Veterans for Common Sense

Insurgents in Baghdad have mounted dozens of separate bombings in recent weeks.

Nowhere is the fallout from the violence more apparent than in the city’s emergency rooms and trauma centers.

Jamal Enad, a second-year surgical resident at Baghdad’s Yarmouk Hospital, said he has seen firsthand the effects of the increased violence.

“It was a very bad week, the last week,” he said.

Enad is one of three doctors and six nurses working the day shift in the emergency room. They have been inundated with patients of late, since Yarmouk is where most Iraqi victims of insurgent attacks in Baghdad are taken for treatment.

Each day, Enad and the other doctors have been treating twisted limbs and pulling shrapnel from the wounded. The families of the victims crowd the ER, waiting in anguish.

Yarmouk is a teaching hospital, where doctors come to learn. They say what they are learning most clearly is how to deal with victims of insurgent attacks — how to recognize instantly who will die, and who might be saved.

It is experience Enad said he would rather do without.

‘Not the Real Job of a Doctor’

“For me as a doctor, I think this is not my future,” he said. “The blast injuries is not the real job of a doctor.”

Enad dreams of performing elective surgery at a peaceful hospital. But in wartime, he willingly goes to work, despite fears for his own life.

“I feel sometimes I might be a target,” he said. “But what can I do?”

Enad said one of his hardest jobs is dealing with patients’ families. While being interviewed by ABC News, one of Enad’s patients — the victim of a recent bombing — died from his injuries.

When the victim’s brother was told, he fell to the floor, screaming and crying in distress.

“This is normal,” Enad said of the man’s reaction. “This is one of his relatives.”

For Enad, the situation is painfully common.

In trying to defeat the Iraqi insurgency, the Pentagon has turned to Saddam Hussein’s former henchmen. Under former Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, U.S. officials has installed many of the hated Baathists who tormented Iraq in high-level posts in the interior and defense ministries. But the new Iraqi government, overwhelmingly composed of Shiites and Kurds who suffered the most under Hussein, have announced that they are going to purge the ex-Baathists, putting them on a collision course with the United States.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made one of his surprise visits to Baghdad last week, warning the new government not to “come in and clean house” in the security forces. The official line is that the U.S. is worried about losing the “most competent” security forces. But there is a deeper concern that purging the security forces could feed into sectarian tensions and explode in civil war.

Much of that is due to a ruthless U.S. policy of using any tactic, no matter how unsavory, in trying to defeat the insurgency. According to a slew of reports, the U.S. military is encouraging tribal vendettas, freeing kidnappers to spy on insurgents, incorporating ethnic-based military units into the security forces, and encouraging the development of illegal militias that draw in part from Hussein-era security forces.

There is clear evidence that the tactics are having an effect. U.S. casualties have declined by 75 percent since their peak of 126 combat deaths in November 2004. Part of that is probably due to sweeping thousands of Sunni Arab males of the street-Iraqis imprisoned under U.S. control have more than doubled since last October to 10,500.

It is the more ruthless methods that may be having a greater effect on squeezing the insurgency. Yet the establishment of militias may backfire. U.S. military officials express concern that if the former Baathists who lead the militias are removed, they could take their forces with them.

A report by the Wall Street Journal from Feb. 16 revealed that numerous “pop-up militias” thousands strong are proliferating in Iraq. Not only are many of these shadowy militias linked to Iraqi politicians, but the Pentagon is arming, training and funding them for use in counter-insurgency operations.

Most disturbing, one militia in particular-the “special police commandos”-is being used extensively throughout Iraq and has been singled out by a U.S. general for conducting death squad strikes known as the “Salvador option.” The police commandos also appear to be a reconstituted Hussein security force operating under the same revived government body, the General Security Directorate, that suppressed internal dissent.

High-level White House officials are banking on the police commandos to defeat the insurgency. In hearings before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Feb. 16 Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said the commandos are among “forces that are going to have the greatest leverage on suppressing and eliminating the insurgency.”

The police commandos were identified as one of at least six militias by Greg Jaffe, the Journal reporter. Last October it was said to have “several thousand soldiers” and lavishly armed with “rocket-propelled-grenade launchers, mortar tubes and lots of ammunition.” Yet these militias owe their allegiance not to the Iraqi people or government, but to their self-appointed leaders and associated politicians such as interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Even the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East, Gen. John P. Abizaid, admitted in testimony before Congress on March 1 that such militias are “destabilizing.”

