Veterans for Common Sense

Sons killed in Iraq; mothers turn political

Tracy and Vacaville women do TV ads to help defeat Bush

WASHINGTON – Nadia McCaffrey lost a son and gained a cause, a woefully uneven trade that nonetheless thrust the Tracy resident into the 2004 presidential campaign.

Her only son, Patrick, was a soldier, killed in Iraq. Her new cause is defeating President Bush. Her allies are other bereaved relatives who launched a nationwide ad campaign this week challenging the Republican president.

“The day my son died, my life totally changed – totally changed,” McCaffrey said at a National Press Club news conference Wednesday. “That day, I had to do something about what is going on in the world today.”

McCaffrey has joined Vacaville resident Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Casey, was killed in April, and others in the ad campaign organized by a new political action committee called RealVoices.org.

The Los Altos-based PAC claims to have raised $200,000 and wants to buy a combination of national cable television time and targeted time in battleground states. No TV time has been bought yet.

Organizers say the money has come from “progressive Democratic donors,” including some associated with the group MoveOn.org.

The new organization hopes to join a media battlefield jammed with signals from other independent groups. The Progress for America Voter Fund, for instance, began airing 30-second ads Friday, visually linking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry to Osama bin Laden.

In many cases, as with the controversial Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads that ran in August, the groups cultivate media attention to amplify individual ads that might run only a few times. That’s why RealVoices.org, with the help of a Washington-based public relations firm, organized the Wednesday news conference.

Each 30-second advertisement by RealVoices.org features a family member, starkly filmed in black and white, speaking with unvarnished pain and anger about the family’s loss. The ads don’t explicitly call for Bush’s defeat or Kerry’s election, but there is no mistaking the sentiment.

“We have been so betrayed by this president,” Cindy Sheehan said Wednesday. “He has lied to us. He has betrayed my family. He betrayed my son.”

Sheehan is 47. She still can laugh, but she looks tired. She was given a script to read for her ad when the camera crew showed up at her home. She set it aside. Instead, tearful then as she was Wednesday, she spoke to the camera, describing her son’s last mission.

“And the sergeant said, ‘Sheehan, you don’t have to go,’ because my son was a mechanic,” his mother says in the ad. “And Casey said, ‘Where my chief goes, I go.’ “

Army Spc. Casey Sheehan died in a Baghdad slum on April 4. The 24-year-old former Eagle Scout had been in Iraq about two weeks, serving with the 5th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division.

Army Sgt. Patrick Ryan McCaffrey died June 22. He was shot in the chest multiple times, ambushed while patrolling in the city of Balad, 85 miles north of Baghdad.

Both mothers hooked up this year with Deane Little, a politically active molecular biologist. He formed a liberal group called Speak Up America in the 1990s, running ads attacking Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, and he formed RealVoices.org in July.

Both mothers believe their sons died needlessly, in an unnecessary war.

“All of the things that were promised before going to Iraq – it was a lie,” Nadia McCaffrey said. “A complete lie.”

Nadia McCaffrey is 59, a native of France and a naturalized U.S. citizen. The former Sunnyvale resident has lived in Tracy since her son’s death, helping care for her daughter-in-law and 2-year-old granddaughter. It’s what she promised her son she would do when he shipped out for Iraq in January.

Patrick McCaffrey was 34 years old when he died, a decade or so older than most of the other 1,054 U.S. troops killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion. He had enlisted in the National Guard in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the East Coast. He did not, his mother says, envision the Iraq war as a way to fight the terrorists who attacked his own country.

“Can somebody tell me,” she said Wednesday, “why my son had to die?”

The Bee’s Michael Doyle can be reached at (202) 383-0006 or mdoyle@mcclatchydc.com

Arlington West shows tragedy of Iraq war

SANTA MONICA, Calif. — Every Sunday morning at 8, a squad of volunteers fans out across a section of beach next to the famous Santa Monica Pier.

In the shadow of the Ferris wheel and the trinket stands, they carefully push more than 1,000 white crosses into the sand, methodically placing them in straight rows, using a string grid system as their guide.

