Veterans for Common Sense

January 3, 2009 – The destruction of the Army’s reputation will be one of the most lasting of Tony Blair’s legacies.

As we enter the year when the last British troops leave Iraq, further evidence is emerging of just what an abject failure Britain’s military intervention in Iraq has been. Despite the bravery of many individual soldiers, the only real success of the Government has been the extent to which it has managed to hide from view how, thanks to its catastrophic misjudgements, this has been the one of the most humiliating chapters in the history of the British Army.

In recent weeks, drawing on a wealth of published and unpublished sources, my colleague Dr Richard North has been compiling the first comprehensive account of this story, for a book to be published this summer as our troops beat their final inglorious retreat. Like any tragedy, it is a story which has unfolded through five main acts or stages,

Stage one began in April 2003 when, after 40,000 British troops took part in the US-led invasion, Britain was given the responsibility of restoring order in the predominantly Shia south-east of the country centred on Basra. We began with hubris, imagining we would be welcomed by the local population as liberators and that, such was our experience in Northern Ireland, establishing order would be no problem, Almost immediately, however, our troops came under sporadic attacks by armed militias, notably the “Mahdi Army’’ run by a militant cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr. Having dismantled the structures of authority and reduced our troop numbers to 11,000, we had nothing like enough men to fulfil our legal duty under the Geneva Convention to maintain public order and safety.

Stage two began with the fateful decision in late 2003, endorsed by General Mike Jackson as head of the Army, to deploy 178 Snatch Land Rovers as our chief patrol vehicle. The intention, as part of the attempt to ”win hearts and minds’’, was to avoid using armoured Warriors in favour of vehicles looking less aggressive. In 2004 Muqtada’s Mahdi Army launched a conventional uprising in several cities, including Baghdad, provoking a massive US response which led to its defeat. In Basra and the south, therefore, the Mahdi Army resorted to guerrilla tactics, notably roadside bombs which caused havoc with the hopelessly unprotected Land Rovers. By summer 2005, as yet more soldiers died, the British were forced to suspend Snatch patrols. As the cities of Basra and Al-Amarah to the north came under militia control, this was where the British lost the confidence of an increasingly terrorised population,

Stage three in 2006 centred on the extraordinary, largely unreported drama surrounding Al-Amarah and the nearby base at Abu Naji, our largest after Basra. Unable to keep control over the city, the British hunkered down in Abu Naji, subjected to constant mortaring which they had neither the men nor the equipment to deal with. In August we retreated, supposedly handing over to the Iraqi army, only for the base to be triumphantly looted by the Mahdi Army, which by the end of October had turned Al-Amarah into a vast bomb-making factory, supplying insurgents all over Iraq.

Stage four in 2007 saw the Americans launch their spectacularly successful ”surge’’ to the north, with 20,000 additional men, equipped with the properly mine-protected vehicles the British so tragically lacked. Now impotently confined to just four bases in Basra, under constant attack, the British could do no more than protect the convoys needed to supply them. Forced to abandon one base after another, in September they retreated to Basra airport. In effect, for the British the war was over.

The fifth and final stage came in March 2008, when the Iraqi government and the US Army, frustrated by the failure of the British to carry out their responsibilities, and determined to end the flow of weaponry out of Al-Amarah, launched the operation known as ”the Charge of the Knights’’.

Entering Basra in overwhelming force, they routed the Mahdi Army, restoring the city to peaceful normality. Last June, Iraqi and US forces similarly liberated Al-Amarah. It was made clear to the British that their presence in Iraq was no longer relevant.

The British Army had entered Iraq in 2003 with a reputation as ”the most professional in the world’’. Six years later it will leave, having failed to fulfil any of its allotted tasks and having earned the contempt of the Iraqis and the Americans after one of our most humiliating defeats in history.

