Honoring All Our Troops

CNN reports that soldiers who die by suicide will not receive a letter of condolence from the President Obama. The reason for not honoring military personnel? It is an inherited policy. The unwritten policy has been in place "at least since Bill Clinton was president," according to a New York Times article. With 184 military personnel reported dead by suicide in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001 and at least 128 active-duty soldiers confirmed to have killed themselves in 2008, compared with 115 in 2007, 102 in 2006 and 87 in 2005, it makes no sense to dishonor their memories to their families.

Regardless of the reason for death, every military personnel deserves the recognition of the Commander-in-Chief for their service to their country. Contact the President and your Congressional Representatives to call on them to change this disrespectful policy. While you are at it, you might also ask them to stop putting our soldiers in harm's way without a good reason.

President Barack Obama

Representative Bruce Braley
Representative Leonard Boswell
Representative Steve King
Representative Tom Latham
Representative Dave Loebsack

Senator Charles Grassley
Senator Tom Harkin

343,100 to 351,000 Reasons to End the War

Beyond the troops that are in Iraq, there are tons of contractors and they are not all "security" mercenaries like Blackwater, DynCorp and so on.

The Gazette reports that:
180,000 (the CS Monitor estimated it at 182,000) = Number of people working in Iraq under U.S. contracts
169,000 = U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the Pentagon
163,100 = U.S. troops in Iraq, according to the U.S. Central Command

In 2006, the Washington Post reported that there were 100,000 government contractors there. With the additional 80,000, this is 18 times the number of US contractors that were there during the first Gulf War.

The Christian Science Monitor estimates tha 20,000 to 30,000 are mercenaries. DynCorp International has about 1,500 employees in Iraq, including about 700 helping train the police force. Blackwater USA has more than 1,000 10 1,500 employees in the country, most of them providing private security. Kellogg, Brown and Root, one of the largest contractors in Iraq, said it does not delineate its workforce by country but that it has more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. MPRI, a unit of L-3 Communications, has about 500 employees working on 12 contracts, including providing mentors to the Iraqi Defense Ministry for strategic planning, budgeting and establishing its public affairs office. Titan, another L-3 division, has 6,500 linguists in the country.

Unfortunately, without the military leaving Iraq, it is likely that these other workers are not either. As the CS Monitor story said, "Nobody is going to be able to throw the contractors out of there," says David Isenberg of the British-American Security Information Council. "They're the American Express card of the American military. The military doesn't leave home without them, because it can't.""

Re-Surge-itate

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Pentagon said on Monday it will send another 9,000 U.S. troops to Iraq, with about half of them returning to combat ahead of schedule, in order to maintain troop levels in its new security crackdown through at least August.

Two of the affected Army units, totaling about 4,500 troops, will return to combat short of their promised year at home, reflecting the strain placed on U.S. forces by commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"What you're seeing here today reflects a decision that will carry the level of effort ... through August '07," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

One unit will deploy 81 days short of the year-long "dwell time" at home and the second will return 47 days short of a year, Whitman said.

"This is a reflection that this is a military that is in conflict," Whitman said. "We're obviously using a significant portion of the force, combat units of the force, and it's a reflection of the realities that exist right now."

Under the Bush administration's new Iraq policy announced earlier this year, the Pentagon has increased force levels in Iraq by about 30,000 troops in an attempt to regain control of security and reduce sectarian violence.

Henry the K Says Total Military Victory in Iraq--Not Gonna Happen

From MarineTimes
From Marine Corp. Times

Kissinger: Iraq military victory not possible
By Hans Greimel - The Associated PressPosted : Sunday Apr 1, 2007 15:56:20 EDT

TOKYO — Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who helped engineer the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, said Sunday the problems in Iraq are more complex than that conflict, and military victory is no longer possible.

He also said he sympathizes with the troubles facing President Bush.
“A ‘military victory’ in the sense of total control over the whole territory, imposed on the entire population, is not possible,” Kissinger told The Associated Press in Tokyo, where he received an honorary degree from Waseda University.

The faceless, ubiquitous nature of Iraq’s insurgency, as well as the religious divide between Shiite and Sunni rivals, makes negotiating peace more complex, he said.

Feinstein MILCON it For what It's Worth - Part 1 1/2

What's this?

"The investigation [of Sen. Feinstein] was partially funded by the Investigative Fund of The Nation Institute, a non-profit organization affiliated with the liberal magazine The Nation."

From: Feinstein Leaves Senate Defense Panel Amid Controversy
By Fred Lucas CNSNews.com Staff WriterApril 02, 2007

More

Pork On Wheels

The Iowans for Sensible Priorities Pigmobile was sighted on Iowa Ave in Iowa City yesterday.

According to the ISP, "The blubbery, grunting, eye popping PigMobile consists of three oversized piggy banks that demonstrate the whacked out spending priorities of America. This one of a kind display of our federal budget is currently making its way around Iowa. Help us move our money and volunteer to drive this sweet ride! Email jessica@sensiblepriorities.org."



These free range pig is perfect for visiting your congressional representative or senator. I wonder if they run on biodiesel?

Poor Product Placement?

President Bush apologized Friday for the shoddy conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and promised during a visit to the facility for war veterans that "we're going to fix the problem."

Critics questioned the timing of Bush's visit six weeks after poor conditions and neglect of veterans were exposed there.

Bush toured the main hospital and Abrams Hall, where soldiers were transferred after they were vacated from the facility's Building 18, where moldy walls, rodent infestation and other problems went unchecked until reported by the media. He said his conversations with those who had been in Building 18 left him "disturbed by their accounts."

"The problems at Walter Reed were caused by bureaucratic and administrative failures," the president said at the end of a more than two-hour visit. "The system failed you and it failed our troops and we're going to fix it."

Bush first toured a typical -- but empty -- patient room in Abrams Hall. The room Bush saw featured a wide-screen television and a Macintosh computer on a desk.

"I appreciate that soldiers have got a Mac" to communicate with their families, the president said.

The Heat Is On?

I'm curious, what is a visitor from the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms visiting my humble blog about? Oh, I see, it seems that a story I picked up off the web has some heat to it.


senate.gov 3/30 3:46:18 pm 3 4:13

Army Ordering Injured Troops to Iraq?

From Salon

At Fort Benning, soldiers who were classified as medically unfit to fight are now being sent to war. Is this an isolated incident or a trend?

As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.

On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier's "physical profile," an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier's physical limitations because of medical problems -- from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny.

The 3,900-strong 3rd Brigade is now leaving for Iraq for a third time in a steady stream.