After the crosses are planted, they set out a flag-draped coffin with an empty pair of combat boots in front and a helmet atop. The numbers on a sign are updated: As I write this, the death toll is 1,054, the number of wounded up to 7,384. Other big signs are put up, with photos and descriptions of young people who have made the ultimate sacrifice.

As the Pacific Ocean’s waves roll ashore in the background and the sun rises higher in the morning sky, tourists begin to wander onto the scene. Puzzled at first, they read the signs, then realize the meaning of “Arlington West”: Here, quietly spread before them, is a memorial to the American soldiers who have died in the Iraq war.

A hush surrounds the site as the tourists look over the photos or stare out at the crosses. A few tears flow. Some visitors place flowers by a cross and attach a note, designating that wooden stake to a particular soldier for the day.

The Los Angeles chapter of Veterans for Peace creates the Santa Monica version of Arlington West each Sunday. The original Arlington West first appeared on the beach at Santa Barbara last November, as a Veterans Day commemoration by that city’s Veterans for Peace chapter. Its effect was so powerful, however, that the veterans realized they had to keep it going and to spread the message.

“We want to show the actual human element of the war,” said Ed Ellis, of the Los Angeles Veterans for Peace chapter. “We want to reveal who’s been killed and wounded.”

He said many chapter members are Vietnam vets, who regrouped after the first Gulf War to speak out against war. But they are careful not to discuss politics each Sunday on the Santa Monica beach. “This display is for the soldiers, for the families,” Ellis said. “After Vietnam, we had to wait 20 years to get the Wall. This display allows people to express their grief now.”

Thousands come by each week. Ellis said there have been some powerful moments at Arlington West. One day a Marine came by. He’d been home from Iraq only a few months. He looked over the photos and descriptions of the soldiers who have died. He was the only one in his unit to survive an attack – 20 of his buddies were killed.

“He was on his hands and knees weeping,” Ellis said. “I went over and covered him. Some of the volunteers made a laminated display for his unit and we bring it out now every week.”

This week, the veteranswill add a new component to Arlington West: blue crosses in the front row representing the death toll from the past week. “People see on the news a soldier killed here or there and they don’t realize the toll in one week can be dozens of soldiers,” Ellis said.

The weekly undertaking requires much effort. Ellis said they have been blessed with many volunteers who aren’t part of Veterans for Peace. A group of employees from a Home Depot store, who lost a fellow worker in the war, come down to help in honor of their friend. Other volunteers just arrive off the beach.

/>36='””‘ />Arlington West will continue to grace the sands of Santa Monica until the Iraq war ends. Each week the number of crosses representing American soldiers grows on this couple of acres of beachfront.

But here’s another point to remember: It would take miles of beach to memorialize all of the Iraqis killed in this war.

Judy Ettenhofer writes editorials for The Capital Times. E-mail: jettenhofer@madison.com. To learn more about Arlington West and other peace efforts, visit www.veteransforpeace.org

Purple Heart Recipient Receives Homecoming

Lance Corporal Vigil Suffered Shrapnel Wounds

SAN JOSE, Calif. — A San Jose Marine has returned from Iraq and his family threw him a big welcome home party Sunday.

Lance Corporal Leonard Vigil, a Purple Heart recipient, said he’s glad to be home and feels fortunate to have made back it with just shrapnel wounds, considering some of his friends did not make it back alive.
Vigil said while he thinks the United States will finish the job in in Iraq, troops are still constantly under attack by insurgents.

“It’s real hard to explain unless you’re actually there, because this thing happens on a day-to-day basis,” Vigil said. “People don’t realize it — they hear it on the news, but when it actually happens (to you), it’s huge.”
Vigil said the Marine Corps is doing an excellent job helping Marines deal with post traumatic stress.

Soldier’s dad: Bush blunder cost son his life

Sixteen months have passed since Kirk Straseskie of Beaver Dam, a 23-year-old U.S. Marine infantry sergeant, became the first Wisconsin fatality in the Iraq war.

That story, you may recall, received widespread play – partly because it brought the war into Wisconsin living rooms, and partly because of the heroic nature of his death. A former star athlete at Beaver Dam High School, Straseskie drowned after jumping into a canal while attempting to rescue a downed helicopter crew.

