Elaine Meinel Supkis
It is just beginning to dawn on our troops that the revolving door in Iraq has no exit. Some troops have decided to appeal to the AIPAC-owned Congress to end this disasterous war. The insanity rate is skyrocketting as troops discover they can't escape the hell we created. This all sounds like some existentialist Sartre play.
Monday, October 23, 2006 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sixty five active duty service members are officially asking Congress to end the war in Iraq -- the first time active troops have done so since U.S. invasion began in 2003.Three of the service members will hold a press conference Wednesday explaining their decision to send "Appeals for Redress" under the Military Whistleblower Protection Act to their members of Congress. Under the act, National Guard and Reservists can send communications about any subject to their member of Congress without punishment.
Troop morale is terrible. Of course, our dictator and his gang use hand-picked troops as backdrops to show 'support' sort of like when Hitler used to review Hitler Youth as Stalin's armies lobbed bombs at Berlin. Thanks to the many bunkers and spider holes built to hide both military staff and dictators, none of them have to react to reality since they are muffled in cotton. Which is also stuffed in their ears.
The death rate for this month is now topping the scales for this WWII-length conflict. Thanks to modern medicine, many people who would have died in Vietnam or WWII with these wounds are living minus huge hunks of the body or with hideous burns that would have killed a mere 20 years ago. These human wrecks now have to struggle to survive on a pittance that will shrink with time (as we well know, being in the same boat here!).
There are ghosts here, whispers of these people who sacrificed their lives to serve their country. In a recent tour of the facility, the names and identifying information of the dead were concealed to protect their families, but the presence of the dead was still strong."There's a lot of each individual in those lockers," said Lt. Col. L. Scott Kilmon Jr., who commands the depot. Working with the materials day after day can be an emotional strain, he said. "It takes a toll on you."
The workload has gotten steadily heavier over the past few years, as nearly 3,000 U.S. troops have died in the Middle East and thousands more have been injured. The seriously wounded who are evacuated from the fighting also have their things shipped to Aberdeen now. Col. Kilmon said the depot is bracing for the fall and winter, when there have been higher levels of U.S. casualties in Iraq.
And because the fighting seems likely to continue, the Defense Department is working to establish the depot as a more permanent operation. Col. Kilmon said there are plans to move the temporary, wartime facility to Dover Air Force Base by 2009, which would put it at the same facility where the troops' remains are processed.
This news should alarm everyone in the Army and National Guard. Namely, they are now so certain we will lose more than 50 soldiers a month there, we might as well build a fancy building to be used to sort through all their pitiful remains. Before the war was even announced, back in 2001, in the spring, one of our accquaintances landed a job in the military as a coroner. She told us, 'They are looking for a lot of coroners! Ads are everywhere! They told me, we will be seeing action!'
The plans for deaths was not a shock but was something expected. And the hope is, America won't mind thousands of dead, dying or horribly maimed soldiers because of no draft. This is disgusting.
And then there are the insane.
Once in the theater, and in violation of the military's stated policies, "some unstable troops are kept on the front lines while on potent antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs, with little or no monitoring or counseling," and despite the fact that their superiors are aware of their mental condition.In 2005, these practices contributed to the suicides of 22 soldiers in Iraq, or nearly one in five of all Army non-combat deaths--an all-time high.
In the war zone, commanders rather than medical professionals decide whether to retain troubled soldiers. Ann Scheurman's son, Pfc. Jason Scheurman, was referred for a psychological evaluation and stripped of his gun after he wrote her a suicide note. Shortly thereafter he was "accused of faking his mental problems and warned that he could be disciplined, according to what he told his family." The Army gave Jason his gun back.
Three weeks later, he killed himself with it.
After the Vietnam war, the mental walking wounded caused many problems, some of them ended up shooting up lots of civilians here as they had flashbacks and other insane thoughts. Desert Storm I had similar cases, some very spectacular like Timothy McVeigh blowing up a major Federal building in Oklahoma or the DC sniper.
Recruiting people who are mentally ill and then keeping many ill people on the warfront is dangerous to us here at home. As I recall, this whole stupid mess was to protect us from terrorists. Yet history clearly shows, the terrorists can often and ARE often returning soldiers who are insane. Germany learned this from WWI: the returning soldiers, the injured, the shell-shocked, were the very same people who took over and turned all of Germany into a terrorist organization which set off to kill as many people as possible and ended up destroying all of Germany.
