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Thursday, August 21, 2008
Monday, August 18, 2008
Military Blogger from Hawaii Muzzled
Filed under: HI Media — Doug @ 12:31 pm
A long time ago, when former-Representative Tamayo was blogging from Iraq, I wrote a post where I wondered what other milbloggers from Hawaii were out there blogging from Iraq or Afghanistan. Well, today the Star-Bulletin In the Military column mentions a blog by a Schofield-based soldier in Iraq that apparently the Army would rather we not read. They forced him to take it down, in fact.
Luckily, there is an archived version of the blog, to include the offending post that got the author, a Lieutenant (now Captain) Matthew Gallagher in hot water with the higher brass.
Hi blog, "Kaboom: A Soldier's War Journal," chronicles his time with Gravediggers - his platoon. Matthew's fiancee now maintains it.
Monday, July 21, 2008
The Costs of War: The Parents' Agony
Friday 18 July 2008
by: Ann Wright, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Every day for a parent of a person in the United States military is a long day, filled with concern for their daughter or son. Parents of nine US Army soldiers were notified of the deaths of their family members in Afghanistan this week.
July 16 and 17, 2008 have been extraordinarily long days for another group of parents.
In Washington, DC, on July 17, 2008, John and Linda Johnson, the parents of US Army Private First Class (PFC) Lavena Johnson, met US Army criminal investigators concerning the classification of the death of their daughter, who died three years ago on July 19, 2005 in Balad, Iraq. The Army labeled her death a suicide, despite evidence from materials the Army reluctantly provided to the parents that she was beaten, bitten, sexually assaulted, burned and shot. Despite numerous questions from Dr. John Johnson about the Army's investigation and determination of suicide, the Army stuck to its guns, saying that Lavena Johnson committed suicide. After the briefing, the Johnsons asked Congressman William Lacy Clay and Congresswoman Diane Watson to request that House Oversight and Governmental Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman hold hearings, requiring the production of witnesses to testify under oath to their knowledge of how Lavena died - an attempt to get information that the Army has so far failed to provide.
On July 16, 2008, at Fort Knox, KY, Helen and Eric Burmeister, the parents of PFC James Burmeister, attended the court-martial of their son.
After being in three IED explosions in Iraq, . . .
Afghanistan can no longer be ignored
The Taliban Strikes BackMonday 21 July 2008 by: Gary Brecher, AlterNet
After six years of ignoring Afghanistan, things have gotten bad enough to force American officials to pay attention. For the past two months, U.S. casualties in Afghanistan have been higher than in Iraq. And on July 13, Afghanistan definitely got everybody's attention when nine U.S. troops were killed in what Wikipedia is now officially calling "The Battle of Wanat." Three days after the battle, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), the U.S.-dominated military force running the country, announced it's abandoning Wanat completely.
The outpost that the United States had just set up in Wanat was supposed to disrupt Taliban supply lines from Pakistan. Instead, it became a tempting target for the local guerrillas, just like hundreds of other remote forward bases in other rural guerrilla wars from Southeast Asia to Algeria. Guerrillas usually avoid open combat with conventional forces, but when they do attack in force it's usually against the smaller, more vulnerable forward bases. The Wanat base was a very tempting target because it was still under construction.
It's not so easy to be sure what actually happened in the battle there on July 13 . . .
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Soldiers have dramatic emotional changes
"We're Going to Be Paying For This For a While": Soldiers Bring the War Home
By Jill Carroll, Christian Science Monitor. Posted July 16, 2008.
When veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bring their troubles home, police and judges often are the first to deal with them
During 21 years in the Marine Corps, Jeff Johnson saw young adults walk into his recruiting office and newly minted marines walk out of boot camp just a few months later. Now working at the other end of that pipeline at the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, he sees far different, troubling changes in those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The changes were dramatic. I'd never seen these kinds of changes in people," says Mr. Johnson of those wrestling with the mental and physical trauma of war.
The once upstanding service members were getting arrested for domestic violence and bar fights, and being pursued by police as they raced along streets at 100 miles per hour -- often with drugs or alcohol involved -- seeking to replicate the adrenaline rush of combat or to commit suicide by motorcycle or police bullets.