Since then, 20 other Wisconsin soldiers have died in Iraq, the most recent being 21-year-old Marine Cpl. Adrian Soltau of Milwaukee, who was killed in an explosion Sept. 13. And while all those deaths were duly noted in the media, one gets the sense that many Americans have grown indifferent to what’s happening in that chaotic region. Either that, or they don’t want to face the unsettling possibility that, 30 years after Vietnam, we’re once again trapped in a no-win situation.

John Straseskie, the father of Kirk Straseskie, senses it, too.

“I don’t think Bush has a clue what he’s doing over there,” the 52-year-old retired Beaver Dam resident said in a phone interview this week.

And Straseskie suspects things will just continue to deteriorate because, he maintains, the president and his advisers can’t seem to comprehend one simple fact.

“Anytime you have guerrilla-type warfare going on, you kill a lot of innocent people – and that just feeds the guerillas,” he says. “And there’s gonna come a time when we’re running with our tails tucked between our legs just to get out of there.”

It should be noted that this isn’t the first time Straseskie has voiced his opposition to the war. Though he originally supported the idea – like the vast majority of Americans, he says, “I believed this stuff about weapons of mass destruction and all the other horse bleep” – Straseskie publicly criticized Bush shortly after learning of his son’s death in May 2003. (Another of his sons, Ryan, also was deployed in the Persian Gulf with the Wisconsin National Guard, but returned home early this summer.)

“He put our troops over there to finish what his dad didn’t do,” Straseskie said at the time.

Sixteen months later, those feelings appear to have intensified.

He’s angry, Straseskie says, “because more and more innocent soldiers are dying in a war that we had no business starting in the first place.” And he’s disillusioned, he says, because many Americans apparently agree with Bush’s contention that the war was worth fighting because we captured Saddam Hussein – who, according to the president, was a major terrorist threat.

“But how many Iraqis were involved in Sept. 11? None that I’m aware of,” Straseskie counters. And yet, he says, “people still buy this stuff.”

Having said all that, Straseskie acknowledges there’s still a chance the United States “could turn this around” and says people shouldn’t be surprised if the draft is revived and the war is expanded early next year – particularly if Bush is re-elected.

But in his own view, there’s only one sensible option at this point.

“I think we should get out and let the Iraqis fight their own battles,” he says.

Besides, “I think if you look at the region as a whole, they don’t want democracy over there. Not their current leaders anyway. Because if they get democracy, they’ll lose their power.”

Asked what he’d ask Bush if he – not Jim Lehrer – were moderating Thursday night’s televised debate, Straseskie says, “I’d ask him, ‘Don’t you think you’re rather vain and full of bluster when you say that – with all the information we have now – we were justified in going into Iraq? Without enough allied support to even try to get the job done?’ “

But Straseskie says he knows Bush wouldn’t answer truthfully – one, because he’s not about to admit he made such a catastrophic blunder; and two, because to admit as much could very well cost him the election.

And, frankly, that’s been the toughest thing to accept over the last 16 months, Straseskie says. The likelihood that his son – and 1,052 other Americans – gave his life in a war that in the long run “probably isn’t going to solve a thing.”

Yes, the initial shock of Kirk’s death has worn off, Straseskie says.

“But you never really get over it. Especially at holidays and birthdays. You look around and realize your son’s not there.

“It’s like an open sore.”

DeGette urges Army recruiting inquiry

Soldiers cite threat of coercion: Re-enlist or go back to Iraq

Rep. Diana DeGette called upon Congress Monday to investigate complaints by Fort Carson soldiers that they are being threatened with deployment to Iraq if they do not re-enlist.

“I am hearing from enlisted personnel who are telling me they’re being coerced into re-enlisting. They’re telling me that if they don’t re-enlist they’re going to be sent back to Iraq,” DeGette said, standing at the Colorado Veterans Memorial in front of the state Capitol Monday.

“This is an outrage. Soldiers who served honorably, fought in Iraq and are near the end of their service should not be threatened with impressment,” she said.

