Pentagon now taking its cues from the worst used car dealers
From the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA.org), the story of Jon Town, a badly wounded soldier who got royally screwed out of his medical care — in fact, the Pentagon eventually claimed he owed them money.This sentence here gives the flavor — the bit about a rocket and a skull in particular stand out for me:
His struggles appear to be classic symptoms of traumatic brain injury (TBI), a result of the rocket’s impact on his skull, and not, as [Army psychologist] Dr. Wexler diagnosed, a behavioral disorder.
That didn’t stop an Army psychologist from promising him that if he just signed a document attributing his symptoms to a personality disorder, he’d get all his benefits and get on with his life — when in reality the fine print on the document essentially stripped him of everything.
Read the whole thing. Â
President Bush visited Vietnam today for the first time during his presidency, with the primary focus of strengthening business ties with the nation. Bush’s trip to the country while we are engaged in a long and drawn out occupation conjured up questions about whether there are lessons to be learned from the war in Vietnam. In response, Bush, true to form, instead touted the country’s steadfast resolve to succeed:
“One lesson is, is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while.”
And, although it is hard to tell from the sliced footage of CNN that the folks over at Think Progress have, Bush, seems to continue his response, sticking to his tired guns, saying, “We’ll succeed until we quit.” Apparently, the big/important lesson from Vietnam seems to have slipped his mind.
Will Gates Open the Floodgates in Iraq?
That’s the question posed by Tom Engelhardt in a new piece that deflates some of the hype surrounding the retun of Robert Gates and Jim Baker. The conventional wisdom is that “daddy’s boys” have arrived to (once again) save George W. Bush’s butt from a fiasco of his own making. (See this week’s Newsweek cover for the short version of this satisfying pop psych-meets-poli sci analysis.) But Engelhardt suspects that rather than advocating redeployment or withdrawal, Gates and Baker may just prolong our involvement by signing onto the recently floated plans to send more troops to give it the old school try:
…[P]erhaps the disaster behind us will be nothing compared to the disaster ahead, especially if Daddy’s Boys, the Iraq Study Group, other Democratic and Republican movers and shakers, and all those generals and former generals floating around our world decide that this isn’t the moment to rediscover a Colin Powell-style “exit strategy,” but “one last chance” to succeed by any definition in Iraq. Then, god help us — and the Iraqis. Sooner or later, we’ll undoubtedly be gone from a land so determinedly hostile to being occupied by us, but that end moment could still be a long, long time in coming.
Here, for instance, is Robert Gates’ thinking eighteen months ago in a seminar at the Panetta Institute at California State University in Monterey on “phased troop withdrawals” from Iraq:
“But Mr. Gates qualified his comments, noting it sometimes takes time to accomplish your goals. Sixty years after the end of the Second World War, ‘there are still American troops in Germany,’ he noted. ‘We’ve had troops in Korea for over 50 years. The British have had troops in Cyprus for 40 years… If you want to change history, you have to be prepared to stay as long as it takes to do the job.”
So hold onto your hats. Tragedy and more tragedy seems almost guaranteed, and the Pentagon has just submitted to Congress a staggering $160 billion supplemental appropriation request in order to continue its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Engelhardt says we should expect “endless months or years of non-withdrawal withdrawal plans” combined with preparations for a permanent American presence in Iraq (a story that hasn’t received much mainstream attention but was covered in MJ last year.) George Bush Sr.’s cavalry may have arrived, but we’re far from being rescued.
Police Brutality, Brought to You by YouTube
Police tasered an unarmed student at least four times on Tuesday night inside the UCLA library.
23-year-old Mostafa Tabatabainejad did not have or was not showing his ID when he told the police, “Don’t touch me,” after they grabbed him on his way out with his backpack.
After they stunned him, he screamed and yelled, “Here’s your Patriot Act. Here’s your fucking abuse of power.”
A crowd of dazed and angry students demanded the officers’ names, with one saying, “You shocked him repeatedly. It’s a violation….” to which an officer warned, back off or “you’re gonna get tazed too.”
The hair-raising scene is the third LA police brutality case publicized on YouTube this month. The first showed an officer repeatedly punching a suspect in the face after a foot chase in Hollywood. The second showed an officer pepper-spraying a suspect who is handcuffed inside a cruiser.
After the second video surfaced, Councilman Bernard C. Parks, a former police chief, said that for over a year, the LAPD has ignored warnings of an “ongoing discipline problem” in the department. Of course, the LAPD likely isn’t fazed by the YouTube phenomenon; they’ve been starring in on-camera beatings for more than 15 years.
—April Rabkin
And you thought THOSE videos were bad…Â
Fox News: Our Brand is Still Crisis
The Huffington Post has obtained one of those infamous internal Fox News Memos. Here’s FNC’s veep for news rallying the troops after the election:
The elections and Rumsfeld’s resignation were a major event, but not the end of the world. The war on terror goes on without interruption…. [L]et’s be on the lookout for any statements from the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress…. The question of the day, and indeed for the rest of bush’s [sic] term, is: What’s the Dem plan for Iraq?… Just because Dems won, the war on terror isnt’ [sic] over.
Fox’s website may have gone blue, but it looks like the Kool-Aid over there is still bright red.