Q: Why are veterans, active duty, and National Guard men and women opposed to the war in Iraq?
A: Here are 10 reasons we oppose this war:
The Iraq war is based on lies and deception.
The Bush Administration planned for an attack against Iraq before September 11th, 2001. They used the false pretense of an imminent nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threat to deceive Congress into rationalizing this unnecessary conflict. They hide our casualties of war by banning the filming of our fallen’s caskets when they arrive home, and when they refuse to allow the media into Walter Reed Hospital and other Veterans Administration facilities which are overflowing with maimed and traumatized veterans.
For further reading: www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/index.html
Corporate profiteering is driving the war in Iraq.
From privately contracted soldiers and linguists to no-bid reconstruction contracts and multinational oil negotiations, those who benefit the most in this conflict are those who suffer the least. The United States has chosen a path that directly contradicts President Eisenhower’s farewell warning regarding the military industrial complex. As long as those in power are not held accountable, they will continue…
For further reading: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0714-01.htm http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/
Service members are facing serious health consequences due to our Government’s negligence.
Many of our troops have already been deployed to Iraq for two, three, and even four tours of duty averaging eleven months each. Combat stress, exhaustion, and bearing witness to the horrors of war contribute to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a serious set of symptoms that can lead to depression, illness, violent behavior, and even suicide. Additionally, depleted uranium, Lariam, insufficient body armor and infectious diseases are just a few of the health risks which accompany an immorally planned and incompetently executed war. Finally, upon a soldier’s release, the Veterans Administration is far too under-funded to fully deal with the magnitude of veterans in need.
For further reading: http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/ http://www.vets4vets.us/
The war in Iraq is tearing our families apart.
The use of stop-loss on active duty troops and the unnecessarily lengthy and repeat active tours by Guard and Reserve troops place enough strain on our military families, even without being forced to sacrifice their loved ones for this ongoing political experiment in the Middle East.
For further reading: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL
The Iraq war is robbing us of funding sorely needed here at home.
$5.8 billion per month is spent on a war which could have aided the victims of Hurricane Katrina, gone to impoverished schools, the construction of hospitals and health care systems, tax cut initiatives, and a host of domestic programs that have all been gutted in the wake of the war in Iraq.
For further reading: http://www.costofwar.com
The war dehumanizes Iraqis and denies them their right to self-determination.
Iraqis are subjected to humiliating and violent checkpoints, searches and home raids on a daily basis. The current Iraqi government is in place solely because of the U.S. military occupation. The Iraqi government doesn’t have the popular support of the Iraqi people, nor does it have power or authority. For many Iraqis the current government is seen as a puppet regime for the U.S. occupation. It is undemocratic and in violation of Iraq’s own right to self-governance.
For further reading:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
Our military is being exhausted by repeated deployments, involuntary extensions, and activations of the Reserve and National Guard.
The majority of troops in Iraq right now are there for at least their second tour. Deployments to Iraq are becoming longer and many of our service members are facing involuntary extensions and recalls to active duty. Longstanding policies to limit the duration and frequency of deployments for our part-time National Guard troops are now being overturned to allow for repeated, back-to-back tours in Iraq. These repeated, extended combat tours are taking a huge toll on our troops, their families, and their communities.
For further reading: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-military12jan12,0,7
If this is how US Soldiers treat puppies in Afghanistan and Iraq, what are they doing with the locals?
What else have these psychopaths brave men in uniform been doing that has not been caught on tape?
Calling people terrorists when your own government orchestrated and planned the entire 9-11 hoax. Welcome to the United States of Amnesia. Does this country feel any shame, guilty or responsibility for its actions, or it is always someone else’s fault?
“Third. The unstated threat. And here I criticise the [Bush] administration a little, because the argument that they make over and over again is that this is about a threat to the United States. And then everybody says: ‘Show me an imminent threat from Iraq to America. Show me, why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us?’ So I’ll tell you what I think the real threat is, and actually has been since 1990. It’s the threat against Israel. And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don’t care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn’t want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it’s not a popular sell.“
Wide open borders, toll roads and highways everywhere you turn, a cashless microchip based economy, and a common currency called the Amero. This scenario is not a movie script, its the future of Canada, the United States and Mexico. The Amero Logo is already available, thanks to the Fraser Institute. Here is a sneak peek to what these New World Order advocates have in mind.
In the US, experts are now predicting that the collapse of the dollar is imminent.
“People in the U.S. are going to be hit hard,” says Bob Chapman publisher of The International Forecaster newsletter. “In the severe recession we are entering now, Bush will argue that we have to form a North American Union to compete with the Euro.”
