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Homeless Vets Struggle After
Returning From Iraq
The U.S. Vets Westside Residence Hall is a hulking eight-story
structure a few blocks from Los Angeles International Airport.
It's the largest transitional housing and employment centre
for homeless veterans in the country, hosting 700 veterans
annually.
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A Rough Road from Boot Camp to College
Derek Adams played with his two-year-old son on the grounds
of Veterans Upward Bound, an outreach and education programme
for former U.S. military service members outside the campus
of California State University, Humboldt.
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For Some Vets, No Way Out of the War Zone
The widow of an Afghanistan war veteran who was shot and
killed by the Maryland State Police is talking to a lawyer
after a state attorney's report released this month found
the troopers' behaviour was "flawed," "assaultive"
and "militaristic".
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Latino Soldiers Who Refused Iraq Speak Out
A U.S. Army medic who refused to load his gun in Iraq and
then escaped through a base window in Germany rather than
be deployed a second time returned home to Los Angeles this
week after serving six months in a U.S. military prison.
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Suicidal and Facing a Third Tour in Iraq
SAN FRANCISCO, May 15 (IPS) - At the beginning of May, Corporal
Cloy Richards tried to kill himself.
"He punched out all his windows and cut major arteries,"
his mother Tina Richards told IPS. "He had to go to the
hospital because he almost bled to death."
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Iraqi's Mental Health Suffering, Say Doctors
SAN FRANCISCO, May 12 (OneWorld) - More than 1,000 people
turned out this week for one the largest conferences to date
on the health effects of the Iraq war.
Leading researchers flew in from around the United States
to speak at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF).
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Ex-Soldier Recalls Horros of Abu Ghraib
Saturday marked the third anniversary of the Abu Ghraib prison
scandal. On Apr. 28, 2004 CBS broadcast the first graphic
photos of torture inside of the U.S.-run prison in Iraq on
its 60 Minutes II programme.
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Iraq, Afghanistan Vets Find Relief in the Floodlights
The house lights go down and the stage lights come up on
"The Wolf", the first production of VetStage, a
non-profit theatre company run by veterans of the U.S.-led
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It opens with a funeral: a Roman
Catholic priest preparing to deliver a eulogy for a U.S. soldier
killed by a road-side bomb.
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Civilian Court Sides With Conscientious Objector
University of California Santa Cruz student Robert Zabala
joined the Marine Corps thinking it would be a "place
where he could find security" after the death of his
grandmother in 2003.
But when he began boot camp in June 2003, Zabala said he
had an ethical awakening that would not allow him to kill
other people. He was particularly appalled by the boot camp's
attempts to desensitize the recruits to violence.
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U.S.-Korea Trade Deal Disappoints Labor, Rights Activists
Trade unionists on both sides of the Pacific expressed disappointment
Monday after the United States and South Korea agreed the
biggest U.S. trade pact in 15 years with only minutes to go
before a deadline.
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US Religious Leaders Urge
Bush to Talk to Iran
A delegation of U.S. religious leaders called for Washington
to negotiate with Tehran, following the delegation's landmark
two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
The 13-person religious delegation was the first to meet
with an Iranian president since the Islamic Revolution in
1979.
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SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 15 (IPS) - Staff Sergeant Don Hanks had
served 15 years in the U.S. Army before he spent a year running
patrols in the heart of Iraq's Sunni triangle. He said he
returned from the conflict a changed man.
Read more...
US-Korea Free Trade Talks
Go Nowhere
SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 16 (OneWorld) - Trade unionists on both
sides of the Pacific expressed relief Thursday after a seventh
round of free trade negotiations between South Korea and the
United States ended without an agreement.
Read more..
Reprieve for Officer Who
Denounced "Immoral War"
FORT LEWIS, Washington, Feb 8 (IPS) - The court-martial of
the first commissioned U.S. military officer to refuse to
serve in Iraq ended abruptly Wednesday when the military judge
overseeing the proceedings declared a mistrial over a technicality.
Read More..
Officer Who Wouldn't Serve
Goes on Trial
TACOMA, Washington, Feb 5 (IPS) - Supporters of the first
commissioned U.S. officer to refuse to serve in Iraq plan
to pack the courtroom at Fort Lewis, Washington where First
Lieutenant Ehren Watada will face a court martial Monday.