The Denver Democrat sent a letter Monday to House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, a California Republican, asking him to examine the soldiers’ statements and Army practices.

Meanwhile, new accusations of coercion came from two more soldiers from Fort Carson’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team. The soldiers told the Rocky Mountain News that Army recruiters told them to re-enlist for three years with the 3rd Brigade or they would be sent to other units most likely bound for Iraq.

Their accounts agreed with those of two soldiers who told the News two weeks ago that much of the 3rd Brigade was issued the same ultimatum in a series of meetings earlier this month.

A Fort Carson spokesman has said that 3rd Brigade recruitment officers denied threatening the soldiers with Iraq duty.

“We were offered about $10,000 (as a bonus) to re-enlist, but a lot of us said no, we didn’t want to,” said Wes Swanson, a specialist who was wounded during his first tour in Iraq.

“So they said if you don’t re-enlist, we’re going to PCS (transfer) you to another unit that’s going to Iraq, and you’re going to end up going to Iraq for another year whether you re-enlist or not,” he said.

Another soldier, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said he has less than a year left on active duty, but was told he’d be sent back to Iraq if he refused to re-enlist.

“I definitely would be involuntarily extended if they put me into a unit that was going back to Iraq,” he said.

“Why not just let me finish what I signed up for? It’s a shame a policy like this exists. We’re supposed to be a volunteer Army,” he said.

Army human resources officials responded to the soldiers’ charges last week, saying that it is unlikely that those with less than 12 months of their obligation remaining would be sent to Iraq.

But the soldiers say that contradicts what the recruiters continue to tell them.

Extending a soldier’s active duty is within Army authority. The enlistment contract carries an eight-year obligation, even if a soldier signs for only three or four years of active duty.

But the Army has rarely forced soldiers to stay beyond their active duty enlistment contracts, said one Vietnam-era veteran who accompanied DeGette Monday.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ron Cole, a Navy pilot during the Vietnam war.

DeGette believes the Army is facing troop shortages and resorting to severe measures to retain soldiers.

“They’re having problems meeting recruitment goals and they’re putting this hammer over their heads, which is just wrong,” said DeGette.

On Monday, The New York Times reported that the National Guard recruitment is expected to fall short of its annual recruiting quota for the first time since 1994, almost 10 percent below its goal of 56,000 recruits.

Swanson said that the active duty Army is “incredibly short of soldiers.”

“The Army Times keeps saying there’s not enough soldiers for this, there’s not enough soldiers for that, and there’s a lot of people who want to get out. I mean we’re in the middle of a war, for God’s sake,” he said.

DeGette said she has heard anecdotally from Congress members that pressure is being exerted at other military posts.

“The question remains: How widespread is this? How deep does it go into the Pentagon? How far does it go up to the Oval Office?

“We need to look into this and make sure we cherish and respect our fighting men and women,” DeGette said.

Young soldiers conflicted about Bush’s leadership

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C. – On two of the nation’s key military bases, where young American troops get ready for war and recover from it, young Americans in uniform have mixed feelings about President Bush’s wartime leadership.

Much like their civilian peers, many of the mature teenagers and budding twentysomethings who are fighting the war in Iraq question Bush’s international savvy but admire his steadfast, decisive streak.

Whatever their doubts about their commander-in-chief, however, young soldiers don’t think much of his Democratic opponent. They’re skeptical, and often sharply derisive, about Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, whom they repeatedly call weak-kneed and too easily swayed.

“If you’re running for president, I know you’re going to lie,” said Marine Lance Cpl. Shane Samuels, 19, of New York, who’s stationed at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, N.C. “But, damn – this guy (Kerry) has been caught lying so many times.”

Samuels, who’s anticipating deployment to the Middle East next summer and has watched friends leave for yearlong tours, said “Bush jumped the gun” in Iraq.

“We elected an idiot president. … He’s like Mike Tyson,” said Samuels.

Despite his misgivings about the president’s intellect, he said Bush has proven himself to be more unflappable than Kerry, and he’s supporting Bush’s re-election bid. “Don’t get me wrong … he’s a good president,” Samuels said.