“Creating the amero,” Chapman explained, “will be presented to the American public as the administration’s solution for dollar recovery. In the process of creating the amero, the Bush administration just abandons the dollar.”
The framework agreements are already in place under the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP), and the only thing missing is the right event to get the masses to accept the idea. The SPP has been very busy duping the public under the guise of “Security and Prosperity”. As Benjamin Franklin said, “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”
Watch this video and see how the RCMP send their undercover Police officers to pose as protesters in an attempt to provoke the onslaught of the Riot Police, at recent Montebello Summit in Quebec, Canada in 2006.
His reference has weight and relevance in the American context, but in the wider global content the quote should be “The answer to 1984 is 1215.” With 1215 being the signing of the Magna Carta, a far more ground breaking document that was a framework for the American Constitution written more than 500 years later. It should not come as a surprise that David Rubinstein, a lawyer and founder of equity firm the Carlyle Group, just bought a copy of the Magna Carta for $21 million dollars. He is a key player in the Bilderberg Group. Its a slap in the face of freedom.
Which will it be, Liberty or Freedom? How many will give up their Liberty for Freedom? Make your choice.
As Edmund Burke said, “The people never give up their liberties, but under some delusion.”
In March 2004, just as the insurgent movement strengthened, several members of one National Guard unit arrived in Iraq, with cameras. THE WAR TAPES is the result – a uniquely collaborative film from a team that includes Director Deborah Scranton, Producer Robert May (THE FOG OF WAR) and Producer/Editor Steve James (HOOP DREAMS).
Straight from the front lines in Iraq, THE WAR TAPES is the first war movie filmed by soldiers themselves. It is Operation Iraqi Freedom as filmed by Sergeant Steve Pink, Sergeant Zack Bazzi and Specialist Mike Moriarty and other soldiers.
Zack is a Lebanese-American university student who loves politics, traveling, and being a soldier. Steve is a carpenter with a sharp sense of humor and aspirations to write, which he does with insight and candor. Mike is a resolute patriot and father of two, who rejoined the army after 9/11. All of them leave women at home—a mother, a girlfriend, and a wife.
While they battled unconventional forces, they recorded events that conventional journalists have been unable to capture. They mounted tripods on gun turrets, inside dashboards and used POV mounts on their Kevlar helmets and vests. They filmed all of the footage in Iraq, which amounted to over 800 hours of tape.
Zack, Steve, and Mike’s unit, Charlie Company, 3rd of the 172nd Infantry (MOUNTAIN) Regiment, was based at LSA Anaconda in the deadly Sunni Triangle, under constant threat of ambush and deadly IED attacks. They traveled, as a unit, 1.4 million miles during their tour, and lived through over twelve hundred combat operations and two hundred and fifty direct enemy engagements. That’s almost one a day.
The soldiers were not picked by casting agents or movie producers. They selected themselves. One hundred and eighty soldiers in Charlie Company were given the opportunity. Ten chose to take it on, and ultimately 21 soldiers filmed for the project, volunteering to share their eyes with America, not knowing where this experiment would take them.
“There was something incredibly profound about the soldiers being the ones to press the record button in Iraq that allows us into their world in a never before seen way,” said director Deborah Scranton Producer Robert May adds, “These soldiers were doubly courageous—as soldiers at war, and as human beings willing to share that experience in an honest, powerful and personal way.”
The filmmaking team shot an additional 200 hours of tape documenting the unfolding lives of the soldiers’ families at home, both during deployment and after the soldiers returned home. The families and girlfriends and mothers had also signed on, ensuring that THE WAR TAPES—like any true story about war—is not just about life inside the war, but the life left at home, and the always difficult and sometimes beautiful way the relationships develop and change.
Finally, the prodigious task of distilling over 1,000 hours of tape into the finished 97-minute film took an entire year. “We had to figure out how to preserve the complexity and rawness of their experience in the course of telling their story—a story we truly believe has not been told before,” said producer and editor Steve James.
Although five soldiers filmed their entire year’s deployment with one-chip Sony miniDV video cameras, in the end, the film follows the lives of three. “We wanted to tell a compelling, cohesive story—to focus on just a few soldiers so that, most importantly, audiences will truly get to know the soldiers seen in the film,” said producer Robert May. “After watching this film, we want people who don’t know soldiers in their personal lives to feel as if they know Zack, Mike, and Steve. And to accomplish that, we all had to cut scenes and soldiers that we loved.”
