GI Special:

thomasfbarton@earthlink.net

2.8.06

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GI SPECIAL 4B7:

 

 

 

 

 

A Casket Full Of Betrayal

 

From: Mike Hastie, US Army Medic, Vietnam

To: GI Special

Sent: February 07, 2006 3:31 AM

Subject: A Casket Full of Betrayal

 

When I saw the picture of Robson de Lima Barbosa [below] looking at his son, Corporal Felipe Carvalho Barbosa in his casket, I am reminded of a stark truth.

 

The people who are in control of America's war machine, will never wind up in a casket with a military uniform on.

 

It is so easy for them who don't go, to say he or she died for their country.

 

That line rolls off their lips with such ease.

 

Kind of like saying, "Our thoughts and prayers are with you and your family."

 

Such concern, and thoughtfulness.

 

I heard this so many times during the Vietnam War, until I went to Vietnam.

 

Two weeks after I came home, something was wrong with me.

 

Something died inside of me, and when I saw an American flag, I felt a sense of profound betrayal.

 

For years, I imagined putting an American flag in a casket, so I could grieve.

 

Because, that symbol is the most painful death of my life.

 

Mike Hastie

Vietnam Veteran

February 6, 2006

 

Robson de Lima Barbosa of Brazil with his son, Corporal Felipe Carvalho Barbosa, February 6, 2006.  Corporal Barbosa , 2nd Battalion, 6th Marine Regiment of the U.S. Marine Corps was killed in Iraq on January 28, 2006. REUTERS/Ellen Ozier

 

 

IRAQ WAR REPORTS

 

 

THREE MARINES DIE IN HIT IED ATTACK

 

2/7/2006 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 06-02-07CP

 

HIT, Iraq:  An improvised explosive device attack in Hit killed three U.S. Marines yesterday. 

 

The Marines are assigned to the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit (Special Operations Capable), which has operated in Al Anbar province since mid-December along with a battalion of Iraqi Army soldiers from the 2nd Brigade, 7th Iraqi Army Division.

 

MARINE DIES AFTER IED ATTACK

 

2/7/2006 HEADQUARTERS UNITED STATES CENTRAL COMMAND NEWS RELEASE Number: 06-02-07C

 

CAMP FALLUJAH, Iraq:  A Marine assigned to 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force (Forward), died as a result of wounds received by an improvised explosive device while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province Feb. 5.

 

Family Told Barberton Native Killed By Explosion:

He Wrote, “I’ll Be Home Soon”

 

February 07, 2006 Joe Guillen, Plain Dealer Reporter

 

Lance Cpl. David Parr, a 22-year-old Barberton native, was killed in Iraq on Sunday when his vehicle drove over an explosive device, family members said Monday.

 

"He was just a young Marine.  I didn't think he'd be in that much danger right now," said his mother, Diana Pasquinelli, who lives in North Carolina.

 

Pasquinelli said her son suffered an abdominal injury from the blast in the city of Hit.

 

Parr graduated from boot camp a year ago last month and left for Iraq in October.

 

He was based in Camp Lejeune, N.C. He attended Barberton High School through 11th grade before moving to North Carolina, Pasquinelli said.

 

"He was the hit of the crowd," she said.  "He loved to entertain people.  People just swelled on the stories that came out of his mouth.  He was a leader with a lot of respect for people."

 

Parr's sister, Misty Curley, 30, still lives in Akron.

 

She said that her brother had been expected home within a week for a brief leave and that they recently exchanged e-mails.

 

"I told him I'm going to drive him crazy now that I have his e-mail address," Curley said.

 

Curley had a message dated Feb. 4, two days before Parr's family was notified of his death.

 

He wrote, "I'll be home soon."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTES FROM A LOST WAR:

Feel Good Happy Talk Bullshit

Vs. Ugly Reality

 

[Any resemblance between the ass-kissing lying bullshit put out by this propagandist for the occupation and the reality in these photographs is purely coincidental. T]

 

 

February 7, 2006 By Nelson Hernandez, Washington Post Staff Writer

 

HIT, Iraq, Feb. 6:  The troops of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit had every reason to feel a sense of accomplishment. Violence in this ancient town along the western Euphrates River had dropped sharply since their arrival. They were only a few days from heading home. And they had not lost a single Marine during two months in Iraq's most dangerous province.