Of these militias, at least three are linked to Allawi. Jaffe writes, “First came the Muthana Brigade, a unit formed by the order of. Allawi.” The second is the Defenders of Khadamiya, referring to a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Baghdad, which appears to be “closely aligned with prominent Shiite cleric Hussein al Sadr.” Al Sadr ran on Allawi’s ticket in the January elections and proved himself loyal when he attacked the main Shiite ticket publicly for stating it was endorsed by Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. (Al-Sadr also held the infamous press conference in Baghdad where several journalists in attendance were seen receiving $100 gifts from Allawi’s government.)

The special police commandos is led by Gen. Adnan Thabit, who participated in the disastrous 1996 coup against Saddam Hussein that Allawi coordinated. Thabit was jailed and subsequently released shortly before the 2003 U.S. invasion. He is also the uncle of Iraq’s interim minister of the interior, under which the commandos operate.

Thabit told the Armed Forces Press Service last October that the police commandos are drawn from “police who have previous experience fighting terrorism and also people who received special training under the former regime” of Saddam Hussein. The report from Oct. 20, 2004, also quotes U.S. Army Col. James H. Coffman Jr., who specifies that police commandos are “former special forces and (former Directorate of General Security) personnel.”

The Directorate of General Security was one of the main security services Hussein used to maintain an iron grip on Iraq. The Center for Nonproliferation Studies describes the service’s role as “detecting dissent among the Iraqi general public” by monitoring “the day-to-day lives of the population, creating a pervasive local presence.”

Col. Coffman reports to Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, who heads the mammoth U.S. effort to create Iraq’s myriad security forces. Petraeus calls the police commandos “a horse to back” and has done so by providing it with “money to fix up its base and buy vehicles, ammunition, radios and more weapons.” In a satellite briefing to the press on Feb. 4, Petraeus repeatedly praised the special police commandos, calling the leadership “tremendously aggressive” in operations. Petraeus also revealed that the commandos, the Muthana Brigade and another militia called the Defenders of Baghdad were used to provide security on election day.

But a senior officer on Petraeus’s staff confided, “If you tried to replace Gen. [Thavit] he’d take his…brigades with him. He is a very powerful figure.”

Ousting wholesale the ex-Baathist security forces now in the government could push them to join the insurgency. And this precisely what Iraq’s new president, Jalal Talabini is suggesting. According to the BBC, Talabani argues “the insurgency could be ended immediately if the authorities made use of Kurdish, Shia Muslim and other militias. Jalal Talabani said this would be more effective than waiting for Iraqi forces to take over from the US-led coalition.”

The militias Talabani is referring to include the Kurdish Peshmerga and Shiite units such as the Badr Brigades. But such a move would cement the conflict as a sectarian one.

Military analyst William Lind notes that “the rise and spread of Shiite militias devoted to fighting Sunni insurgents puts ever-greater pressure on Iraq’s Sunnis to cast their lot with the insurgency.” Add to this the use of Kurdish Peshmerga also against Sunni Arabs and civil war would likely result.

U.S. BETS ON BAATHISTS

Ironically, Allawi-with U.S. encouragement-has put a network of former Baathists in charge of various security services to fight what the U.S. claims are other Baathists who form the core of the insurgency. They include Thavit’s nephew, Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, who is the son of a prominent Baath official. The Minister of Defense is Hazem al-Shaalan, a former Baathist from al-Hillah, and. Brig. Gen. Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, an old-time Ba’ath officer, is now head of the Iraqi secret police, according to author and analyst Milan Rai.

This policy of “re-baathification” is actively supported by Bush administration. The Washington Post reported on Dec. 11, 2003, that the CIA met with Allawi and another member of his Iraqi National Accord party to create “an Iraqi intelligence service to spy on groups and individuals inside Iraq that are targeting U.S. troops and civilians working to form a new government.” The plan was to “screen former government officials to find agents for the service and weed out those who are unreliable or unsavory.” Evidence of this role comes from Thabit who told the Armed Forces Press Service that former regime personnel in his force “were efficiently chosen according to information about their background.”

Even before he officially assumed the post of interim prime minister, Allawi announced a reorganization of security forces at his first press conference on June 20, 2004. According to a Human Rights Watch report on torture in Iraq, Allawi mentioned “Special police units would also be created to be deployed ‘in the frontlines’ of the battle against terrorism and sabotage, and a new directorate for national security established.” Human Rights Watch also noted that Al-Nahdhah, a Iraqi newspaper, reported on June 21 that the interior ministry “appointed a new security adviser to assist in the establishment of a new general security directorate modeled on the erstwhile General Security Directorate. one of the agencies of the Saddam Hussein government dissolved by the CPA in May 2003.” That security advisor was “Major General ‘Adnan Thabet al-Samarra’i.” (There are numerous variations on Thabet’s last name.)

