Veterans for Common Sense

June 3, 2007 – Fallen comrades visit him in dreams. Some were close friends. Some, he barely knew. Some are whole again. Some, he cannot bear to see.

He bolts awake in the night, then roams the house, checking locks on doors and windows. He doesn’t get back to sleep. He just paces.

“They say it will be over, but sometimes, I just can’t see it,” said Tom Gibson, 29, of Bridgeport, who has a wife, a 2-year-old daughter and an unwanted carryover from his time in Afghanistan. It’s called post-traumatic stress disorder.

As the U.S. Army labors strains under the pressure of two wars, the toll on its warriors is visible.  Lost limbs and wheelchairs make unforgettable images, but for many Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, some of the most troubling scars lie hidden.

At the top of the list is PTSD, a mix of anxiety, guilt and depression that gained public awareness during the Vietnam War. Since 2002, nearly 40,000 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have been diagnosed with PTSD symptoms, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

Though misunderstood, PTSD is treatable, as long as the person seeks help. For many ex-soldiers, that’s not so easy.

“It’s the stigma of a warrior having to admit that something in his or her life is out of control,” said Larry Lantinga, a psychologist and co-manager of behavioral health at the Syracuse VA Medical Center. “At post-deployment or discharge, often they will deny everything and say, ‘I just want to go home.’ By the time we see them, something in their lives is not right.”

That’s how it went for Gibson. After returning in 2004 from nine months in Afghanistan, he downplayed his problems to counselors at Fort Drum, the Army’s post near Watertown. But after he received an honorable discharge in 2005, Gibson couldn’t put get his life back on course.

In January 2006, he sought counseling at the Syracuse VA Center. He couldn’t sleep at night. He couldn’t relax.  Weary and frustrated, he couldn’t keep a job. For 11 months, he received medication and counseling, trying to rise from his doldrums.

On Dec. 6, a letter arrived from the U.S. Army.

“You are relieved from your present reserve component status and are ordered to report for a period of active duty,” it said.

He was ordered to re-enter the Army for up to 18 months and work anywhere from Arizona to Baghdad.

The country was calling Gibson back, and he was falling apart.

‘Panicked and scared’

Upon enlistment, every U.S. soldier commits to eight years of military service, regardless of how long he or she spends on active duty. After being discharged, veterans are placed on the Army’s Individual Ready Reserve list, a pool that numbers 78,000.

“Back in the ’80s, nobody thought about the IRR,” said Fred Bush, the Syracuse VA’s coordinator of Returning Veterans Education Outreach. “It’d be, ‘Hell, they’re not going to call me back.’ Well, that’s a real concern now.”

Since 2001, the Army has recalled 10,128 veterans from the IRR list. To keep boots on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has also extended combat deployments from 12 to 15 months, required soldiers to serve extra tours through the “stop-loss” program and called up large numbers of National Guard troops.

The recall letter hit Gibson hard.

“He reported being very panicked and scared, and did not know what to do,” psychologist Louise Weller wrote Dec. 7, in an evaluation for the Syracuse VA. Based on Gibson’s phone call, Weller described him as “highly anxious and distressed.”

After talks with his counselors, Gibson requested an exemption to his call-up, based on health concerns. The Army pushed back his reporting date by a month, to Feb. 22.

The Army grants about half the requests for IRR exemptions, according to the Pentagon. The most common reasons: health concerns of soldiers or hardship for their immediate families.

“Exemptions are approved when their return to active duty would create an undue hardship or that their physical or mental readiness has changed to the point they are no longer capable of performing their duty,” the Army said in an e-mail.

As the wars grind on, concerns are growing about what the Army traditionally has called “combat stress.”

A 2007 Pentagon study reports that 17 percent of the soldiers in Iraq show PTSD symptoms. The frequency rises among soldiers who serve multiple and longer deployments.

PTSD has been around for as long as war. In earlier times, people called it “shell shock” or “war neurosis.” In 1980, after exhaustive study of Vietnam veterans, the American Psychiatric Association gave it a name.

In 1988, a study estimated that 13 percent of Vietnam veterans suffered from PTSD. The war in Vietnam took place in jungle villages. Iraq is being waged in desert cities. But in both, U.S. troops could not outwardly tell the difference between friend and enemy. And buried explosives brought about a constant threat of instant death.

In mid-December, after receiving his call-up orders, Gibson quit his job as a telemarketer. He gathered VA records for his arthritic knees and flat feet, and sent his psychiatric assessments to the Army.

On March 9, the answer arrived.