 

Until Monday. Word spread around the 22nd's main camp, among those who had stayed awake late to watch the Super Bowl: Five Marines were hit about 1:30 a.m. while driving in an armored Humvee. It was a roadside bomb. They were unconscious.

 

In the morning, the Marines learned that three of their comrades were dead.

 

The 2,300 troops of the 22nd, many of whom are veterans of combat in Afghanistan and Iraq, are familiar with war and its consequences. But their tour in Hit, a city of 30,000 to 40,000 in Iraq's restive Anbar province, had been unlike the others.

 

They walked the streets on foot, passing out candy, chocolates and the occasional soccer ball to waving children.  Their patrols weaved fearlessly around lines of cars and through packed markets.  For the most part, their house calls began with knocks, not kicks.  It was their strategy to win the respect, if not the love, of the city's Sunni Arab population.  

 

They wanted to cut the road linking the heartland of the Iraqi insurgency with the Syrian border.

 

No unit was more involved in the Hit campaign than Charlie Company of the 22nd Marine Expeditionary Unit's Battalion Landing Team.  The company's 200 men did the majority of the patrolling here.  And it was Charlie that suffered seven Marines wounded and three killed in a pair of attacks over the last week.

 

Led by Capt. David Handy, a native of New Bern, N.C., the company hadn't previously suffered a single man killed or wounded since coming to town in December.  Handy recorded 18 violent incidents a week when he arrived, and said it was down to four thanks to an aggressive program of patrolling the city's streets 24 hours a day.

 

"I think we've built a foundation here," Handy, 31, said before setting out on another patrol in the rain-soaked city Friday.  "I really do hope that I read in six months that the Marines are able to leave this city."  [Now would be even better.]

 

Apart from its strategic location, Hit has little but history to its name. Its founding dates to the days of Babylon, long before the prophet Muhammad or Jesus was born. Hollow stone ruins from that time still stand by the Euphrates on the edge of Hit, reminders of an age when conquerors showed no mercy to the beaten.

 

Within the next few days, the old rule the Marines had attempted to follow, treat others as you'd like to be treated, would be confronted by the more ancient wish for vengeance.  [Now check the photo below.  Can you believe anybody could be stupid enough not to realize these photos had been taken?  And write this puerile horseshit?]

 

Charlie Company's bad luck began a few hours after Handy stated his hope.  It had been a quiet day.  They assembled a convoy of five vehicles to make the day's "chow run" to two other bases in the city, delivering a hot dinner of beef stew and peas to the units standing guard there.

 

The convoy cleared the final checkpoint outside what the Marines called "Hotel Hit," a beaten-up former teachers' college in the western part of town that serves as Charlie Company's headquarters.  The three Marines in the last Humvee, accompanied by a reporter, were grousing about the wet weather when the sharp sound of an explosion ended their conversation.

 

It came from about 30 yards ahead.  The second-to-last vehicle was hit.  White sparks showered as the high-backed Humvee skidded to a halt a few feet forward of a crater three feet wide and about two feet deep.  The explosion had come from an antitank mine planted in an opaque puddle along the road, only 200 yards from the end of the barbed wire and barricades protecting Hotel Hit.

 

"It's an IED!" a Marine in the front passenger seat shouted, using the military's term for an improvised explosive device.  The convoy stopped and the Marines poured out of their Humvees.  The empty street resounded with the Marines' hoarse cries: What happened?  Secure the road!   Is anybody hurt?

 

Their expressions were creased with a mixture of surprise, alarm, fear and anger.

 

Cpl. Tadeusz Zych of New York, the convoy commander and leader of 2nd Squad, 3rd Platoon, radioed in to the base.  His squad fanned out, taking the front, rear and intersections of the street.  Others rushed to the site of the attack.

 

The explosion had ripped the Humvee's tires off and sprayed the cab with shrapnel. Three Marines sitting in the rear stumbled out in a daze, deafened and shaken by the blast.  The two others, who sat in the cab, were bleeding.

 

Lance Cpl. Janilson Silva of Brockton, Mass., was in the passenger seat and tried to get Pfc. Justin Reynolds, who had dislocated his ankle, out of the driver's seat.  But Silva's elbow had been hit by shrapnel.  Pfc. Alian Pequeno-Gimenez of Tampa came to help, getting Reynolds out of the car and onto the muddy asphalt.

 

It later emerged that Pequeno-Gimenez, known as "PG," was among those sitting in the back and was the most seriously injured.  He had a concussion and was soon drifting in and out of consciousness.