Then on July 15, 2004, just two months before the police commandos became public, Allawi said the government would establish “internal intelligence units called General Security Directorate, GSD, that will annihilate. terrorist groups.” Jane’s Intelligence Digest commented at the time that the GSD, “will include former members of Saddam Hussein’s feared security services, collectively known as the Mukhabarat. These former Ba’athists and Saddam loyalists will be expected to hunt down their colleagues currently organizing the insurgency.”

Perhaps Allawi’s announcement was spurred by events in the city of Samarra. A July 15 report from Radio Free Europe noted that a Shiite website, www.ebaa.net , stated Islamic militants had blown up numerous sites in Samarra, including “the headquarters of the Iraqi National Movement Party led by Interior Minister Falah al-Naqib, the City Council, the headquarters of the [Kurdish] peshmerga forces, and the home of Municipal Council Chairman Adnan Thabit.”

It seems then, former Baathist brutes may have gone from one security service under Hussein to the exact same one as under Allawi, another ex-Baathist. And the rougues apparently haven’t forgotten their old tactics.

‘GAY ORGIES’

The police commandos have been supplying suspects who confess their crimes on the TV show, “Terrorism in the Hands of Justice.” Described as the Iraqi government’s “slick new propaganda tool,” the program runs six nights a week on the Iraqiya network, which was set up by the Pentagon and is now run by Australian-based Harris Corp. (a major U.S. government contractor that gave 96 percent of its political funding, more than $260,000, to Republicans in 2004). According to the Boston Globe, camera crews are sent “wherever police commandos make a lot of arrests.”

The show features an unseen interrogator haranguing alleged insurgents for confessions. Virtually every press account notes that the suspects appear to have been beaten or tortured, their faces bruised and swollen. The London Guardian states “some have. robotic manners of those beaten and coached by police interrogators off-camera.” The Boston Globe observed, “The neat confessions of terrorist attacks at times fit together so seamlessly as to seem implausible.” And then there’s the nature of the confessions. Many suspects admit to “drunkeness, gay orgies and pornography,” according to the Guardian. The Financial Times reported that, “One long-bearded preacher known as Abu Tabarek recently confessed that guerrillas had usually held orgies in his mosques.” Another preacher giving a confession says he was fired for “having sex with men in the mosque,” the Globe account stated that suspects “frequently admit to rape and pedophilia.”

The show is said to be popular, particularly among many Shiites and Kurds, which causes concern that depicting Sunni Arab nationalists as “thieving scumbags” could deepen communal strife. Political and religious leaders from the Sunni Arabs have denounced the show, calling for it to be pulled off the air.

The police commandos’ penchant for tall tales caused them considerable embarrassment after they crowed about a major operation that killed more than 80 insurgents at a training camp along Lake Tharthar in Al Anbar on March 22. Within a day many discrepancies emerged-how many insurgents were killed, reports of more than 20 prisoners versus none, a number of different locations cited, many miles apart. The story fell apart after an AFP reporter visited the camp and still found 40 to 50 insurgents camped there.

But the police commandos are still receiving special treatment from the U.S. occupation. A State Department report to Congress from Jan. 5 noted that at the request of the Iraqi Ministry of the Interior, “billeting space” was provided for 1,500 police commandos in the Baghdad Public Safety Academy, postponing a basic training class of 2,000 scheduled to begin in November and limiting the number of students to 1,000 while the commandos received training “until the planned January 2005 elections.”

Overall, the militias are a tacit admission that the U.S. effort to create an Iraqi military force has been a colossal failure, costing at least $5 billion to date. During the most recent large-scale military campaign, “Operation River Blitz,” U.S. Marines raided towns West of Baghdad along the Euphrates River. The first order of business in many of these Sunni Arab towns, according to the Christian Science monitor, was to “round up and detain police officers”-the very ones who had been “trained” by the U.S. to fight the insurgency. In Tikrit in early March, the police went on strike after U.S. troops raided the provincial police headquarters there and arrested two high-ranking officers. (About the same time in Samarra, the mayor and city council resigned after the mayor’s office was raided and in protest of U.S. troops refusing to withdraw from the city as agreed.)

At the end of March, police brandishing Kalishnikovs staged a demonstration in Hit, one of the towns targeted, demanding their jobs back. An AP account of the protest dated March 29 noted that police forces have been dismissed across the province of Al Anbar, the heart of the insurgency, and “former local police officers have been protesting in several cities in recent weeks against a new plan to replace them with police from other Iraqi provinces.”

By introducing of militias and other units composed of Shiites and Kurds into the Sunni Arab regions, the U.S. may just turn the insurgency into a civil war.