"If more officers like Lt. Watada come forward and said
they wouldn't order their troops into a war that's morally
wrong that means fewer enlisted people like myself will come
back injured or killed," former Marine Corp medic Chanan
Suarez-Diaz told a packed house of activists Sunday evening
in the basement auditorium of the First Congregational Church
in nearby Tacoma.
Read More...
What I Told Congress
[On Monday January 29, 2006 I spoke at a forum of the
US Congress' "Out of Iraq" Caucus in the Ways and
Means Committee room of the Longwoth House Office Buiding.
The forum was officiated by Congresswomen Maxine Waters of
Los Angeles and Lynn Woolsey of Northern California. Below
is a transcript of my opening remarks.]
Congresswoman Waters, and fellow members, a year ago I published
a book called How America Lost Iraq. The book, based on my
experiences as an unembedded journalist, documented how the
US military went from being seen as liberators to the situation
we have now - where the vast majority of ordinary Iraqis support
attacks on American soldiers in an effort to get them to leave
their country.
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Anti-War Marches Draw Hundreds
of Thousands
WASHINGTON --Peace activists from across the United States
gathered in Washington Sarturday for what they said was the
largest demonstration to date against the Iraq war.
"It's time for a new day," the Reverend Jesse Jackson
told what organisers estimated as a crowd of 500,000 demonstrators
gathered outside the halls of Congress on the National Mall.
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U.S. Military Spied on Hundreds
of Antiwar Demos
SAN FRANCISCO - At least 186 antiwar protests in the United
States have been monitored by the Pentagon's domestic surveillance
program, according to documents obtained by the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU), which also found that the Defense
Department collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans
in a single anti-terrorism database.
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Antiwar Soldier Speaks From Baghdad
More than 1,000 active duty US soldiers have signed a petition
to Congress – known as an Appeal for Redress – calling
for a withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq. Among them is
Sgt Ronn Cantu of Los Angeles, California. He served in Iraq
with the 1st Infantry Division from February 2004 until February
2005 and participated in the second siege of Fallujah in November
2004.
He started the website forum soldiervoices.net to give soldiers
a forum to speak about the Iraq war. Cantu was redeployed
to Iraq in December 2006 and spoke from Baghdad with Aaron
Glantz.
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Sick, Literally of Fighting in Iraq
Susan Tileston hasn't seen her son, Levi Moddrelle, in more
than two years. Levi served in the 101st Airborne Division
in Afghanistan and then Iraq, where he was stationed for almost
a year. He returned home for Christmas in 2003, but wasn't
the same.
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More Subpoenas in Watada
Case
In a case that could have repercussions for free speech and
press freedom in the United States, the U.S. military has
subpoenaed two peace activists and a journalist in its case
against Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to
be court-martialed for refusing to serve in Iraq
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Iraq Vets Come Home Physically,
Mentally Butchered
On New Year's Eve, the number of U.S. soldiers killed in
Iraq passed 3,000. By Tuesday, the death toll had reached
3,004 – 31 more than died in the Sep. 11 attacks on the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
But the number of injured has far outstripped the dead, with
the Veterans Administration reporting that more than 150,000
veterans of the Iraq war are receiving disability benefits.
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Saddam's Death Leaves Unanswered Questions
Iraqi-Americans reacted with sadness to the execution of
Saddam Hussein Saturday, calling the former Iraqi president's
death by hanging early this morning Baghdad time a missed
opportunity for justice.
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Reporter Summoned to Testify Against War Resister
The U.S. military subpoenaed an independent journalist Thursday,
demanding she testify as a witness for the prosecution of
First Lt. Ehren Watada, the first commissioned officer to
be court-martialed for refusing to serve in Iraq.
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Experts Expect Democrats to Hike Military Spending
Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress are likely
to drive U.S. military budgets even higher in 2007, experts
say.
This year's Pentagon budget is $436 billion. That amount
does not include more than $140 billion that's being spent
this year alone on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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A Glimpse of Life Under Occupation
The most honoured film about the Iraq war is opening at theaters
across the United States this month.
The documentary "Iraq in Fragments" by independent
film-maker James Longley won best director, cinematography
and editing when it opened at the prestigious Sundance Film
Festival earlier this year. Since then, it has won awards
at festivals in Chicago, Cleveland, Thessalonica, and at the
Human Rights Watch film festival in New York.
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Spying Won't Deter Us, Peace
Groups Say
A coalition of U.S. peace groups is pressing ahead with plans
for what it hopes will be a massive march on Washington Jan.
27, even though newly released documents show the antiwar
community is under Pentagon surveillance.