The fault for this lies almost entirely with Tony Blair, abetted by one or two very senior military commanders, who failed at any point after the invasion to provide the men and equipment needed to carry out the task to which Blair had vaingloriously agreed. The price paid has been measured partly in the deaths and injuries of our men – but above all it has been in that destruction of the Army’s reputation which will be one of the most painful and lasting legacies of the Blair era.

A Focus on Violence by Returning G.I.’s

January 2, 2009, Fort Carson, Colorado — For the past several years, as this Army installation in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains became a busy way station for soldiers cycling in and out of Iraq, the number of servicemen implicated in violent crimes has raised alarm.

Nine current or former members of Fort Carson’s Fourth Brigade Combat Team have killed someone or were charged with killings in the last three years after returning from Iraq. Five of the slayings took place last year alone. In addition, charges of domestic violence, rape and sexual assault have risen sharply.

Prodded by Senator Ken Salazar, Democrat of Colorado, the base commander began an investigation of the soldiers accused of homicide. An Army task force is reviewing their recruitment, medical and service records, as well as their personal histories, to determine if the military could have done something to prevent the violence. The inquiry was recently expanded to include other serious violent crimes.

Now the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren, says he is considering conducting an Army-wide review of all soldiers “involved in violent crimes since returning” from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a letter sent to Mr. Salazar in December. Mr. Geren wrote that the Fort Carson task force had yet to find a specific factor underlying the killings, but that the inquiry was continuing.

Focusing attention on soldiers charged with killings is a shift for the military, which since the start of the war in Iraq has largely deflected any suggestion that combat could be a factor in violent behavior among some returning service members.

Maj. Gen. Mark Graham, the Fort Carson commander, said, “If they had a good manner of performance before they deployed, then they get back and they get into trouble, instead of saying we will discipline you for trouble, the leadership has to say, Why did that occur, what happened, what is causing this difference in behavior?”

General Graham, whose oldest son, Jeff, was killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq a year after another son, Kevin, committed suicide, has made mental health a focus since taking command of Fort Carson in 2007. “I feel like I have to speak out for the Kevins of the world,” he said.

The inquiry, the general added, is “looking for a trend, something that happened through their life cycle that might have contributed to this, something we could have seen coming.”

Last January, The New York Times published articles examining the cases of veterans of the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan charged with homicide after their return. At the time, it counted at least 121 such cases. In many of them, combat trauma and the stress of deployment appeared to have set the stage for the crimes.

At Fort Carson, at least four of the accused killers from the Fourth Brigade Combat Team, Fourth Infantry Division were grappling with post-traumatic stress disorder and several had been injured in battle.

One was John Needham, a 25-year-old private from a military family in California, whose downward spiral began when he sustained shrapnel wounds in Iraq and tried to commit suicide. This September, after being treated for stress disorder and receiving a medical discharge from the Army, Mr. Needham was charged with beating his girlfriend to death.

“Where is this aggression coming from?” asked Vivian H. Gembara, a former captain and Army prosecutor at Fort Carson until 2004, who wrote a book about the war crimes she prosecuted in Iraq. “Was it something in Iraq? Were they in a lot of heavy combat? If so, the command needs to pay more attention to that. You can’t just point all of them out as bad apples.”

The Fourth Combat Brigade, previously called the Second Combat Brigade, fought in Iraq’s fiercest cities at some of the toughest moments. Falluja and Ramadi, after insurgents dug into the rubble. Baghdad and its Sadr City district, as body counts soared. By 2007, after two tours, the brigade, which numbers 3,500, had lost 113 soldiers, with hundreds more wounded. It is now preparing for a tour in Afghanistan this spring.

Most Fort Carson soldiers have been to Iraq at least once; others have deployed two, three or four times.

Kaye Baron, a therapist in Colorado Springs who treats Fort Carson soldiers and families, said, “It got to the point I stopped asking if they have deployed, and started asking how many times they have deployed.”

