Veterans for Common Sense

April 1, 2008 – Washington, DC – President Bush wants to bolster the multinational fight in Afghanistan by reminding NATO allies that the war is in their interest — and by persuading them to send more troops into battle.

But this will be a challenge for Bush, who was en route to Ukraine Monday at the start of a trip that will also lead to Romania, Croatia and Russia. The NATO alliance is strained currently and is engaged in soul-searching about its place and mission in a rapidly changing world.

Beyond Afghanistan, Bush is trying to score a breakthrough on a U.S.-based missile defense system in Europe. And he wants NATO to expand its borders.

At the center of the trip is the NATO summit, starting Wednesday in Bucharest, Romania. The war in Afghanistan is under fresh review as the 26-nation NATO alliance confronts al-Qaida and Taliban forces, rising violence and internal debate about whether member nations are contributing enough.

Bush’s administration expects to emerge from the summit with a strong allied statement about the commitment in Afghanistan — a message that could be backed by the limited promise of new troop deployments to Afghanistan, where NATO commanders say they need more muscle.

“We think we’re going to have some countries stepping up and doing more in Afghanistan,” Stephen Hadley, the president’s national security adviser, told reporters traveling with Bush on Air Force One. He declined to name those countries or say whether their expected troop additions will be enough.

“Let’s see what we get,” Hadley said. “We’ve all been saying that we all need to do more. We’ve also been saying this is going to be a long effort.”

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in Denmark ahead of the NATO summit, set measured expectations.

“I would be surprised if we saw commitments in Bucharest at a level that would fully meet all the requirements” for combat troops and military and police trainers, Gates said. “But we’ll just keep working at it.”

The United States wants not only more troops, but also fewer restrictions from some governments on how their troops can be used. Those restrictions are intended to limit the risk of casualties; U.S. officials complain that they also limit the usefulness of the forces.

NATO’s force is about 43,000-strong, but commanders are pleading for more troops in the south, where Taliban insurgents are wreaking the most havoc.

The United States is the biggest contributor of troops in Afghanistan, with 31,000 fighting men and women — about 17,000 as part of the NATO-led force, and 14,000 in a U.S.-led outfit in eastern Afghanistan that is training the Afghan army and conducting counterinsurgency operations.

Most of the fighting is done by troops from the U.S., Canada, Britain and the Netherlands.

Ahead of Bush’s trip, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, for one, pledged to deploy more troops to fight the Taliban if Afghans also get more responsibility and if there is better coordination of nonmilitary efforts. Bush said that promise would help ensure the NATO meeting is a success.

Some European leaders are under pressure to pull back, though, and NATO is increasingly stretched thin.

Bush starts in Ukraine in a show of support for the country’s democratic reforms. He meets Tuesday with the country’s leaders and its opposition leader. The president and first lady Laura Bush are also set to visit a cathedral and a public school before departing for Romania.

At the summit, NATO leaders are expected to formally invite Croatia, Albania and perhaps Macedonia to join, expanding the alliance’s imprint in the Balkans. Bush supports that expansion and also wants Ukraine and Georgia to get on track for membership.

Meanwhile, Bush also has an upcoming date with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

At week’s end in the Black Sea resort city of Sochi in Russia, the two will again discuss the missile defense system that the United States plans to base in Central Europe. It would involve 10 interceptor missiles based in Poland and a tracking radar system in the Czech Republic.

Moscow has been vehemently opposed to the idea, saying the intent is to weaken its nuclear deterrent. The United States denies that.

Hadley said Bush had talked to Putin about the matter personally, and in a letter he sent to Putin. He sounded optimistic about a breakthrough.

“We’re hopeful,” Hadley said. “We’re not going to resolve all our differences. You know, this is a complicated relationship.”

Before leaving Washington, Bush could not help but poke Congress on his way to his helicopter.

He said lawmakers in the Democratic-run Congress should pass a Colombia free-trade deal, a reform of the Federal Housing Administration and a government eavesdropping law intended to root out suspected terrorists. “They have a lot of work to do,” Bush said.

March 31, 2008 – Almost 20 years after his death, the Department of Veterans Affairs has recognized that an area Army veteran had a valid claim to service-related disability benefits.

“I wish he could’ve been alive to have it,” said Virginia Grimes, the widow of veteran Andrew Grimes. She will receive a service-connected death benefit compensation in light of this recognition.

Her husband, a Gibson County native, fought in Vietnam and Cambodia and had began filing paperwork with the Veterans Administration in 1987 to get benefits after he became ill. He died at age 40 on Dec. 5, 1988, after The American Legion Magazine had featured him in a story about Vietnam veterans’ filing for disability.

Grimes said her husband always believed his declining health and a rare lymphoma cancer were results of his exposure to the chemical defoliant Agent Orange during combat in the jungles of Cambodia in 1970.

“He was in infantry. They all walked in on the ground right after it was sprayed,” she said.

On his death bed, he asked his wife to continue fighting for the recognition. “He said, ‘Do not give up on this.'”

“I feel like I have fulfilled what he wanted. I feel more at peace now. This is something he wanted me to have,” said Grimes, who lives in Jackson.

She filed several times on behalf of her husband over the past two decades. With each new filing, new evidence was required.

“The years was just passing by. … I had been denied so many times,” she said. Response letters to her filings in the past said “what you have sent is not sufficient enough.”

Finally, last year Grimes looked at all the paperwork she had and found something she had not sent in before. It was her husband’s autopsy report along with an article off the Internet about the type of cancer he had.

“If I had not agreed to the autopsy, I never would’ve gotten it,” she said. That was apparently the new evidence that turned everything around.