“Your request for an exemption is disapproved,” it said.

He was ordered to report to Fort Benning, Ga., on April 22.

Survivor’s guilt

Thomas G. Gibson grew up in the Sullivan County community of Livingston Manor, and graduated from the State University of New York College at Oneonta in 2000 with a degree in math and physics. He wanted to be a teacher.

To pay college loans, Gibson enlisted for a four-year hitch in the Army on Aug. 29, 2001. Two weeks later, the World Trade Center fell.

In August 2003, as a specialist in the 10th Mountain Division’s 2nd Brigade, Gibson deployed to Afghanistan for six months, a tour that was later extended to nine.

His job: driving Humvees around the city of Ghazni.

In 2003, the Army was still adjusting to the threat of IEDs — improvised explosive devices — buried along roads. This was the era of “soft-skinned” Humvees, without the reinforced armor of today’s vehicles. As the death toll rose, soldiers began filling Humvees with sandbags. But when a soft-skin triggered a roadside bomb head-on, somebody likely died.

Gibson lost several friends to IEDs. But his own convoys were hit only once, without casualties. He never saw a firefight. But he lost a friend in a helicopter crash, a flight he at one point was scheduled to make.

But Gibson said he does not believe he experienced the kinds of atrocities that justify a soldier having PTSD.

“It’s never seemed right that I could be messed up,” he said. “It’s like I have no right to be complaining, no right to be experiencing this.”

In May 2004, his brigade returned to Fort Drum. Gibson saw a counselor about his anger and sleepless nights. Upon his 2005 discharge, he thought his nightmares would vanish.

“It was the anticipation of getting out of the uniform,” he said. “I was going to move on and start the next part of my life.”

With his wife, Joann, and a baby daughter, Gibson bought a home in Bridgeport, near Oneida Lake. He planned to go back to school and get his teaching degree. But something wasn’t right.

“There was just no joy in things. I stayed in the house. I didn’t get out. I didn’t like driving. Everything just kind of hit me,” he said.

In November 2005, the Albany VA Medical Center diagnosed Gibson’s PTSD symptoms, though an examiner there wrote that Gibson was downplaying his problems to avoid being “labeled.”

Two months later, Gibson sought help at the Syracuse VA.

“He has recurring intrusive thoughts, memories, images and recollections of his time in Afghanistan,” his VA evaluator would write later. “He cannot relax.  He has trouble feeling safe for any sustained period of time.”

Gibson went through ups and downs. But as the wars continued, and the news reports kept coming, he couldn’t climb out of the hole.

“I’d think, ‘I’m here, with all these opportunities. I can go out and enjoy my day. And those guys over there, they can’t.’

And then in December, the Army called him back.

A decision

In February, Gibson appealed the Army’s rejection of his exemption request. The Army pushed his date-to-report back to June.

Over the next month, Gibson put his life on hold, unsure of what to do. If he reported, he feared being unable to do his job, and maybe costing someone his or her life. If he didn’t report, he’d lose his honorable discharge and veteran status. He grew more angry, more frustrated, more numb.

“He continues to procrastinate and then belittle himself for that,” Weller, the psychologist, wrote in April.

When Army caseworkers called his home, Gibson was too distraught to take the phone. He asked Bush, his VA counselor, to call back and help him. He sent a bundle of VA medical records to the Army, then waited.

“His insight and judgment are good,” wrote VA examining provider Michael Thompson, on April 12. “He is in appropriate treatment for his needs.”

Thompson said Gibson showed a “full-range” of PTSD symptoms.

“Prominent psychic numbing is noted.  In my opinion, at the present time, this veteran would not be capable of maintaining himself in a reliable and stable manner.”

Thompson suggested Gibson spend time at the VA’s residential PTSD program in Batavia.

On April 18, a letter arrived from the U.S.Army Human Resources Command in St. Louis.

“Your orders for mobilization have been revoked,” it said. “Because further medical review is required on your care, you will be placed in the Standby Reserve.  If you are found to be fit for duty in the future, you may be mobilized at that time.”

The decision brought feelings of relief and guilt. Gibson could not celebrate.

“I feel that I’m letting the guys down,” he said.

“Good days are when I appreciate so much,” he said recently. “That I own my home, that I have a beautiful little girl. On good days, I get something done. Even if it’s just playing around with her, it’s a feeling of accomplishment.