 

Reynolds, of Elida, Ohio, lay on the ground as a corpsman stopped the bleeding with a temporary tourniquet.  The Marines nearby pleaded with Reynolds not to look at the blood and swelling of his foot.  Reynolds bore the pain with stoic groans as he was placed on a stretcher and loaded onto another truck.  Handy, his face a mask of grim concentration, walked with swift strides from Hotel Hit to the shattered vehicle just down the road.

 

"Reynolds broke his leg.  Silva hurt his elbow.  PG is deaf," Zych said, adding an expletive as he sped back to the main camp northwest of Hit, leading the remains of his convoy.  "Don't get off the road!  Don't even think about it!" the 23-year-old native of Poland yelled at his driver while frantically fiddling with the radio, which had stopped working.

 

Zych reached the base and stepped out of his Humvee, enraged.  "When I go out there again, there are going to be a lot of dead hajjis , I'll tell you that," he said.

 

Two days later, Zych felt no need to use the nickname given to insurgents.  He had walked the city again since the attack. He was still shaken, it was his first combat experience, he said, but his anger had softened.

 

"We didn't take it out on kids," he said.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMPOSSIBLE MISSION:

FUTILE EXERCISE:

BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW!

A U.S. soldier stands guard near a damaged oil pipeline near Kirkuk, February 2, 2006. REUTERS/Slahaldeen Rasheed

 

 

TROOP NEWS

 

 

Wounded Soldier Forced To Pay For Blown-Up Body Armor:

“There’s A Complete Lack Of Empathy From Senior Officers Who Don’t Know What It’s Like To Be A Combat Soldier”

 

February 07, 2006 By Eric Eyre, Staff writer, The Charleston Gazette

 

The last time 1st Lt. William “Eddie” Rebrook IV saw his body armor, he was lying on a stretcher in Iraq, his arm shattered and covered in blood.

 

A field medic tied a tourniquet around Rebrook’s right arm to stanch the bleeding from shrapnel wounds.  Soldiers yanked off his blood-soaked body armor.  He never saw it again.

 

But last week, Rebrook was forced to pay $700 for that body armor, blown up by a roadside bomb more than a year ago.

 

He was leaving the Army for good because of his injuries.  He turned in his gear at his base in Fort Hood, Texas.  He was informed there was no record that the body armor had been stripped from him in battle.

 

He was told to pay nearly $700 or face not being discharged for weeks, perhaps months.

 

Rebrook, 25, scrounged up the cash from his Army buddies and returned home to Charleston last Friday.

 

“I last saw the (body armor) when it was pulled off my bleeding body while I was being evacuated in a helicopter,” Rebrook said.  “They took it off me and burned it.”

 

But no one documented that he lost his Kevlar body armor during battle, he said.  No one wrote down that armor had apparently been incinerated as a biohazard.

 

Rebrook’s mother, Beckie Drumheler, said she was saddened, and angry, when she learned that the Army discharged her son with a $700 bill.  Soldiers who serve their country, those who put their lives on the line, deserve better, she said.

 

“It’s outrageous, ridiculous and unconscionable,” Drumheler said. “I wanted to stand on a street corner and yell through a megaphone about this.”  [That’s right.  With about 20,000 other troops, fully armed.  At the White House.  Maybe that will get some attention from the scum who live there.]

 

Rebrook was standing in the turret of a Bradley Fighting Vehicle when the roadside bomb exploded Jan. 11, 2005.  The explosion fractured his arm and severed an artery.  A Black Hawk helicopter airlifted him to a combat support hospital in Baghdad.

 

He was later flown to a hospital in Germany for surgery, then on to Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital in Washington, D.C., for more surgeries.  Doctors operated on his arm seven times in all.

 

But Rebrook’s right arm never recovered completely.  He still has range of motion problems.  He still has pain when he turns over to sleep at night.

 

Even with the injury, Rebrook said he didn’t want to leave the Army.  He said the “medical separation” discharge was the Army’s decision, not his.

 

So after eight months at Fort Hood, he gathered up his gear and started the “long process” to leave the Army for good.

 

Things went smoothly until officers asked him for his “OTV,” his “outer tactical vest,” or body armor, which was missing.  A battalion supply officer had failed to document the loss of the vest in Iraq.

 

“They said that I owed them $700,” Rebrook said.  “It was like ‘thank you for your service, now here’s the bill for $700.’  I had to pay for it if I wanted to get on with my life.”