In early March, she received a letter from the Department of Veterans Affairs in Nashville stating that it had granted her claim related to the service-connected death of her husband. The letter was

dated Feb. 28 and signed by Jerry Mitchell, manager of the Veterans Service center.

“I was shocked when I got the letter. … When I opened it and read (it), I cried.”

Grimes hopes her experience will give hope to others.

“Anybody that is filing that is sincere, just don’t give up,” she said.

She had enlisted the help of U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., to file for service-connected widow’s compensation. Also, “the Veterans Affairs office in Jackson was so nice to me.”

Last April, her husband was among 77 veterans honored posthumously during the ninth annual “In Memory Day” for their non-combat injuries and emotional suffering caused directly by the Vietnam War.

That recognition, sponsored by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, was for veterans who were not eligible to have their names listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

April 1, 2008 – On Tuesday, U.S. Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Daniel K. Akaka (D-HI) and committee member Senator Bernard Sanders (I-VT) met with Veterans Affairs Secretary James Peake. They discussed funding for the National Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and a proposal to modify VA’s income threshold to make more middle-income veterans eligible for VA healthcare. Akaka, Sanders and other committee members have pressed Secretary Peake on both issues since his recent confirmation as VA Secretary.

“As we move through the final year of this Administration and this Congress, we must work together to find common ground for the sake of our veterans. I appreciate the Secretary’s willingness to work with us on these issues,” said Akaka. Secretary Peake agreed during the meeting to look more closely into the income threshold for veterans, as well as strengthening support for the National Center for PTSD.

Senators Akaka and Sanders wrote Secretary Peake on January 24, 2008, urging him to dedicate more funds to the National Center for PTSD. The Center has taken on a larger mission and workload in recent years, due in part to the increased number of veterans suffering from PSTD. Already, more than 100,000 servicemembers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan have reported mental health disorders, according to the Congressional Research Service. Meanwhile, the PTSD Center’s budget, adjusted for inflation, has been flat for the past half-decade, and overall staff levels have been reduced since 1999.

The Senators and Secretary also discussed health care eligibility for middle income veterans, known as “Priority 8” by the VA. In response to a question from Chairman Akaka at a hearing on February 13, 2008, Secretary Peake stated that he was willing to work with the Committee to consider modifying the policy, adopted in 2003, that prohibits middle-income veterans from enrolling in the VA health care system. On March 14, 2008, Majority Members of both the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committees wrote Secretary Peake to follow up. Today in some geographical regions, veterans making as little as $28,430 are considered too wealthy to enroll for VA heath care.

Washington, DC (AP) — Thе Pentagon оn Tuesday mаdе public a now-defunct legal memo thаt approved thе uѕе оf harsh interrogation techniques аgаіnѕt terror suspects, saying thаt President Bush’s wartime authority trumps аnу international ban оn torture.

Thе Justice Department memo, dated March 14, 2003, outlines legal justification fоr military interrogators tо uѕе harsh tactics аgаіnѕt al-Qaida аnd Taliban detainees overseas — ѕо lоng аѕ thеу did nоt specifically intend tо torture thеіr captors.

Evеn ѕо, thе memo noted, thе president’s wartime power аѕ commander іn chief wоuld nоt bе limited bу thе U.N. treaties аgаіnѕt torture.

“Our previous opinions make clear thаt customary international law іѕ nоt federal law аnd thаt thе president іѕ free tо override іt аt hіѕ discretion,” said thе memo written bу John Yoo, whо wаѕ thеn deputy assistant attorney general fоr thе Office оf Legal Counsel.

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The memo also offered a defense in case any interrogator was charged with violating U.S. or international laws.

“Finally, еvеn іf thе criminal prohibitions outlined аbоvе applied, аnd аn interrogation method mіght violate thоѕе prohibitions, necessity оr self-defense соuld provide justifications fоr аnу criminal liability,” thе memo concluded.

Thе memo wаѕ rescinded іn December 2003, a mere nіnе months аftеr Yoo sent іt tо thе Pentagon’s tор lawyer, William J. Haynes. Thоugh іtѕ existence hаѕ bееn known fоr years, іtѕ release Tuesday marked thе fіrѕt tіmе іtѕ contents іn full hаvе bееn mаdе public.

Haynes, thе Defense Department’s longest-serving general counsel, resigned іn late February tо return tо thе private sector. Hе hаѕ bееn hotly criticized fоr hіѕ role іn crafting Bush administration policies fоr detaining аnd trying suspected terrorists thаt ѕоmе argue led tо prisoner abuses аt thе detention center іn Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Yoo’s memo bесаmе раrt оf a debate аmоng thе Pentagon’s civilian аnd military leaders аbоut whаt interrogation tactics tо allow аt overseas facilities аnd whеthеr U.S. troops mіght face legal problems domestically оr іn international courts.

Alѕо оf concern wаѕ whеthеr techniques used bу U.S. interrogators mіght someday bе used аѕ justification fоr harsh treatment оf Americans captured bу opposing forces.

Thе Justice Department hаѕ opened аn internal investigation іntо whеthеr іtѕ tор officials improperly authorized оr reviewed thе CIA’s uѕе оf waterboarding, whісh simulates drowning, whеn interrogating terror suspects. It wаѕ unclear whеthеr thе Yoo memo, whісh focuses оnlу оn military interrogators, wіll bе раrt оf thаt inquiry.

Thе declassified memo wаѕ released аѕ раrt оf аn American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit tо force thе Bush administration tо turn оvеr documents аbоut thе government’s wаr оn terror. Thе document аlѕо wаѕ turned оvеr tо lawmakers.

Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said іtѕ release “represents аn accommodation оf Congress’ oversight іntеrеѕt іn thе area оf wartime interrogations.”

Jameel Jaffer, director оf thе ACLU’s national security project, said Yoo’s legal reasoning puts “literally nо limit аt аll tо thе kinds оf interrogation methods thаt thе president саn authorize.”

“The whоlе point оf thе memo іѕ obviously tо nullify еvеrу possible legal restraint оn thе president’s wartime authority,” Jaffer said. “The memo wаѕ meant tо allow torture, аnd that’s exactly whаt іt did.”

Thе 81-page legal analysis largely centers оn whеthеr interrogators саn bе held responsible fоr torture іf torture іѕ nоt thе intent оf thе questioning. And іt defines torture аѕ thе intended sum оf a variety оf acts, whісh соuld include acid scalding, severe mental pain аnd suffering, threat оf imminent death аnd physical pain resulting іn impaired bоdу functions, organ failure оr death.

The “definition of torture must be read as a sum of these component parts,” the memo said.

The memo also includes past legal defenses of interrogations that Yoo wrote are not considered torture, such as sleep depravation, hooding detainees and “frog crouching,” which forces prisoners to crouch while standing on the tips of their toes.

“This standard permits some physical contact,” the memo said. “Employing a shove or slap as part of an interrogation would not run afoul of this standard.”

The memo concludes that foreign enemy combatants held overseas do not have defendants’ rights or protections from cruel and unusual punishment that U.S. citizens have under the Constitution. It also says that Congress “cannot interfere with the president’s exercise of his authority as commander in chief to control the conduct of operations during a war.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the memo “reflects the expansive view of executive power that has been the hallmark of this administration.” He called for its release four months ago.

“It is no wonder that this memo … could not withstand scrutiny and had to be withdrawn,” said Leahy, D-Vt. “This memo seeks to find ways to avoid legal restrictions and accountability on torture and threatens our country’s status as a beacon of human rights around the world.”

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

March 31, 2008 – New Britain, CT — Capt. Brian Letendre’s presence on Pendleton Road was short-lived but memorable.

The Marine sold his house in 2005, kissed his wife and son goodbye and headed to Iraq, where he would die in combat on May 3, 2006.

What remained of the Letendres’ life on Pendleton Road were memories of the conversations and the brief but frequent interactions they had shared with their neighbors.

On March 8, members of the community commemorated the Letendres’ 18 months on the quiet street by renaming a small patch of land Captain Brian S. Letendre USMC Memorial Park.

Letendre’s then 4-year-old son, Dillon, left his handprints at the foot of a granite monument honoring his father and listened as his mother addressed a community that embraced Letendre, an avid outdoorsman from Virginia, as one of its own.

“To me, it’s just amazing,” Autumn Letendre said. “Some of these people, they hardly knew us — they maybe waved to us as they walked around the block … but to do something like this when you don’t know somebody is exactly what Brian was doing and he had a passion. That’s why he volunteered to go back on this second mission.”

Communities across the country have created similar ways to honor veterans killed in the Iraq war. Unlike the large, symbolic monuments that paid tribute to the war dead after the Civil War and world wars, these have become more personalized.

The pattern, which began after the Vietnam War, allows communities to remember individual soldiers and Marines rather than a faceless, nameless group.

Personal Remembrances

In contrast to World War II, which claimed the lives of 405,000 fighters, the fighting in Iraq has taken the lives of about 4,000 American troops. With fewer casualties, communities have been able to create memorials to individual service members.

Much of the momentum for modern-day memorials comes from Vietnam veterans, said Linda Schwartz, the state commissioner for veterans’ affairs and a Vietnam veteran.

“The war there was not popular, but at the same time, people, I think, want to make up for what happened in the past,” she said. “It’s kind of a legacy of the war that we will not turn our backs on the people that go to war.”

Her department has created a multimedia memorial that is temporarily in Waterford, one of the first Connecticut towns to mourn the loss of a Marine killed in Iraq. The memorial combines pictures of dead soldiers and Marines with “American Anthem,” sung by Norah Jones. The approach takes the reams of names inscribed onto the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall to a more vivid level.

“You can look at names, but when you see the faces, then you know how much [more] those people had to live and how much their sacrifices really mean because the war is different,” Schwartz said. “These are citizen soldiers and they come from every town and city in our state.”

In West Hartford, town leaders and residents have honored Lance Cpl. Lawrence R. Philippon through memorials at his old high school, the town center and the ice-skating rink where he worked and played hockey and along a stretch of Route 4 renamed in his honor.

In Suffield, the name of Cpl. Stephen R. Bixler will be affixed to a postal office near his childhood home on Mountain Road. Bixler’s father, Richard, a letter carrier, passes the building on his way to work each day.

In Milford, officials dedicated a park in honor of Cpl. Jordan Pierson, a Marine who died in Iraq on Aug. 25, 2006. Pierson’s mother, Beverley Pierson, looks out at the park from her window each night to make sure the flag is lit.

A Comfort To Families

The memorials have given the grieving families a sense of comfort in knowing that their loved ones have not been forgotten.

“We have this huge void,” said Leesa Philippon, the mother of Lance Cpl. Philippon. “These ceremonies and the fact that people remember — they can’t fill the void, but they certainly help to bandage it.”

The decision to name roads after Philippon and Bixler seems impersonal at first, but a closer look reveals just how intertwined those stretches of asphalt were with their lives.

Philippon used to drive along Route 4 to have doctors at the University of Connecticut Health Center in Farmington treat his sports injuries. He took the same road to have his wisdom teeth pulled, to run and bike along West Hartford’s reservoir and to fill his gas tank.

