War

After seeing my post The men of ward 57, a friend who was a “Donut Dolly” visiting soldiers in the hospital during the Viet Nam War, and says it’s time to do it again, sent me the information for people interested in volunteering here in NYC:

To register to volunteer at the Veterans hospital

423 East 23rd Street (just east of First Avenue)
Room One South (ask Security)
Frank Civitillo or his assistant
212-686-7500 x 7920
walk in Mon-Fri 8:00 am to 4:00 pm

They will interview you and arrange for a T.B. shot. There are plenty of volunteers now, during this height of feeling, but many surviving Veterans probably need whatever you offer.

Wow — look at this headline:

Jessica Lynch Due Home After Media Hype on Heroism

PALESTINE, W.Va. (Reuters) – Jessica Lynch, the wounded Army private whose ordeal in Iraq was hyped into a media fiction of U.S. heroism, was set for an emotional homecoming on Tuesday in a rural West Virginia community bristling with flags, yellow ribbons and TV news trucks.

But when the 20-year-old supply clerk arrives by Blackhawk helicopter to the embrace of family and friends, media critics say the TV cameras will not show the return of an injured soldier so much as a reality-TV drama co-produced by U.S. government propaganda and credulous reporters.

“It no longer matters in America whether something is true or false. The population has been conditioned to accept anything: sentimental stories, lies, atomic bomb threats,” said John MacArthur, the publisher of Harper’s magazine.

…

Lynch became a national hero after media reports quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying she fought fiercely before being captured, firing on Iraqi forces despite sustaining multiple gunshot and stab wounds.

In the end, Army investigators concluded that Lynch was injured when her Humvee crashed into another vehicle in the convoy after it was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Far from a scene of battlefield heroism, the Army said the convoy blundered into the ambush after getting lost and many of the unit’s weapons malfunctioned during the battle.

The U.S. military also released video taken during an apparently daring rescue by American special forces who raided the Iraqi hospital where she was being treated.

Iraqi doctors at the hospital said later the U.S. rescuers had faced no resistance and the operation had been over-dramatized.

Quoting the Harper’s publiser? They’ll be banned from Washington! Well, they are a British company, so they sometimes act like real journalists rather than what we’re getting out of our own media at this point.

Even though he will begin married life in a wheelchair after the loss of both his feet, First Lt. John Fernandez, a West Point graduate, swears he won’t feel sorry for himself. Not when three men around him came home from Iraq in body bags.

While our media writes about what seems to be considered a relatively low number of (American) deaths in Iraq, Daily Kos tells us about The men of Ward 57. More than 650 seriously wounded soldiers have passed through Walter Reed Hospital since March. If we had a real media this would be in the news more.

This line really got me:

Pfc. Danny Roberts was wishing for Faulkner instead of a glossy guide about adapting to limb loss.

These people are maimed in a war that we didn’t need to fight that was built on lies. Today the NY Times reports that we were conducting air raids starting in 2002 to prepare for an invasion of Iraq.

The strikes, which were conducted from mid-2002 into the first few months of 2003, were justified publicly at the time as a reaction to Iraqi violations of a no-flight zone that the United States and Britain established in southern Iraq. But Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the chief allied war commander, said the attacks also laid the foundations for the military campaign against the Baghdad government.

Indeed, one reason it was possible for the allies to begin the ground campaign to topple Mr. Hussein without preceding it with an extensive array of airstrikes was that 606 bombs had been dropped on 391 carefully selected targets under the plan, General Moseley said.

One of the things that drove the Soviets out of Afghanistan was the streams of amputees coming home despite the government and the media telling the people that the war was going well.

The Washington Post reports that the White House was so unhappy about an ABC News story about bad morale in Iraq that they pointed out to Matt Drudge that the reporter who did the story is gay and Canadian. Unless they’re trying to use jingoism and homophobia to further their fascist aims, what’s the point?

Some folks in the White House were apparently hopping mad when ABC News correspondent Jeffrey Kofman did a story on Tuesday’s “World News Tonight” about the plummeting morale of U.S. soldiers stationed in Iraq.