Ms. Baron added, “There are some guys who say, ‘Why do I have to get treatment for P.T.S.D.? I just have to go back.’ ”

While most soldiers returning from war adjust with minor difficulties, military leaders acknowledges that multiple deployments strain soldiers and families, and can increase the likelihood of problems like excessive drinking, marital strife and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Domestic violence among Fort Carson soldiers has become more prevalent since the Iraq war began in 2003. In 2006, Fort Carson soldiers were charged in 57 cases of domestic violence, according to figures released by the base. As of mid-December, the number had grown to 145.

Rape and sexual assault cases against soldiers have also increased, from 10 in 2006 to 38 as of mid-December, the highest tally since the war began. Both domestic violence and rape are crimes that are traditionally underreported.

Fort Carson officials say the increased numbers do not necessarily indicate more violence. Karen Connelly, a Fort Carson spokeswoman, said the base, whose population fluctuates from 11,000 to 14,500 soldiers, is doing a better job of holding soldiers accountable for crimes, encouraging victims to come forward and keeping statistics.

Even so, Col. B. Shannon Davis, the base’s deputy commander, said the task force was examining these trends. “We are looking at crime as a whole,” he said.

The killings allegedly involving the nine current or former Fourth Brigade soldiers have caused the most consternation. The first occurred in 2005, when Stephen Sherwood, a musician who joined the Army for health benefits, returned from Iraq and fatally shot his wife and then himself.

Last year, three battlefield friends were charged with murder after two soldiers were found shot dead within four months of each other. Two of the accused suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, and all three had been in disciplinary or criminal trouble in the military. One had a juvenile record and been injured in Iraq.

The latest killing was in October, when the police say Robert H. Marko, an infantryman, raped and killed Judilianna Lawrence, a developmentally disabled teenager he had met online. Specialist Marko believed that on his 21st birthday he would become the “Black Raptor” — half-man, half-dinosaur, a confidential Army document shows. The Army evaluated him three times for mental health problems but cleared him for combat each time.

Senator Salazar, President-elect Barack Obama’s choice to be secretary of the interior, called for the Fort Carson inquiry, saying the killings raised questions about what role, if any, combat stress played.

“It’s a hard issue, but it’s a realistic issue,” he said.

Since arriving at Fort Carson, General Graham has spoken openly about mental health, particularly post-traumatic stress disorder, calling it an act of courage, not frailty, to ask for help.

His 21-year-old son, a top R.O.T.C. cadet, hanged himself in 2003 after battling depression. He had stopped taking his antidepressants because he did not want to disclose his illness, fearing such an admission would harm his chances for a career as an Army doctor, General Graham said.

“He was embarrassed,” the general said.

He added: “I feel it every day. We didn’t give him all the care we should have. He got some care, but not enough. I’ll never be convinced I did enough for my son.”

At Fort Carson, in cases of dishonorable discharge, General Graham asks whether the soldier might be struggling with combat stress disorder.

He has sometimes opted instead to grant medical discharges, which entitle veterans to benefits. All Fort Carson soldiers who seek medical attention are now asked about their mental health and, if necessary, referred for treatment.

Still, some sergeants view stress disorder skeptically and actively discourage treatment, some therapists and soldiers say.

Billie Gray, 71, who until recently worked at a base clinic helping soldiers with emotional problems, said “that was the biggest problem at Fort Carson today: harassment” and “the very fact they are harassed made their mental status worse.”

Ms. Gray said she believed she was fired in October for being an outspoken advocate for mental health treatment. Base officials declined to comment, citing privacy reasons.

Colonel Davis, the deputy commander, acknowledged that sergeants had been reprimanded for discouraging treatment. “We have had to take corrective action,” he said, “but fewer and fewer times.”

John Wylie Needham, one of the accused killers whose case is now being examined by the task force, was “cracking up” in Iraq, he told his father in an e-mail message. Yet, he felt he had to fight to get help, his father said in an interview.