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Rural Communities Suffer
High Toll in Iraq, Afghanistan
Rural communities are experiencing a disproportionate amount
of U.S. military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan, according
to a new study by the Carsey Institute, a think tank at the
University of New Hampshire.
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Active Duty GIs Call for
Withdrawal
For the first time since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003,
active-duty members of the military are asking members of
Congress to end the occupation of Iraq and bring U.S. soldiers
home.
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Israeli Soldier Incarcerated
for Refusing to Fight
Israeli authorities have sentenced an army officer to 28
days in a military prison for refusing to serve in the ongoing
Israeli campaign in Lebanon.
32-year-old Reserve Captain Amir Paster, an infantry officer
and student at Tel Aviv University, is the first Israeli soldier
to be punished for refusing to serve in the current conflict
and has received harsh criticism from the Israeli military
for setting what it termed a bad example for his troops.
According to the soldier support group Yesh Gvul ("There
Is a Limit"), Paster refused to serve on the grounds
that Israeli operations were harming civilians, declaring
at his trial "taking part in this war runs contrary to
the values upon which he was brought up."
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Kurdish "Thank You"
A Republican Stunt?
Kurdish officials toured the United States last week to launch
a massive advertising and public relations campaign thanking
the United States for overthrowing Saddam Hussein and urging
U.S. companies to invest in the region.
The campaign looks suspicious to some observers, however,
since it is run by an A-list Republican public relations firm
that refuses to divulge how much money it is spending.
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Israel Targeting Aid Workers
Ambulances appear to be have become a target of the Israeli
military in its quest to oust Hezbollah from southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese Red Crescent Society has reported five "security
incidents" since the capture of two Israeli soldiers
by Hezbollah earlier this month sparked a large-scale Israeli
bombardment of southern Lebanon.
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Afghan Cabinet Wants Return
of Religious Police
An Afghan government proposal to reestablish the notorious
Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice
has raised concerns among U.S. human rights advocates.
Under the Taliban, the virtue and vice department enforced
restrictions on women and men through public beatings and
imprisonment.
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Normal Life Impossible in
Iraq
Living in Iraq is becoming absolutely impossible.
The numbers tell part of the story. The United Nations announced
Tuesday that, on average, 100 Iraqi civilians died every day
in May and June. According to the report, about 2,700 civilians
were killed in May and 3,100 were killed in June. Two days
later, the Iraqi government announced least 162,000 people
have fled their homes over the past five months in an effort
to escape the sectarian violence that has swept the country.
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A Friend, Alaa Hassan, Killed
in Iraq
A dear friend and colleague Alaa Hassan was killed on his
way to work in Baghdad June 28th. He was 35 years old. He
is survived by his mother, five brothers, five sisters and
his wife who is pregnant with their first child.
I collaborated with Alaa on stories for Inter Press News
Service, but he was not killed for being a reporter. Indeed,
he had only just begun helping IPS gather news. When fighters
ambushed him and machine-gunned his car, it was simply because
he was in the wrong place at the wrong time -- one of so many
people killed seemingly for no reason in Iraq each day.
I have written an article for IPS about Alaa's life and death,
which you can read here
Yours sincerely, Aaron Glantz
Israel: Stop Shooting Journalists
Somebody should tell the Israeli military it’s not right
to shoot reporters just because you disagree with them.
At least seven media workers were injured in the first 48
hours of fighting in Lebanon – all of them hurt by the
Israeli military. According to the watch-dog group Reporters
Without Borders the count includes three employees of the
Lebanese satellite channel New TV and four workers at the
Hizballah-controlled TV network al-Manar.
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GIs Could Be Stripped of
Immunity After Rape, Murder Allegations
SAN FRANCISCO, Jul 12 (OneWorld) - Iraq will ask the United
Nations to end immunity from local law for U.S. troops, the
country's human rights minister said on Monday, as the military
named five soldiers charged in a rape-murder case that has
outraged Iraqis.
According to the Pentagon, the indicted soldiers drank alcohol,
abandoned their checkpoint, changed clothes to avoid detection
and headed to a house, about 200 yards from a U.S. military
checkpoint in Mahmoudiya, a poor slum on the outskirts of
Baghdad. When they got there, the soldiers allegedly raped
a 14-year-old girl and then killed the victim and her family
to cover it up.
More
Iraqis Call for Timetable, America Cracks Down
Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld paid an unannounced visit
to Baghdad today, after telling reporters the Iraqi government
is not yet ready to determine the pace of U.S. troop reductions.
