I Ain’t Gonna Listen To You No More»

Meet Army Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, who served in Japan, the Philippines and Afghanistan. He’d rather go to jail than Iraq.

Good afternoon. My name is Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, and I served in the Army as a Photojournalist until being honorably discharged last summer after over four years of service in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Phillipines. As an Army journalist whose job it was to collect and filter servicemember’s stories, I heard many stomach-churning testimonies of the horrors and crimes taking place in Iraq. For fear of retaliation from the military, I failed to report these crimes, but never again will I allow fear to silence me. Never again will I fail to stand.

In February, I received a letter from the Army ordering my return to active duty, for the purpose of mobilization for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Thanks in great part to the truths of war being fearlessly spoken by my fellow IVAW members, I stand before you today with the strength, clarity and resolve to declare to the military and the world that this Soldier will not be deploying to Iraq.

This occupation is unconstitutional and illegal and I hereby lawfully refuse to participate as I will surely be a party to war crimes. Furthermore, deployment in support of illegal war violates all of my core values as a human being, but in keeping with those values, I choose to remain in the United States to defend myself from charges brought by the Army if they so wish to pursue them. I refuse to participate in the occupation of Iraq.

I Don’t Know Just Where I’m Going But I’m Gonna Try For The Kingdom If I Can Cause It Makes Me Feel Like I’m A Man»

We’re aboard the Pequod with John McCain:

Iraq was the first subject McCain discussed.

“By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq war has been won,” he said.

First, note that after McCain’s magical victory, only “most” of the troops come home. The rest remain for the beneficent 100 (”Make It A Thousand!”) Year Occupation. Read the rest of this entry »

Wages Of Sin, We Keep Paying»

Amazingly, the Bush administration can’t figure out just why the Arab governments it occasionally flirts with undermining/subverting/overthrowing — and whose citizens it reserves the right to abduct, imprison, kill and certainly demonize — won’t cooperate with its proxy Iraq government!

And look at the alibi. As a wise man once said, you want it to be one way –

But U.S. and Iraqi officials dismissed Arab security concerns as a smokescreen. “If I believed the issue were purely one of security, it would be one thing,” a senior Bush administration official said. The Iraqi government has offered the Arabs space inside the fortified Green Zone, where the U.S. embassy and much of the Iraqi government is located.

The real basis for Arab reluctance, the U.S. official said, “is political. It’s a choice, an acknowledgement that there is a new Iraq, of recognizing that its political structures, its constitution, its government, is in fact legitimate.”

– but it’s the other way.

The Arabs, unsurprisingly, say that is nonsense. “Iraq is an Arab country and we want the same things the Americans want,” an Arab official said. But beyond diplomatic security, he and others said they are not convinced that the Basra offensive proved that Maliki is ready to stand up to Tehran. They also note that Maliki’s government has so far failed to incorporate more than a fraction of the largely Sunni Awakening security forces backed by the U.S. military into the Iraqi police and military forces.

Several Arab officials questioned whether Iraq’s military offensives against Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia were staged to crack down on “criminals,” as Maliki has said, or to benefit Sadr’s Shiite rivals, who are allied with the prime minister. Administration officials raised that possibility themselves immediately after the Basra assault, one Arab noted, before they decided to hail it as evidence of Maliki’s willingness to go after his co-religionists.

Several Arab officials attributed their hesitation partly to what they describe as Iraqi government incompetence. Egypt has complained that it has yet to receive the body of its assassinated ambassador, and also that political factions in Baghdad have been unable to agree on Iraq’s envoy to Cairo. A Saudi official noted that while Iraq complains about Riyadh’s failure to forgive billions in debt, Baghdad has not provided the necessary paperwork and has paid no principal or interest for the past 20 years. Still, the Saudi official said, “nobody is taking them to the credit bureau.”

It’s almost as if telling the Arab world to snack on ‘em before you need it to support your imperial fantasies isn’t an effective strategy!

Disappeared In The Crowd, All You Seen Was Troops»

Iraq Veterans Against The War took Winter Soldier to the Congressional Progressive Caucus yesterday. Their testimony was almost as grueling as the March convention was. I wrote it up for the Washington Independent.

The hearing’s emotional crescendo was the testimony of Goldsmith. ” I joined the Army to kill Iraqis, to kill Muslims,” Goldsmith said, before apologizing. When he finally went to Baghdad in 2005, he found the Iraqis had greater sympathy to the Mahdi Army militia of Moqtada Sadr than the U.S.-backed government. “They feel they have been let down by America and by their own government that George Bush’s administration put in power,” he said.

His voice occasionally wavering, Goldsmith confessed that he attempted suicide after returning home. “I never deployed a second time. Because of that I received a general discharge,” he said. “I lost my college benefits, the $40,000 promised me in the Montgomery GI Bill I will not be eligible to receive. And currently there is a senator in Congress — excuse me, currently running for president — who is fighting to kill our Webb GI bill. And I’m one of the soldiers who will never get that money.”

Barbara Lee promised Goldsmith, “You will go to college,” as she vowed to pass Sen. Jim Webb’s new GI Bill.

Never Ever Thought You’d Be The One To Betray Me»

Is there a criminal statute that could apply to whomever’s responsible for this?

An internal e-mail written by a Veterans Affairs Department employee suggested avoiding a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder for veterans and instead considering a diagnosis that might result in a lower disability payment.

A copy of the e-mail was distributed Thursday by the groups Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a congressional watchdog group, and VoteVets.org. The e-mail dated March 20 had been forwarded to VoteVets.org, an Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans lobbying group opposed to the Bush administration’s handling of the war and veterans issues.