In the end, THE WAR TAPES is a complex, heartbreaking, and completely unique opportunity for millions to witness first-person experiences of war—a modern-day Odyssey—and the experience of homecoming.
Evil has spread across the land. Martial Law: 9/11 Rise of the Police State exposes the high-tech control grid that is being set up across AmericaOut of the ashes of the September 11th tragedy, a dark empire of war and tyranny has risen. The Constitution has been shredded and America is now a Police State. This film exposes not just who was behind the 9-11 attacks, but the roots and history of its orchestrators.
From the frontlines of the Police State to the darkest sanctum of the secret society that controls it, Martial Law reveals the master plan of a group hell-bent on capturing America today — and tomorrow the world.
THE NEW WORLD ORDER HAS SET IN MOTION THE FOURTH REICH
Martial Law is a blazing spotlight piercing the electronic Berlin Wall that is the corporate-controlled media. Plumb the depths of the Elite’s minds: their ideology, their driving philosophy – and uncover the power-mad “cult of Death” that is sworn to turn the Earth into a prison planet. Discover the documented truth yourself — before it’s too late.
NEW YORK (AP) — At least 121 Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans have committed a killing or been charged in one in the United States after returning from combat, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The newspaper said it also logged 349 homicides involving all active-duty military personnel and new veterans in the six years since military action began in Afghanistan, and later Iraq. That represents an 89-percent increase over the previous six-year period, the newspaper said.
About three-quarters of those homicides involved Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, the newspaper said. The report did not illuminate the exact relationship between those cases and the 121 killings also mentioned in the report.
The newspaper said its research involved searching local news reports, examining police, court and military records and interviewing defendants, their lawyers and families, victims’ families and military and law enforcement officials.
Defense Department representatives did not immediately respond to a telephone message early Sunday. The Times said the military agency declined to comment, saying it could not reproduce the paper’s research.
A military spokesman, Lt. Col. Les Melnyk, questioned the report’s premise and research methods, the newspaper said. He said it aggregated crimes ranging from involuntary manslaughter to murder, and he suggested the apparent increase in homicides involving military personnel and veterans in the wartime period might reflect only ”an increase in awareness of military service by reporters since 9/11.”
Neither the Pentagon nor the federal Justice Department track such killings, generally prosecuted in state civilian courts, according to the Times.
The 121 killings ranged from shootings and stabbings to bathtub drownings and fatal car crashes resulting from drunken driving, the newspaper said. All but one of those implicated was male.
About a third of the victims were girlfriends or relatives, including a 2-year-old girl slain by her 20-year-old father while he was recovering from wounds sustained in Iraq.
A quarter of the victims were military personnel. One was stabbed and set afire by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.
If this is what they are doing to their own families and in their own country, what are they doing over in Iraq and Afghanistan? Both foreign countries in which they are sent to kill.
What atrocities are they committing over there and we have not even heard about? I fear knowing the depth and extent of this sickness.
And of course the US Army does not collect these types of statistics, because they are “statistical anomalies” that do not serve their interests. Just as they do not collect statistics on the number of Iraqis or Afghans killed by their occupation.
The Russian army has similar problems with its veterans returning from Chechnya, in what has been called the Chechen Syndrome. This an excerpt from an article in Time that reports on this Syndrome;
Since the Chechen conflict began nine years ago, similar cases have been reported all across Russia: depressed young vets return embittered and traumatized to their home towns and begin lashing out at those around them. Russian psychiatrists, law-enforcement officials and journalists have started calling the condition Chechen syndrome (CS), drawing a parallel with the post-traumatic stress disorders suffered by American soldiers who served in Vietnam and Soviet soldiers who fought in Afghanistan.
The symptoms are identical — chronic fatigue, nightmares, attention problems, anxiety, aggression and denial — but some see Chechen syndrome as worse because Chechnya vets fought a war inside their own country. “At least 70% of [the estimated 1.5 million] Chechnya vets suffer CS,” says Yuri Alexandrovsky, deputy director of the Serbsky National Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow. “Some readjust. Many don’t. All need help.” (Sunday, Sep. 28, 2003 By YURI ZARAKHOVICH | MOSCOW | Time Magazine)
The war in Chechnya is another example of another war started on false premises. The FSB was heavily implicated in blowing up its own buildings as a pretext to start a war in Chechnya.
Does the plot sound similar? A government blowing up its own buildings and blaming others to justify starting a war against a population they have been demonizing in the media?
Invade a foreign country and you get a boost to your poll ratings (for a while until people figure out the truth) as a bonus.
Maybe the underlying cause of this psychosis is the unjust nature of all these wars?
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