He was moved to action, creating a presentation about the mental injuries of war for police and other first responders, usually the ones called when a veteran hits bottom.
A year later, he's delivered his message more times than he can count and he's been in demand from police departments across the country, hungry to prepare for what they worry is a coming surge of mentally injured veterans.
"A lot of them were getting in trouble with police. If [the police] know what resources are out there then they can funnel them into that," says Johnson, who has one son who is an Iraq veteran and another entering the service.
Police departments, veterans groups, and individuals from California to Colorado to Massachusetts are taking similar steps. At the other end of the criminal justice system, a "treatment court" in Buffalo, N.Y., dedicated to veterans opened this year.
The flurry of action is spurred by numbers like these: Some 40,000 cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were diagnosed by the military among troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2007. The Rand Corp. estimates 300,000 troops are suffering from PTSD from those wars. Many mental-health experts expect those trends to continue, or even worsen, as the wars go on.
Police Sgt. George Masson in Riverside, Calif. -- home to many military families and near several bases -- shares those concerns. When he began his career in 1980, he encountered many troubled Vietnam War veterans. Almost 30 years later, those early experiences weigh on him.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Sergeant Masson. "We're going to be paying for this for a while."
He helped organize a large, multi-agency training session this year focused on handling troubled veterans. Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton role-played such scenarios as hostage taking and suicide attempts. They invited mental health experts and combat veterans who suffered from traumatic stress to lecture.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department's crisis intervention team has added a segment on veterans to its training, says public information officer Sgt. Wilfred Williams.
Updated statistics are few, but a 2004 US Department of Justice report found 10 percent of all state and federal prisoners had served in the military, mainly during the Vietnam era. But about 4 percent were Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
the rest
By Jill Carroll, Christian Science Monitor. Posted July 16, 2008.
When veterans of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan bring their troubles home, police and judges often are the first to deal with them
During 21 years in the Marine Corps, Jeff Johnson saw young adults walk into his recruiting office and newly minted marines walk out of boot camp just a few months later. Now working at the other end of that pipeline at the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs, he sees far different, troubling changes in those coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan.
"The changes were dramatic. I'd never seen these kinds of changes in people," says Mr. Johnson of those wrestling with the mental and physical trauma of war.
The once upstanding service members were getting arrested for domestic violence and bar fights, and being pursued by police as they raced along streets at 100 miles per hour -- often with drugs or alcohol involved -- seeking to replicate the adrenaline rush of combat or to commit suicide by motorcycle or police bullets.
He was moved to action, creating a presentation about the mental injuries of war for police and other first responders, usually the ones called when a veteran hits bottom.
A year later, he's delivered his message more times than he can count and he's been in demand from police departments across the country, hungry to prepare for what they worry is a coming surge of mentally injured veterans.
"A lot of them were getting in trouble with police. If [the police] know what resources are out there then they can funnel them into that," says Johnson, who has one son who is an Iraq veteran and another entering the service.
Police departments, veterans groups, and individuals from California to Colorado to Massachusetts are taking similar steps. At the other end of the criminal justice system, a "treatment court" in Buffalo, N.Y., dedicated to veterans opened this year.
The flurry of action is spurred by numbers like these: Some 40,000 cases of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were diagnosed by the military among troops deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan from 2003 to 2007. The Rand Corp. estimates 300,000 troops are suffering from PTSD from those wars. Many mental-health experts expect those trends to continue, or even worsen, as the wars go on.
Police Sgt. George Masson in Riverside, Calif. -- home to many military families and near several bases -- shares those concerns. When he began his career in 1980, he encountered many troubled Vietnam War veterans. Almost 30 years later, those early experiences weigh on him.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," says Sergeant Masson. "We're going to be paying for this for a while."
He helped organize a large, multi-agency training session this year focused on handling troubled veterans. Marines from nearby Camp Pendleton role-played such scenarios as hostage taking and suicide attempts. They invited mental health experts and combat veterans who suffered from traumatic stress to lecture.
Meanwhile, the San Francisco Police Department's crisis intervention team has added a segment on veterans to its training, says public information officer Sgt. Wilfred Williams.
Updated statistics are few, but a 2004 US Department of Justice report found 10 percent of all state and federal prisoners had served in the military, mainly during the Vietnam era. But about 4 percent were Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
the rest
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