"We haven't gotten to that point," he said.
It's perhaps no accident that Rumsfeld's visit comes as the
Iraqi Parliament prepares to vote on a measure that would
demand a timeline for a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.
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U.S. Military Urged to Release
Statistics on Iraqi Casualties
SAN FRANCISCO, Jun 28 (OneWorld) - Humanitarian groups trying
to assess the number of innocent civilians killed in Iraq
are demanding the Pentagon back up its claims that fewer Iraqis
are being killed by accident at U.S. military check-points.
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Bush's
Iraq Visit a Lead Balloon
George Bush's much ballyhooed "surprise" visit
went over like a lead balloon in Iraq.
Even before Bush left Baghdad, thousands of supporters of
the Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr had taken took to the streets
in protest -- an incredible feat of organizing when you consider
even Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki didn't know about Bush's
trip until five minutes before his arrival.
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How Many Iraqis I Know Are
Dead?
Last Thursday, the BBC broadcast gruesome footage from Ishaqi,
a small community about 60 miles North of Baghdad. The Pentagon
has already dismissed allegations of a massacre there, but
the video tells the story clearly enough. Bodies of 11 Iraqi
civilians are riddled with bullet holes, among them a 75 year
old grandmother and a 6 month old baby shot in the head and
stomach.
Watching the video now from the comfort of California, I
realize that I have been to this small town.
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Zarqawi's Killing Won't
End Violence
BAGHDAD, Jun 8 (IPS) - Iraqis seem divided over the killing
of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian-born leader of al-Qaeda
in Iraq.
U.S. and Iraqi officials said he was killed along with seven
allies in an air raid overnight in Baqouba, 50km northeast
of Baghdad.
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'US Military Hides Many More Hadithas'
An Iraqi doctor who was in Haditha during a deadly U.S. raid
last year says there are many more stories like that in Haditha
that are yet untold.
The Pentagon admitted last week that U.S. Marines killed
24 civilians – including a 66-year-old woman and a 4-year-old
boy – in the western Iraqi town last November. Before
that, the military had maintained the civilians were killed
by a roadside bomb.
"There are many, many, many cases like Haditha that
are still undercover and need to be highlighted in Iraq,"
Dr. Salam Ishmael, projects manager with the organization
Doctors for Iraq and former chief of the junior doctors in
Baghdad's Medical City Hospital, told IPS.
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Multiply Haditha By Thousands
The Iraqi government has decided to launch its own investigation
into the killing of 24 people by U.S. Marines in the western
town Haditha last November.
The raid came to light after a local Iraqi videotaped the
killings. The tape told a story dramatically different from
the bland assertion by the U.S. military in November last
year that some people died in a roadside bomb blast.
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Basra Explodes
BAGHDAD, May 26 (IPS) - Basra in the south of
Iraq is beginning to splinter under increasing violence and
sectarian divisions.
Smuggling of oil on a large scale coupled with increasing
violence and the lack of basic services like water and electricity
has caused increasing tensions in the city, 570km south of
Baghdad. More than 100 civilians have been killed in Basra
so far this month.
More...
A New Iraqi Government?
Don't Believe the Hype
There's a lot of hype about Iraq's new "government."
In a speech to the National Restaurant Association in Chicago,
George Bush called the new government a "turning point
in the struggle between freedom and terror."
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America Loses Guns, Prisoners
The US government has lost track of over 200,000 machine
guns that were supposed to be used by the Iraqi police. The
99-ton cache of AK47s was to have been secretly flown out
from a US base in Bosnia. But the four planeloads of arms
have vanished. This, along with the escape of five Iraqi inmates
from a newly-built high security prison should be raising
new questions about the competence of the US occupation.
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Korean Farmers Say "No"
to Giant US Base
Sixty South Korean activists will face criminal charges after
they attacked police as part of a thousand-strong protest
against a government plan to expand a U.S. military base in
Pyongtaek, about an hour's drive south of Seoul.
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The Iraqi Government Is the Iraqis' Business
There's a lot of talk these days about splitting Iraq into
three parts. It's coming from almost every direction.
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Turkey Masses Troops on Iraqi Border
Life for Kurds in northern Iraq is about to get a lot more
complicated.
The Turkish army has begun massing troops on Iraq's northern
border in an effort to combat the Kurdish armed group the
PKK.
More...
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How America Lost Iraq