GI Special: 11.25.03 Print it out (color best). Pass it on.

GI SPECIAL #142

CORNERED RAT PRETENDS TO GIVE A SHIT

Fort Carson, Colorado, November 24. (Larry Downing/Reuters)

Dying Soldier Tormented By Sadistic Asshole Officers;

Called Stupid Lazy Liar;

Accused Of “Faking It;”

November 24, 2003, By Lisa Falkenberg, Associated Press

KARNACK, Texas — By the time he shipped out for the war in Iraq in January, Special Forces Sgt. James Alford was a wreck of a soldier.

For five months, he had been doing odd things. He disappeared from Fort Campbell, Ky., for several days last year. He lost equipment and lied to superiors. In December, he was demoted from staff sergeant to sergeant.

In the Kuwaiti desert, he came apart. The hotshot Green Beret who a year earlier ran circles around his team members and earned a Bronze Star in Afghanistan was ordered to carry a notepad to remember orders. By March, he was being cited for dereliction of duty, larceny and lying to superiors. He couldn’t even keep up with his gas mask.

Finally, in April, his commanders had had enough. They ordered him to return to Fort Campbell to be court-martialed and kicked out of the Special Forces.

“Your conduct is inconsistent with the integrity and professionalism required by a Special Forces soldier,” Lt. Col. Christopher E. Conner of the 2nd Battalion, 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters in Kuwait, wrote April 10.

Confused and disgraced, the soldier moved back into his off-base home where he ate canned meat and anchovies, unaware of the day, the month or the year.

Sensing something was wrong, a neighbor called Alford’s parents. They drove 600 miles from East Texas to find a son who’d lost 30 pounds and could no longer drink from a glass, use a telephone, button his shirt or say Amber, the name of his soldier wife who was still stationed in the Middle East.

They rushed him to an emergency room. A month and several hospitals later, Alford’s family learned he was dying of a disease eating away his brain. He had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, an extremely rare and fatal degenerative brain disorder akin to mad cow disease that causes rapid, progressive dementia.

Now, as the 25-year-old soldier wastes away in his boyhood home, his parents and his wife are struggling to understand how the military could have misdiagnosed Alford’s erratic, forgetful behavior as nothing more than the symptoms of a sloppy, incompetent soldier.

“He had to hold his hands to keep them from shaking, but they saw nothing wrong with my child,” his mother Gail Alford, a nine-year Army veteran, said recently from her home in a rural community near Marshall, Texas.

Alford’s parents say Special Forces staff told them that a doctor in Kuwait found nothing wrong with him and that a psychiatrist there had said Alford was “faking it.”

Army officials have acknowledged that the 5th Special Forces Group erred and, more than eight months after Alford’s demotion, they reinstated his staff sergeant rank.

But the dying soldier’s family wants more. They want a public apology for the ridicule and disgrace that they say filled Alford’s final days of service.

“They called him stupid, told him he was lazy, he was a liar, that he wasn’t any good, that he was a faker,” his mother said, recalling what little her son could tell her about his time in Kuwait. “I want them shamed the way they shamed my son.”

And they want his pay restored and his medical benefits maintained. The Army declared Alford medically incompetent, placed him on retirement status and froze his pay earlier this month until his parents can prove in court they are his legal guardians. His mother said she was given power of attorney long ago.

Alford’s father mainly faults the Special Forces.

“I think they did everything they could to break him, mentally and physically,” he said.

In a July 30 letter responding to an inquiry by Rep. Max Sandlin, D-Texas, Army Lt. Col. Johan C. Haraldsen wrote that the Special Forces group to which Alford belonged expressed “its deepest concerns” to the soldier and his family.

“All actions taken ... involving Sergeant Alford were appropriate based on the best information available at that time,” Haraldsen wrote.

Col. David Dooley said. “The Special Forces group was fairly inert to the face of data that we medics were showing them.”

Alford was awarded the Bronze Star in May 2002 for “gallant conduct” in leading reconnaissance patrols in Kandahar and helping capture suspected Iranian terrorists.

Alford’s father said the actions of his son’s superiors broke the spirit of a young man who had wanted to become a soldier since he was 4.

He now lies in pastel sheets next to a wall painting of John Wayne. Wearing a Houston Texans T-shirt that hangs like a hospital gown, he stares absently into a TV that glows 24 hours, his hands gripping stuffed animals to keep them from clenching shut.

“He knows his name, sometimes,” says his wife, a tiny woman in sneakers who helps tend to her husband as she ponders a life alone. “Sometimes I’ll go up to him, wink at him and make kissy faces and he laughs.”

Her eyes well up as she remembers the handsome, arrogant boy she met as a teenager at a barrel racing contest in Texas.

As his brain deteriorates, his organs will fail.

“He will go blind, he will go deaf, he will lose everything,” his father says.

He stopped walking more than a month ago, mumbles when he tries to speak, is fed intravenously and takes medicine for insomnia, pain and tremors. Doctors have told the family he probably won’t live to see Christmas.

The Army told the family the issues over Alford’s pay could be resolved within weeks, but the family is skeptical. They aren’t sure how they will pay his bills and maintain his 24-hour care without his salary.

“It’s very sad when the people who are putting their life on the line for this country should be treated like this,” Alford’s father said. “This has been a bureaucratic nightmare. We’ve got enough to deal with on a daily basis, caring after our son and dealing with our pain and weariness and our suffering to have to fight the U.S. Army.”

They fought for four months before his rank was reinstated in September.

John Alford knew his son might not live long enough to get the good news, so he had already told him a “white lie” that he had been vindicated.

“It was very important to him because he kept saying, ‘I didn’t do anything wrong, Daddy.”’