So angry, in fact, that the next day, a White House operative alerted cyber-gossip Matt Drudge to the fact that Kofman is not only openly gay, he’s Canadian.

Yesterday Drudge told us he was unaware of the ABC story until “someone from the White House communications shop tipped me to it” along with a profile of Kofman in the gay-oriented magazine the Advocate.

…

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan “is having a rough first week,” Drudge said. “The White House press office is under new management and has become slightly more aggressive about contacting reporters. This story has certainly become talk radio fodder about the cultural wars-slash-liberal bias in the media.”

A network insider was less sanguine about the White House tactic: “Playing hardball is one thing. But appealing to homophobia and jingoism is simply ugly.”

Mr. Drudge is rather quiet about his own orientation when the subject comes up.

… or about helping the Iraqis in any meaningful way.

I was struck by the photo when I saw it, not knowing any background.

Mon Jun 23, 5:09 PM ET
U.S. military policeman Sgt. 1st Class Brian Pacholski, left, comforts his hometown friend, U.S. military policeman Sgt. David J. Borell, right, both from Toledo, Ohio, at the entrance of the U.S. military base in Balad, about 50 kilometers (30 miles) northwest of Baghdad, Friday, June 13, 2003. Borell broke down after seeing three Iraqi children who were injured while playing with explosive materials. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano)

Now the story of that photo is out. Borell broke down after an army doctor refused to treat the children.

On a scorching afternoon, while on duty at an Army airfield, Sgt. David J. Borell was approached by an Iraqi who pleaded for help for his three children, burned when they set fire to a bag containing explosive powder left over from war in Iraq.

Borell immediately called for assistance. But the two Army doctors who arrived about an hour later refused to help the children because their injuries were not life-threatening and had not been inflicted by U.S. troops.

Now the two girls and a boy are covered with scabs and the boy cannot use his right leg. And Borell is shattered.

“I have never seen in almost 14 years of Army experience anything that callous,” said Borell, who recounted the June 13 incident to The Associated Press.

A U.S. military spokesman said the children’s condition did not fall into a category that requires Army physicians to treat them — and that there was no inappropriate response on the part of the doctors.

I wasn’t aware that doctors renounced the Hippocratic Oath when they entered the military.

[via Anees]

No commentary from me needed, I think:

‘Apocalypse Now’ Music Fires Up U.S. Troops for Raid

U.S. troops psyched up on a bizarre musical reprise from Vietnam war film “Apocalypse Now” before crashing into Iraqi homes to hunt gunmen on Saturday, as Shi’ite Muslims rallied against the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

With the strains of Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” still ringing in their ears and the clatter of helicopters overhead, soldiers rammed vehicles into metal gates and hundreds of troops raided houses in the western city of Ramadi after sunrise as part of a drive to quell a spate of attacks on U.S. forces.

…

There was nothing secretive about Saturday’s robust sweep through Ramadi, 100 km (60 miles) west of Baghdad, by soldiers of the First Battalion of the 124th Infantry Regiment who psyched themselves up at a base on a musical moment redolent of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 film about the Vietnam war.

The Baghdad Blogger, Salam Pax, who also happens to be gay, now has a fortnightly column in the Guardian. There is an article by freelance journalist Peter Maass in Slate about him discovering his interpreter was the world-famous blogger.

Peter Maass wrote a very powerful article in April for the NY Times Magazine about being with the Third Battalion as it entered Baghdad — killing all in its path, civilian and otherwise.

From The Guardian, via Ruminate This.

The US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz – who has already undermined Tony Blair’s position over weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by describing them as a “bureaucratic” excuse for war – has now gone further by claiming the real motive was that Iraq is “swimming” in oil.

The latest comments were made by Mr Wolfowitz in an address to delegates at an Asian security summit in Singapore at the weekend, and reported today by German newspapers Der Tagesspiegel and Die Welt.

Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: “Let’s look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil.”

—

UPDATED: The Guardian has issued a correction on this:

A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading “Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil” misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, “The … difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.” The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.

Thanks to Matt Stoller for pointing this out.