Military Resistance 11I12
“Our Military Brass Gets A Slap On The Wrist For Things That Would Get Enlisted Soldiers Demoted And Dishonorably Discharged”
“Billions Get Spent On Programs We Don’t Need That End Up Getting Scrapped, And The Ones We Need Die From Lack Of Funding”
“All While Our Bosses (Congress) Vote Themselves Pay Raises, And Take Taxpayer- Funded Vacations, And Don’t Do Their Jobs”
Letters To The Editor
Army Times
September 9, 2013
Regarding “Nearly half of soldiers say Army isn’t committed to them,” armytimes.com, Aug. 21:
In the past year, we’ve had talk of involuntary separation, can’t have tattoos, taking away our retirement, taking away our medical, cutting our pay, freezing our pay, not paying us, stopping promotions, rolling back promotions, cutting our BAH, cutting our GI Bill, stopping tuition assistance, lowering standards for political correctness, higher-ups not listening and generally not caring about problems reported.
And that’s just off the top of my head — all while our bosses (Congress) vote themselves pay raises, and take taxpayer- funded vacations, and don’t do their jobs.
Our military brass gets a slap on the wrist for things that would get enlisted soldiers demoted and dishonorably discharged, and they are generally immune from their own cutback ideas.
And billions get spent on programs we don’t need that end up getting scrapped, and the ones we need die from lack of funding.
I came in looking to be a lifer.
The only reason I re-enlisted past my first term was my family.
— Sam H Cunningham
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
3 US Troops Killed In Afghan Insider Attack,
Another Wounded
September 21, 2013 By RAHIM FAIEZ, AP & Reuters
KABUL -- An Afghan wearing a security forces uniform turned his weapon against U.S. troops Saturday, killing three in eastern Afghanistan, officials said, in another apparent attack by a member of the Afghan forces against their international allies.
The Afghan National Army (ANA) soldier opened fire on US soldiers in a military training camp, killing two on the spot, he said.
A third later died of his wounds, he added.
“We can confirm that three ISAF service members were killed and one wounded by an individual wearing an ANSF uniform in Gardez,” said Afghan Defence Ministry spokesman General Zahir Azimi.
Gardez is the capital of eastern Paktia, a volatile province that shares a porous border with Pakistan and is a hub for the Haqqani network, an insurgent group associated with the Taliban.
The attack took place inside a base of the Afghan army in the city, according to a security official in Gardez, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give details while the incident was still under investigation.
A U.S. Defense Department official confirmed that all three soldiers were Americans, but that no further details would be released until after their relatives had been notified.
NATO said the shooting was carried out by a gunman wearing the uniform of the Afghan National Security Forces, but it gave no further details.
POLITICIANS REFUSE TO HALT THE BLOODSHED
THE TROOPS HAVE THE POWER TO STOP THE WAR
MILITARY NEWS
Veteran Killed By VA Overmedication:
“My Husband Served Honorably And With Pride And Dignity-- Not To Come Home And Die On The Couch”
“The People In Charge Said, ‘We Want You To Sign Off On Narcotic Prescriptions On Patients You Don’t See’“
“And I Knew Immediately It Was Illegal. And The People In Charge Don’t Care If It’s Done Right”
A dozen VA physicians who’ve worked at 15 VA medical centers told us they’ve felt pressured by administrators to prescribe narcotics and that patients are not being properly monitored.
September 19, 2013 By Jim Axelrod, CBS News
Veterans by the tens of thousands have come home from Iraq and Afghanistan with injuries suffered on the battlefield. Many of them seek treatment at Veterans Affairs hospitals.
Now a CBS News investigation has found that some veterans are dying of accidental overdoses of narcotic painkillers at a much higher rate than the general population -- and some VA doctors are speaking out.
Five tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan left 35-year-old Army Spc. Scott McDonald with chronic back pain.
A coroner’s report determined Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran Scott McDonald had been “overmedicated” and that he died from the combined effects of five of his medications. / CBS News
His wife Heather said over the course of a year, VA doctors in Columbus, Ohio prescribed him eight pain and psychiatric medications.
“It just got out of control,” said Heather. “They just started pill after pill, prescription after prescription...and he’d come home with all brand-new medications, higher milligrams.”
Then a VA doctor added a ninth pill -- a narcotic called Percocet.
Later that evening, Heather came home from work and found Scott disoriented on the couch.
Scott McDonald’s widow, Heather, recalled her husband getting eight pain and psychiatric medications. She plans to sue the VA. / CBS News
“And I asked him,” Heather recalled, “‘You didn’t by chance by accident take too many pills, did you?’ And he’s like, ‘No, no. I did what they told me to take, Heather.’ I popped a pillow under his head and that’s how I found him the next morning, exactly like that.”
McDonald wasn’t breathing.
The coroner’s report ruled his death accidental. He had been “overmedicated” and that he died from the combined effects of five of his medications.