In two days of interviews at Camp Lejeune and Fort Bragg, an Army installation in Fayetteville, young troops said the president enjoys broad support from those in uniform. It’s a backing strengthened in no small part by Bush’s support for pay increases, they said.

Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan Harmon, 20, from West Virginia, returned this month to Camp Lejeune after seven months in Iraq. Although he hasn’t followed politics closely, Harmon said he’s supporting Bush because of the president’s steady, resolute tenor.

Army Sgt. Eric Hernandez, 25, of Jersey City, N.J., said Bush’s support at Fort Bragg is evident in the abundance of Bush-Cheney bumper stickers. “I haven’t seen a John Kerry sign anywhere,” Hernandez said.

Hernandez said he’ll pick a candidate – but only after he starts studying both men’s politics.

Worries over Bush’s motives for going to war have weakened some troops’ support. Others wish America would withdraw from Iraq.

Army Spc. William Hebb, a 23-year-old Ohioan who spent six months in Kuwait last year, said he’s voting for Bush because it’s unwise to switch leadership during a war. But “I’m not going to say if I like the way he’s handled” the war, Hebb added.

A handful were more blunt.

“I’d probably vote for a monkey if he was running against Bush,” said Spc. Chris Schrader, 20, another Ohioan based at Fort Bragg. The Iraq war, he said, was based on “the wrong reasons at the wrong time.”

Likewise, said Keith Johnson, 20, “I believe all Bush really wanted is power. … Now it’s just about how we can get more power.”

Johnson, a Marine from Elizabeth, N.J., expects to be deployed to the Middle East in January. He said Saddam Hussein’s ouster was the Iraq war’s key objective. Because that mission’s been fulfilled, he said, Americans should pull out and leave Iraqis to rebuild their land on their own. Johnson is leaning toward voting for Kerry.

But Army cadet Samantha Hamm said she has her doubts about the Democrat because of his explanations of his position on Iraq.

“I don’t particularly care for Kerry,” said Hamm, who’s enrolled in Penn State University’s ROTC program. “I don’t think he makes up his mind very well.”

Others troops at the North Carolina bases conceded, somewhat sheepishly, that they haven’t really been watching the race for the White House and know strikingly little about Kerry. With workdays much longer than eight hours, they haven’t had the time, they said, adding that they’ll decide before Nov. 2.

Some soldiers and Marines worry that Kerry, if elected, would withdraw troops from Iraq. That would mean that those who’ve been killed there died for nothing, they said.

“Then all this is in vain,” said 20-year-old Marine Pfc. Scott Courtright, who’ll go to Iraq in about a year.

Which isn’t to say that leaving for tours of unknown duration is easy, the young warriors said.

“You get reluctant when it comes down to it – leaving my girlfriend, my family, going over there,” said Marine Pfc. Nicholas Lutz, 19, of Menomonie, Wis. An undecided voter, he’s scheduled to head to Iraq in about a year.

Kerry’s combat experience in Vietnam, Lutz said, gives the Democrat firsthand insight that Bush lacks – and, Lutz hopes, a reluctance to send more troops to Iraq.

“I wish we’d get the hell out,” said Lutz, who hails from a firmly Republican family. “The terrorist groups over there are so scattered, we don’t know who we’re fighting.”

Lutz was the exception, though, in discussions about Kerry’s status as a combat veteran. Young troops mostly said they’re unconcerned with Bush’s and Kerry’s military records during the Vietnam War era. They’re looking for a leader who’s unflappable – a trait that Bush has demonstrated, they said.

“Just because a person didn’t go to war doesn’t mean they wouldn’t be a good leader,” said Courtright, whose home is in Schenectady, N.Y. “There’s been many great presidents who’ve never been to war.”

“Bush scammed out of Vietnam, but he’s shown he can be a military leader,” said Marine Lance Cpl. George Ryan Mehaffey, 19, of Richmond, Va.

Though he’s an undecided voter, Mehaffey said he likes Bush and fully supports the war.

As for Kerry, Mehaffey said, “It’s not so much that I don’t think he would” complete the war effort. “I don’t know if he would.”