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For my generation, the end of a war is something of a foreign concept. I was 22 years old when we went into Iraq, and for most of my adult life, our country has been at war in Iraq.
Our military has fought valiantly throughout those nine years, fulfilling every mission it was given, even though it seemed at times as if our occupation would be indefinite.
But on Thursday at a ceremony in Baghdad, our military leaders cased its colors and left the country. By the holidays, our troops will be home with their families.
For those of us who supported Barack Obama in 2008 in part because of our shared opposition to the Iraq War, this is a significant day. The leader we helped elect has kept his word and brought this war to a responsible end.
We are also proud that our President has restored our image around the world and relationships with allies, both of which had been tested by our involvement in Iraq. The President rightly refocused our attention on Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the 9/11 terror plot was hatched, and has eliminated more than half of al Qaeda's leadership - including, of course, Osama bin Laden.
While the end of a war may be new to young Americans, the return of our veterans is something we know well. My generation takes great pride in our military and what it has accomplished, including this new era of democracy for the Iraqi people who, starting today, will determine the future of their nation.
The President takes seriously his responsibility to ensure that everyone whose service made this day possible can get the care and benefits they earned. And we support the President's fulfillment of another promise: to make sure our Iraq veterans can go to college at no cost, get quality healthcare and get the training they need to find a job in the civilian workforce. He's also encouraging companies to hire our veterans and put them back to work - a plan that will help not only those companies and veterans, but also our economy as a whole.
As we celebrate the end of a war, we keep close to our hearts the memories of 4,500 brave Americans - many of them young Americans like us - who gave everything for our country. They are my generation's truest heroes.
Jessica Lynch became a soldier so she could go to college. She graduates on Friday:
MORGANTOWN, W.Va.-- Jessica Lynch was just 19 when the world first saw her - a broken, blond soldier caught on combat video in Iraq, her face wearing something between a grimace and a grin.
The Army supply clerk was being carried on a stretcher after nine days as a prisoner of war. She had been captured along with five others after the 507th Maintenance Company took a wrong turn and came under attack in Nasiriyah on March 23, 2003. Eleven of her fellow soldiers died.
Lynch had joined the Army at 18 to earn money for college and become a school teacher. This Friday, at 28, she completes that mission.
She'll spend Thursday finishing her training as a student teacher at the same elementary school she attended in sparsely populated Wirt County. Then, on badly damaged legs and a right foot that still pains her, she'll walk across a stage Friday evening and get her education degree from West Virginia University at Parkersburg.
Let us never forget the horrors inflicted upon our nation by President George W. Bush and the Other President Dick Cheney. This originally appeared in November 2007 at Daily Kos. Carnacki
At this point in the rule of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, I thought I had reached shock fatigue. We've seen illegal invasions, torture, unprecedented levels of corruption, a warrantless wiretapping on a nationwide scale, and an erosion of national credibility on everything from the environment to the rule of law.
Yet this morning I read a story that filled me anew with fresh outrage and I think exemplifies the horrors - the absolute horrors - of this administration and the political ideology behind them.
The article is in Vanity Fair's November edition, The People vs. the Profiteers. (If this was diaried earlier this month, my apologies. I did a search on several key words and did not see it. Vanity Fair is a very thick magazine and I read it from front to back so I usually read it spaced out over the entire month).
In it, the writer, David Rose, covers how an attorney, Alan Grayson, has led a campaign against government corruption. He's done so for 16 years. In the past the Department of Justice often allied with him to root out corrupt officials. But when it has come to the Iraq war, the DOJ has thrown up roadblock after roadblock.
In this administration corruption on a massive scale is a statistic. It's an example Rose uses from among the cases that is the outrage.
Consider the case of Grayson's client Bud Conyers, a big, bearded 43-year-old who lives with his ex-wife and her nine children, four of them his, in Enid, Oklahoma. Conyers worked in Iraq as a driver for Kellogg, Brown & Root. Spun off by Halliburton as an independent concern in April, KBR is the world's fifth-largest construction company. Before the war started, the Pentagon awarded it two huge contracts: one, now terminated, to restore the Iraqi oil industry, and another, still in effect, to provide a wide array of logistical-support services to the U.S. military.
In the midday heat of June 16, 2003, Conyers was summoned to fix a broken refrigerated truck-a "reefer," in contractor parlance-at Log Base Seitz, on the edge of Baghdad's airport. He and his colleagues had barely begun to inspect the sealed trailer when they found themselves reeling from a nauseating stench. The freezer was powered by the engine, and only after they got it running again, several hours later, did they dare open the doors.
The trailer, unit number R-89, had been lying idle for two weeks, Conyers says, in temperatures that daily reached 120 degrees. "Inside, there were 15 human bodies," he recalls. "A lot of liquid stuff had just seeped out. There were body parts on the floor: eyes, fingers. The goo started seeping toward us. Boom! We shut the doors again." The corpses were Iraqis, who had been placed in the truck by a U.S. Army mortuary unit that was operating in the area. That evening, Conyers's colleague Wallace R. Wynia filed an official report: "On account of the heat the bodies were decomposing rapidly.... The inside of the trailer was awful."
