of operations, as well as the long-term cost that we would have to spend even if we were to withdraw quickly; those include the cost of taking care of veterans, both the medical care and disability compensation over their lives; the cost of military reset, which includes both the cost of replacing all of the military and National Guard equipment and the cost of restoring the personnel forces to their prewar strength; and the cost of the interest on all of the money which we have borrowed, which is all the money paying interest on the debt. The way that we look at it to reach $3 trillion, there are two approaches: There is a budgetary approach or an economic approach. If you look at it from a budgetary approach you would count the operating costs, as well as future operating costs, as well as the veterans long-term costs, the military reset cost and the interest cost. If you look at it from an economic perspective, we don’t count the interest costs because those are considered transfer payments. But we do include the social costs, which are the costs to the economy that the government doesn’t pay, and the macroeconomic costs, which are overall economic loses to the economy. Either way, you quickly get to $3 trillion.
Q: This also includes Afghanistan?

A: We include Afghanistan in some areas and in some areas we don’t. It’s very difficult to separate out the accounts between Iraq and Afghanistan. We have tried to estimate how much is Iraq and how much is Afghanistan. But particularly on the veterans cost, the VA doesn’t actually break out the Iraq vs. Afghan veterans. The way the military allocates its accounts, it’s difficult to follow exactly where the money is being spent.

Q: Where did you go to dig up this information?

A: It was a huge amount of work, a really, really huge amount of work to write this book and to dig up the information. We used all government sources, some of which were publicly available and much of which we needed to secure under the Freedom of Information Act, which the veterans groups did on our behalf. Basically, through a combination of information from the Congressional Research Service, the GAO, the Congressional Budget Office, the budget accounts, the Inspector General reports, congressional testimonies, audit reports — all kinds of government records, as well as some other kinds of established, reputable studies from medical sources.

Q: What are some of the big-ticket items that particularly surprised, shocked or enraged you?

A: Well, I’d say that pretty much every week we were working on this book we had one of those kinds of moments where there would be something unbelievable. Some of them were big-ticket items; some of them were small-ticket items. Some of the things that stunned us, in no particular order, were the fact that we now pay enlistment bonuses of $25,000 to $40,000 for new recruits and up to $150,000 for re-enlistment bonuses. We found that if you were injured during your enlistment period, you were asked to repay your enlistment bonus on a prorated basis. So somebody who comes back without a leg is then asked to repay their bonus.

Another thing that stunned us was the fact that KBR, which is the largest contractor in Iraq, has been evading hundreds of millions of dollars a year in payroll taxes — Social Security and Medicare taxes — by employing its contractors through shell companies in the Cayman Islands. Another thing that stunned us was when we looked at the cost outside of the Defense department and the Veterans department. We found a number of significant costs. For example, the very significant cost of Social Security disability compensation, which is another big chunk that typically doesn’t get included. Another cost is the fact that the Department of Labor actually pays the insurance cost for contractors who are employing contractors in Iraq, both for the U.S. and foreign nationals.

If you are Halliburton, in order to do business anywhere, you have to have worker compensation insurance. Because that insurance is considered too risky and the cost would be too high, the government pays for it. The contractor doesn’t have to pay any insurance costs. But then the insurance company also doesn’t want to provide the insurance or the benefits, because they say it would be too risky for an act of war. So if someone is injured, the Department of Labor also pays the benefits. When we found this out, we thought, “This cannot be true.” But it is true. There is a GAO report on it where they were also stunned. There are many lawsuits that are going on now because the whole issue about whether the government is paying out to these contractors or not has to do with whether or not they were injured in an act of war.

But overall, the thing that really struck me was simply the scale of the war. There have already been 1.7 million service men and women deployed, which I think is not really understood, because people tend to think about the 140,000 who are serving at this point in time. And the scale of the injuries and the survival rates are much higher now than in previous wars. In Vietnam and Korea, there were about 2.3 or 2.5 injuries per fatality. Now if you look at just the in-combat injuries, it’s 7-1. The number of people who have actually been treated already in VA hospitals and clinics is already 300,000. The number of wounded, if you include the battlefield and the non-battlefield, is over 70,000 people who have been evacuated from the theater for medical problems.

So simply understanding just how much larger the scale is than we had realized was I think the thing that surprised me the most — and the fact that the government has really tried very hard to conceal this scale of injuries by suppressing the availability of the information about how many injuries there are and by making it very difficult to get hold of the information to basically understand all of this.