After Philippon died, the road became another way for the Philippon family to remember him. It was the only road that was available to be named after Philippon, but it was also the most fitting, Leesa Philippon said.

“We drive by that stretch of highway all the time,” she said.

Suffield residents have honored Bixler in many ways, including a Memorial Day picnic that drew 200 people last year, a bench on the town green and a piece of Route 190 East that bears his name.

Like many Suffield residents, Bixler often drove along Route 190 East, one of two ways to reach the closest shopping areas in the neighboring town of Enfield.

The Bixlers, like the Philippons, take the road even when using another one would be more convenient.

“It just brings back another memory of Steve,” Richard Bixler said. “We just remember everything about him.”

A Lasting Presence

Daily reminders, such as the plaque honoring Bixler that adorns the post office where his father works and the plaque at his old high school, help reassure his family that his sacrifice and the sacrifices of others haven’t been forgotten.

When Philippon’s son died on May 8, 2005, it was Capt. Brian Letendre who notified the family.

The family was among dozens who ignored a persistent, bone-chilling rain to attend Letendre’s dedication service in New Britain.

“He was a wonderful individual and treated us like family,” Leesa Philippon said. “Even though he is not a Connecticut citizen, he is being held as one and we are very happy about that.”

Captain Brian S. Letendre USMC Memorial Park is across the street from the Letendres’ former home. The young family lived on Pendleton Road for less than two years, but it was where they established a family routine.

Those memories are now cemented in the handprints that Dillon left behind at the monument, the same spot where he would often toss baseballs during family games.

The family left the neighborhood in 2005, after Brian Letendre volunteered to return to Iraq. Autumn and Dillon Letendre moved to Indiana to be close to relatives.

Shortly after Brian Letendre died on May 3, 2006, one of his neighbors on Pendleton Road petitioned the city to rename the neighborhood park after Letendre.

A granite stone, donated by a local business owner, was installed in the park, with a bench inscribed with Letendre’s favorite quote.

It was the first time in at least 24 years that the city dedicated a park to someone.

Autumn Letendre, who was reminded of a time when her son blazed a trail on a Kawasaki Big Wheel and her husband climbed the tree in front of their house and sat his son on his knee, plans to visit Pendleton Road again.

“Dillon’s only a child,” Autumn Letendre said, “but when he’s an adult, I think this will be another location to place the puzzles of his life together, cause I’m sure there will be many.”

March 29, 2008 – James Webb, the Vietnam vet and senator from Virginia who was once secretary of the Navy, likes to share the chart he prepared for five of his Senate colleagues. They are men who fought in World War II and afterward went to college and even law school on the American taxpayer, a free ride in exchange for their service. Webb’s chart quantifies how much of their education costs would have been covered if they had served in Iraq or Afghanistan. Not even close.

In 1944, President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill. It was one of the most visionary and transformative pieces of legislation in American history, providing free education for returning veterans.

Its champions believed it was the moral response to the sacrifice those service members had made, but it also solved an economic and social problem.

An influx of millions of unemployed and untrained men into the labor force could have triggered another Great Depression. But with 5 million of those soldiers becoming students instead, the result was the ascendancy of the middle class and a period of enormous prosperity.

Every dollar spent on the GI Bill was multiplied many times over in benefits to the postwar U.S. economy.
But government institutions are notoriously amnesiac. College costs have escalated, and benefits have shrunk.

Service members are surprised to discover that the grateful nation that made it possible for Sen. John Warner to go to both college and law school and Sen. Frank Lautenberg to graduate from an Ivy League university won’t even cover three years at a public institution, much less a private college.

Members of the National Guard and Reserves, who have been a linchpin of the current conflicts, receive only a fraction of that help.

“Watch the commercials,” says Paul Rieckhoff, founder and executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America.

“It looks as though you’re going to be able to go wherever you want. People ask all the time, ‘Don’t you all go to school for free?'”
The answer is no, but Webb is the author of legislation that would help change that. His revamped GI Bill would cover the full cost of the most expensive public institution in any given state; World War II vets like Lautenberg and Warner are enthusiastic supporters, as are dozens of other senators.

(Oddly enough, Webb has not been able to get John McCain, who received the ultimate taxpayer-funded education at the Naval Academy, to take a position on the bill.)

The source of the opposition is shocking: the Department of Defense, whose leaders argue that offering enhanced educational opportunities to soldiers would hurt retention.

Military brass apparently tremble at the notion that multiple deployments, starvation wages and inadequate medical care might not be enough to hold on to their people. Of course, this is the military brass who have had to lower age and ability standards despite spending billions to try to entice young men and women to join up.

It does not seem to have occurred to them that a better long-range plan would be to offer true educational incentives so that more focused and ambitious people would enlist.
Webb says, “This will expand the recruiting base because you could approach smart people just finishing high school, who are worried about paying for college, and say, ‘If you serve your country, you’ll get a first-class education.'”

Because of the DOD opposition, Webb has had a hard time prying loose estimates of how much these expanded benefits will cost, but at this point he thinks the figure is about $2 billion.

That’s half what is spent annually on recruitment and the cost of only a couple of days’ worth of war in Iraq. But, more important, Rieckhoff says it’s one of those costs he suspects the American people would support happily.

“If the president stood up tomorrow and said, ‘I need $2 billion to send vets to college,’ people would be doing bake sales and carwashes across America,” he says. “They can find that kind of money in the seat cushions on Capitol Hill.”