(As an aside, I have smelled the sickly scent stench of putrified corpses more times than I care to recall. It is one of the worst smells in existence. I cannot imagine what 15 trapped inside a metal trailer for two weeks in the desert heat would have been like.)
Under any consideration, the rule of civilian or military regulations or laws, religious taboos, and basic human decency, there are prohibitions against carrying food and water in the same containers that had been used to carry human corpses - yet alone putrid corpses.
But that is exactly what is being done in Iraq. To our soldiers. With our tax dollars.
But when Bud Conyers next caught sight of trailer R-89, about a month later, it was packed not with human casualties but with bags of ice-ice that was going into drinks served to American troops. He took photographs, showing the ice bags, the trailer number, and the wooden decking, which appeared to be stained red. Another former KBR employee, James Logsdon, who now works as a police officer near Enid, says he first saw R-89 about a week after Conyers's grisly discovery. "You could still see a little bit of matter from the bodies, stuff that looked kind of pearly, and blood from the stomachs. It hadn't even been hosed down. Afterwards, I saw that truck in the P.W.C.-the public warehouse center-several times. There's nothing there except food and ice. It was backed up to a dock, being loaded."
This is where a Republican ideology leads us. The for-profit contractor used a refrigerated tractor trailer permeated with human remains in the wood floor and on the floor itself to carry ice and probably food.
Profit over people - even when it comes to the troops they claim to support. They outsourced a basic government service of the feed and care of the troops for a for-profit enterprise which didn't care about their health or human decency.
It came down to a shortage of refrigerated trucks. Rather than buy more, Kellough Brown and Root kept it running from corpse hauling to food hauling. Conyers was fired by KBR for not being a "team player."
How KBR treated Conyers would itself be an outrage but after hauling ice for human consumption with the remains of putrid corpses, anything KBR does under that pales in comparison. The entire story is well worth a read, including how the DOJ is using a provision of the whistle-blower law probably to keep incidents like this covered up rather than to investigate them as it should.
Grayson has hope that one day the deep-rooted profiteering and corruption of the Iraq war will come to light.
There are a few encouraging signs that a day of reckoning is drawing near. Committees in both the House and the Senate have held hearings on contracting in Iraq, and several plan to hold more. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate judiciary committee, has introduced a War Profiteering Prevention Act, which would make it much easier to investigate corrupt contractors and call them to account. And in August, the news that tens of thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces had vanished or been stolen prompted the Pentagon to announce that its inspector general, Claude M. Kicklighter, would lead an 18-person team to investigate "contracting practices" in Iraq.
In the more distant future, a Democratic administration might open up the vaults and expose the American public to the scale of what has been looted. "What we have seen up to now is the worst of the worst in terms of a deliberate cover-up," Grayson says. But if and when it comes to an end, he thinks it's entirely possible that Congress will appoint a special prosecutor-one whose targets might one day reach "an extremely high level."
We can only hope. But I think the stench will linger forever.
She may be out of the military and out of prison, but West Virginia's Lynndie England gets to continue to serve as America's scapegoat:
More than two years since leaving her prison cell, the woman who became the grinning face of the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal spends most of her days confined to the four walls of her home.
Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.
She doesn't like to travel: Strangers point and whisper, "That's her!"
In fact, she doesn't leave the house much at all, limiting her outings mostly to grocery runs.
"I don't have a social life," she says. " ... I sit at home all day."
Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice makes a point the AP doesn't have the balls to make:
We may never be allowed to call Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, William Kristol, or any of their prosperous fellows to account for their crimes during the ginning up and prosecution of our latest War Against the Iraqis. But, by the Christianists' God, we can at least ensure that the face of America's nightmare behavior there will be ostracized from Appalachia's fast-food emporiums and public housing
I missed this earlier this month in The New York Times when Stephen Colbert was on his USO tour for the troops:
Tom Foss is a comedian who has traveled to 18 countries to entertain the troops, including four tours of Iraq and three of Afghanistan.
As a comedian I use my freedom of speech to make a living, so it's an honor to entertain the troops. I get my biggest laugh when I tell them they make me feel like I am back at home in West Virginia. They have me staying in a trailer, I am working in a tent, its hot out and the Christmas lights are still up. Just like home!
I never go overseas with the idea that I am going to tell the troops what they are doing or what I would do if I were them. I try to bring them home for a couple of hours. I mostly tell Wal-Mart and Nascar jokes and let their minds get away from the stress of war. It's always hard to leave when the tours are over. But I still keep in touch with many of these great troops I've met on my tours. Entertaining them is the best thing that I can do with the skills I have.
Army Sgt. 1st Class Otie J. McVey, 53, of Oak Hill.
Evacuated from Iraq Sept. 23, 2004, for a non-combat related illness and died in Beaver, W.Va. Nov. 7, 2004.
BAGHDAD - Cheered wildly by U.S. troops, President Barack Obama flew unannounced into Iraq on Tuesday and promptly declared it was time for Iraqis to "take responsibility for their country" after America's commitment of six years and thousands of lives.