Q: Have the media — the mainstream media, mainly — been asleep on this issue of the true cost of the war?

A: Overall, I think, the media have been asleep at the wheel in terms of the cost of the war. They have unblinkingly reported the $600 billion figure of the cost of the war. They have unblinkingly reported the wounded in combat without looking beyond that. They have unblinkingly reported on the veterans’ problems. But there are major exceptions to that. In addition to the most well-known one, The Washington Post expose on the Walter Reed Hospital scandal, there also has been some really excellent reporting done in various places. Here in Boston … and in Charlotte…. Early on, there was an excellent piece done in U.S. News & World Report by Linda Robinson on the discrepancy between disability ratings in the military and the VA. There has been a lot of excellent reporting done by individuals. But despite that, overall, you keep seeing again and again some of the same mistakes repeated in the mainstream media.

Q: There’s no chance that the total cost of the war was unknown merely because the Pentagon is a big dumb bureaucracy and it never put a rope around the total cost — as opposed to the cost being deliberately hidden for political reasons?

A: A lot of what we talk about in the book is that the government accounting system does not allow you to look at the full long-term cost of anything. The government uses cash accounting. That’s like saying if you buy a car — and it cost $25,000 and you spend $5,000 on a down payment — that your car cost $5,000. But actually you still owe the $20,000 and if you took out a loan, you still owe the interest. If you are looking at how much your car is actually going to cost you, it’s going to cost you a lot more than the $5,000. Now businesses are not allowed to do that kind of accounting if they are bigger than the corner grocery store.

But amazingly enough, the federal government uses cash accounting, which means that the cost of things that take a long time — huge weapons systems that are purchased over many, many years — are essentially hidden from view. The government budgeting is done very inappropriately. What happens is that if you are looking at a program that is year-to-year funding — funding a grant or a transfer payment or whatever — what you fund in a year is what is paid out. But if you are looking at the cost of the F-22 bomber, which incidentally has not flown a single sortie in Afghanistan or Iraq, the cost over many years looks different than the cost which was estimated up front. So with many long-term projects, it’s very difficult to understand up front what the costs are — particularly when you have a war like this, where we’ve borrowed all the money. So we’ve deferred a lot of the cost. All the $600 billion that we have spent has been borrowed, so it’s not like we’ve put any down payment down. This is the first time in our entire history that we’ve done this. We have not raised taxes or cut spending to pay for the war; we’ve actually cut taxes and raised spending. This is the first time since the Revolutionary War that we have borrowed from overseas for a war.

Q: What recommendations do you make in your book?

A: Many of the recommendations are about improving the government accounting system. Some of the reason why it is so difficult to understand the war is because of the way the government keeps its books. But — and there’s a very big but — in every area there have been particular shortcomings in the way the budgeting has been done. On the veterans side, even in 2005 and 2006 you had the budgeting for the VA being done on the basis of projections made in 2001, before the war even started. You really had an unsurprising outcome that for three years in a row the VA completely ran out of money.

Now in the Pentagon you have the fact that this is an utterly dysfunctional financial system which has flunked its financial audit every year for the last 10 years; where no one has any idea where money is going and where the fact that you have tens of billions of dollars of which — in Pentagon-speak — they’ve “lost visibility,” is a direct result of the fact that they are incapable of tracking and imposing financial discipline.

The government in the CFO Act of 1990 required all government agencies to have clean financial accounts. Everybody else in the government, with a huge amount of effort, has managed to do this. So the only other department apart from the Pentagon that doesn’t is the Homeland Security Department, and that’s because they are a consolidation of 22 agencies and they haven’t been able to harmonize all the systems yet. But the Pentagon has never taken this seriously. It’s not just me, but the Controller General and the Inspector General for the Pentagon and the auditors — every year a chorus of all of us complain about the fact that it is not possible to execute the Pentagon budget, and that’s one of the reasons it is so difficult to track where the money is being spent.

Q: Can you describe what your politics are and whether you were for or against the war in Iraq?

A: I was against the war in Iraq, and Joe Stiglitz, my co-author, was against the war in Iraq at the outset, which we state clearly in the book. But I am also a professor of public finance. I teach budgeting and budget-accountability. I worked in the department of Commerce. I worked for many years around these issues. I really do believe this is a good-government issue. I really, really believe there should be accountability for where our tax dollars are spent and that it has been highly irresponsible — not only the war in and of itself but the way that the war has been financed; the way that funding for the war has been concealed; the way that the money has not been available in a timely fashion to take care of the veterans’ needs and so forth. I honestly feel this is a good-government issue.