In October 2006, during his first week in Iraq, Private Needham, a California surfer, watched a good friend die from a sniper bullet. Months later, he was blasted in the back by shrapnel from a grenade. To cope with his growing anxiety, he stole Valium and drank liquor. Caught twice, he was punished with a reduction in rank, a fine and extra work, a confidential Army document shows. Eventually, he was prescribed medication, but he wrote to his father, Mike Needham, that it did not help.

Private Needham became angry at the way other soldiers reacted to the fighting, and he did not hide it. “They seemed to revel in how many people they had killed,” said a friend in his unit who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In September 2007, Private Needham tried to kill himself with a gun, the Army document states, but another soldier intervened. Mike Needham, a veteran, said that rather than treating his son, the Army disciplined him for discharging a weapon and confined him to barracks. The Army declined to comment.

“I’m stressed to the point of completely losing it,” Private Needham wrote to his father in October 2007. “The squad leader brushed me off and said suck it up.”

He added, “They keep me locked up in this room and if I need food or water I have to have 2 guards with me.”

The Army evacuated Private Needham to Walter Reed Army Medical Center to treat his back and his post-traumatic stress disorder. But a month later, he was back at Fort Carson.

“The first words out of the Mental Health Authority was, ‘we are severely understaffed,’ ” Mr. Needham said in an e-mail message to an officer at Walter Reed. “If you’re suicidal we can see you twice a week, otherwise once a week.”

Fort Carson assured Mike Needham that his son was receiving proper care. But during his son’s visit home during the Thanksgiving break, Mr. Needham found him smearing camouflage-colored makeup on his face and frantically sharpening a stick with a kitchen knife.

“He was a total mess,” Mr. Needham said.

He was treated at a California naval hospital until last July when he received a medical discharge from the Army. While Private Needham was in the early stages of getting help from a Veterans Administration clinic, he spent his days depressed and often drinking at his father’s condominium.

Then last summer, Private Needham met Jacqwelyn Villagomez, a bubbly 19-year-old aspiring model who saw him as a kindred spirit, said Jennifer Johnson, who had helped raise her. Her mother had died of AIDS when she was 6 and her father had left the family. Ms. Villagomez, “who saw the good in everyone,” had recently kicked a heroin habit, Ms. Johnson said.

“She thought she could save him,” Ms. Johnson said. But a month later, the police say, Private Needham beat Ms. Villagomez to death in his father’s condominium.

Mr. Needham said the Army handled his son’s case poorly, but Ms. Johnson finds it hard to muster sympathy for him.

“I’m sure what happened to him was awful,” she said. “I’m sure he saw some horrible things that altered him. But this is a 200-pound guy who beat up this 95-pound little girl. It’s disgusting.”

The U.S. Military is barred from enacting or supporting policies that advance, promote or endorse religion. But according to the amended Military Religious Freedom Foundation lawsuit that is exactly what the military has been doing.  Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a veterans advocacy group who said suicides among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached epidemic proportions, said his organization “strongly supports” MRFF’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense “because we believe in supporting religious freedom.  We call upon President-Elect Obama and Defense Secretary Gates to end the illegal practices cited in the lawsuit,” Sullivan said.  

January 3, 2008 – The U.S. Army’s suicide prevention manual advises military chaplains to promote “religiosity,” specifically Christianity, as a way to deter distraught soldiers from taking their own lives, according to an amended federal lawsuit filed last week against Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Department of Defense.

The 2008 Army Suicide Prevention Manual says “Chaplains… need to openly advocate behavioral health as a resource” to treat suicidal soldiers and instructs behavioral health providers “to openly advocate spirituality and religiosity as resiliency factors.”

“Spirituality looks outside of oneself for meaning and provides resiliency for failures in life experiences. Religiosity adds the dimension of a supportive community to help one deal with crises. Both embed themselves in a relationship with God, or a higher power, that provides an everlasting relationship. Bottom line, Soldiers should not base their reason for living in another human being!” says a slide included in the Army’s “Suicide Awareness for Soldiers 2008” PowerPoint presentation.