“Bad days are when I have to put myself in a room, because I can’t even deal with my little girl. I hurt too much to even play horse with her. I get hung up on the news, and it just makes me want to cry, thinking about what the troops are going through. You’re sitting there knowing that someone’s over there, maybe dying that very minute, and that’s all you think about. You’re tired by 5 o’clock at night, but you don’t sleep until 1 in the morning.”

Gibson said he hopes to get his life back on course. But the anxieties will not end as long as the wars continue.

“What it comes down to is, I’m back here now,” he said, “but there are guys over there still.  It’s not over.”

He will remain on the IRR Individual Ready Reserve list until August 2009.

Hart Seely can be reached at hseely@syracuse.com and 470-2247.

BAGHDAD, June 3, 2007  — Three months after the start of the Baghdad security plan that has added thousands of American and Iraqi troops to the capital, they control fewer than one-third of the city’s neighborhoods, far short of the initial goal for the operation, according to some commanders and an internal military assessment.

The American assessment, completed in late May, found that American and Iraqi forces were able to “protect the population” and “maintain physical influence over” only 146 of the 457 Baghdad neighborhoods.

In the remaining 311 neighborhoods, troops have either not begun operations aimed at rooting out insurgents or still face “resistance,” according to the one-page assessment, which was provided to The New York Times and summarized reports from brigade and battalion commanders in Baghdad.

The assessment offers the first comprehensive look at the progress of the effort to stabilize Baghdad with the heavy influx of additional troops. The last remaining American units in the troop increase are just now arriving.

Violence has diminished in many areas, but it is especially chronic in mixed Shiite-Sunni neighborhoods in western Baghdad, several senior officers said. Over all, improvements have not yet been as widespread or lasting across Baghdad, they acknowledged.

The operation “is at a difficult point right now, to be sure,” said Brig. Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the deputy commander of the First Cavalry Division, which has responsibility for Baghdad.

In an interview, he said that while military planners had expected to make greater gains by now, that has not been possible in large part because Iraqi police and army units, which were expected to handle basic security tasks, like manning checkpoints and conducting patrols, have not provided all the forces promised, and in some cases have performed poorly.

That is forcing American commanders to conduct operations to remove insurgents from some areas multiple times. The heavily Shiite security forces have also repeatedly failed to intervene in some areas when fighters, who fled or laid low when the American troops arrived, resumed sectarian killings.

“Until you have the ability to have a presence on the street by people who are seen as honest and who are not letting things come back in,” said General Brooks, referring to the Iraqi police units, “you can’t shift into another area and expect that place to stay the way it was.”

When planners devised the Baghdad security plan late last year, they had assumed most Baghdad neighborhoods would be under control around July, according to a senior American military officer, so the emphasis could shift into restoring services and rebuilding the neighborhoods as the summer progressed.

“We were way too optimistic,” said the officer, adding that September is now the goal for establishing basic security in most neighborhoods, the same month that Bush administration officials have said they plan to review the progress of the plan.

Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the senior American ground commander in Iraq, said in a brief interview that he never believed that a midsummer timetable for establishing security in Baghdad was realistic. “This was always going to be conditions-driven,” he said, noting that he always had expected it would take until fall to establish security across much of the city.

But in order to meet that timetable, he added, the Iraqi Security Forces would have to make strides in coming months at maintaining security. “Ultimately the I.S.F., and specifically the police, are the key to holding an area,” he said. “We have to within the next four months move them more toward holding the areas we have cleared.”

The last of the five combat brigades ordered to Iraq as reinforcements as part of the security plan will increase the number of American troops in the city to around 30,000, up from 21,000 before the operation, an American officer said.

In addition, around 30,000 Iraqi Army and national police forces and another 21,000 policemen have been deployed in Baghdad. Many of the Iraqi units have turned up at less than full strength and other units have been redeployed from the capital, General Brooks said, leaving fewer than expected.

American commanders have also had to send troops outside the capital, to deal with a sharp rise in violence in Diyala Province and to search for American soldiers kidnapped south of the capital.

In some parts of the city, commanders have yet to attempt large-scale clearing operations. For example, American forces have moved into only a small portion of Sadr City, the vast slum on the city’s east side that is a Shiite stronghold.

Sending large number of troops in there could incite heavy violence and opposition from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s largely Shiite government, several officers said.

The problems facing American troops are illustrated in troubled western Baghdad. In the Rashid district there, the First Battalion, Fourth Brigade of the First Infantry Division has been working since March to carry out the security push.

When the battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Patrick Frank, moved in, it was replacing a lone American Army company of 125 soldiers. Yet even with three times as many soldiers patrolling the area, violence has worsened. Last month, 249 bodies were found in the sector, up from 98 the month Colonel Frank arrived, according to statistics compiled by the battalion.