"You have given Iraq the opportunity to stand on its own as a democratic country," the president said as he made a brief inspection of a war he opposed as candidate and now vows to end as commander in chief. "That is an extraordinary achievement."
Sunday morning, a cold front has replaced the driving rain with chilly sun. What better time to enjoy a cup of your favorite morning beverage and dig into substantive topics.
These links caught my eye in the last 24 hours.
** What exactly caused our latest economic meltdown? Kevin Drum weights the evidence... the housing bust or ... ?
Good article on the persistence of cliches and stereotypes in movies about West Virginia from Tony Rutherford, entertainment editor of the Huntington News. We see that the stereotyping not only in films but also from many political pundits and bloggers.
Speaking on behalf of Gov. Manchin, press secretary Matt Turner stated the governor believes that often " the writers and producers responsible for the portrayal not only are not familiar with the state, [but] in many cases they have never been here. It's easy to pass judgment on a place or people you don't know and to base that on an existing stereotype."
For those of you in the Shepherdstown area, please attend:
"Shared Prosperity" Town Hall Meeting
West Virginians United for Social & Economic Justice, a coalition of progressive state organizations, is holding the next in its series of community town hall meetings at the Robert C Byrd Center for Legislative Studies on Sept. 22nd from 7-9 PM.
Speakers will outline the group's basic agenda with brief comments and then open the discussion up to community members. These policy topics are: Health Care for America Now - making health care affordable and assessable to all West Virginians; Cost of War - connecting the extreme costs of the conflict in Iraq to the cuts in spending for education, housing, social services and other domestic spending right here in West Virginia; Justice in the Workplace - how workplace issues affect quality of life; Civil Justice - protecting citizen access to our courts; and Economic Fairness - how public policy can level the playing field and work toward a shared prosperity by Investing in America's Future!
Contact Gary Zuckett 304-346-5891 for more information.
"The greatest judge will be history. Mistakes have been made."
History has already judged, Ms. Capito. Seven years after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11th, the mastermind Osama bin Laden remains free. He remains free because George W. Bush - with your endorsement and support - diverted troops and resources from the hunt for bin Laden to attack Iraq, a country we knew had nothing to do with the Sept. 11 attacks.
Today of all days, Ms. Capito, you should bow your head in shame and pray for the forgiveness of the dead from Sept. 11th for the justice delayed that is owed them.
No wonder Bush Republican Rep. Shelley Moore "Country Club" Capito's Pennsylvania campaign manager wouldn't let Capito speak about the Iraq war. Interviewed by the Charleston Gazette, the woman showed she's unrepetenant. More than 4,000 dead soldiers, hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqs, the U.S. reputation in tatters, our military at the breaking point, a "surge" being called successful despite reaching not a single defined goal set by the administration and Capito says this:
"I have regrets," Capito said. "It may end up to have been a mistake. But I can't make that judgment now."
It may end up being a mistake? Bush's own intelligence reports have shown the Iraq war not only is creating more enemies for us there, it also diverted the military from the hunt for Osama bin Ladin and allowed the Sept. 11 mastermind to remain alive and free.
Another major obstacle has been the war in Iraq.
Officials with the CIA and the U.S. military said they began shifting resources out of Afghanistan in early 2002 and still haven't recovered from that mistake.
"Iraq was a fundamental wrong turn. That was the most strategically negative action that was taken," said John O. Brennan, a former deputy executive director of the CIA and a former chief of the National Counterterrorism Center. "The collective effort in the government required to go after an individual like bin Laden -- the Iraq campaign consumed that."
The Bush administration tried to reinvigorate the flagging hunt for bin Laden early last year by redeploying Predator drones, intelligence officers and Special Forces units to Pakistan and Afghanistan. But by then, U.S. counterterrorism officials said, the war in Iraq had already given bin Laden and his core command precious time to regroup and solidify their new base of operations in northwestern Pakistan.
To Capito that's not a mistake. Just as Bush has been a boon to help bin Laden recruit new people, Capito and the Republicans have used him as a campaign tool, turning the united desire of America for justice into partisan politics.
Capito refuses to acknowledge that her support of the Iraq war was a mistake. It certainly was. She claims to have "regrets." Her regret is we see the blood on her hands. Some day she's going to have to acknowledge it is there and come clean with how deeply she has failed the American people and West Virginians.
Capito refuses to acknowledge her mistake. We have the opportunity in November to correct ours in electing Capito in the first place and send Anne Barth to Washington to represent us.
"We spend $12 billion a month on the war. Iraq is getting new roads, new bridges and new schools. Their government has a surplus."
Barth believes that money would be better spent at home. "We need to invest in our infrastructure....
"The Bush administration had grossly mismanaged our economy. They destroyed a $5.6 trillion surplus. We have $10 trillion in national debt."
Barth remembers talking with worried parents who called Byrd's office. "We sent troops to Iraq without body armor. We sent them in and did not provide that for them. I would have voted against it [the Iraq invasion]."
Like Senator Robert C. Byrd, Barth understands West Virginians and will work for us and not continue the failed policies of George W. Bush.
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