The inclusion of Christianity and spirituality a new addition to the Army’s 2008 suicide prevention manual.

According to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), the watchdog group that is a co-plaintiff in the federal lawsuit filed against Gates and the Defense Department, the PowerPoint presentation “is not only an unconstitutional promotion of Christianity for the soldiers who are mandated to attend it, but for the behavioral health providers and non-Christian chaplains who must present it.”

The lawsuit alleges a “pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religion by the military.”

Another PowerPoint slide says, “Soldiers need to take care of each other and rid any thoughts of survival of the fittest. Almost all religions adhere to some form of Christianity’s Golden Rule, or the Categorical Imperative of Immanuel Kant.”

This PowerPoint slide includes an image of a group of silhouetted soldiers with one soldier up in the clouds looking at a large cross. In 2007, during a similar presentation, the same image was used but it did not include the image of the cross.

Slides two through four state: “Connectivity to the Divine is fundamental to developing resiliency that allows one to deal with disappointments,” “Emphasize the importance of spiritual health, connectivity with a faith community, and a relationship with God,” and, for a slide that follows a DVD of former football star Terry Bradshaw talking about his battle with depression, “Terry is very open about his faith in God and his relationship with his church. Spirituality is an invaluable ingredient in his battle with this disease.”

In one of the presentation’s last slides, the presenter is instructed to have the audience adopt a word rooted in Christian scripture as a “motto or mantra.” The talking point for that slide is: “Emphasize the phrase ‘that you persevere, that you stay alive.’ This is derived from the Greek word ‘Hupomeno’ which is used in Christian scriptures, particularly in the Pauline epistles. It is also used by James, the bishop of Jerusalem, as Jerusalem was in devastation and about to be destroyed. He wanted all Christians, despite the persecutions and violent times, to not lose hope, to keep on enduring. Encourage the audience to repeat this word and use it as a motto or mantra when in difficult times.”

Last year, in a stunning admission, top officials at the Veterans Health Administration confirmed that the agency’s own statistics show that an average of 126 veterans per week — 6,552 veterans per year — commit suicide, according to an internal email distributed to several VA officials.

Brig. Gen. Michael J. Kussman, the undersecretary for health at the VA, sent the e-mail, dated Dec. 15, 2007. Kussman had inquired about the accuracy of a news report published that month claiming the suicide rate among veterans was 18 per day.

“McClatchy [Newspapers] alleges that 18 veterans kill themselves everyday and this is confirmed by the VA’s own statistics,” Kussman wrote. “Is that true? Sounds awful but if one is considering 24 million veterans.”

In an e-mail response to Kussman, Ira Katz, the head of mental health at the VA, confirmed the statistics and added “VA’s own data demonstrate 4-5 suicides per day among those who receive care from us.”

Paul Sullivan, the executive director of Veterans for Common Sense, a veterans advocacy group who said suicides among veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has reached epidemic proportions, said his organization “strongly supports” MRFF’s lawsuit against the Department of Defense “because we believe in supporting religious freedom.”
 
“We call upon President-Elect Obama and Defense Secretary Gates to end the illegal practices cited in the lawsuit,” Sullivan said. 

But that’s proving to be difficult.

Mikey Weinstein, the founder and president of MRFF, said Obama’s transition team is “unapproachable.”

“Let me make this damn, crystal clear to the currently unapproachable and disinterested Obama transition team, the equally supine United States Congress, all Americans and the rest of the world: MRFF’s just amended, landmark Federal lawsuit is NOT trying to say, ‘Houston we have a problem.’ It’s NOT a ‘problem’. It’s NOT an ‘issue’. It’s NOT a ‘concern’. What MRFF’s lawsuit IS primal screaming to the aforementioned parties IS a blaring siren of immediate disaster wrought by nothing short of a wretched, out-of-control, national security threat. 