10,000 STRONG

In terms of numbers, a column by David Ignatius in the Feb. 25 Washington Post notes that Thabit “commands a force of about 10,000 men,” which would make them larger than the British military, the second largest foreign force in Iraq. The commandos have been used extensively, first last October in the assault on Samara that was called a “model” for how to retake a city from insurgents (but which is stilled roiled by regular attacks). The commandos have also become a fixture in major cities such as Ramadi and Mosul. In Ramadi, The Stars and Stripes describes the commandos as “the Iraqi forces that might soon be responsible for security in the city.”

A report in Dec. 25 issue of The Advisor-a Pentagon publication with the tagline “Iraq’s Official Weekly Command Information Reporter”-stated that the “Special Police Commandos have been deployed all over Iraq to hunt down insurgents and to help provide security for the upcoming Jan. 30 elections.”

FEARS OF CIVIL WAR

Jaffe notes many of the pop-up militias come “from Shiite-dominated southern Iraq.” And they appear to be operating mainly in Sunni Arab areas. The police commandos in particular are taking the lead in operations in such Sunni Arab hotspots as Samarra, Ramadi, Mosul, Tikrit and Baghdad. Last October they were assigned to Haifa Street, which had been a resistance stronghold on the edge of the Green Zone, the heart of the U.S. occupation. It’s a district of 170,000 Sunnis and Shiites where insurgents find willing recruits among the Sunni neighborhoods. Two Iraqi battalions of more than 2,000 patrol the neighborhood, and the New York Times observes that one is lead by a Shiite general “commanding a unit composed mostly of Shiites.” (The units are the Iraqi 302nd and 303rd Battalion; it’s unclear if they are affiliated with the police commandos assigned there.)

Knight Ridder correspondent Tom Lasseter filed a report from Haifa on March 16, also noting that “Most of the Iraqi troops who patrol the area. are Shiite.” During the operations, Lasseter wrote, “When Iraqi and American soldiers detained a suspected Sunni insurgent in Haifa this week, a group of the Shiite troops crowded around him. A sergeant kicked him in the face. Another soldier grabbed him by the neck and slammed his head into a wall. A third slapped him hard in the face.” The Americans’ Iraqi interpreter yelled at the detainee, “If you come with us, we will slaughter you.”

The ethnic-based militias are having a trickle-down effect on Iraqi society. With no functioning government, various communities are increasingly arming themselves. In another report, Lasseter spoke to a Shiite soldier who claimed that, “Shiite neighborhoods on the edges of Haifa have formed militias to enforce the sectarian boundary.” The soldier added, “”That militia is secretly funded by a sheik at a local Shiite mosque… what’s happening right now could be the beginning of civil war in Baghdad.” And in what remains of Fallujah, “Sunni residents say anger toward Shiite troops is reaching a boiling point.” Bush may be right after all that “freedom is on the march” in Iraq: the freedom to hate and kill.

As for the “hunt” for insurgents, it seems to include death squads. Retired Gen. Wayne Downing, the former head of all U.S. special operations forces, appeared on NBC’s Today show on Jan. 10 to discuss a Newsweek report about the Salvador option. The reference is to the extensive use of death squads by El Salvador’s military during its war against the left in the 1980s. Downing called it a “very valid tactic” that has been employed “since we started the war back in March of 2003.” In the account, brought to light by analyst Stephen Shalom, Downing adds, “We have special police commandos now of the Iraqi forces which conduct these kind of strike operations.”

And there is evidence for such operations. According to the March 12 London Times, the body of Qahtan Jouli was delivered to his family in Samarra by commandos from the interior ministry. He had appeared on “Terror in the Grip of Justice” and confessed to collaborating with insurgents in 10 killings. Qahtan’s father charged that “My son was killed after he was tortured by the Interior Ministry commandos. They killed him to cover up the lies they broadcast on the al-Iraqiya channel that my son killed many people, including Iraqi army officers.”

Despite the pressure, the insurgency is still capable of conducting large-scale attacks. It’s still mounting 50 to 60 strikes a day across Iraq. The difference is U.S. forces have become more effective at responding to the attacks-with more armor, more surveillance and electronic countermeasures. The insurgents have responded by shifting their targets to the Iraqi security forces and intensifying economic sabotage by crippling the electrical and petroleum infrastructure. They still have the upper hand there by showing the U.S. and its Iraqi allies are incapable of ruling the country.