“There’s an overuse of narcotics,” Dr. Phyllis Hollenbeck, a physician at the VA medical center in Jackson, Mississippi. “It’s the first reflex for pain.”
Hollenbeck raised her concerns with the federal government about the VA’s practices about prescribing narcotics.
“The people in charge said, ‘We want you to sign off on narcotic prescriptions on patients you don’t see,’“ she said.
“I was absolutely stunned. And I knew immediately it was illegal. It works on the surface. It keeps the veterans happy. They don’t complain. They’re not coming in as often if they have their pain medicine. And the people in charge don’t care if it’s done right.”
CBS News obtained VA data through a records request which show the number of prescriptions written by VA doctors and nurse practitioners during the past 11 years.
The number of patients treated by VA is up 29 percent, but narcotics prescriptions are up 259 percent.
A dozen VA physicians who’ve worked at 15 VA medical centers told us they’ve felt pressured by administrators to prescribe narcotics and that patients are not being properly monitored.
“I have seen people that have not had an exam of that body part that they’re complaining of pain in for two years,” said a doctor who presently treats pain patients at the VA and had asked not to be identified. “It’s easier to write a prescription for narcotics, and just move along, get to the next patient.”
“We’re letting people come in and prescribing massive doses of narcotics and they also are on drugs for mental health problems,” the doctor continued.
By giving those kinds of quantities of pills, one might assume that requires a rather close eye being kept on the patient. “You would think so. But it isn’t the case,” said the doctor.
We gathered data from five of the states with the most veterans. We found they are dying of accidental narcotic overdoses at a 33 percent higher rate than non-veterans.
Heather McDonald said she plans to sue the VA.
“He never should have been taking those many pills,” said Heather of her late husband. “But he trusted his doctors. My husband served honorably and with pride and dignity-- not to come home and die on the couch.”
The VA declined to talk to CBS News about the specifics of the McDonald case and this story.
FORWARD OBSERVATIONS
“At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. Oh had I the ability, and could reach the nation’s ear, I would, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke.
“For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder.
“We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake.”
“The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppose.”
Frederick Douglass, 1852
The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the Army from Vietnam, but it was the rebellion of low-ranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless suicidal policy.
-- David Cortright; Soldiers In Revolt
Drunk On Betrayal
From: Mike Hastie
To: Military Resistance Newsletter
Sent: September 21, 2013
Subject: Drunk On Betrayal
Drunk On Betrayal
I took this picture of a drunk Vietnam veteran
at the Oregon Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Portland several years ago.
It was a very emotionally gripping image to take
on Veterans Day.
There were hundreds of Vietnam veterans at the
memorial that day, who were trying desperately
to hold it together.
I saw many vets with teary eyes,
lost in their own thoughts of an unspeakable
trauma called betrayal.
It is a severe mental state of mind I call
Political Incest.
That is when a soldier is sacrificed on the altar
of war profiteering, while at the same time being
led to believe that his service was a noble cause.
There is another word for this,
Rape.
So, how does a veteran come to believe that he
or she was emotionally incested for the cause
of profit?
If that door is opened, and all of that painful suppressed
energy is released, betrayal turns into rape rage.
That is when your rage makes you want to take revenge,
the kind of revenge that can destroy your own life,
and severely alter the lives of your own family.
That is when you become a stranger in your own country.
That is when your belief system is psychologically
dismantled.
That is when you enter an emotional whiteout.
That is why veterans commit suicide,
or drink and drug themselves to death.
That is when you find yourself in a padded cell
of a psychiatric hospital screaming your heart out,
as I did in 1980.
That is when you realize that everything was a lie.
That is when you write something as crude as this:
The last thing I felt before I left Vietnam
was Dick Nixon’s dick withdrawing from
my ass.
That is raw.
And Raw spelled backwards is War.
Political Incest is the unspeakable.
It is the unbelievable.
It is the great truth that has great silence.
It is Taps being played at a funeral.
It is a pastor saying at the services
that this veteran suffered for all of us.
Little does he understand that veterans
are prophets coming home from war and
trying to reveal that unspeakable truth
that war is all about profits.
An unbelievable amount of wealth that
goes into the coffers of the rich at the
expense of the coffins of the poor and
working class.
It is the kind of immoral greed that makes
you want to overthrow your government.
How much longer are the wealthy corporate
monsters going to suck the life out of its
own people, and murder an unthinkable
number of civilians for the lying cause of
W A R---Wealthy Are Richer...
When will the rest of the world finally
stand up and say to America that enough
is enough, that your economic profiteering
massacre is destroying the earth?
That War Capitalism is a piranha eating the
flesh of all in its murderous path.
Lying is the most powerful weapon in war.
Mike Hastie
Army Medic Vietnam
September 21, 2013
“The only thing worse than death is betrayal.”