Lately, his troops have been hit by a wave of roadside bomb attacks that have killed five of them and wounded 13 others. “We have a tough fight ahead of us,” he said.

The district includes Ameel, Baya, Jihad and Furat, mostly mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods abutting the road to the Baghdad airport where his troops have established three patrol bases. Before the new strategy, there were none.

The area, a mixture of poorer urban slums and middle-class dwellings, once home to many retired professionals, has been troubled for years. Violence dipped there and across the city in the first months of the year, but has since worsened.

Militants, many associated with the Mahdi Army of the Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, have resumed a push to drive Sunnis from their few enclaves, American commanders said. One of the area’s last Sunni mosques was bombed Wednesday.

“This area used to be primarily Sunni, but in the last six months Jaish al-Mahdi has conducted essentially a cleansing campaign,” said Colonel Frank, using the Arabic name for the Mahdi Army.

In addition to carrying out sectarian killings, the Mahdi Army controls two of the area’s three gas stations, which refuse to sell to most Sunnis. Gunmen regularly attacked trash trucks when they entered Sunni areas until the American military began providing security. Sunni homes are also the targets of arson attacks if their occupants fail to heed warnings to leave, he said.

Sunni insurgents have fought back as well, with two large car bomb attacks in largely Shiite sections of Baya and Ameel that killed more than 60 people, officers said.

The sectarian violence was especially disheartening to some American officers because it occurred in May, the same month that they were undertaking the centerpiece of the Baghdad security plan — a neighborhood clearing operation.

The battalion’s troops, augmented by more than 2,000 soldiers in armored Stryker vehicles, went block by block through the neighborhood, arresting suspected insurgents and destroying arms caches.

But since the Stryker unit has moved on to a different area of Baghdad, “there’s been a reinfiltration” by Shiite fighters and intimidation squads, who had left the area when the operation began, said Capt. Tim Wright, the company commander responsible for the neighborhood.

In addition to the dumped bodies being found every day, more Sunni families are departing. Soon, he said, they may all be gone.

Colonel Frank, of Cuba, N.Y., who served a previous Iraq tour in Mosul in 2003 with the 101st Airborne Division, said his forces were having some success in neighboring Ameel at keeping sectarian violence under control. Thirty Sunni families have returned to the neighborhood recently, he said.

But American officers worry that many members of the largely Shiite police force sympathize or collaborate with the Mahdi Army.

The local commander of the Iraqi national police, a force run by the Shiite-run Interior Ministry, has been replaced three times since March.

One of those commanders, Col. Nadir al-Jabouri, a Shiite described by Colonel Frank as the most aggressive and even-handed Iraqi officer he had seen. But he was detained in late March by the Interior Ministry and accused of having ties to insurgents.

“He was not a protector of the people; he was a terrorist,” said Col. Vhafir Kader Jowda, his Shiite replacement.

American patrols have been attacked in a wave of deadly bombings recently, sometimes within sight of police checkpoints, officers said.

Ten soldiers under Colonel Frank’s command have been killed since March. At least eight of the recent attacks in the area have used explosively formed penetrators, or E.F.P.’s, powerful bombs able to pierce armored Humvees.

When Colonel Frank went to the Ameel police station recently accompanied by a reporter and asked for help in capturing a local Shiite sheik believed to be behind the bombings, the police official he was meeting with spoke in a whisper. “They listen to us,” he said, pointing to a ventilation grill on his wall. “I am in danger just by meeting with you.”

A few weeks earlier, angered by the attacks on his soldiers, Colonel Frank ordered a video camera hidden near an abandoned swimming pool along a main road in Ameel, near a police checkpoint, where patrols had been hit repeatedly.

When the video was examined after another attack, it showed two Iraqi policemen talking with companions, who were heard off-camera, apparently laying an explosive device. Minutes after the policemen were seen driving away, the camera showed a powerful bomb detonating as an American Humvee came into view.

The video of the attack, which just missed the vehicle and caused no casualties, was shown to a reporter from The New York Times.

After police commanders were confronted with the video in mid-May, six Iraqi officers were arrested, Colonel Frank said.

But the episode has not been forgotten. At a weekly meeting where military commanders and police chiefs sit around a horseshoe-shaped conference table at one of the American bases, Capt. Adel Fakry, the Ameel police commander, complained that American soldiers on patrol were showing “distrust” toward his officers.

