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PATH: BS | Government | Military
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A Soldier's Last Words
Posted by Pile
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[Activists] |
 Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He was part of Task Force Lightning, an intelligence unit. In 2004-2005, he was mainly assigned to a Tactical Human-Intelligence Team (THT) in Baghdad, Iraq, where he ran more than 400 combat missions as a machine gunner in the turret of a Humvee, interviewed countless Iraqis ranging from concerned citizens to community leaders and and government officials, and interrogated dozens of insurgents and terrorist suspects. In 2006-2007, Daniel worked with Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) through his former unit in Mosul where he ran the Northern Iraq Intelligence Center. His official role was as a senior analyst for the Levant (Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and part of Turkey). Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it. |
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Racism As A Tool Of The American Military
Posted by Pile
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| Mike Prysner describes a mission he took part in which his unit forced Iraqis out of half a dozen homes, with no compensation, so the US military could use them. "One family in particular, a woman with two small girls, very elderly man, and two middle-aged men--we dragged them from their houses and threw them onto the street, and arrested the men because they refused to leave." Since he left, he has been plagued by guilt, "anytime I see a mother with her children, like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worse than Saddam as we forced her from her home--anytime I see a young girl like the one I grabbed by the arm and dragged into the street." Prysner also describes the physical abuse of a wounded prisoner, with a sandbag over his head and his hands tied behind his back. "We were told we were fighting terrorists; the real terrorist was me, and the real terrorism is this occupation." |
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In the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden, MIT professor Noam Chomsky comments on the issue claiming, "There is much more to say"...
In 1983, the National Film Board of Canada produced a 57-minute film, "Anybody's Son Will Do". Arguably the best documentary on military recruitment ever made, and tailored for public television, it scared the hell out of the U.S. military machine, which has done its best to "disappear" it. For years it has been nearly impossible to find a copy, until now.
Before You Enlist! provides a rational voice to counter the seductive and often deceptive recruiting practices of the U.S. military. The message is not "don't enlist" but rather to provide young people and their families a more complete picture of the life-altering consequences of joining the military especially in wartime.
Keith Olbermann goes off on a rant addressing George W. Bush's attempt to empathize with fallen soldiers fighting in Iraq.... by giving up golf. Or has he?
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If you're the President and your generals are so upset with you that they're quitting service so they can go public with how badly you've screwed up the military, Mr. George W. Bush, you might be having a bad day...
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The Army Corps of Engineers, the Keystone Cops of public civil engineering projects, continues its streak of crackerjack work. The Corps was shopping for bids for some new pumps for New Orleans' beleaguered canal system, so they needed to write up specifications for the pumps they were looking for. But that's a lot of work, what with the typing and drafts and spell-checking and all--so instead they decided to just cut and paste the text straight out of an existing catalog. You'll never guess whose catalog it was.
The letter, originally posted on Craigslist, says, "I'm having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I'm going to write this while I'm pissed off enough to do it right."
In exploring reasons why the "War in Iraq" isn't going so well, some liberals say it's because Americans have not been asked to make sacrifices for the war. Bill Maher, in his "New Rules" segment on HBO's Real Time, has a different take.