Q: Has your book had an impact on anybody important?

A: I think it has. Sen. Obama has quoted from it. Sen. Clinton is now talking about the trillions of dollars spent on the war. Sen. Edwards just yesterday wrote a letter to the Washington Post complaining about the two sets of books in the Pentagon. A recent poll taken last week showed that 71 percent of Americans now believe that the war is contributing to the economic downturn, which is one of the major premises of our book. I do believe people are looking at this war and thinking, “This is costing a lot” and that they are concerned about it and our book has sort of put a number around that. We hope that some of our recommendations are adopted and make it less likely that we are embroiled in such a financial fiasco in the future.

Q: Beyond the staggering human and financial cost of the war, what did you learn from doing your book that you did not already know about war?

A: What we really learned is that there is no such thing as a free war. Contrary to the conventional wisdom, wars are not good for the economy. And this war in particular has had a seriously weakening effect on the economy.

April 11, 2008 – President Bush says he knew his top national security advisers discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.

“Well, we started to connect the dots in order to protect the American people.” Bush told ABC News White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. “And yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”

As first reported by ABC News Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the CIA.

The high-level discussions about these “enhanced interrogation techniques” were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.

These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects — whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.

The advisers were members of the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.

At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Dick Cheney, former National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.

As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.

The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of “combined” interrogation techniques — using different techniques during interrogations instead of using one method at a time — on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.

Contacted by ABC News, spokesmen for Tenet and Rumsfeld declined to comment about the interrogation program or their private discussions in Principals meetings. The White House also declined comment on behalf of Rice and Cheney. Ashcroft could not be reached.

ABC News’ Diane Sawyer sat down with Powell this week for a previously scheduled interview and asked him about the ABC News report.

Powell said that he didn’t have “sufficient memory recall” about the meetings and that he had participated in “many meetings on how to deal with detainees.”

Powell said, “I’m not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal.”

In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals’ involvement was not so “startling.” The president had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before Wednesday’s report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans — down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner — had never been disclosed.

Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.

In interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”

The discussions and meetings occurred in an atmosphere of great concern that another terror attack on the nation was imminent. Sources said the extraordinary involvement of the senior advisers in the grim details of exactly how individual interrogations would be conducted showed how seriously officials took the al Qaeda threat.

It started after the CIA captured top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in spring 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. When his safe house was raided by Pakistani security forces along with FBI and CIA agents, Zubaydah was shot three times during the gun battle.

At a time when virtually all counterterrorist professionals viewed another attack as imminent — and with information on al Qaeda scarce — the detention of Zubaydah was seen as a potentially critical breakthrough.

Zubaydah was taken to the local hospital, where CIA agent John Kiriakou, who helped coordinate Zubaydah’s capture, was ordered to remain at the wounded captive’s side at all times. “I ripped up a sheet and tied him to the bed,” Kiriakou said.

But after Zubaydah recovered from his wounds at a secret CIA prison in Thailand, he was uncooperative. “I told him I had heard he was being a jerk,” Kiriakou recalled. “I said, ‘These guys can make it easy on you or they can make it hard.’ It was after that he became defiant.”

The CIA wanted to use more aggressive — and physical — methods to get information. The agency briefed high-level officials in the National Security Council’s Principals Committee, led by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and including then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, which then signed off on the plan, sources said. It is unclear whether anyone on the committee objected to the CIA’s plans for Zubaydah.

The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Mohammad, who is known as KSM, was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.

In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.

“We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it,” Bush said. “And no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew.”

The president said, “I think it’s very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack — I mean, the 9/11 attacks.”

At a hearing before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay March 10, 2007, KSM, as he is known, said he broke under the harsh interrogation. COURT: Were any statements you made as the result of any of the treatment that you received during that time frame from 2003 to 2006? Did you make those statements because of the treatment you receive from these people?

KSM: Statement for whom??

COURT: To any of these interrogators. ?

KSM: CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning, when they transferred me…?

Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the “enhanced” questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called “Golden Shield” for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.

Old hands in the intelligence community remembered vividly how past covert operations, from the Vietnam War-era “Phoenix Program” of assassinations of Viet Cong to the Iran-Contra arms sales of the 1980s were painted as the work of a “rogue agency” out of control.