Today, a very large majority of Americans polled about the war are against it continuing.
(CNN) -- One in five Americans believes the United States is winning the war in Iraq, according to a poll. The number has dropped by half since December.About the same number -- 18 percent -- believe insurgents are winning. But the majority, 60 percent, say no one is winning in Iraq.
The poll of 1,013 adult Americans interviewed by telephone found two-thirds -- 64 percent -- of those polled oppose the war in Iraq.
Time to stop. Time to go home. We have to give this up because we are supposed to be a democracy. If Congress can't figure this out, the stage could be set for a very ugly future confrontation as frustrated people perhaps join with a military coup not from the generals who are all living in a fantasyland but some Corporal, for example, like the guy who was laying in a German hospital ward when he suddenly decided he would 'save Germany'.
Mr. Khalilzad and General Casey did not say what American officials planned to do if the timetable is not met.Both men spoke in unusually conciliatory terms about the Sunni insurgents who have been the main source of attacks on American troops until recently, referring to them as “the resistance.” General Casey called them “the Sunnis who fight us and claim to be the honorable resistance of Iraq,” and said that American officials have begun talking with them, along with the Iraqi government.
By contrast, Iran and Syria were singled out for harsh criticism at the briefing, and accused of working to make matters worse in Iraq. Mr. Khalilzad lumped them together with Al Qaeda as “the enemies of Iraq.”
General Casey described the security situation as “difficult and complex,” adding that “it’s likely to remain that way over the near term.”
“We have seen the nature of the conflict evolving from what was an insurgency against us to a struggle for the division of economic and political power,” he said.
The general said that the struggle was “one that will be resolved prominently by Iraq, but with our support,” suggesting that an end to the struggle lies at least a year and a half away.
According to the article about the Pentagon building a permanent facility for rummaging through the leftover stuff owned by dead soldiers, this war is going to go way past 2009. They obviously are perfectly OK with this since none of them show much alarm. Retired generals made a small row last summer but they have been silenced or maybe they just don't care all that much. All I know is, the imputus to retreat isn't showing at any of the top actors in this Sarte play.
Indeed, the insanity isn't with our poor troops but at the very top. For Bush is stubbornly continuing forwards with this folly and he isn't letting anyone stop him nor is anyone stopping him. Pelosi already said she won't impeach our war criminal dictator no matter what and this means two more years of death and financial folly. Every hour we are in Iraq, bin Laden grows in power. The GOPredator national committee is so pleased by this, they are busy broadcasting bin Laden's threats and boasts hoping Americans will ask for more wars that benefit bin Laden's cause.
This is all utterly insane but then, our dictator's world is a mad, mad, mad, mad, mad world.
And here it is: no one in charge of this war want to end it.
By Jim Miklaszewski
Chief Pentagon correspondent
NBC News
Updated: 7:35 p.m. ET Oct 23, 2006 Jim Miklaszewski
Chief Pentagon correspondentWASHINGTON - Administration and Pentagon officials tell us they have set no timetable for withdrawal of American forces in Iraq — in fact, after all this talk about a new strategy — the administration's latest plan sounds pretty much like the old one, at least for now.
Violence in Iraq raged on unabated over the weekend. Masked insurgents shouting "God is great!" attacked a U.S. outpost in Ramadi, in a region where five Marines were killed.
Under growing political pressure at home, President Bush met with his top generals at the White House on Saturday to review the Iraq strategy — and Monday told CNBC's Maria Bartiromo the generals were calling the shots.
Is our top general Osama? Sounds like it to me. If the generals are 'calling the shots' maybe someone should ring them up on a telephone and tell them to hang it up! Eventually, someone will. I am supposing it will be the Chinese when they pull our credit rating.
Here is a very interesting article I found at the Silver Bear Cafe:
http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/masterplan.html
Looks accurate to me whenever I view a map of the world and see where we have our armies.
Posted by: DeVaul | October 25, 2006 at 05:39 PM
Money doesn't grow on trees.
Posted by: Beats by Dre | January 14, 2012 at 01:55 AM