“The reason there is distrust,” Colonel Frank responded, his voice rising, “is because I have a video of six Iraqi officers placing a bomb against my soldiers, and they came from your station.”

There had been “some mistakes,” Captain Fakry responded, looking taken aback by the confrontation. Not all of the six officers were from his station, he added before ending the conversation by flipping open his cellphone and making a call while the meeting continued.

The same distrust has hampered relations throughout Baghdad since the strategy began. In Shula, a neighborhood just east of Kadhimiya, north of Rashid, American troops in March discovered a group of Iraqis in police uniforms setting up an E.F.P. near a bridge. They were using police vehicles to provide cover.

The American soldiers killed two of the bomb planters. They later discovered that one had a badge granting him wide access to the Green Zone, the fortified area in central Baghdad where the American Embassy and most Iraqi government buildings are situated.

“That’s the level of penetration that these guys have,” said Lt. Col. Steven M. Miska, deputy commander of the Second Brigade, First Infantry Division, which is charged with controlling northwestern Baghdad.

May 14, 2007 – Tim Coil served in the first Gulf War and now suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

On March 12, he and his wife, Yvette, went to the Stow-Munroe Falls Public Library in Ohio. At 37, she is a student at Kent State and needed to study for a biology test. Tim, 40, was reading some books.

Then they noticed two military recruiters trying to enlist someone in a nearby room, with a large glass window.

She decided to take action.

She took out some 3×5 cards and wrote messages to the man being recruited and then put them up on the window sill.

His wife was putting up 3×5 cards on the window of the room used by the recruiters.

“Don’t fall for it! Military recruiters lie,” said one.

“It’s not honorable to fight for a lying President,” said another.

Then the police came.

She says she cleared it all first.

“Before I put those cards up, I went to a volunteer and I asked her if it was OK if I put those cards up in the window, and she said she didn’t have a problem with that but talk to someone who works there,” Yvette says. “The next person said it was fine so long as there is no confrontation. And she said, ‘Between you and I, I wish they weren’t here, either.’ ”

The recruiters were none too happy with the cards.

One of them came out and asked Coil who put them up.

When she admitted she had, he asked for her name, which she didn’t give him.

He told her that she and her husband couldn’t put the cards up.

“My husband asked him if he was trying to keep us from using our freedom of speech,” Coil says.

He didn’t answer that, she says, but he did tell her again to stop.

He took the cards and went to find the library director.

In the meantime, Coil put some more card on the sill:

“Don’t do it.”

“My husband is a Gulf War Veteran. He can tell you the TRUTH.”

“To the military, you are cannon fodder.”

“Recruiters: You’re fighting for my freedom of speech, too!”

The library director, Doug Dotterer, told them that if they put up one more card, he was going to ask them to leave, Coil says. He told them they couldn’t display things that were disturbing other people in the library. She told him that the Army had its brochures out on a nearby table, and they were disturbing her, she says.

“My husband said that the library was a public place and we are allowed our freedom of speech,” Coil says. “The director said it was his library, and so we would have to follow his rules.”

When he left, they knocked on the window and urged the man being recruited not to join up.

Soon the police arrived.

They asked the Coils to leave the building.

“We said, ‘Gladly,’ ” Yvette recalls.

But on his way out, Tim called the director a name.

“One more word from you and I’ll arrest you,” the police officer told Tim.

Then Tim shouted, “Don’t let the military recruit people in the library.”

Whereupon the police arrested him and took him to the station and booked him for disorderly conduct. A little while later, Yvette came and picked him up.

The district attorney did not return phone calls for comment.

Library Director Dotterer would not talk except to say: “I contacted my board president, who is an attorney, and he indicated that because this is an ongoing case we’re not going to comment. What I would refer you to are the official police reports.”

The police report says Coil was arrested for “causing a disturbance within a library.”

At an April 30 pretrial meeting, Coil was asked if he wanted to make a plea and settle the whole thing.

“No, I’m not guilty,” he said, according to his wife.

She explains: “We’re Mennonite. To lie about that would be wrong. I don’t want him to go to jail. Neither does he. He doesn’t need that. But I believe that God’s going to take care of it. We’re OK with whatever happens. The point is if we don’t stand for these freedoms and we don’t allow ourselves to be put on the line for those things, there won’t be an option anymore.”

Attorney William Whitaker is representing the Coils.

“If a statute punishes this conduct, then that statute is unconstitutional since it sweeps protected speech within its orbit,” he says. “They were engaged in protected First Amendment speech. It’s legitimate to use the public library in the same way that the recruiters were using it.”