The militias are central to many of these roundups. According to The Advisor, in Samarra, the special police commandos detained 200 suspected insurgents in the “short time [they] have been operational in the area.” In one week in the Mosul area, according to a Dec. 7 press release from U.S. Task Force Olympia, the commandos and Iraqi National Guardsmen, backed by U.S. troops, detained 232 people. A report from the Iraqi Ministry of Defense claimed that more than 400 suspects were seized in Baghdad in just one week in March with hundreds more taken from surrounding towns. Many of those arrested remain under Iraqi control-where many are tortured according to human rights groups as well as the U.S. State Department. Thus the actual prison population in Iraq is unknown, with many more thousands probably in custody above the U.S. total (which itself is unverified).

U.S. Marine units have taken the militia strategy to a new level: by creating their own. In a recent sweep through Al Anbar province, The 7th Marines Regiment brought with the Iraqi Freedom Guard, a 61-man unit set up by the Marines in January and paid $400 a month each, according to a Reuters report. During the same operation, Marines of the 23rd Regiment were accompanied by 20 members of a special forces unit called the Freedom Fighters. The Christian Science Monitor described them as Shiites from the southern city of Basra, with “little love between them and the Sunni Arab citizens of Anbar.”

In the greatest irony, U.S. forces have reached a pact with elements of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army to have them hunt down insurgents. This is the same militia that U.S. forces fought in lopsided battles last year that saw the Americans’ massive firepower devastate much of Sadr City in Baghdad and Najaf’s old city and kill thousands of Iraqis.

According to Agence France-Presse, U.S. forces are using a Shiite tribal leader to enforce vigilante justice in Baghdad’s Dura district. One U.S. officer calls the leader, Sayed Malik, “the godfather” and notes he’s received lots of public works contracts, enough to make him a millionaire. Another Sadr official states point blank that “people from Sadr organization are publicly hunting down the terrorists.” This apparently includes the kidnapping and disappearing of a Sunni cleric from a mosque in Dura.

The U.S. military is so obsessed with defeating the insurgents that it is “routinely freeing dangerous criminals in return for a promise to spy on insurgents,” according to The Independent. One senior Iraqi police officer charged that “The Americans are allowing the breakdown of Iraqi society.We are dealing with an epidemic of kidnapping, extortion and violent crime, but even though we know the Americans monitor calls on mobiles and satellite phones, which are often used in ransom negotiations, they will not pass on any criminal intelligence to us. They only want to use the information against insurgents.”

Despite the grab bag of ruthless and destabilizing tactics, the insurgency is far from over. One U.S. general recently noted that it takes on average nine years to defeat an insurgency. Additionally, it’s the violence of the U.S. occupation that gives the insurgency such force. Even if the rebellion is contained to “manageable” levels for the Pentagon, meaning a low rate of combat deaths, that does not mean the resistance will end. U.S. forces long ago lost the battle for hearts and minds.

And Iraq’s own “democracy” is already in trouble, leaving many Iraqis disillusioned. The winning parties have been unable to form a government almost three months after the election. They are still squabbling over who will control the most important portfolios-defense, interior and oil-which is where the real power lies. With a do-nothing government ensconced in bosom of the deadly U.S. occupation, the stage is now set for a further descent into rebellion and repression.

A.K. Gupta is an editor with the NYC Indymedia Center, www.nyc.indymedia.org . This is an updated version of an article that appears in the May issue of Z Magazine.

Bush Administration Religious Profiling Sparks Federal Lawsuit

Three influential civil rights groups charged Wednesday that border control tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security discriminate against U.S. citizens solely on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

NEW YORK, Apr 20 (IPS) – Three influential civil rights groups charged Wednesday that border control tactics used by the Department of Homeland Security discriminate against U.S. citizens solely on the basis of their religion and ethnicity, in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

In simultaneous news conferences held in New York City and Buffalo, on the Canadian border, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the New York Civil Liberties Union and the American Civil Liberties Union announced that they were suing the head of the Department of Homeland Security over the practice of targeting U.S. citizens participating in religious conferences outside the United States.

The lawsuit was filed in U.S. district court on behalf of five Muslim-Americans who, along with dozens of others, were detained for six and a half hours, interrogated, fingerprinted, and photographed at the Canadian border crossing to Buffalo as they returned home from an annual Islamic conference in Toronto.

”None of the plaintiffs had engaged in any unlawful conduct nor any other conduct that would justify the mistreatment to which they were subjected but instead were subjected to this treatment solely because they had attended the conference,” court documents charged.

Catherine Y. Kim, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, told IPS that the action taken at the border ”is part of a broader pattern of profiling innocent individuals — in this case American citizens — solely on the basis of their religion, ethnicity or exercise of First Amendment protected rights.”