“Why? Because the military command and control of our nation’s nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional and laser-guided weapons has been unconstitutionally compromised by a tsunami of unbridled fundamentalist Christian exceptionalism, triumphalism and proselytizing. All of the forgoing is massively exacerbated by the fact that we’re currently engaged in two wars with the Islamic fundamentalist mirror versions of these very same American forces of religious supremacy infamy.”

Spokespeople for Obama’s transition team did not return numerous phone calls or e-mails for comment.

MRFF’s complaint was originally filed last September and accused the Army of subjecting soldiers to fundamentalist Christian prayer ceremonies against their will during mandatory military events. Army Spc. Dustin Chalker is the other co-plaintiff in the amended lawsuit.

On at least three occasions beginning in December 2007, Chalker claimed he was directed to attend military events, one of which was a barbecue, where an Army battalion chaplain led a Christian prayer ceremony for military personnel. Chalker, who said he is an atheist, asked his superiors for permission to leave the prayer sessions and on each occasion his request to be excused was denied, according to the lawsuit.

Despite Chalker’s objections to being subjected to fundamentalist Christian prayer sessions, his Army superiors continuously forced him to attend other military events where the prayer ceremonies continued.

“Plaintiff Chalker is an atheist and as such does not voluntarily participate in religious services, ceremonies or rituals that are conducted either on and around Fort Riley other military installations to which he is assigned. Plaintiff Chalker has sought relief from mandatory attendance at the subject functions/formations through his chain of command and the equal opportunity process. Neither has yielded satisfactory results.”

“The requirement for plaintiff Dustin Chalker to attend military functions and formations where sectarian Christian prayers are delivered is evidence of a pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense and the United States Army,” the lawsuit says. Chalker is stationed at Fort Riley, Kansas.

Previously, the Defense Department tried to have a similar lawsuit MRFF filed dismissed, claiming that the soldier who alleged he was being forced to embrace fundamentalist Christianity failed to resolve his complaints through the proper military channels.

The amended lawsuit, however, shows that Chalker and others in the military have taken the appropriate steps to file complaints but their concerns were not addressed.

Weinstein, said his group has learned of additional cases since the lawsuit was filed last September and decided to amend its complaint in order to demonstrate “the noxiously unconstitutional pattern and practice of fundamentalist Christian oppression in our U.S. armed forces.”

“The list of amended items is at once quite literally shameful and astonishing,” Weinstein said. “It includes military-sanctioned missionary proselytizing of Iraqi and Afghan citizens, an official [United States Air Force] sponsored evangelical motocross team ministry, the prominent featuring of a Christian/white supremacist in the USAF’s flagship quarterly professional magazine and the unbridled Christian supremacy espoused in a U.S. Army suicide prevention program, to name just a few. Our amended complaint is specifically designed to further stab at the throbbing unconstitutional heart of darkness that comprises the systemic fundamentalist Christianity so pervasive and pernicious in today’s American armed forces.”

The U.S. Military is barred from enacting or supporting policies that advance, promote or endorse religion. But according to Weinstein’s amended lawsuit that is exactly what the military has been doing.

For example, the U.S. Air Force was an official sponsor of the Evangelical Christian Motocross Ministry known as “Team Faith,” who says their mission is “to infiltrate professional racing circuits and other Action Sports events all over the US and Canada” and “lead extreme sports athletes to Christ and disciple them so that they will in-turn, lead others involved in or interested in the sport to Christ.”

“Team Faith’s” uniforms contained a logo that was a combination of the U.S. Air Force and Team Faith logos, and the U.S. Air Force logos was also visible on team members motorcycles and on ramps.

In 2006, the Air Force adopted new religion guidelines, in the aftermath of a proselytizing scandal at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, that said the Air Force will “remain officially neutral regarding religious beliefs, neither officially endorsing nor disapproving any faith belief or absence of belief.” Those guidelines specifically state that prayer cannot “usually be a part of routine official business.”

Recently, the Freedom From Religion Foundation, a Madison, Wisconsin-based watchdog group, wrote to Gates on behalf of a noncommissioned officer who contacted the organization late last year claiming two Army chaplains and one Air Force chaplain led mandatory Christian prayer sessions and Bible study as part of daily shift change briefings in the 3rd Expeditionary Sustainment Command (ESC), Iraq. The 3rd ESC works 12-hour shifts, meaning mandatory Christian worship and ritual, occurred at least twice a day.

The non-commissioned officer, who identified himself as an atheist, objected to the denominational prayers. He was told by one of the chaplains, Lt. Col. Chaplain Harrison, that he could be “excused” from the Christian prayer sessions and the chaplain advised the non-commissioned officer that his goal was to turn soldiers into “his congregation.”

The chaplain’s remark led the non-commissioned officer to e-mail to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, who then sent a four-page legal brief to Gates and demanded an investigation.

Prayer sessions in the military “must have a secular purpose; the primary effect of the prayer must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion; and finally, the prayer must not foster an excessive government entanglement with religion,” according to a 2003 U.S 4th Circuit Court of Appeals decision that struck down meal-time prayer at the Virginia Military Institute as a violation of the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.  

Gates never responded to the group’s Nov. 5, 2007, letter, but the noncommissioned officer informed the organization that the mandatory prayer sessions were replaced with “This day in history” and “a moment of reflective silence.”

MRFF’s lawsuit also includes examples of the Pentagon’s involvement in the production of two cable programs, one of which featured two so-called “extreme” missionaries embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

The popular reality series, “Travel the Road,” aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network, featuring Will Decker and Tim Scott, the two so-called “extreme” missionaries who travel the globe to “preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and encourage the church to be active in the Great Commission.”

The other cable program in which the Pentagon appears to have played a role in producing was “God’s Soldier.” The show aired in September on the Military Channel and was filmed at Forward Operating Base McHenry in Hawijah, Iraq. It featured an Army chaplain openly promoting fundamentalist Christianity to active-duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

December 29, 2008, McAllen, Texas – Members of the Valley’s Veterans Alliance are hoping President Bush will grant one wish before he leaves the White House.

The local veterans sent Mr. Bush a letter requesting an executive order to build a veterans hospital here in the Rio Grande Valley.

They say the growing need for the VA hospital and growing support from elected officials will hopefully convince the Commander-In-Chief to make it a reality.
 
“It’s like our last minute call before he leaves office,” said Homer Gallegos, the commander for VFW Post 8788 and the co-chair of the Veterans Alliance. “He’s got the power to do that and since we have the support of the incoming president Obama. We feel like we have a chance maybe through that effort.”

Tony Cordova, the commander for the Purple Heart Chapter 5077, agreed.
 
“This is just something that we hope can take place before the end of the year before the sitting President goes out,” Cordova said. “But that’s not to say that we’re not going to continue our efforts, when the new President comes in.”

December 29, 2008 – The Defense Department violated the rights of a veteran who was seeking an entry-level, civilian auditing job when it decided to hire two nonveteran candidates instead, a federal court has ruled.

In a Dec. 24 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that an Office of Personnel Management authority that allowed Defense to bypass traditional competitive hiring procedures for entry-level positions was invalid because the regulation conflicted with statutory requirements.

Congress required that OPM give permission to DoD to pass over a veteran or other preferred candidate for a job, but in this case Defense made that decision on its own when it passed over veteran Stephen Gingery for a job at the Defense Contract Audit Agency.

Defense used a special authority to hire candidates through the Federal Career Intern Program, which under OPM’s regulation allowed the department to decide whether to give preference to the veteran. In exercising this hiring authority, the department denied Gingery, who has a 30 percent or greater disability, his preference rights, Judge Kimberly Moore wrote in the decision.