But even after the “Golden Shield” was in place, briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal.

According to a former CIA official involved in the process, CIA headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking for authorization for specific techniques. Agents, worried about overstepping their boundaries, would await guidance in particularly complicated cases dealing with high-value detainees, two CIA sources said.

Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.

“It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time,” said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. “They’d say, ‘We’ve got so and so. This is the plan.'”

Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved. “These discussions weren’t adding value,” a source said. “Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it’s legal, [you should] just tell them to implement it.”

Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.”

The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department’s own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.

At one meeting in the summer of 2003 — attended by Cheney, among others — Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.

A year later, amid the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the top al Qaeda suspects that was leaked to the press. A new senior official in the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo — the Golden Shield — that authorized the program.

But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns — shared by Powell — that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: “This is your baby. Go do it.”

April 11, 2008 – Washington, DC — Surprise, surprise. Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, wants to put a halt to any more troop withdrawals for the foreseeable future.

The highly politicized Petraeus seemed to be dutifully following his White House marching orders when he testified before congressional committees earlier this week.

Under his scenario, there will be no drawdown of U.S. forces in that strife-ridden country until President Bush leaves office.

That’s fine with Bush, who obviously has no intention of ending this futile war on his watch. Apparently feeling no responsibility for starting the war, Bush is planning to pass the Iraqi debacle on to his successor.

You can forget accountability for the yet-to-be defined U.S. military mission which has taken more than 4,000 American lives, possibly a million Iraqi lives and destroyed a country.

Think of President Harry Truman and President Lyndon B. Johnson, who both understood that war was too important to be left to the generals in the field.

Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.

Those two presidents finally drummed up enough courage to just say “no.”

Petraeus is too smart to be pinned down on when the U.S. can pull out more troops, especially when there’s been a new flare-up of sectarian violence in Iraq. Let’s say he is careful and self-protective, trying to hold on.

When Petraeus testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., told him: “What you have given to your chain of command is a plan which has no end to it.”

The general replied: “Withdrawing too many forces too quickly could jeopardize the progress of the past year.”

Congress should wake up before it’s too late and listen to retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, former director of the National Security Agency.

NSA is the nation’s largest intelligence agency which monitors messages from all over the world.

Odom testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week and urged an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. He claimed the troop surge (escalation) has prolonged instability in Iraq and that the only “sensible strategy” is “rapid withdrawal.”

In a separate speech last week, the outspoken general said, “We are certainly to blame for the chaos in Iraq” but “we do not have the physical means to prevent it.”

Odom said the military situation in Iraq is worsened by “the proliferation of armed groups under local military chiefs who follow a proliferating number of political bosses.”

“We are witnessing … the road to Balkanization of Iraq, that is political fragmentation,” Odom said

War makes strange bedfellows.

The Sunnis are now on our side — if we continue to pay them enough, of course. They would be happy to see the U.S. attack Shiite-dominated Iran. Odom said those new-found friends threaten to defect unless their fees are increased.

“The concern we hear the president and his aides express about a residual base left for al-Qaida if we withdraw is utter nonsense, ” Odom said. “The Sunnis will destroy al-Qaida if we leave Iraq,” he added. “The Kurds will not allow them in their region and the Shiites “detest” al-Qaida, he said.

Although the U.S. economic recession is expected to dominate the presidential election race, Iraq won’t be on the back burner if the Petraeus hearings are any guide.

The three presidential hopefuls — Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz.; Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y. and Barack Obama, D-Ill. — showed up at the high-profile hearings where Petraeus testified.

As expected, staunch-war supporter McCain said any promise to withdraw U.S. forces “would constitute a failure of political and moral leadership.”

In their disappointing comments, the Democratic rivals were as cautious as Petraeus.

Clinton said “it’s time to begin an orderly withdrawal of our troops.”

Obama told Petraeus that while he wants U.S. troops out of Iraq, he “would not initiate a precipitous withdrawal.”

Ohio’s GOP Sen. George Voinovich seemed to express the frustration best when he told Petraeus: “The American people have had it up to here.”

April 13, 2008 – Heavy fighting between American and Iraqi forces and fighters loyal to the Shia religious leader Moqtada al-Sadr have killed at least 13 people in the huge and impoverished Baghdad suburb of Sadr City. The fighting, which followed the assassination of a senior aide to al-Sadr, continued despite a call for calm by the cleric, who is a fierce opponent of the US-led occupation.