The lawsuit seeks to prevent the government from taking similar actions against other citizens and seeks the return or removal from government databases of all information obtained from the plaintiffs during their detention.

”During the detentions, border agents confiscated cell phones when they learned that those being held were attempting to contact lawyers or the media,” the suit charges.

”The same religious conference is scheduled to take place again in December 2005, and the plaintiffs all want to attend it but are reluctant to do so if they will be subjected to similar treatment.”

CAIR National Legal Director Arsalan Iftikhar declared, ”When American citizens are targeted by their own government and detained, searched, fingerprinted, and photographed with threat of arrest for committing no crime, this is not only unacceptable and unlawful, but also unconstitutional and un-American.”

CAIR is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties group, with 31 offices and chapters nationwide and in Canada. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American-Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding.

The suit says that on three occasions since January 2003, a large religious assembly known as the Reviving the Islamic Spirit (RIS) Conference has been held in Toronto, Canada.

Organised by college students and considered the largest Islamic conference in Canada, the RIS Conference is a mainstream cultural and religious gathering that advocates peace, tolerance, and unity. It features speakers, includes religious activities, and has been endorsed by prominent politicians.

The most recent RIS Conference took place in late December 2004 at a stadium in downtown Toronto called the Skydome. As in prior years, the Canadian government welcomed the December 2004 conference.

Several Canadian officials addressed the gathering, including the premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty; Toronto Mayor David Miller; and Commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Among the conference’s keynote speakers was Hamza Yusuf, a U.S. citizen and prominent imam from Hayward, California, who has advised President George W. Bush on several occasions on matters regarding Islam. Yusuf sat near First Lady Laura Bush during the president’s Sep. 20, 2001 address to a joint session of Congress.

Valerie Smith, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, would not discuss details of the case, but told the New York Times: ”The mission of the Department of Homeland Security is to protect Americans from terrorism and the mission of Customs and Border Protection is to prevent terrorists and their weapons from entering our country.”

”It is incumbent upon Customs officers to be right each and every time. Terrorists only have to get it right once.”

None of those detained returning from the December 2004 conference were charged with any crime. (END)

Iraq War Veteran to Speak in Boone: Navy Corpsman Addresses Veterans Rights

With increasing media attention on issues of the day such as Social Security, the installation of the new Pope at the Vatican, and the Michael Jackson trial, you could understand why some people might be under the impression that the War in Iraq is a done deal.

When you talk to Navy Corpsman 2nd Class Charlie Anderson, however, you begin to realize that there are many unresolved issues regarding our country’s conflict in Iraq.

“There are 50 to 60 attacks on U.S. personnel every day in Iraq,” said Anderson Tuesday in a phone interview. “Make no mistake about it, we’re still in Iraq.”

Anderson recently got out of the Navy after a stint in Iraq and has made increasing the public’s awareness about the war and about veterans’ issues his top priorities.

Corpsman Anderson, currently working as the Southern Regional Coordinator for the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, will speak on Friday, April 22 at 7 p.m. at the ASU Catholic Campus Ministry Building at 232 Faculty Street. He will also speak on Saturday, April 23 at 7 p.m. in the Roan Mountain Room at ASU’s Plemmons Student Union and on Sunday, April 24, he will lead a discussion group at the High Country United Church of Christ on State Farm Road in Boone. Also on Sunday he will speak at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church on Council Street in Boone at 2:30 p.m.

All talks are free and open to the public.

Anderson was first deployed to Iraq during the initial invasion on February 1, 2003 and worked as a medic with a tank division in country until May 28, 2003. The tank division stayed on the move around Basra and Bagdad until it was moved out of country into Kuwait.

“Tank divisions are a big target,” said Anderson. “So we tend to keep moving.”

Anderson retired from the Navy three weeks ago, receiving an Honorable Discharge after being diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). “I’ve been in treatment for PTSD and pretty much couldn’t continue with the duties of my job,” said Anderson.

After become a leader in Iraq Veterans Against the War, Anderson decided the best way to utilize his experiences was to tell the public about ways in which he feels that veterans and active military personnel are being treated unfairly by the policies of the Bush Administration.

“There was a lot of misunderstanding among military personnel and the public about why we went to war in the first place,” said Anderson. “I’m trying to raise the collective consciousness of the people who were lied to. Most of the people in the military went in wanting to help other people. Some went in for job opportunities, some went in to better themselves as people, and some went in to get money to go to school.

“We were misused and misled. At first we were told that it was about weapons of mass destruction. They were not there and our leaders knew that before the invasion. We were told that there was a link between Iraq and 9/11 when there was no such link. And we were told that Saddam Hussein was a threat when he was no threat whatsoever.