The court reversed a previous decision by the Merit Systems Protection Board to uphold the Defense hiring decision under the intern program and sent the case back to the board for further action.

Although Gingery had also questioned the legality of the intern program as a whole, saying it violated requirements that exceptions to competitive service be “necessary” for “conditions of good administration,” the court decided not to rule on this issue.

“Because we conclude that OPM’s pass-over regulation is invalid and that Mr. Gingery’s veterans’ preference rights were violated, we need not reach the broader questions of the FCIP’s validity,” Moore wrote.

The intern program allows agencies to shorten hiring times and target recruitment to particular applicants by allowing managers to fill jobs without public notice or competition. The program’s authorities allow the interns to be converted to permanent employees after a two-year probationary period. In contrast, traditional competitive hiring procedures, which would have favored Gingery, require agencies to post vacancies nationally and to hire from a list of highly qualified candidates.

The National Treasury Employees Union, which filed a brief in support of Gingery during the case, said it was pleased the court ruled in Gingery’s favor, but was disappointed the court took no action with regard to the intern program.

NTEU president Colleen Kelley has criticized the program on grounds that it enables federal hiring managers to skirt traditional competitive hiring methods.

One judge on the three-judge panel that heard the case said the court should have settled questions regarding the intern program. The validity of the intern program and how it was implemented was central to the case and could have larger implications for Gingery’s legal rights, Judge Pauline Newman said in a concurring opinion.

December 29, 2008, El Paso, Texas – A U.S. Army War College report warns an economic crisis in the United States could lead to massive civil unrest and the need to call on the military to restore order.

Retired Army Lt. Col. Nathan Freir wrote the report “Known Unknowns: Unconventional Strategic Shocks in Defense Strategy Development,” which the Army think tank in Carlisle, Pa., recently released.

“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities … to defend basic domestic order and human security,” the report said, in case of “unforeseen economic collapse,” “pervasive public health emergencies,” and “catastrophic natural and human disasters,” among other possible crises.

The report also suggests the new (Barack Obama) administration could face a “strategic shock” within the first eight months in office.

Fort Bliss spokeswoman Jean Offutt said the Army post is not involved in any recent talks about a potential military response to civil unrest.

The report become a hot Internet item after Phoenix police told the Phoenix Business Journal they’re prepared to deal with such an event, and the International Monetary Fund’s managing director, Dominique Strauss-Khan, said social unrest could spread to advanced countries if the global economic crisis worsens.

Javier Sambrano, spokes-man for the El Paso Police Department, said city police have trained for years so they can address any contingency, but not with the military.

“The police (department) trains on an ongoing basis as part of its Mobile Field Force Training,” Sambrano said. “As a result, the police will be able to respond to emergency situations, such as looting or a big civil unrest. The police (department) does not train with soldiers.”

Earlier this year, Pentagon officials said as many as 20,000 soldiers under the U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) will be trained within the next three years to work with civilian law enforcement in homeland security.

Joint Task Force-North, a joint command at Biggs Army Airfield, which conducts surveillance and intelligence along the border, comes under NORTHCOM. No one was available at JTF-North to comment on the Army War College’s report. NORTHCOM was created after the 9-11 attacks to coordinate homeland security efforts.

Soldiers under the former Joint Task Force-6 (now JTF-North) supported the Border Patrol in El Paso with its drug-interdiction operations.

In case civilian authorities request help or become overwhelmed, El Paso has several National Guard and military reserve units that can be called on. In 1992, National Guard and active Marine and Army units were deployed to help police control riots and looting in Los Angeles.

Charles Boehmer, political science professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, was skeptical about the Army War College report.

“The military was not called out during the Great Depression, and I don’t think our economic problems are as bad as they were then,” he said. “The military always has contingency plans. It’s a think tank’s job to come up with scenarios, but that doesn’t mean it represents an active interest on the part of the (Pentagon).”

Diana Washington Valdez may be reached at dvaldez@elpasotimes.com; 546-6140