The original GI Bill set the standard for innovative and audacious legislation. It was right in both senses of that word: the sensible thing to do, and the moral thing as well. And it helped expunge the shameful treatment of World War I veterans, many of whom had found themselves unemployed and destitute.
The Department of Defense says it’s a different era now, with a war that drags on and a volunteer Army, than it was when the GI Bill was first signed.

But it’s the same era, too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment among young veterans is three times the national average. Already some Iraq vets are homeless and have substance-abuse problems.

Offering these men and women a college education is the least we can do. It’s not free; they’ve already paid, in Fallujah and Kabul. If Congress wants an economic-stimulus package, this is a great one.

A Topeka, Kan., lawyer and national commander of the American Legion, Harry Colmery, was the architect of the original GI Bill. He asked a question that is as resonant today as it was then: “If we can spend 200 to 300 billion dollars to teach our men and women to kill, why quibble over a billion or so to help them to have the opportunity to earn economic independence and to enjoy the fruits of freedom?”

March 30, 2008 – The Iraq war seems no closer to resolution today than when it began five years ago. The daily stories of death, setbacks and gains bleed together like a list of mayhem on a police blotter, rarely jolting us anymore from our safe slumber back home. Two new books try to do just that by tallying the war’s costs from these daily ledgers. Although each has a different focus, both accountings draw the same picture of hopelessness.

The most enlightening is “The Three Trillion Dollar War,” by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz and Harvard professor Linda J. Bilmes. They matter-of-factly dissect the staggering monetary cost of the war and the human devastation behind the ever-increasing bill. In “Defeat,” Jonathan Steele uses the region’s history and his own extensive reporting on the ground for the Guardian to provide ammunition for his thesis, that “the occupation was flawed from the start.”

Both books are deeply critical of the rationale for going to war and the way it is being waged. But Stiglitz and Bilmes focus on a track less worn than Steele’s. They follow the money, ferreting out exactly how it was spent, explaining how we’ll be paying the bill — one they calculate to be at least $3 trillion — for decades to come and suggesting where all that money could have been used more effectively.

For instance, $3 trillion is enough to provide the nation’s 8.3 million uninsured children with health coverage for about 18 years. It is worth noting that $3 trillion is their “excessively conservative” estimate of the war’s total cost when all is said and done.

“The Three Trillion Dollar War” isn’t likely to be an Oprah Book Club selection — its clinical prose and abundant lists don’t make for a leisurely read. But its statistics are a damning indictment of how the war has been conducted and a wake-up call for American taxpayers, who for the most part have remained untouched by a conflict that churns through money and lives on a daily basis. Borrowing the phrase “there is no free lunch,” Stiglitz and Blimes describe how hefty the bill will become if we don’t change course.

They note that the United States has been in Iraq more than a year longer than it fought World War II, and that the “cost of direct U.S. military operations — not even including long-term costs such as taking care of wounded veterans — already exceeds the cost of the twelve-year war in Vietnam and is more than double the cost of the Korean War.”

Deficit spending has hidden this cost, giving Americans “the illusion that the laws of economics can be repealed, that we can have both guns and butter.” But signs of strain are everywhere. The war has contributed to the ballooning national debt (adding about $1 trillion so far) and helped fuel the steep rise in oil prices (from about $35 a barrel in February 2003 to more than $100 a barrel today). The authors cite the tens of thousands of injured Iraq war veterans confronting squalid conditions at under-funded U.S. veterans’ hospitals and a Kafkaesque bureaucracy that has produced a backlog of more than 400,000 disability claims, about 25{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of which have been pending for more than six months.

Some veterans have been waiting for years. One young Texan who was wounded in 2004 got a visit from President Bush and a Purple Heart. But according to the authors, he didn’t receive disability benefits for three years and got them recently only because Bilmes informed veterans’ advocates, who alerted the media.

Many injured veterans have been charged for equipment no longer in their possession, such as body armor and night visions goggles probably left on the battlefield after they were wounded. The Department of Defense, the authors note, has pursued “hundreds of battle-injured soldiers for payment of non-existent military debts.” Such collection efforts are striking considering the money that has been spent in multimillion-dollar no-bid contracts to private firms backstopping the military effort. Although much of their discussion of veterans’ mistreatment falls under the rubric of the Bush administration’s alleged efforts to cut or hide costs, Stiglitz and Bilmes also note that the cost of care is being shifted to the veteran and the veteran’s family, spreading the war’s emotional and monetary toll even wider.

The administration “has not flinched at asking for ever higher amounts of cash to pay troops while they are in combat, and it has not balked at the astronomical demands of private contractors such as Halliburton and Blackwater Security,” the authors complain. But it has “behaved as if there were a direct conflict of interest between funding the war and taking care of the veterans after they come home.”

Nor has war achieved the administration’s goals, Stiglitz and Blimes write, noting that Iraq has “descended into internecine conflict,” ranking above only Somalia and Myanmar in corruption. As for the war helping to bring democracy to the Middle East, the authors note that now “even the more modest goal of a stable and democratic Iraq appears unattainable.”

Steele’s “Defeat” also has a sense of exasperation at its core. He argues that the Bush administration’s belief that the troops would be welcomed as liberators disregards a long history of ambivalence and mistrust of the West by Iraqis and the rest of the Arab world. After toppling Saddam Hussein, Steele writes, the actions of coalition forces on the ground exacerbated that skepticism.

Steele is certainly not the only author to give Iraqis a voice, but his interviews with many locals are among the book’s strongest suits and they help him to lay out the reasoning behind his central argument: “The day on which Bush decided to have an occupation was the day he ensured its defeat.”