At least 13 people died in the clashes, which erupted on Friday night and tapered off early yesterday, said the US military, which claimed that all of the dead were fighters. Iraqi police reported that the total included seven civilians.

Al-Sadr had blamed the Americans and their Iraqi allies for the death of his aide, Riyadh al-Nouri, director of his office in the Shia holy city of Najaf. Gunmen ambushed al-Nouri as he was returning home from Friday prayers.

The latest fighting – in the week that General David Petraeus admitted to the US Congress that security progress following the much-vaunted ‘surge’ of 30,000 soldiers in the Baghdad area had produced only a ‘fragile’ result, which could easily be reversed – came as US officials blamed Iran, not al-Qaeda, as being the primary threat in the region.

The senior officials, quoted in yesterday’s Washington Post, apparently reflected the view of US Defence Secretary Robert Gates about Tehran’s allegedly ‘malign’ influence in Iraq.

According to the newspaper, the intensified focus on Iran is now being cited as the main justification for a continuing US military presence in Iraq. During the briefing, Petraeus, who is the senior American military commander in Iraq, and his civilian counterpart, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, barely mentioned al-Qaeda in Iraq but both of them spoke extensively of Iran.

With ‘al-Qaeda in retreat and disarray’ in Iraq, one official told the Washington Post, ‘we see other obstacles that were under the waterline more clearly… The Iranian-armed militias are now the biggest threat to internal order.’

The comments come as Petraeus has made clear that, while his recommendation is to ‘thin’ the number of American troops on the ground in Iraq to around 120,000 by the end of this year, he has no intention of reducing the countrywide breadth of the US military footprint.

Petraeus’s suggestion of a continued long occupation – albeit with reduced troop numbers in the future – follows the announcement that American diplomats will begin moving into their new, gigantic, heavily fortified embassy in Baghdad next month after long delays in the $736 million project.

Crocker announced on Friday that the building at the Vatican-sized compound – the world’s largest United States embassy – was now complete.

April 14 Update – General Petraeus tells Congress to halt troop cuts. What condition must a soldier be in to serve again? And again? And again?

There were no suprises in General David Petraeus’ testimony before Congress last week. The war in Iraq is going well, but not so well that we don’t need an infinite number of soldiers securing the country for freedom and democracy. While the politicians in Washington debate funding and troop levels and Americans call for troops to come home, our soldiers are sent off to battle again and again and again.

As though ignorant to all other reports about the Iraq War, President Bush halts troop withdrawals, putting even more strain on our already overburdened military.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Wars are producing more instances of post-traumatic stress disorder than any other wars in history. Traumatic Brain Injury has become the emblamatic wound of the two wars. Yet we see a dearth of treatment offered in the war zone and at VA centers across the country. Even worse, in an effort to meet demands for troop levels, soldiers are being taken out of hospitals and sent back to the war zone.

This is wrong on so many levels. Veterans for Common Sense vehemently opposes the military going against doctors’ orders to meet the required troop levels. Sending injured soldiers back to the battlefield is potentially deadly for the soldiers and endangers everyone around them. Contribute to VCS today to help us get the word out about this abhorrent behavior.

It is not only Veterans for Common Sense calling for leniency here. The Army is worried about the rising stress of return tours to Iraq. Their cries fall on deaf ears.

Unequivocally, soldiers suffering from PTSD need recovery time, not another tour of duty. When soldiers are sent back to the war zone when they are already wounded from their service, the results can be tragic. Taking care of our soldiers must be a priority.

Veterans for Common Sense believes it is unconscionable for our leaders to display such little regard for the troops who have devoted themselves to protection of our Constitution. Please contribute today to help us inject Common Sense into the chaos of debate surrounding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Thank you,

Libby Creagh
Development Director
Veterans for Common Sense

VCS provides advocacy and publicity for issues related to veterans, national security, and civil liberties. VCS is registered with the IRS as a non-profit 501(c)(3) charity, and donations are tax deductible.

April 9, 2008, Washington, D.C. – On Wednesday, the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, led by Chairman Bob Filner (D-CA), held a hearing to examine the effectiveness of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) homeless programs.  The hearing focused on the need to improve direct service programs designed to help veterans with self-sufficiency and prevention programs that identify vulnerable veterans and service members.
 