Soldier Writes “I Have Lost All Faith In My Leadership All The Way To The Top”

November 19, 2003

Just to let everyone know...

There are units that could be home right now. Units that have no job to do here, so they spend their days going to the PX, hanging out in the MWR tents or sleeping. Many units whose missions were complete put in paperwork to get home.

Since the Army wants to play a numbers game, they give them shit details to keep them busy. One year boots on ground, whether you're needed or not!

These are Guard and Reserve personnel who want to get back to their lives.

Instead, they have many of them working for the civilian contractors here. Cheap labor for KBR! I don't know the exact numbers, but my job requires me to make rounds around this base. I see the same units, same faces everyday. Just hanging out, watching TV or movies, or doing details that the civilian contractor is supposed to be doing.

I came over here with the mindset that we were doing the right thing. Now, I wonder what the hell is going on. I have lost all faith in my leadership all the way to the top. 23 years I have in this military, and it turns my stomach to see the political BS that has become the norm.

Our unit will loose 90% of it's personnel when we return home. Private contractors, members of our unit are loosing thier businesses, I myself have missed promotions. We all knew what we were getting into initially, but the lies and deceit have taken thier toll on the morale of everyone. I'm not pissed because I'm here, I'm pissed about being lied to. Lied to by a command group that I placed my confidence in.

Anonymous

posted 22 nov 2003

From: http://www.bringthemhomenow.com/ Check it out!

Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward this E-MAIL along, or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether in Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your service friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing resistance to the war, at home and in Iraq, and information about other social protest movements here in the USA. Send requests to address up top. For copies on web site see:http://www.notinourname.net/gi-special/

IRAQ WAR REPORTS:

Soldier Wounded In Mosul Ambush;

Brain Dead Officer Orders Raid On Occupation Allies

November 24, 2003 By Mariam Fam, Associated Press

MOSUL, Iraq — Gunmen ambushed soldiers on patrol with a roadside bomb then opened fire on them in Mosul on Monday, wounding one, as fears grew that the anti-coalition insurgency was spreading north a day after two soldiers were killed here.

In the Mosul attack, gunmen activated a roadside bomb and opened fire on the convoy, wounding a soldier, the military said. The Americans responded with a barrage of fire, a witness said.

Residents said U.S. troops immediately cordoned the area in Hay al-Dobat neighborhood. “I heard a strong explosion saw the Americans randomly shooting in all directions,” said Omar Hamed.

Members of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan said U.S. troops and Iraqi police raided one of their offices in Mosul about 10:00 a.m. A party member, Salem Hussein, said the Americans arrested two PUK guards and confiscated four Kalashnikov rifles, a television set, a computer, a printer, a satellite receiver and a small amount of cash.

U.S. military officials said that someone opened fire on Iraqi police and ran into a PUK building but had no other details.

TROOP NEWS

Under Fire, Bush Meets Families of Iraq War Dead

By Adam Entous 11.24.03

FORT CARSON, Colo. (Reuters) - At an Army base hard hit by Iraq war losses, President Bush huddled privately on Monday with the families of 26 of the dead and vowed to answer attacks on U.S. troops with more force as he defended the invasion and his response to mounting casualties.

Bush told the troops. "Our nation will never forget the sacrifice their loved one made to protect us all."

THANKS TO B WHO E-MAILED THIS IN: B WRITES:

The nation wont forget, but the Bush gang will! Hell it only took Bush 7 months to realize that soldiers are still dying for oil and Empire and that maybe he should take some time off of vacationing at the ranch, getting drunk and partying with Blair, and making his cronies even richer, to show up and shed some fucking crocodile tears.

THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME

Army Reserve Battling An Exodus;

War Draining Ranks

By Robert Schlesinger, Boston Globe Staff, 11/23/2003

WASHINGTON -- The US Army Reserve fell short of its reenlistment goals this fiscal year, underscoring Pentagon fears that the protracted conflict in Iraq could cause a crippling exodus from the armed services.

The Army Reserve has missed its retention goal by 6.7 percent, the second shortfall since fiscal 1997. It was largely the result of a larger than expected exodus of career reservists, a loss of valuable skills because such staff members are responsible for training junior officers and operating complex weapons systems.

Defense Department officials are scrambling to combat a broader downturn in retention and recruitment that they fear is on the horizon.

Further Reserve or Guard call-ups, back-to-back tours of duty -- to fill the global obligations, any personnel shortfalls could prove disastrous.

"It's a slippery slope in the sense that there's kind of a snowball effect," said Andrew F. Krepinevich, executive director of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Signs of trouble are emerging. Recruiting for the Massachusetts National Guard, a backup to the professional Army and Air Force, was down 30 percent this year. Nationwide, the Army National Guard has fallen 13 percent short of its recruiting goal.

Perhaps the most troubling statistic is the drop in retention for the Army Reserve, first disclosed by Army Chief of Staff General Peter Schoomaker. The drop was due to the Reserve falling 9.3 percent short of its retention goal among career soldiers.

That the shortfall was entirely among career soldiers is important because they are considered the Army's backbone. "They're critically important," said Cindy Williams, a specialist on military personnel issues with MIT's Security Studies Program. "That's where the leadership is going to come from in the next decade."

They are people like Staff Sergeant Scott Durst, a 15-year veteran of the Army Reserve who extended his enlistment after a tour in Bosnia but will not sign on for another tour after Iraq, though it will means he loses the opportunity for retirement benefits.

"Not even a chance, no," said his wife Nancy Durst, a high school art teacher. "He didn't sign up to be a Reserve to be doing active-duty orders every year."