Although many may not agree with Steele’s overarching thesis of predestined doom, he, like other authors before him, provides plenty of examples of why U.S. intervention in Iraq has been a failure. Hubris, he shows, has kept the invaders out of touch with the population, while fear has led to the killing and incarceration of a multitude of innocent civilians.

Steele writes of a Baghdad veterinarian and his high-school-age son who described being stopped at a U.S. checkpoint in 2003, then taken into custody after soldiers found a pistol in their car, a common accouterment for Iraqis seeking a measure of safety in postwar Iraq. The father was released after a few weeks, but the boy spent 66 days in various jails, often living on about a cup of water a day. “At no time was I questioned, interrogated, or charged. It was punishment without trial,” the boy told Steele. “When the Americans first came to Baghdad I was happy, but I don’t want to speak about my feelings towards them now.”

Uncontrolled firing on civilians has been an endemic problem. While covering the war, I witnessed Marines at a makeshift checkpoint repeatedly open fire on civilian cars fleeing Baghdad. Steele cites documents outlining similar examples, noting the case of a driver killed for failing to get out of his car when warning shots were fired; an sergeant noted in the file that the driver likely didn’t know how to respond, adding, “If I was in his place I would have stayed put too.”

The question is what to do now. Both books argue that staying the course in Iraq is not an option. As Steele puts it, Bush’s goals of democracy, stability and security may one day be achieved, but they “cannot be imposed through the barrel of a foreign gun.” And even if those goals could be accomplished by remaining longer, how much more are Americans willing to pay? Stiglitz and Bilmes argue that the costs have already become too high.

“Staying another two years will simply add another 1,000 or more American bodies to the 4,000 who have already died in vain, and another 10,000 or more casualties to the 60,000 [Americans] who have already been injured,” they conclude. “When framed the correct way — not whether we should leave, but when we should leave — exit becomes simpler. It is a bleak situation. Leaving sooner rather than later is the only way to stop it from getting worse.” *

March 29, 2008 – Dr. Ward Casscells is assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. A prominent Houston cardiologist with interests ranging from disaster preparedness to bird flu, Casscells shook his life up when he enlisted in the U.S. Army Reserves in 2005, then accepted President Bush’s nomination in 2007 to become the military’s top health officer. Casscells, who was in Houston last week to speak at a nursing conference, talked with Houston Chronicle reporter Todd Ackerman about a wide range of issues, including the neglect scandal at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and his own battle with cancer.

Q: So how do you find Washington compared to Houston?

A: It’s less homogenous, less of a city, doesn’t have that big civic pride. It’s more where the country comes to talk and make decisions.

Q: What’s been the biggest challenge?

A: Walter Reed, Walter Reed, Walter Reed. We’ve made good progress. It’s always better when you get all sorts of people looking over your shoulder. Patient satisfaction is improving, but public perception is lagging. There’s two new polls out — one found 75 percent of our patients think military health care is on the right track. The other found that only 21 percent of the public does.

Q: What’s the underappreciated health issue that soldiers in Iraq face?

A: We talk a lot about concussions and traumatic brain injury, but the biggest challenge is the psyche. Those who feel we’ve done good over there face the least problems. Those who feel our activities there are a mistake and those who feel they let the team down are at higher risk.

Q: Do you have an opinion about Gulf War syndrome, the mysterious illness some veterans think was caused by wartime exposure to biological and chemical toxins. Do you think that link is real?

A: It’s hard to sort out the component that’s psychological. There’s some suggestive evidence, but it’s not very strong. That doesn’t rule it out — the absence of evidence isn’t proof. But what is clear is, whatever triggered it, we owe those veterans care.

Q: We spend something like 10 times more on bioterrorism preparedness than on hurricane preparedness. Is that really justified?

A: Maybe not. It is true that local governments need the authority to make their own plans. In Biloxi, you want money for hurricanes, not the Ebola virus or anthrax.

Q: Was bird flu overhyped?

A: I don’t think so. But of course, I was one of the big hypers. You never prevent a pandemic, which comes every 30, 40 years, but it’s important to be as prepared as possible.

Q: Isn’t there a danger people will start tuning out public health officials when these catastrophes don’t materialize?

A: That’s a concern, certainly. We’re at the point where, when fire alarms go off in buildings, almost no one responds. Are we at that point with bird flu? I don’t think so, but it’s a significant risk. Though you can’t be sure, H5N1, the current bird flu, probably isn’t going to cause a pandemic — it still needs a number of major mutations. But it might be H6N1, or whatever combination of letters and numbers they give the next virus.

Q: People in the Medical Center know you have prostate cancer, but I’ve never heard you talk about it. Can you? I’d heard it was pretty advanced.

A: It was terrible. I was dying. I always had great medical care, but my doctors made a mistake. Even though I was always a cancerphobe, often going in for tests, by the time it was diagnosed, it had spread from head to toe, to my skull and my liver. I was told I probably had three years to live. But an M.D. Anderson doctor told me to disregard such prognoses and put me on constantly changing combinations of drugs that have kept me in good health for almost seven years now. I have chronic prostate cancer — I take 52 pills a day — but I’m still here.

Q: And yet, despite all that, you enlisted in the Army Reserves at 52. What was basic training like at that age?

A: It was hard. I trained for a couple of months before, and I still struggled. I struggled with the heat, the cold, the exercises, the obstacle course, everything.

Q: So why did you do it? You’ve got three kids and a potentially deadly disease. Why take on so much?

A: As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more adventuresome. I want to set an example for the kids, and it keeps me from focusing on my own problems.

Q: What will a change in administration mean for your office?

A: We’ll all submit our letters of resignation Jan. 20, then assist in the transition process. (Barack) Obama and (Hillary) Clinton will be pleased to find the military is more favorable to women and minorities than any institution in the country, that it operates in an objective, non-sexist, non-prejudiced way. (John) McCain will take that for granted. But since he knows the military so well, he’ll reach deeper down in the organization and hand-pick not just, say, the secretary of defense but numerous layers below.

March 26, 2008 – Former U.S. Marine Corps machine gunner John Michael Turner leaned over the microphone, his voice choking with emotion, the words barely forcing themselves out, the tears barely held back.

“There’s a term ‘Once a Marine, always a Marine,’” he said, ripping off his medals and throwing them to the ground. “But there’s also the expression ‘Eat the apple, f*@ the Corps, I don’t work for you no more.”

Turner was one of more than 200 veterans who came the Winter Soldier hearings organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). Like the other veterans assembled, Turner spoke openly about what he saw and did during his tours in Iraq.

“April 18, 2006 was the date of my first confirmed kill,” he said. “He was innocent, I called him the fat man. He was walking back to his house and I killed him in front of his father and friend. My first shot made him scream and look into my eyes, so I looked at my friend and said, ‘Well, I can’t let that happen,’ and shot him again. After my first kill I was congratulated.”

Not Just Bad Apples
When he was done speaking, Turner received a standing ovation from the crowd of Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam and Gulf War veterans. The ovation went on for over two minutes. Turner’s comments, and the response was typical of the three day gathering, which Iraq Veterans Against the War hoped would show that well-publicized incidents of U.S. brutality, including the Abu Ghraib prison scandal and the massacre of an entire family of Iraqis in the town of Haditha, are not isolated incidents perpetrated by “a few bad apples,” as many politicians and military leaders have claimed. They are part of a pattern, the organizers said, of “an increasingly bloody occupation.”

Corporal Jason Washburn did three tours in Iraq including the invasion. Over the course of his service, Washburn was stationed in some of the most dangerous areas of Iraq: Najaf, Sadr City, and Anbar Province. A squad in his unit was responsible for the massacre of 26 civilians in Haditha in November 2005.

Washburn told the gathering his commanders encouraged lawless behavior.

“We were encouraged to bring ‘drop weapons’ or shovels, in case we accidentally shot a civilian, we could drop the weapon on the body and pretend they were an insurgent,” he said.

“By the third tour, if they were carrying a shovel or bag, we could shoot them. So we carried these tools and weapons in our vehicles, so we could toss them on civilians when we shot them. This was commonly encouraged.”
Meager Media Coverage
These gripping, often tearful personal testimonies were broadcast in their entirety through IVAW’s website, the satellite statio Free Speech TV, and Pacifica Radio (who’s three- day live broadcast I co-hosted) but they mostly went ignored by the mainstream media.

These grassroots outlets reached a much larger audience than organizers expected. IVAW’s website received more than 30,000 unique views every day during Winter Soldier. Warcomeshome.org, the site I edit for Pacifica Radio, received hits from internet users in over 110 countries and moving comments from veterans and active duty service members and their families. The progressive print and online media also paid attention: articles ran in In These Times, The Nation and AlterNet.

Winter soldier also received wide play in the military press, with favorable stories published in Stars and Stripes and the Military Times chain of newsweeklies. The IVAW has posted media coverage of the hearings on its site.

Success in alternative and military outlets was tempered, however, by a nearly complete blackout by the mainstream media. Though the gathering was timed to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and was held in Silver Spring, Maryland less than 10 miles from the White House, the personal testimony of hundreds of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans garnered scant mainstream media coverage, with the notable exceptions of Time, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, the Boston Globe and The Washington Post, which buried an article on Winter Soldier in the Metro section. Meanwhile, The New York Times¸ CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS ignored it completely.

Instead, these media outlets proffered stories produced by embedded journalists citing “progress” in Iraq, supposedly thanks to the so-called “surge.” The contrast between the raw, honest words of these veterans and the coverage on TV was incredibly jarring.

Waking up at my suburban Washington hotel Sunday morning, I turned on Good Morning America, and saw a live shot from “Camp Victory” (formerly Saddam Hussein International Airport) where the reporter excitedly reported “more troops is just one reason for the drop in violence.”

No mention was made of the 4,4783 Americans who’ve been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, or the one million Iraqis researches at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University believe have died. No mention, either, of more than 69,000 American soldiers the Pentagon reports have been wounded, injured, or fallen ill in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There was also no mention of the nearly 300,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who have gone to the Department of Veterans Affairs for treatment; nor of the 250,000 who have filed a disability claim with the VA.

Five years into the war, we appear to be back where we started in terms of media coverage, where a cowed media blindly follows the spin coming from the White House. After Winter Soldier concluded, the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting released an alert to its members asking them to “contact the broadcast networks and ask them why they decided to ignore the Winter Soldiers hearings while carrying the less-informed observations on Iraq of John McCain and Dick Cheney.”

Troubling Polling Data
It’s not surprising then that when asked by the Pew Research Center earlier this month, only 28{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of respondents correctly said that about 4,000 Americans have died in the war. Most thought the number was closer to 2,000 or 3,000.

According to the same survey, overall media coverage of the war dropped from an average of 15{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of stories in July 2007, to just 3{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} in February 2008.

At Winter Soldier, veterans I spoke to found these developments upsetting, but not discouraging. They note that when Vietnam veterans held a similar forum on war crimes in 1971 it was also roundly ignored by the mainstream press. But that did not cause the story to go away, because word got out through military and veteran circles got out that resistance within the ranks was building – a development most members of Iraq Veterans Against the War see as even more important than mainstream media coverage and lobbying on Capitol Hill.