On May 10, Yvette Coil says that her lawyer was advised that the state would drop charges if they would pay $100 in court fees.

“Tim said he should not have to pay for being harassed,” says Yvette. “No one has the right to take your freedoms away.”

The case is scheduled for June 5.

May 31, 2007 – When can veterans stop saluting and start speaking out?

The question is more than a matter of protocol. As some returning Iraq veterans join anti-war protests, free speech advocates say disciplinary cases against three outspoken former Marines could stifle dissent by those who may know the most about conditions in Iraq.

The cases involve members of the Individual Ready Reserve, a group most servicemembers enter after active duty. Unlike regular reservists, they receive no pay and are not required to drill or attend annual training. Their only obligations are to inform the military of a change of address and to return to active duty if called. There are 150,000 members of the IRR.

Adam Kokesh, who served in Fallujah, is one of them. A member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, Kokesh wore his camouflage uniform, with all insignia removed, on March 19 during a mock “combat patrol” past the White House. Soon after his picture was in The Washington Post, Marine Maj. John Whyte e-mailed him that he may have violated regulations that forbid wearing all or part of a uniform “while engaged in political demonstrations or activities.”

Kokesh, 25, e-mailed back, addressing the officer with a profanity.

Monday, Kokesh faces an administrative discharge hearing that accuses him of violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Pentagon policy on the wearing of uniforms and being “disrespectful” to a superior. A military board could convert his honorable discharge into an “other than honorable” one, which could reduce his veterans benefits. Today, he and supporters will board a “peace bus” in Washington to take him to the hearing in Kansas City.

“I’m a civilian with the full rights of a civilian until I am called back by the Marine Corps,” Kokesh says.

The military doesn’t see it that way. The Marine Corps would not comment on specifics of Kokesh’s case because it is pending. Marine Maj. Stewart Upton, a Pentagon spokesman, said all troops are instructed that they are forbidden from wearing a uniform at a political event, regardless of whether they are on active duty or retired. “If he says he’s a civilian, then why is he wearing the uniform?” Upton asks. “What is he trying to communicate by his action?”

Two other Iraq veterans, Sgt. Liam Madden, 22, of Boston and Cpl. Cloy Richards, 23, of Salem, Mo., also face disciplinary proceedings because of anti-war activities.

Richards has agreed not to speak out again until he leaves the IRR in July 2008, says his mother, anti-war activist Tina Richards. She says her son, who has an 80{cd9ac3671b356cd86fdb96f1eda7eb3bb1367f54cff58cc36abbd73c33c82e1d} combat disability after suffering brain trauma, post-traumatic stress syndrome and other injuries from a mortar attack in Iraq in 2004, fears that the military will take away his $1,300-a-month disability benefits if he speaks out. “They are trying to shut up the most authoritative voices, which are the Iraq veterans themselves,” she says.

Mike Lebowitz, Kokesh’s lawyer, says the disciplinary hearings set “a dangerous precedent” for veterans who speak out against the war.

Eugene Fidell, an authority on military law who heads the National Institute of Military Justice, doubts the Marine Corps has jurisdiction. As members of the IRR, he says, the three veterans are in a “funny twilight status” and not subject to military law. He adds, “If I had a quarter for every person who wears an article of uniform in a setting that has some political dimension, I’d be a wealthy man.”

Beyond what protesters wear, though, is what they can say about an increasingly unpopular war, says Marv Johnson, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is very likely to chill returning Iraq veterans from stating their opinions,” he says, “and that may very well be the intent.”

Georgie Anne Geyer writes today in the Dallas Morning News about President Bush’s strange behavior during a recent meeting with “[f]riends of his from Texas.”

But by all reports, President Bush is more convinced than ever of his righteousness.

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

This is the second time in recent weeks that accounts have surfaced of Bush lashing out or “ranting” in private meetings when responding to criticism of his Iraq policy. Chris Nelson of the Nelson Report offered a similar account earlier this month:

[S]ome big money players up from Texas recently paid a visit to their friend in the White House. The story goes that they got out exactly one question, and the rest of the meeting consisted of The President in an extended whine, a rant, actually, about no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he’s doing things would be OK…etc., etc. This is called a “bunker mentality” and it’s not attractive when a friend does it. When the friend is the President of the United States, it can be downright dangerous. Apparently the Texas friends were suitably appalled, hence the story now in circulation.

Like the tearful House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), Bush needs to channel his bottled up emotions towards a more worthy end — winding down the war in Iraq rather than defending the status quo.