“We keep losing good people over there and it’s wrong.”

Anderson also wants people to know that the government is reneging on promises made to military personnel regarding education and health benefits for veterans.

“Veterans benefits are a completely under-funded aspect of the war,” said Anderson. “There are a lot of vets coming home that are going to need those benefits and they just aren’t going to be there. That was supposed to be the deal with an all-volunteer military. We have contracts that we signed in good faith and now they are not being honored. I’m speaking to people to tell them that if we send people to war, we need to be willing to honor those contracts and do the right thing when they get home.”

Anderson is particularly dismayed that the current conflict in Iraq has been put on the back burner and that the media seems reluctant to cover the issue of wounded veterans that are trying to put their lives back together at home.

“I’ve talked to a lot of people who don’t even realize that there is still a war going on in Iraq,” said Anderson. “I talked to a high school group a couple of weeks ago and one guy asked me what war I was talking about. He was honestly surprised when I told him that we were still in Iraq. The problem is that we just don’t hear about it as much these days.”

As a medic, Anderson saw his share of wounded men and women and he feels that one of the bigger problems related to the War in Iraq is the number of disabled Americans that will have to be rehabilitated stateside.

“A lot has been made of the fact that this war has resulted in a lower number of people killed (1,559 American deaths as of Wednesday, April 19) in this conflict compared to, say, the Vietnam War,” said Anderson. “A lot of that is due to modern medicine and advances in in-the-field care. A lot of people who would have been dead in Vietnam or in other wars have been kept alive. They’re coming back to communities that are simply not prepared to receive them. They are becoming misfits in their own communities, without the help or training that they will need to become useful members of society for the rest of their lives. That issue is like the elephant in the room that no one is willing to talk about.”

Anderson stated that he plans to use this weekend’s speaking opportunities as a chance to tell people about what it was like in Iraq and to remind them that there is still a war taking place.

“When I returned home to Virginia Beach, I felt a very hollow sense of support from a lot of people in my community,” said Anderson. “When I went to church that first Sunday, a lot of people pointed to the yellow stickers on their cars that said ‘Support Our Troops.’ But those same people did very little to help my family or send letters to the troops in Iraq. It takes about 30 seconds to buy a sticker at Wal-Mart and put it on your car. But what does it really mean?”

Anderson said that there are some very able and committed groups that are now being formed to create tangible support for both active military personnel and returning veterans.

“I’m going to continue to go around and speak on these issues as long as we have problems to solve,” said Anderson. “I want our troops to come home now and I want our veterans to have the benefits to which they are entitled.”

For more information on Anderson’s appearances in the High Country, call (828) 268-1532

The casualties of war go far beyond the battlefields

With the second anniversary this month of the United States invasion of Iraq, many peacemakers will participate in vigils or memorials for the dead. An interfaith group in Salt Lake City will read the names of the war dead. 

    The list includes both American and other soldiers who have fallen as well as the names of as many Iraqis as can be found. When ABC News “Nightline” devoted an entire program to reading names of war dead, some TV affiliates chose not to air the broadcast. They claimed it was too political. 

    Honoring the victims of war is something our country has etched in stone. War and veterans’ memorials can be found in nearly every city, town and hamlet across this nation. It is from these hometowns that this country’s young men — and now women – have left for foreign battlefields. 

  Seeing all those names on the stark, black stone wall of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., was a moving experience for me. It is an emotional experience to touch the name of a loved one or friend on that wall. 

    The World War II Memorial opened just last year has a crescent wall on its west side with thousands of gold stars. Each star represents 100 fallen. There is no room for all the names. The words carved in the stone below denote “the price of freedom.” 

    The price is much higher. The cost is greater than we first see. The names of those casualties of war far outnumber those officially listed as killed in action. 

    The Wasatch Mountains of Utah are about as far away from a war zone as you can get. In the waning days of last summer, when the wildflowers were not yet gone, a casual hike turned into a horrible reminder. 

    Seeing a business acquaintance along the trail was a surprise. Usually, I see him behind a customer service   counter. But I recognized him with his backpack passing on the trail. 

    He reminded me of his name. I asked how he was doing. Not so well, he said. 

    The trail we were on was a place he used to bring his favorite nephew. The uncle had come up to the tall pines, the stands of aspen and the unrestricted views of the peaks to remember. And to try to forget. 

    His nephew had enlisted in the Army. He and a buddy from a suburban Midwestern city had been to Iraq and back. 