Malcolm X
Photo and caption from the portfolio of Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam 1970-71. (For more of his outstanding work, contact at: () T)
One day while I was in a bunker in Vietnam, a sniper round went over my head. The person who fired that weapon was not a terrorist, a rebel, an extremist, or a so-called insurgent. The Vietnamese individual who tried to kill me was a citizen of Vietnam, who did not want me in his country. This truth escapes millions.
Mike Hastie
U.S. Army Medic
Vietnam 1970-71
December 13, 2004
“Movements Are Bound To Be Confused At The Beginning, Confused Because The Thinking Of The Masses At First Moves Among Contradictions, Lack Of Clarity, And Lack Of Cohesion, And Also Because Of The Role That Prophets Still Play In Them”
On The History Of Early Christianity, By Friedrich Engels, Die Neue Zeit, Vol. 1, 1894-95 [Excerpts]
And just as those who have nothing to look forward to from the official world or have come to the end of their tether with it — opponents of inoculation, supporters of abstemiousness, vegetarians, anti-vivisectionists, nature healers, free-community preachers whose communities have fallen to pieces, authors of new theories on the origin of the universe, unsuccessful or unfortunate inventors, victims of real or imaginary injustice who are termed “good-for-nothing pettifoggers” by the bureaucracy, honest fools, and dishonest swindlers — all throng to the working-class parties in all countries — so it was with the first Christians.
All the elements which had been set free, i.e., at a loose end, by the dissolution of the old world came one after the other into the orbit of Christianity as the only element that resisted that process of dissolution — for the very reason that it was the necessary product of that process — and that it therefore persisted and grew while the other elements were but ephemeral flies.
There was no fanaticism, no foolishness, no scheming that did not flock to the young Christian communities and did not at least for a time and in isolated places find attentive ears and willing believers.
And like our first communist workers’ associations, the early Christians, too, took with such unprecedented gullibility to anything which suited their purpose ….
In fact, the struggle against a world that at the beginning was superior in force, and at the same time against the innovators themselves, is common to the early Christians and the socialists.
Neither of these two great movements was made by leaders or prophets — although there are prophets enough among both of them — they are mass movements.
And mass movements are bound to be confused at the beginning, confused because the thinking of the masses at first moves among contradictions, lack of clarity, and lack of cohesion, and also because of the role that prophets still play in them at the beginning.
This confusion is to be seen in the formation of numerous sects which fight against one another with at least the same zeal as against the common external enemy.
So it was with early Christianity, so it was in the beginning of the socialist movement, no matter how much that worried the well-meaning worthies who preached unity where no unity was possible.
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Yard Sale To Ease Military Retrograde From Afghanistan
Gen. Dunford’s personal bicycle is expected to be one of the yard sale favorites.
September 22, 2013by Ross Magee, The Duffel Blog
KABUL — Facing the daunting task of redeploying the entire ISAF Coalition and all of the equipment they have accumulated during a decade of war, ISAF Commander Gen. Joseph Dunford has ordered radical changes to the retrograde mission, launching a command-wide yard sale this Saturday from 0900-1300.
With NATO’s 2013-14 budget for Afghanistan retrograde reduced from $1.3 billion to $73,000 in the aftermath of recent economic crises in Cyprus and Lichtenstein, ISAF was struggling to figure out how to get all their materiel out of the country.
After nearly 16 hours of video teleconference discussions with field grade officers from across the theater, Sgt. Pando Romano, Director of Coalition VTC operations, had an epiphany, though some observers described it more as a mental breakdown. Romano leapt upon the conference table and shouted at the room full of field grade officers.
“Hey, slapnuts! It’s just like when you PCS and you realize your wife has bought too much crap and you’re going to be overweight for your move. What do you do then?”
The room full of field graders, who are all authorized approximately 14 tons of household goods and had never faced this conundrum, stared at him blankly. “Schedule an OPT?” offered one timid army Major.
“No! You have a fucking yard sale!” responded the emotionally exhausted Romano.
“I pitched my idea of having Retrograde Yard Sales to the old man early one morning, right after PT when he’s in the best mood of the day,” said Lt. Col. Doug Friedman, Chief of Retrograde Operations. “You know, before he opens his email and reads about all the allegations of civilian casualties that are going to ruin his next 24 hours. He loved the originality of my idea and told me to implement it immediately.”
Friedman said Dunford even offered to show his personal commitment by selling a pink bicycle, a cat named “CIVCAS-Metrix” and an enormous four-hose hookah pipe that Gen. Allen had left him during the ISAF change of command ceremony last winter.
“This is a way for us to expose Afghans to an incredibly rich and vibrant American tradition,” said 1st Lt. Amy Longfellow, a Public Affairs Officer for ISAF. “Instead of bringing Afghans onto ISAF installations to sell us cheap trinkets, Pakistani rugs and fake Kashmir pashminas, we’re bringing them onto the compound to bid on all of the first-rate western military equipment that we simply can’t afford to ship home. The prices are really competitive and the Afghans like haggling with us even though we’re horrible at it.”