VA recently announced the number of veterans homeless on a typical night has declined 21 percent in the past year.  VA credits that decline to the services offered by the Department of Veterans Affairs and its partners in community and faith-based organizations, plus changing demographics and improvements in survey techniques.  The homeless veteran population fell from 195,000 to about 154,000. 

“Homelessness in America is a national tragedy and the presence of homeless veterans today is a moral disgrace for this nation,” said Chairman Filner.  “There are many compassionate people across this country that are involved in successful treatment and service programs.  But we are not solving this problem.  We need to do more.” 

Research shows that veterans are overrepresented in the homeless population.  VA is the largest single provider of direct service to homeless veterans, reaching 25 percent of homeless veterans a year through their various programs.  VA relies heavily on its federal, state and community based partners to assure a full range of services for homeless veterans.

Prior to becoming homeless, a large number of veterans at risk have struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder or have addictions acquired during or worsened by their military service.  These conditions can interrupt their ability to keep a job, establish savings, and in some cases, maintain family harmony.  Veterans’ family, social, and professional networks may have been broken due to extensive mobility while in service or lengthy periods away from their hometowns and their civilian jobs.  These problems are directly traceable to their experience in military service or to their return to civilian society without having had appropriate transitional support.

Approximately 1,500 homeless veterans are from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom.  Witnesses expressed concern that such an early presence of veterans from the current conflicts at shelters did not bode well for the next generation of veterans.  Advocates also believe that the intense repeated deployments leave newer veterans particularly vulnerable. Panelists provided a number of recommendations to the Committee that would help end and prevent homelessness among the nation’s veterans.  Recommendations included increasing the appropriation of the Grant Per Diem program which is used to fund community agencies that provide services to homeless veterans.  Panelists also discussed the need to improve access to mental health care, provide improved job counseling services and collaborate with the military to better identify at-risk veterans. 

Testimony provided by Phil Landis, CEO of Veterans Village of San Diego, described the needs of homeless treatment facilities and service providers.  “After becoming clean and sober, gaining life sustaining employment, and getting physically healthy, our veterans need affordable supportive housing, both transitional and permanent. Studies have demonstrated that the longer a person stays in a supportive environment, the greater the likelihood of long term success is.  We need additional funding to build or purchase additional transitional/permanent housing beds, not just in San Diego or California, but throughout the United States, in any city where there resides a veteran who for what ever reason must spend the night on the street, under a bridge or in a doorway.  We also need additional funding to expand the supportive services that are provided, specifically weekly case management and therapy.

The Department of Veterans Affairs is meeting the challenge of providing services and treatment of our newest veterans head on. However, resources seem to be limited and the need continues to escalate. Though the VA budget for healthcare has steadily increased, more needs to be done.”

The 110th Congress has taken action to prevent homelessness and provide improved services to assist homeless veterans.  A January 2008 law provides returning service members from Iraq and Afghanistan a total of five years of access to free VA health care.  The following bills are currently pending in Congress and address the needs of vulnerable veterans:

•       H.R. 5554, the Veterans Substance Use Disorders Prevention and Treatment Act of 2008; and •       H.R. 2874, the Veterans’ Health Care Improvement Act of 2007. 

“The tragedy of homeless veterans is that we know what we need to do to prevent it, but neither the military or VA bureaucracy is ready to do this,” said Bob Filner (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.  “We also know the repercussions of not doing something.  The military should insist on mandatory screening when troops are discharged and the VA must be prepared to provide comprehensive services to prevent homeless veterans.”

The opening statements of all the witnesses and a link to the webcast are available on the Committee website at http://veterans.house.gov/hearings/hearing.aspx?newsid=220. 

Witnesses:

Panel 1
* John Driscoll, Vice President for Operations and Programs, National Coalition for Homeless Veterans
* Libby Perl, Analyst in Housing, Congressional Research Service
* Michelle Saunders, Veteran, Arlington, Virginia

Panel 2
* John F. Downing, President/Chief Executive Officer, Soldier On
* Charles Williams, Colonel USA (Ret.), Executive Director, Maryland Center for Veterans Education and Training, Inc.
* Phil Landis, Chief Executive Officer, Veterans Village of San Diego
* William G. D’Arcy, Chief Operating Officer, Catholic Charities Housing Development Corporation

Panel 3
* Peter H. Dougherty, Director, Homeless Veterans Programs, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs