Veterans for Common Sense

January 4, 2008 – While serving in Iraq, Noah Pierce survived the bombs, the snipers, and countless encounters with the enemy.

But his family and friends say it was the guilt that finally overcame him.

“The demons and the pain…he’s too sensitive,” said his mother, Cheryl Softich. “He couldn’t handle the innocents that were killed, the kids he got attached to. He was a good boy, he had a heart.”

When Noah came home from Iraq in April of 2006, he was 22. He had served two tours of duty there; two years of his young life. He tried to readjust to life back in Eveleth. He went hunting with his step-dad equipped with creedmore scopes, and partied with friends.

But it was difficult. Noah was depressed, he suffered from nightmares, and drank to get through the days. Doctors diagnosed him with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. They recommended he get counseling. But he didn’t go, instead spending much of his time convincing himself and others that he was getting better.

“He says, ‘Ma, you worry too much, I’m fine, I’m happy.’ A week later he shot himself.”

Cheryl says her son struggled for 14 months before taking his life last July. Though he was thousands of miles from combat, Noah could not forgive himself for a life-altering moment in Iraq. While on a road in Fallujah, an Iraqi man was approaching the soldiers. They ordered him to stop, but the man kept getting closer. Noah was ordered to shoot the man. He later found out the man was an innocent Iraqi doctor.

“There was something about that incident that ate up my son every single day,” said Cheryl. “I found a note that he wrote to the doctor and it says, ‘I am so sorry.'”

It’s been six months since Noah died. Cheryl visits the place where her son took his life, in a secluded area, tucked back in the woods not more than a mile from his childhood home. Even though its where he died, Cheryl says she feels close to him here. She is able to remember the happy Noah, the boy who loved life.

“He loved to hunt with Dad, loved to fish with his friends, all he ever wanted to do was serve his country,” she said.

And after 9/11, Noah was even more determined to enlist. He joined the Army right before his 18th birthday. His best friend Tyler says before he enlisted, Noah was easy-going. He smiled all the time, and made jokes. Together they spent their time outdoors. Tyler says Noah was excited to serve, but when he came back from his second tour, he noticed something had changed.

“You could see obvious changes,” said Tyler Newberg. “He had something else on his mind affecting his daily life, you know?”

But it wasn’t just Tyler who noticed the difference; his family became extremely worried. They encouraged Noah to go to counseling, but Noah said asking for help was a sign of weakness.

Cheryl has now made it her mission to teach others about PTSD. On December 15th, the local AMVETS Post 33 in Virginia was named in honor of Noah. She hopes that everyone who walks through the door will learn about the disorder, and how they can get help.

Two military medical studies found that almost 20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of soldiers and marines home from Iraq suffered from a mental illness. Between 12{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d}-20{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} of them met the criteria for PTSD. Now, in honor of her son, Cheryl is determined to get other veterans the help they need.

“Noah died so others could learn about PTSD,” she said.

When soldiers sign up, Cheryl wants a clause saying they must go to counseling when they return from combat. She wants to call it, “Noah’s Clause”. She plans to contact members of Congress, and go to Washington, D.C. if necessary.

It’s not mandatory,” said Cheryl. “It needs to be mandatory so they go, otherwise they’re not going to go. They just wont.”

And if she can save just one other life by getting the word out about Noah and PTSD, Cheryl says her mission will be a success.

“It is my goal in life to make my son so much more and I will do that,” she said.

January 2, 2008 – With the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primaries approaching, I thought we’d begin taking a look at how the candidates address veterans issues. Whether a candidate’s platform calls for an end to the Iraq war or not, vets will continue to be a highly visible presence in American life. Today and tomorrow we’ll examine what the contenders are saying. The first four:

HILLARY CLINTON: Late last month Clinton visited a veterans home in Iowa as part of her “Holidays with Hillary” event series. The Wall Street Journal reports that she gave a specific proposal on low-interest loans:

Speaking to a crowd of mostly elderly and wheelchair-bound veterans from World War II and the Vietnam War, Mrs. Clinton announced her plans to enact an updated version of the GI Bill of Rights that would expand education, housing and entrepreneurial benefits. The plan would also allow veterans to use low-interest, no-fee loans to purchase, build or improve a home valued at up to $625,000. A proposed microloan program would give veterans up to $100,000 to start a small business.

RUDY GIULIANI: Gearing up for Florida’s January 29th primary, Giuliani, flanked by supporting veterans in that state, talked about beefing up the military and the resolve of this current generation’s soldiers (Orlando Sentinel):

Giuliani said the Army needs 10 more brigades and the Marine Corps’ ranks should be increased to 200,000. He added that the Air Force, Navy and Coast Guard need similar buildups…Giuliani said he doubted the mettle of the current generations of Americans, wondering if they could live up to the standard of those who fought, and won, World War II and the Cold War. He said those doubts were dashed after the Sept. 11 attacks.
 

JOE BIDEN: Stumping through New Hampshire in August, Biden had this to say in the Nashua Telegraph:

“If the government has any sacred responsibility, it is to care for those we send to war that come back in bad shape.  We are not taking care of the kids who are coming back.’’

Biden said his proposals would cost at least $1 billion a year to achieve, and he defended the cost of such spending.

“If I only have $10 to spend and you tell me it takes $9 to take care of these vets, I am going to spend all those $9 before I spend any money on you,’’ Biden said.

“Ladies and gentlemen, these are the only people making any sacrifice right now.’’

MITT ROMNEY: On Veterans Day Romney visited a company that makes microphones for fighter pilot helmets. He talked about troop strength and educational benefits:

[Romney] has pledged to add 100,000 active-duty troops if elected president, as well as to increase spending on military gear.

He told the workers at Gentex Electro-Acoustics that updating the G.I. bill to better keep pace with inflation is needed, as are the tuition and equipment changes.

“We’ve got to say that the children, the college students, of our armed services personnel should always know that they’re going to receive the special, lowest rate available in every state where their parents might serve so they’re able to enjoy education without having to pay an excessively high cost,” Romney said in this early voting state.

Each of the candidates has specific online information to address their platforms on veterans issues. 

Clinton: http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/veterans/
Giuliani: http://www.joinrudy2008.com/issues/view/17
Biden: http://www.joebiden.com/issues?id=0022
Romney: http://www.mittromney.com/index.jsp?do=search&q=veterans

Click here to read part 2 of the article: 

http://www.blog.newsweek.com/blogs/soldiershome/archive/2008/01/03/presidential-candidates-on-veterans-part-ii.aspx

Huckabee Steps Back Into the Pulpit at Evangelical Church While Campaigning

WINDHAM, New Hampshire, January 6, 2008 – A pastor from Texas was scheduled to deliver the sermon Sunday at a church here called the Crossing.

But instead this small evangelical congregation heard from a different special guest: Baptist minister and 2008 presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, who delivered a sermon of more than 20 minutes on how to be part of “God’s Army” in the middle school cafeteria where the congregation meets.

“When we become believers, it’s as if we have signed up to be part of God’s Army, to be soldiers for Christ,” Huckabee told the enthusiastic audience.

Days after winning the Iowa Republican caucus, where Christian conservatives powered him to victory, Huckabee now finds himself in a state without an extensive religious base. While more than 60 percent of GOP voters were estimated to be evangelicals in the Iowa caucuses, they accounted for only about one in five New Hampshire Republican voters in 2000, the last time the state held a competitive GOP primary.

Huckabee’s campaign did not allow cameras into the church, and the candidate did not make an appeal for votes as part of his sermon. But a church official invited members to attend an event a mile away, where Huckabee held a rally with actor Chuck Norris and where free clam chowder was served.

Huckabee mixed homespun jokes into his sermon and added a more religious tone than in his political speeches, not just quoting from the Bible but citing specific verses and talking about the serious side of faith.

“When you give yourself to Christ, some relationships have to go,” he said. “It’s no longer your life; you’ve signed it over.”

Likening service to God to service in the military, Huckabee said “there is suffering in the conditioning for battle” and “you obey the orders.”

In his campaign stops in New Hampshire, Huckabee has generally focused on appealing to nonreligious voters, playing the bass guitar and emphasizing his support of small government, local control of schools and gun rights — popular causes among Granite State Republicans. Norris, who has endorsed him, has been at his side at nearly every event. His campaign has not run an ad, popular in Iowa, that dubbed him a “Christian leader.”

The former Arkansas governor said he was comfortable at the Crossing because it is similar to the Church at Rock Creek in Little Rock, which he attends regularly. The former head of the Arkansas Baptist State Convention prefers “contemporary” services, an aide said, and often attends services that are not explicitly Baptist.

At the Crossing, like at Huckabee’s Arkansas church, a band with guitar players leads the singing, and the words of the songs appeared on a projector rather than in hymnals. In contrast, however, this relatively new congregation does not own a building — there is a large sanctuary at his Arkansas church — so more than 200 people sat in folding chairs in the large cafeteria, with the lunch tables used during the school week stacked against the wall.

Huckabee, sitting in the front row beside his wife, Janet, seemed to know most of the songs without reading the words and praised the guitar player as being better than he is. And he said he enjoyed the upbeat service, which included tambourine and drums and children running under flags that were waved during the songs.

“If we know the Lord, there ought to be joy,” Huckabee said.

January 3, 2008 – CIBOLO, Texas – In near-freezing temperatures Thursday, Spc. Austin Johnson and his wife, Lisa, cut through a yellow ribbon stretched across the porch of their new home and walked in to a house full of furniture.

The move into the new home – their first house since the couple married right out of high school – is bittersweet for the Johnsons.

Last August, Spc. Johnson, 27, received a traumatic brain injury from an improvised explosive device blast in Iraq, his fifth explosion in two tours.

Tragedy struck again in October, not long after he began rehabilitation at Brooke Army Medical Center. Their three children were killed after Mrs. Johnson’s car was overturned by heavy winds in West Texas as she drove from El Paso to be with her husband.

“There are a lot of Johnsons out there,” said Amy Palmer, co-founder of Operation Homefront, the nonprofit group that called on local businesses and dozens of donors to help the Johnsons.

More than 30,000 troops have been wounded in six years of war; and as many as 100,000 may experience post-traumatic stress disorder.  Officials with Operation Homefront hope Thursday’s event serves as a model to help other wounded service members whose lives have been disrupted by war.

“This house represents a new beginning for this family,” said Mrs. Palmer. “But it’s also a call for mortgage lenders and homebuilders to sell excess housing at discounted rates to provide a new start for other wounded warriors and their families.”

The nonprofit group provides emergency assistance to families of deployed military and wounded soldiers. It’s helped more than 45,000 military families in need since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and given more than $5 million in financial aid.

Once inside, the Johnsons found a house full of furniture provided by KB Home.

“Oh, wow,” Spc. Johnson said, plopping down on a sectional couch. “Who would think so many people would pull together for us?”

Mrs. Johnson, 26, smiled.

“This is more than we expected,” she said.

“The Johnsons are part of a new generation of wounded warriors and their families who are slipping into destitution and homelessness,” Mrs. Palmer said. “As they transition from the military to VA, they don’t know for up to two years how much income they’ll have. And all of them will need housing in affordable suburban communities near VA medical facilities.”

Operation Homefront heard about Spc. Johnson and his family as he began a long, tedious therapy for a traumatic brain injury at Brooke Army that left him with speech problems, migraines and post-traumatic stress disorder.

The main need, Mrs. Palmer said, was emergency financial assistance. Financial difficulties caused by the strain of two deployments, a payroll mix-up and his injuries forced the couple to file for bankruptcy.

Then, in October, as Mrs. Johnson drove with their three children from their home in El Paso, a strong wind flipped her Chevrolet Trailblazer near Ozona. Two of the children – Ashley, 5, and Logan, 2 – died instantly and Mrs. Johnson was injured. Tyler, 9, died a month later at a Dallas hospital.

Operation Homefront immediately put out a call for help, and businesses, civic groups and individual answered.

Officials with the PGA Tour, the professional golf organization, contacted local businesses and raised $80,000 in two days. The groups eventually raised $140,000 – enough to pay off the Johnsons’ debt, buy a replacement vehicle and make a down payment on the new home closer to where Spc. Johnson will continue rehabilitation.

The Johnsons fell in love with the two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath home near Cibolo, a suburb of San Antonio. The sellers dropped the price to $154,000 and paid the closing costs.

USAA, an insurance company that specializes in military officers, financed the 30-year mortgage at 5.87 percent when no other lenders would take a chance because of the Johnsons’ bankruptcy.

And KB Home provided an additional home-warming gift of linens and cleaning supplies.

Having the new home will allow the couple some “breathing room as they transition from one life to another,” Mrs. Palmer said.

As the Johnsons walked through their new home, it began to sink in that this was their place.

“We’re going to put pictures of the kids all over the place,” she said. “We have thousands. We won’t run out. This is our place, but it’s dedicated to them as much as us.”

January 3, 2008 – Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.

The announcement is the first indication that investigators have concluded on a preliminary basis that C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with Al Qaeda and were destroyed in 2005.

C.I.A. officials have for years feared becoming entangled in a criminal investigation involving alleged improprieties in secret counterterrorism programs. Now, the investigation and a probable grand jury inquiry will scrutinize the actions of some of the highest-ranking current and former officials at the agency.

The tapes were never provided to the courts or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had requested all C.I.A. documents related to Qaeda prisoners. The question of whether to destroy the tapes was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations among lawyers at the highest levels of the Bush administration.

Justice Department officials declined to specify what crimes might be under investigation, but government lawyers have said the inquiry will probably focus on whether the destruction of the tapes involved criminal obstruction of justice and related false-statement offenses.

Mr. Mukasey assigned John H. Durham, a veteran federal prosecutor from Connecticut, to lead the criminal inquiry in tandem with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The appointment of a prosecutor from outside Washington was an unusual move, and it suggested that Mr. Mukasey wanted to give the investigation the appearance of an extra measure of independence, after complaints from lawmakers in both parties that Mr. Mukasey’s predecessor, Alberto R. Gonzales, had allowed politics to influence the Justice Department’s judgment.

Mr. Durham was not appointed as a special counsel in this case, a step sought by some Congressional Democrats. He will have less expansive authority than a special counsel and will report to the deputy attorney general rather than assume the powers of the attorney general, which he would have had as a special counsel.

Mr. Durham has spent years bringing cases against organized crime figures in Hartford and Boston. In legal circles he has the reputation of a tough, tight-lipped litigator who compiled a stellar track record against the mob.

A C.I.A. spokesman said that the agency would cooperate fully with the Justice Department investigation. Current and former officials have said that the C.I.A. official who ordered the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., who at the time was the head of the agency’s clandestine branch.

The decision to start a full-scale criminal investigation into the matter came four weeks after the disclosure on Dec. 6 that the tapes had been created and then destroyed. The Justice Department and the C.I.A. opened a preliminary inquiry on Dec. 8, and Mr. Mukasey said Wednesday that he had concluded from that review “that there is a basis for initiating a criminal investigation of this matter.”

The chairmen of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, and the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, Democrat of West Virginia, welcomed Mr. Mukasey’s announcement. But neither gave any indication he would defer to the criminal inquiry, and in separate statements they pledged to proceed with their committees’ investigations into the destruction of the tapes.

John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A. inspector general who took part in the preliminary inquiry, said Wednesday that he would step aside from the criminal investigation to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

Mr. Helgerson’s office had reviewed the videotapes, documenting the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, as part of an investigation into the C.I.A’s secret detention and interrogation program. Mr. Helgerson completed his investigation into the program in early 2004.

Among White House lawyers who took part in discussions between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy the tapes were Mr. Gonzales, when he was White House counsel; Harriet E. Miers, Mr. Gonzales’s successor as counsel; David S. Addington, who was then counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney; and John B. Bellinger III, then the legal adviser to the National Security Council. It is unclear whether anyone outside the C.I.A. endorsed destroying the tapes.

The new Justice Department investigation is likely to last for months, possibly beyond the end of the Bush administration.

Mr. Durham is currently the top-ranking deputy in the United States attorney’s office in Connecticut, supervising all major felony cases brought in the state.

In the late 1990s he was assigned as a special attorney in Boston leading an inquiry into allegations that F.B.I. agents and police officers had been compromised by mobsters.

In taking over the inquiry, Mr. Durham is expected to be able to move ahead without a long delay because his team will include Justice Department prosecutors who have already been working on the case. But at least in the beginning, it is likely to proceed more slowly than parallel investigations on Capitol Hill that are already well under way. Investigators from the House Intelligence Committee last month reviewed C.I.A. documents related to the destruction of the tapes, and the committee has called government witnesses to testify at a hearing scheduled for Jan. 16.

Mr. Mukasey pointedly did not designate Mr. Durham as a special counsel, in effect refusing to bow to pressure from Congressional Democrats to appoint an independent prosecutor with the same broad legal powers that were given to Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel who was appointed in 2003 to lead the investigation into the disclosure of a C.I.A. officer’s identity. That inquiry resulted in the perjury and obstruction prosecution of I. Lewis Libby Jr., formerly Mr. Cheney’s chief of staff. After Mr. Libby’s conviction, President Bush commuted his sentence.

Mr. Fitzgerald was appointed after the attorney general at the time, John Ashcroft, determined that his own relationship with officials under possible scrutiny in the leak case forced him to recuse himself from the investigation. As special counsel, Mr. Fitzgerald had the authority of the attorney general for the matters under investigation.

Mr. Durham will report to the deputy attorney general, an office being held temporarily by Craig S. Morford. Mr. Durham will have the powers of the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, a jurisdiction that includes C.I.A. headquarters. If a grand jury is convened as expected, it will meet in Alexandria, Va., where the prosecutor’s office is located.

Mr. Mukasey said “in an abundance of caution” the office of United States attorney for the district, Chuck Rosenberg, had been recused from the case and would not take part in the inquiry. Mr. Rosenberg’s office has investigated cases of detainee abuse by C.I.A. employees and contractors and has worked closely with the C.I.A. on counterterrorism and espionage cases.

Mr. Mukasey said the decision was made “to avoid any possible appearance of a conflict with other matters handled by that office.” Appointments like Mr. Durham’s are sometimes made in cases in which prosecutors like Mr. Rosenberg have recused themselves.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Wednesday, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, the chairman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, said they believed that C.I.A. officials had deliberately withheld the tapes from the commission. They suggested that since the commission received its authority from both Congress and President Bush, any deliberate withholding of evidence might have violated federal law.

“Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation,” they wrote.

January 3, 2008 – When Congress returns from its winter break in mid-January and continues its probe into the destruction of CIA interrogation videotapes, the lawmakers may be interested in speaking to Mary O. McCarthy.

    McCarthy spent most of her career at the spy agency, most recently as deputy inspector general. In 2004, she was tapped by the CIA’s Inspector General John Helgerson to assist him with several internal investigations.

    One of those investigations included a closer look at the CIA’s interrogation methods. The report on this probe was completed in spring 2004. It concluded that some of the agency’s approved interrogation methods “appeared to constitute cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, as defined by the International Convention Against Torture,” according to a New York Times story published in November 2005. That was the same month the CIA destroyed the videotapes.

    Helgerson personally viewed the videotapes that showed two detainees being subjected to waterboarding by CIA officers, which formed the foundation for his still classified report on the CIA’s interrogations methods. McCarthy was also personally briefed on the existence and content of the videotapes, according to several CIA officials who worked closely with her, however it’s unknown whether she viewed the material. McCarthy assisted Helgerson in drafting the classified report on the CIA’s use of specific interrogation methods against high-level detainees.

    “The officials who described the report said it discussed particular techniques used by the CIA against particular prisoners, including about three dozen terror suspects being held by the agency in secret locations around the world,” the New York Times story says. “They said it referred in particular to the treatment of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is said to have organized the Sept. 11 attacks and who has been detained in a secret location by the CIA since he was captured in March 2003. Mr. Mohammed is among those believed to have been subjected to waterboarding, in which a prisoner is strapped to a board and made to believe that he is drowning.

    “In his report, Mr. Helgerson also raised concern about whether the use of the techniques could expose agency officers to legal liability,” the officials said, according to the New York Times account. “They said the report expressed skepticism about the Bush administration view that any ban on cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment under the treaty does not apply to CIA interrogations because they take place overseas on people who are not citizens of the United States.”

    According to a May 2006 Washington Post story, a friend said McCarthy “worried that neither Helgerson nor the agency’s congressional overseers would fully examine what happened or why.” Another friend said, “She had the impression that this stuff has been pretty well buried.” The Post story reported, “In McCarthy’s view and that of many colleagues, friends say, torture was not only wrong but also misguided, because it rarely produced useful results.”

    McCarthy also oversaw the Inspector General’s investigation into the treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

    Her “findings are secret,” The Washington Post reported in May 2006. “According to a brief CIA statement about the probe in a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, investigators set out to examine “the conduct of CIA components and personnel, including DO personnel” during interrogations. Tens of thousands of pages of material were collected, including White House and Justice Department documents, and multiple reports were issued. Some described cases of abuse, involving fewer than a dozen individuals, and were forwarded to the Justice Department, according to government officials.”

    The reports are seen by only a handful of people.

    “When IG inquiries involve covert actions such as foreign interrogations, for example, the agency briefs only the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, instead of the full panels,” the Washington Post reported. “So only a handful of people in Washington knew what McCarthy knew.”

    But the timing of the November 2005 New York Times story regarding the contents of the inspector general’s report on interrogation methods, and the publication of a separate, more explosive story in The Washington Post the same month exposing the CIA’s covert interrogation activities, suggests that the CIA may have decided to destroy the videotaped interrogations because it feared the tapes would become part of the public record and could expose its agents to a federal criminal investigation.

    The New York Times has reported that Jose Rodriguez, head of the CIA’s clandestine division, destroyed the videotapes after receiving written authorization from attorneys in the clandestine division. The reasons for purging the tapes, according to one of the The New York Times’ unnamed sources, is that in the event of a leak “there was concern for the careers of officers shown on the tapes. We didn’t want them to become political scapegoats.”

    If that’s true, then the publication of Priest’s CIA secret prison story, and the Times story on the IG investigation into the agency’s interrogation methods in November 2005 – the same month and year the videotapes were destroyed – would amount to a very strange coincidence.

    Neither McCarthy, now an attorney, nor an attorney who had represented her, Ty Cobb, returned emails or messages left at their offices for comment.

    Helgerson’s report into the CIA’s interrogation techniques rankled some officials at the agency, The New York Times reported, and his critique of agency operations is said to have played a role in the decision by CIA Director Michael V. Hayden to turn the tables on the watchdog and launch an internal probe into Helgerson’s work. Hayden alleged that Helgerson’s investigations into the agency’s detention and interrogation policies were not objective. Helgerson’s office is just one of various federal agencies investigating circumstances that led to the destruction of the videotapes and whether any federal laws were broken as a result.

    McCarthy was among a group of former intelligence officials who late last year signed a letter opposing the nomination of Attorney General Michael Mukasey on grounds he would not denounce waterboarding. She alleged that – two years or so after she and Helgerson completed their report into the agency’s interrogation practices – CIA officials lied to members of Congress during an intelligence briefing when they said the agency did not violate treaties that bar, cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment of detainees during interrogations, according to a May 14, 2006, front-page story in The Washington Post.

    “A CIA employee of two decades, McCarthy became convinced that ‘CIA people had lied’ in that briefing, as one of her friends said later, not only because the agency had conducted abusive interrogations but also because its policies authorized treatment that she considered cruel, inhumane or degrading,” The Washington Post reported.

    In his book, “At the Center of the Storm”, former CIA Director George Tenet wrote that McCarthy was present at a meeting with Condoleezza Rice in May 2001 where Tenet discussed Abu Zubaydah’s alleged plans to attack the US and Israel. Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan less than a year later and was whisked to a secret CIA prison site in Thailand, where he was interrogated and subjected to waterboarding. At the time, McCarthy had been working as senior director at the National Security Council, according to Tenet.

    “For my regularly scheduled meeting with Condi Rice on May 30, [2001], I brought along [deputy CIA director] John McLaughlin, [then director of the CIA’s counterterrorist center] Cofer Black, one of Cofer’s top assistants, Rich B. (Rich can’t be further identified here). Joining Condi were [former White House counterterrorism czar Richard] Clarke and Mary McCarthy,” Tenet wrote. “Rich ran through the mounting warning signs of a coming attack. They were truly frightening. Among other things, we told Condi that a notorious al-Qa’ida operative named Abu Zubaydah was working on attack plans.”

    Truthout previously reported that Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff advised the CIA between 2002 and 2003 that its agents had the legal authority to use interrogation tactics on Abu Zubaydah that included waterboarding.

    Chertoff was head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division when CIA officials inquired whether its agents could be charged with violating the federal anti-torture statute for employing interrogation methods such as waterboarding. The tactic causes detainees to slowly drown, and is generally terminated before the detainees die.

    “The CIA was seeking to determine the legal limits of interrogation practices for use in cases like that of Abu Zubaydah, the Qaeda lieutenant who was captured in March 2002,” says a January 29, 2005, New York Times story. That story said unnamed sources told the newspaper that “Chertoff was directly involved in these discussions, in effect evaluating the legality of techniques proposed by the CIA by advising the agency whether its employees could go ahead with proposed interrogation methods without fear of prosecution.”

    During his Senate confirmation hearing in February 2005, Chertoff maintained that he provided the CIA broad guidance in response to its questions about interrogation methods and never specifically addressed legality regarding waterboarding or other techniques.

    Chertoff, according to intelligence sources who spoke to Truthout, was briefed about the videotaped interrogations. Chertoff told former CIA General Counsel Scott Muller and his deputy, John Rizzo, that an August 1, 2002, memo widely referred to as the “Torture Memo” put the CIA on solid legal ground and that its agents could waterboard a prisoner without fear of prosecution. The memo was written by former Justice Department attorney John Yoo.

    Yoo’s memo said that Congress “may no more regulate the President’s ability to detain and interrogate enemy combatants than it may regulate his ability to direct troop movements on the battlefield.”

    At his confirmation hearing in 2005, Chertoff claims he did not advise Rizzo or Muller on the legality of specific methods agents used during their interrogation of Abu Zubaydah. Rather, he said, he answered general questions the CIA had posed about interrogations.

    “You are dealing in an area where there is potential criminality,” Chertoff said he told the agency. “You better be very careful to make sure that whatever you decide to do falls well within what is required by law.”

    In his book, “The One Percent Doctrine,” author Ron Suskind said Zubaydah was not the “high value detainee” the CIA had claimed. Rather, Zubaydah was a minor player in the al-Qaeda organization, handling travel for associates and their families, Suskind says.

    Abu Zubaydah’s captors soon discovered that their prisoner was mentally ill and knew nothing about terrorist operations or impending plots. That realization was “echoed at the top of CIA and was, of course, briefed to the President and Vice President,” Suskind writes. Tenet, though, says claims that Abu Zubaydah was not a valuable prisoner are “hogwash.”

    McCarthy began working at the Inspector General’s office in 2004, according to The New York Times. She had taken a leave of absence from the CIA after 9/11 and spent some time at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank. She testified before the 9/11 Commission in late 2003 about methods that could enhance intelligence-gathering activities, in the hope of avoiding another terrorist attack on US soil.

    In 1998, she wrote an article in the Defense Intelligence Journal under the headline “The Mission to Warn: Disaster Looms” about shortfalls in intelligence gathering and how they could lead to catastrophic events.

    McCarthy also spent some time with the Markle Foundation group, “the Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, working with academics as well as current and former government officials on recommendations for sharing classified information more widely within the government, according to a report issued by the group. The report identifies Ms. McCarthy as a ‘nongovernment’ expert,” The New York Times reported.

    In April 2006, ten days before she was due to retire; McCarthy was fired from the CIA for allegedly leaking classified information to the media, a CIA spokeswoman told reporters at the time.

    The CIA said McCarthy had spoken with numerous journalists, including The Washington Post’s Dana Priest, who in November 2005 exposed the CIA’s secret prison sites, where in 2002 the CIA videotaped its agents interrogating a so-called high-level detainee, Abu Zubaydah. The videotaped interrogation of Zubaydah, which is said to have shown the prisoner being subjected to waterboarding, was destroyed after Priest’s story was published, and is now at the center of a wide-ranging Congressional and Justice Department investigation. Priest won a Pulitzer Prize for her expose. The CIA did not say whether McCarthy was a source for Priest’s story.

    Following news reports of her dismissal from the CIA, McCarthy, through her attorney Ty Cobb, vehemently denied leaking classified information to the media. However, the CIA said she failed a polygraph test after the agency launched an internal investigation in late 2005. The agency said the investigation was an attempt to find out who provided The Washington Post and The New York Times with information about its covert activities, including domestic surveillance, and it promptly fired her.

    The Washington Post reported, “McCarthy was not an ideologue, her friends say, but at some point fell into a camp of CIA officers who felt that the Bush administration’s venture into Iraq had dangerously diverted US counterterrorism policy. After seeing – in e-mails, cable traffic, interview transcripts and field reports – some of the secret fruits of the Iraq intervention, McCarthy became disenchanted, three of her friends say.”

    “In addition to CIA misrepresentations at the session last summer, McCarthy told the friends, a senior agency official failed to provide a full account of the CIA’s detainee-treatment policy at a closed hearing of the House intelligence committee in February 2005, under questioning by Rep. Jane Harman (Calif.), the senior Democrat,” The Washington Post says. “McCarthy also told others she was offended that the CIA’s general counsel had worked to secure a secret Justice Department opinion in 2004 authorizing the agency’s creation of “ghost detainees” – prisoners removed from Iraq for secret interrogations without notice to the International Committee of the Red Cross – because the Geneva Conventions prohibit such practices.”

Dr. Evan Kanter, a staff physician for the Department of Veteran Affairs, who wrote in a November study by Physicians for Social Responsibility, titled “Shock and Awe Hits Home,” that “as many as 30 percent of injured soldiers have suffered some degree of traumatic brain injury.”  

January 2, 2007 – To many people, Army Sgt. Rob Wentworth wouldn’t be considered very lucky – he suffered multiple back, leg, knee and ankle wounds and a traumatic brain injury in the Iraq war.

But Wentworth, 28, of Farmington Hills, says he’s fortunate to have survived when a 2,000-pound bomb in a vehicle was detonated by a suicide bomber north of Tikrit on June 25, about 120 feet from where he was working on guard duty.

One in every nine American soldiers deployed to Iraq suffers a traumatic brain injury, according to Department of Defense figures, said Rick Briggs, a retired Air Force major who runs the veterans program at the Brain Injury Association of Michigan, based in Brighton.

This fact was echoed by Dr. Evan Kanter, a staff physician for the Department of Veteran Affairs, who wrote in a November study by Physicians for Social Responsibility, titled “Shock and Awe Hits Home,” that “as many as 30 percent of injured soldiers have suffered some degree of traumatic brain injury.”

‘Very difficult to diagnose’

Wentworth was standing behind a 12-foot-high cement wall, when the blast occurred. The force of the explosion picked up the 6-foot, 206-pound Wentworth and threw him 25 feet through a large metal sliding door.

Before Wentworth could check to see if he was injured, he came under attack near Bayji, Iraq. The attack killed dozens of Iraqis in the area.

Wentworth is just one of the estimated 28,451 American soldiers injured in the war, which began in March 2003, months after Wentworth joined the service Aug. 21, 2002.

Department of Defense figures show that since the war in Iraq began, 3,918 American soldiers have died there. So far, 18 soldiers from Oakland County have died in either Iraq or Afghanistan.

A traumatic brain injury can leave the victim in a lifelong coma or with milder symptoms such as short-term memory loss or headaches, said Dr. Robert Spitzer, a Beaumont Hospital neurologist.

“It’s very difficult to diagnose,” Spitzer said. “Treatment generally is providing medications to alleviate symptoms or trying to stop the progression of impairment.”

Wentworth’s brain injury left him with short-term memory loss, migraine headaches, dizziness, stuttering and insomnia. He is undergoing physical therapy.

In addition, Wentworth, who was deployed to Iraq in November 2006, advocates for proper treatment of soldiers who have suffered brain injuries in the war, Briggs said.

The cost of treating someone with a traumatic brain injury can range as high as $5 million during a lifetime, said Briggs, who was in Operation Desert Shield in 1990, when Coalition forces pushed the late Saddam Hussein’s army out of Kuwait.

Wentworth recalled the moments after the blast blew him through the door.

“After I went through the garage door, I got up,” Wentworth said. “I was looking for my buddy. I took two steps and was hit in the head by a 2-foot-long piece of steel falling back down from the sky.

“It hit me flat on the head and threw me down,” Wentworth added. “I was looking for the other guy pulling guard duty and realized what was going on. The blast was followed by machine gun fire and RPGs (rocket propelled grenades) being shot at us.

“The bomb destroyed a massive amount of the building.”

Wentworth said that, a few hours after the explosion, “the adrenaline wore off and I told my squad leader I wasn’t feeling so well.” He was sent to a battalion medical aid station.

“I walked in and said my back hurts,” he said. “I collapsed on a stretcher and couldn’t get up after that. They pumped me full of morphine, did X-rays,” and he was sent to a contingency operating base, “a large American base in Iraq, for a CAT scan of my back.”

“(Doctors said) I had possible cracked vertebrae. I was in the hospital by the next day,” Wentworth said.

He was then flown to Speicher, a large U.S. base near Tikrit, for other tests. He then went back on missions after being released from Speicher.

Then, Wentworth started having symptoms and was sent to Balad, Iraq, where there was a U.S. base.

A few weeks later, as his symptoms intensified, Wentworth was shipped to Landstuhl, Germany, where there was a U.S. medical Army hospital and “I was diagnosed with TBI (traumatic brain injury).”

“I didn’t want to leave,” Wentworth said of being sent out of Iraq. “I promised my guys I’d keep them alive.”

Wentworth is assigned to the Community Based Health Care Organization. The military sends soldiers with brain injuries home to be rehabilitated.

Michael Harris, the executive director of the Michigan Paralyzed Veterans of America, based in Novi, said there’s an unusually high ratio of injured-to-killed in the Iraq war.

Harris worries the Department of Veterans Affairs won’t have the resources to take care of the injured soldiers from the Iraq war. The “Shock and Awe Hits Home” study estimated that health care for Iraq war veterans could top $650 billion during the lifetimes of the soldiers.

“This report should serve as a wake-up for Americans and the (Bush) administration,” Kanter said in the report.

“While we endlessly debate what we are gaining in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families are falling victim to death, post-war trauma and lifelong struggles with mental and physical wounds as a legacy of this war,” Kanter, a psychiatrist who is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Washington, wrote in the study.

The Brain Injury Association of Michigan is trying to inform the public of the scope and seriousness of traumatic brain injuries.

Briggs said part of the role of the association is to hold seminars and conduct “pre-homecoming” and post-deployment” briefings.

A post-deployment briefing occurs 60 to 90 days after a soldier returns home.

Traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorders are similar and often are misdiagnosed, he added.

The determination can be made by special screening tests such as a CAT scan, in which doctors look for physiological damage to a soldier’s brain.

However, Spitzer said there often is no physical evidence of a traumatic brain injury.

Some 63 percent to 80 percent of combat-injured veterans who were hospitalized also have suffered brain injuries, Briggs said.

“So, that means at least two out of three injuries have a TBI component with them. Wounded warriors don’t get better overnight.”

Wentworth is working on getting healthy.

“I do physical therapy and exercise,” he said. “Lately, I’ve developed migraine headaches.”

He also has support from his family, something essential for wounded warriors.

“We’re a pretty close family,” Wentworth’s mother, Michelle, said of Rob and his brothers, Andrew, 26, and Richard, 22, and her husband, Bob. “One thing I find frustrating is that it takes so long to rehab,” she said. “We hope he will make a 100 percent recovery. We’re worried about all the guys not getting diagnosed (with TBI).”

Michell Wentworth said parents of soldiers with brain injuries should help their children take advantage of all the help available to them. “Tell the parents to be advocates,” she added. “Don’t stop until you get all the help you can get. The help is there. It’s just hard sometimes to put your finger on it.”

Part of Wentworth’s current mission is to help other injured soldiers. “If they’re home after deploying and having problems, then I tell them to get some help,” Wentworth said. “Go to the Brain Injury Association of Michigan, the VA. Don’t stop until you find someone that understands your issue.

“I don’t have any plans to be 99.9 percent recovered,” Wentworth said. “I hope to get to 100 percent. I plan to be 110 percent after I’m finished (with) therapy. I’m planning to be better than I was.”

Michigan is fortunate to have 55 accredited rehabilitation facilities that can help injured soldiers such as Wentworth recover, Briggs said. By comparison, Missouri has two, and California, usually at the forefront of rehabilitation services, has five

“We’re working diligently to get our massive health care provider network to augment the VA and Department of Defense TBI health care system,” said Briggs.

“A lot of the people get better,” Spitzer said. “I think there’s the feeling that nothing can be done, but that’s wrong.

“If I go in with a positive attitude and have a positive patient, I have a good fighting chance I can help that patient recover.”

Few have a more positive attitude than Wentworth. “My No. 1 mission is to get better,” he says. “I love the Army. I would do anything to help others. I would give my life to help soldiers.”

January 1, 2008 – A Marine infantryman accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians during a combat maneuver in Haditha in late 2005 will be tried by court-martial on charges of voluntary manslaughter but will avoid more serious murder charges originally pressed against him, the Marine Corps announced Monday.

The infantryman, Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, a squad leader whose men killed 24 Iraqis during a house-to-house raid after insurgents attacked their convoy, will also be tried on charges of aggravated assault, reckless endangerment, dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice, the Marines said in a news release.

In a separate decision on Monday, a Marine first lieutenant was ordered to face court-martial for what Marine prosecutors said was the officer’s role in covering up photographs of the aftermath of the killings, the Marines said.

The two court-martial referrals conclude the preliminary investigations into all eight marines originally charged with crimes in the Haditha matter. Four of those eight — two enlisted men and two officers — will be tried by court-martial, in front of either a military judge alone or a jury of fellow marines.

Lt. Gen. Samuel Helland, the commander of Marine Corps Forces Central Command, the officer who made the two decisions that were announced Monday, decided against pursuing unpremeditated murder charges against Sergeant Wuterich, a graver charge than voluntary manslaughter. General Helland also dismissed two other charges: soliciting another to commit an offense, and making a false official statement.

The lieutenant, Andrew A. Grayson, whose evidentiary hearing was delayed for months while he argued that he was beyond military prosecution because the Marines had discharged him from active duty, will stand trial on charges of making false official statements, obstruction of justice and trying to separate fraudulently from the Marine Corps.

Initially, the Marine Corps charged eight men from the Third Battalion, First Marines with crimes related to the Haditha killings on Nov. 19, 2005. Four infantrymen were accused of murder, and four officers, including the battalion commander, of dereliction of duty and other crimes related to failing to investigate the episode thoroughly.

Sergeant Wuterich, of Meriden, Conn., and Lance Cpl. Stephen Tatum, of Edmond, Okla., will be tried in separate courts-martial on charges of wrongful killings of Iraqis. Of the four officers originally charged in the case, the battalion commander, Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, and Lieutenant Grayson will also face courts-martial.

General Helland’s predecessor, Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis, dismissed charges against the four other marines — two enlisted men in Sergeant Wuterich’s squad, and two captains, including a battalion lawyer and a company commander.

January 3, 2008 – About two minutes into the video, I could take no more.

I was going to break decorum. I mumbled, “It’s a lie. It’s the worst kind of lie.”

Realizing that not even the two people sitting directly in front of me had heard my utterance, I raised the volume and repeated it. I stood up from my cushioned chair and in a stronger voice said, “This ad is a lie!”

I didn’t dare glance at my family. I needed to remain in denial as to how my wife and kids were reacting to my outburst. My heart racing, and in my angriest voice, I shouted, “It’s a lie, just like this war!”

That was the scene at my local movie theater prior to a showing of “The Golden Compass.” The pre-show ad that was playing was a music video titled “Citizen Soldier,” a slickly produced and, I suspect, highly effective recruitment ad for the National Guard.

The 3 1/2-minute music video incorporated an original song by the successful rock band 3 Doors Down with images of the National Guard’s responses to past, present and imagined wars and disasters.

The scenes of the band playing were magnificently filmed with a shakiness that evokes a sense of being in the midst of battle explosions. I hated it in part because it was so well-made. It’s a great advertisement because it sells the dream of the product, not its reality or its true price.

Its lie is obscured under the veneer of misguided patriotism and false realism. Its sterilized depictions of death and destruction pale in comparison with what actually happens when people and war collide. In the video, there are no dismembered bodies, no blood raining from the skies, no charred remains of babies caught in bomb blasts. And always out of our view are the horrified, terrified faces of the survivors.

No successful ad campaign about national service under our current civilian leadership could possibly tell the truth. If Americans saw the ugly truth about the war and occupation of Iraq, they would turn in disgust. The war would be ended and the perpetrators prosecuted for the lies that created it and the utter incompetence with which it was waged. Still many, perhaps even most, Americans despair over this endless occupation and the needless suffering of those who serve.

The truth about today’s military service is that almost 40,000 of our armed forces are dead and wounded in Iraq, with the Army National Guard constituting about 20 percent of those. Suicide and divorce rates are escalating for combat veterans. According to recent U.S. Senate testimony, almost half of our returning troops are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Cases of traumatic brain injuries are at high levels. The quality and quantity of medical care provided to veterans is frequently inadequate.

Even with the repeated warnings of military experts that our military is at the breaking point, the policies of repeated and extended deployments remain. They remain for the simple reason that our military does not have enough people to properly carry out its missions. No wonder the National Guard spared no expense with its latest ad.

I do not advocate yelling protests in crowded theaters like I did. My angry rant was boorish. It left me embarrassed and so frazzled that I could barely focus on the movie. Instead, I urge you to call your congressmen weekly (or daily) and inform them that you are aware of the real price of this war — and it’s way too high.

Veterans for Common Sense released the following statement after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid officially stated that President George W. Bush vetoed the National Defense Authorization Act, HR 1585, which contained the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors” provisions. 

Veterans for Common Sense believes President George W. Bush’s actions to veto the Defense bill are unconscionable because he needlessly delayed the implementation of several new key provions designed to assist our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans that were crafted after the Walter Reed Army Medical Center scandal became national news in February 2007. 

VCS supports an immediate override of President Bush’s veto by both the House and Senate.  VCS thanks Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for passing the “Dignity for Wounded Warriors” bill, S 1606, last year and adding it to the Defense bill that President Bush unfortunately vetoed. 

This vital legislation would have provided up to five years of free medical care for our Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics.  Currently, our veterans receive only two years of free VA healthcare, starting from the date they are discharged.

If the bi-partisan bill had become law, then our wounded, injured, and ill veterans would have had streamlined policies so they would not fall through the cracks while waiting months for VA healthcare and benefits.  The President’s offer to make the benefits retroactive by signing a new bill at an uncertain future date does nothing for our veterans and their families who are waiting now – VA reports a total of 600,000 veterans from all wars are waiting more than six months to receive VA benefits.

VCS remains highly disappointed that President Bush failed to work with Congress and veterans groups on this important legislation assisting our service members and veterans.  The President should not have waited until the 11th hour to veto this important bill that cleans up the terrible mess he created by failing to have a plan to care for the 264,000 Iraq and Afghanistan war casualties already treated at VA hospitals and clinics.  A Harvard University report issues last year estimates up to 700,000 new VA patients among the 1.6 million already deployed to the two war zones.

President Bush said he vetoed the Defense bill so that no one could sue the new Iraqi government.  VCS disagrees with the President’s flawed reasoning.  VCS strongly supports Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s provision that allows our former prisoners of war who were brutally tortured by the Iraqi government for months during the 1991 Gulf War to sue Iraq.