The name of the sender and the recipients were blacked out by the groups. The e-mail has the subject title “Suggestion.”

“Given that we are having more and more compensation seeking veterans, I’d like to suggest that we refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight out. Consider a diagnosis of Adjustment Disorder, R/O PTSD,” the e-mail said.

It also said, “Additionally, we really don’t or have time to do the extensive testing that should be done to determine PTSD.”

PTSD is no joke. People die from what PTSD does to them. Kristofer Goldsmith is just one soldier who came home from the war and attempted to take his own life. Real strength is living through that — when you can’t exactly answer why you should — and deciding to wake up in the morning.

This VA bureaucrat probably doesn’t realize exactly what he or she did. It’s not just that his/her policy would misdiagnose PTSD. It’s that his/her policy entails telling veterans they don’t have PTSD. My friends tell me that it’s not the easiest thing to even go to the VA hospital, emotionally. I know men who haven’t been to war who won’t tend to their mental health because they’re uncomfortable admitting they need help. Think about how likely it is that all that applies to the soldier, sailor, airman or Marine who steps through those VA hospital doors anyway. And then he or she gets told whatever s/he’s going through, it’s not PTSD. Just rub some dirt on it. What, you went to war and you’re whining now?

There’s probably no statutory penalty for this. But morally? Morally, this bureaucrat’s hands are covered in blood.

The Mask Has Cracked»

Faiz captures the greatest moment in television history: a right-wing talk show host goes on Hardball to yell appeaserappeaserappeaser and has no idea what happened at Munich in 1938. Video via TPM:

Chris Matthews, that next eightball is on me.

Rejected»

I can’t believe it happened. Is this for real? Is this headline going to change when I hit refresh? Or did the House really vote down the $160 billion war supplemental?

Matt Stoller:

This war is going to end because it is politically unsustainable. The Senate is going to add the funding back in and the House will make sure the money goes to the war, but recognize how big a deal this is. The Republicans in the House and the Senate are going to utterly collapse this fall, and Democrats will have a mandate to end the war. It’s something Obama has promised to do, and now the political logic there is undeniable. The question is whether there will be residual troops in the country, and that is where we can have an impact.

An end to this war means no more troops in Iraq. The Republicans are going to face, as Tom Matzzie said, extinction, because they kept the war going.

On The Way Out»

What’s most pathetic about the George Bush Legacy Tour — where everyone who doesn’t follow him into the abyss loves Hitler — is how it’s infecting even the members of his administration perceived to be sane. For instance, Cernig pointed me to this Bob Gates speech at the Heritage Foundation yesterday:

But there is a more fundamental point that I will close with – and again, historical perspective is important. It is impossible to separate discussions of the “broken” Army following Vietnam — a conscription army — from the ultimate result of that conflict. At a congressional hearing last year, General Jack Keane, former Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, recounted the profound damage done to the Service’s “fiber and soul” by the reality of defeat in that war.

The risk of overextending the Army is real. But I believe the risk is far greater — to that institution, as well as to our country — if we were to fail in Iraq. That is the war we are in. That is the war we must win.

One could be snotty and point out that Gates didn’t mean this as an apology. But let’s instead be pissed off. This alleged grown-up is pushing pure demagoguery. The greater damage to the Army isn’t its destruction in a futile war of vanity and error but a sense of betrayal stoked by the very people that launched that destructive, futile war of vanity and error. If Gates had even one testicle, he would sit down for a very long and candid lecture from Kristofer Goldsmith. If he had half a testicle, he would tell Goldsmith, who returned from Iraq so broken that he attempted suicide, that the real villains here are the liberals, whose error is to want Goldsmith to, you know, live.

Hey Bob. Is fealty to George Bush really worth your soul?

And If I Get Aggression I Give It Two Times Back»

Everyone’s rightfully up in arms over Bush calling 70 percent of the country the heirs of Nazi-appeasers. But look: let’s be productive. Give him back the bile he spews. For instance… Those who would look down from 30,000 feet in the air while African-Americans drown in New Orleans are the heirs of the White Citizens Councils, as are those who apologize for such a disregard for their fellow citizens. We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false virtue of racism, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

See how this works? If this is Nixonland, let’s master its rules.

And Then Pop Bottles»

To all counterinsurgents: lighters in the air! Meet Brigadier General H.R. McMaster, the hero of Tall Afar. And meet Brigadier General Sean McFarland, hero of the Anbar Awakening. The champagne spray has already doused Abu Muqawama.

But what was Tall Afar, anyway? To one brave Winter Soldier, it was this:

Before Congress, Ewing provided a dark counternarrative to 3rd ACR. During a two-house search, Ewing remembered, he entered a house to find soldiers from a mortar platoon holding six Iraqi men against a wall. Out in the driveway, “several middle-aged women” lay on the concrete “covered in blood.” An Apache helicopter “had fired several high-explosive rounds into the front yard.”

Ewing’s comrades provided what medical care to the wounded they could. But, growing emotional, he recalled that some of the women were beyond treatment. “A little boy, about nine, a nine-year old boy,” he said, “came up to me and pointed to his chest and there was a blood spot on it.” He got the boy and some of the women to an aid station.

“This incident,” he said, “illustrates the first serious difference between what I saw in Iraq and what is seen back home. There has been almost no explicit reporting by the mainstream media of civilian casualties caused by U.S. troops in Iraq. Anytime a suicide bomber kills civilians it is highly publicized. But from my personal experience in Tall Afar, the number of Iraqis killed or injured by our forces far outnumbered those killed by insurgents or suicide bombers.”