“We don’t need to rely on the mainstream media,” said Aaron Hughes, a former Illinois National Guardsman who drove convoys in Iraq. “We can rely on the grassroots networks that we’re building through events like Winter Soldier. People are posting on blogs and organizing in their workplaces and in their schools. That’s what’s important.”

Hughes and other members of Iraq Veterans Against the War were also excited to see the extensive coverage they were given by military papers like Stars and Stripes and the Army Times. IVAW also bought advertisements in both papers in advance of the event with an eye to boosting their membership and increasing the amount of opposition to the war within the U.S. military.
Changing the Whole Nation
“That’s getting to the veterans and GIs who oppose this war but may feel like they’re alone,” he said. “As long as we keep building that it doesn’t matter if the mainstream media is covering this or not because we’re going to change this whole nation but what we are doing.”

Already 30 Iraq and Afghanistan have contacted IVAW since the Winter Soldier gathering began on March 13 and hundreds of other veterans who were already members of the organization have stepped forward offering to add their testimony to those who testified in Silver Spring.

“This time we came with 200 veterans,” Hughes said. “The next time we’ll come with 400 veterans and then 800. We will not let up until this occupation is over.”

Independent journalist Aaron Glantz, a Foreign Policy In Focus contributor, has reported extensively from Iraq throughout the U.S. occupation. He is author of How America Lost Iraq (Penguin). He co-hosted the Pacifica radio broadcast of the Winter Soldier hearings, along with veteran Aimee Allison. Full archives of Winter Soldier are available at warcomeshome.org and ivaw.org.

March 26, 2008 – Basra, Iraq — Iraqi forces fought Shi’ite militants on Wednesday in battles that threatened to wreck a truce by a powerful cleric that U.S. forces had credited for much of the reduction in violence of the past year.

More than 60 people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the fighting, centered on the oil hub of Basra in the south and on Shi’ite neighborhoods of Baghdad where armed followers of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr hold sway.

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, in Basra overseeing the campaign, said fighters would be spared if they surrendered within 72 hours. Sadr’s followers rejected the ultimatum.

The assault was the largest military campaign carried out yet by Maliki’s forces without U.S. or British combat units, posing a crucial test for the Iraqi government’s ability to impose its will and allow American forces to withdraw.

“These are Iraqi decisions, they are Iraqi government forces and these are Iraqi leaders implementing and directing these decisions,” U.S. military spokesman Major-General Kevin Bergner said in Baghdad. He said U.S. and British backing was limited to small mentoring teams and some air support.

“A year ago the Iraqi security forces would have struggled to move this force, they would not have been able to support it and it would have been difficult for the government then to take this strong action,” he told a news conference.

Washington aims to bring 20,000 of its 160,000 troops home by July after a build-up of troops reduced violence dramatically last year. But violence has increased in the past few months.

Maliki’s government is under pressure to show it can maintain security on its own. U.S. Democratic candidates who hope to succeed President George W. Bush next January are calling for a speedy withdrawal from an unpopular war.

Sadr, a young, anti-American cleric, helped install Maliki in power after an election in 2005 but later broke with him. His followers, known as the Mehdi Army, have feuded with other Shi’ite groups, especially the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council, a powerful force in Maliki’s government and in the police.

The fighting threatens a ceasefire which Sadr declared last August, winning praise at the time from U.S. commanders for helping to reduce violence.

Sadr’s followers have taken to the streets demonstrating against Maliki’s government and forcing schools, universities and shops to close. On Tuesday he said he would call a “civil revolt” if attacks against his followers did not stop.

The truce was still in effect, senior Sadr aide Luwaa Sumaisem told Reuters in the Shi’ite holy city of Najaf.

The head of Sadr’s office in Basra, Harith al-Ithari, said the movement was negotiating with Maliki to end the fighting.

“There are ongoing negotiations with the prime minister. Maliki asked to meet Sadr officials in Basra,” he told Reuters. “Things are moving in the direction of solving the crisis.”

BASRA FIGHTING

The worst fighting has been in Basra, where a health official said 40 people had been killed and 200 wounded.

Heavy gunbattles restarted early Wednesday in five districts of Basra after a brief lull. Mortars or rocket attacks regularly struck Iraqi security checkpoints and bases.

Ground commander Major-General Ali Zaidan told Reuters his forces had killed more than 30 militants on the first day of the operation, which began before dawn on Tuesday. More than 25 were wounded and around 50 were captured, he said.

“The operation is still going on and will not stop until it achieves its objectives,” he said.

A British military spokesman said the assault was expected to last two to three more days. British forces, which patrolled Basra for nearly five years, have withdrawn to a base outside the city since December and were not involved in the fighting.

An official with Iraq’s Southern Oil Company said production in the Basra area could be disrupted if the fighting continues for more than three days, preventing employees from reaching work. The area produces 80 percent of Iraq’s oil exports.

In the capital, a health official said 14 people were killed and more than 140 wounded in clashes in Sadr City, the Shi’ite slum named for the cleric’s slain father, where the younger Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia have widespread influence.

Bergner said rogue Mehdi Army units linked to Iran were responsible for days of constant mortar strikes on the Green Zone diplomatic and government compound and other Baghdad areas.

One mortar bomb on the Green Zone seriously hurt three U.S. civilians. Mortar attacks killed five people and wounded 21 in the Karrada neighborhood and killed four in Risala.

Elsewhere in the south, Sadr fighters seized control of seven districts in the town of Kut. A Reuters witness heard clashes near a government building. Residential buildings and cars were on fire and mortar explosions could be heard.