    “We’re not getting the whole story,” the uncle told me as we stood in a sun-drenched meadow. His nephew had recounted the horrors of war to his uncle. He had told his uncle that they shot at anything that moved. He had bared his tormented soul to someone he trusted, someone who loved him, someone who had brought him to these mountains for peace and solitude and new experiences.

    Their names will not appear on any war memorial of those killed in the Iraq war. But their lives were cut short by the horrors of war just as though they had been targeted by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. 

    One summer night, the two Iraq war veterans drank too much. The buddy had a new sports car, a “welcome home” gift from his father. These two young veterans sped down a highway careening and crashing the new sports car. Both died. 

    Their names were not seen on any national TV news program listing those who gave the ultimate price. Their names will not appear on any war memorial of those killed in the Iraq war. But their lives were cut short by the horrors of war just as though they had been targeted by a roadside bomb in Baghdad. 

    This is not likely an isolated case. How many returning soldiers become casualties, the number of beaten and abused military   spouses, may never be completely known. The returning veterans from Vietnam who have dealt with the horrors of their war through drug and alcohol abuse took years to quantify and the numbers are likely “best guesses.” 

    Vietnam so damaged this country’s families and fabric that we discovered in the 2004 presidential election it still is an unhealed national wound. Is there any correlation between the end of World War II and its returned victims of war’s horror and the reorganization of Alcoholics Anonymous in the following decade? How many of the returning WWII vets were medicating themselves to dull the memories that were too unbearable? 

    The casualties of war go far beyond the battlefields. They are in the homes and coffee shops, the support groups and the cemeteries of those cities, towns and hamlets that continue to send their youngest to serve in the nation’s wars. 

    It is a cycle   that somehow needs to be stopped. Reading the names of those we know about in this latest war will bring to my mind the unnamed thousands of veterans who came home scarred and those others who are just as much part of the war dead and wounded but who never set foot “in country.”

US Army seeks longer enlistments as recruitment falters

WASHINGTON, District of Columbia, United States of America — The US Army has asked Congress to allow it to extend enlistment contracts offered to future soldiers by two years in order to “stabilize the force,” as top defense officials warned that key recruitment targets for the year could be missed.

The request came as the House of Representatives on Wednesday put its stamp of approval on an 81.4-billion-dollar supplemental spending bill that contains new benefits for US troops deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But the new money notwithstanding, Army Deputy Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Franklin Hagenbeck told a House subcommittee that yearly recruitment goals for the Army reserve and the National Guard were “at risk.”

“In the manning area, we need Congress to change the maximum enlistment time from six years to eight years in order to help stabilize the force for longer periods of time,” Hagenbeck went on to say.

The appeal coincided with the release of a new congressional report that showed that the intensifying anti-American insurgency in Iraq and continued violence in Afghanistan were followed by a distinct drop in the number of volunteers willing to serve in the branches of the military that see the most combat.

The Army reserve and Army National Guard respectively met only 87 percent and 80 percent of their overall recruiting goals in the first quarter of fiscal 2005, according to the study by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress.

The Air Force Reserve attained 91 percent of its target, the Air National Guard 71 percent and the Navy Reserve 77 percent.

The shortfalls could potentially have a noticeable effect on units operating in Iraq, Afghanistan and surrounding areas because, according to defense officials, reservists and guardsmen make up about 46 percent of the total force deployed there.

Recruitment problems are beginning to dog even active duty units that have not experienced them in a long time.

The Marine Corps, whose reputation for efficiency and toughness has always helped it attract ambitious young men and women, missed its goal by 84 recruits in January and another 192 in February for the first time in 10 years, the GAO report said.

“There is no disputing the fact that the force is facing challenges,” acknowledged Deputy Undersecretary of Defense Charles Abell.

The obvious cooling off in Americans’ interest in military service is observed despite multiplying benefits and financial enticements offered by the Pentagon to those signing up for service.

The supplemental measure passed by the House, for example, increases the maximum service member group life insurance benefits from 250,000 dollars to 400,000 dollars.

The onetime death gratuity for combat fatalities received by family members is going up from 12,000 to 100,000 dollars.

At 150,000 dollars a pop, reenlistment bonuses paid to experienced Special Forces members are beginning to resemble Christmas paychecks on Wall Street, while one-time cash incentives for brand new recruits went up from 8,000 dollars to 10,000 dollars — and to 20,000, if they agree to take one of the military jobs deemed hard to fill.

College scholarships, the principle reason why many young people join the military, have been boosted by the Army from 50,000 dollars to 70,000.

Still, Army reserve commander Lieutenant General James Helmly warned in January that with lengthy and grueling deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the reserve is rapidly turning into “a broken force” and may not be able to meet its operational requirements in the future.