 

In the past, the Army allowed to soldiers to write memos, explaining the loss and destruction of gear, Rebrook said.

 

But a new policy required a “report of survey” from the field that documented the loss.

 

Rebrook said he knows other soldiers who also have been forced to pay for equipment destroyed in battle.

 

“It’s a combat loss,” he said. “It shouldn’t be a cost passed on to the soldier. If a soldier’s stuff is hit by enemy fire, he shouldn’t have to pay for it.”

 

Rebrook said he tried to get a battalion commander to sign a waiver on the battle armor, but the officer declined.

 

Rebrook was told he’d have to supply statements from witnesses to verify the body armor was taken from him and burned.

 

“There’s a complete lack of empathy from senior officers who don’t know what it’s like to be a combat soldier on the ground,” Rebrook said.  “There’s a whole lot of people who don’t want to help you.  They’re more concerned with process than product.” 

 

[They’re more concerned with moving up the career ladder.  Fuck the troops; treating them honorably isn’t what gets you the promotion.  Serving the domestic enemies and Imperial thieves who run the Pentagon and the rest of the government gets you the promotion.  Kissing ass gets you the promotion.  Fucking over wounded troops gets you the promotion. 

 

[That’s how the system works, and that’s how it’s meant to work by those who run it.  Duh.]

 

Rebrook, who graduated with honors from the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., spent more than four years on active duty.  He served six months in Iraq.

 

Now, Rebrook is sending out résumés, trying to find a job.  He plans to return to college to take a couple of pre-med classes and apply to medical school.  He wants to be a doctor someday.

 

“From being an infantryman, I know what it’s like to hurt people,” Rebrook said. “But now I’d like to help people.”

 

Anti-Gay Scum At Work:

“Thank God For Dead Soldiers”

Shirley Phelps-Roper from Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kan., holds signs in front of the St. Julie Billiart Catholic Church before a funeral for Army Pfc. Adam Shepherd, Jan. 27, 2006 in Hamilton, Ohio.

 

Members of the tiny Kansas church began picketing the services of U.S. soldiers they say died as punishment for defending a country that harbors homosexuals.  (AP Photo/David Kohl)

 

[How about “Thank God For Dead Bigots”?]

 

900 More From Oregon Off To Bush’s Imperial Slaughterhouse

 

February 7, 2006 From local and AP reports, The News-Review

 

SALEM: The largest overseas deployment of the Oregon National Guard since World War II is under way after soldiers bid farewell to family and friends on their way to Afghanistan.

 

Gov. Ted Kulongoski was among the state leaders on hand Saturday at a ceremony at the Oregon State Fairgrounds to send off the troops, including some 17 soldiers from Douglas County.

 

About 900 soldiers from the Oregon Army National Guard will go to Afghanistan in early June after three months of training at Camp Shelby, Miss.  Their primary mission is to train the Afghan army so it can take the lead in stabilizing the war-torn country.

“I am very excited and proud,” said Capt. J.E. Blues Buckholz, who lives in south Salem.  He will be in an office at Camp Phoenix, near Kabul, the Afghanistan capital, that assists military trainers working with the Afghan army in the field.

 

Although Buckholz said that his job is less dangerous than much of the work performed by National Guard troops, his family members are still worried about his safety. And the partners in his small business, a private investigations firm, will have to get by without him for one year.

 

The 41st Brigade will be joined in this deployment with soldiers from Arkansas, Arizona, California, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Puerto Rico, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.

 

 

IRAQ RESISTANCE ROUNDUP

 

 

Assorted Resistance Action

A damaged police vehicle in southern city of Basra, Feb. 7, 2006.  Four Iraqi police officers were wounded in a roadside bomb blast. (AP Photo/Nabil Al-Jurani)

 

02.07.2006 By PAUL GARWOOD & By Qassim Abdul-Zahra & By ROBERT H. REID, Associated Press & Deutsche Presse-Agentur & (Reuters)

 

In Fallujah, a prominent Sunni Arab cleric was killed by a hail of gunfire from two passing cars as he walked to work on Tuesday, said Fallujah police chief, Brig. Hudairi al-Janabi.

 

The motive for the attack was unknown, but last month Sheik Kamal Nazal welcomed Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad to the city 40 miles west of Baghdad.  [What’s “unknown” about that?]

 

A senior member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni political group seeking a place in the new government, deplored Tuesday's assassination and blamed U.S. and Iraqi authorities in part for failing to protect the sheik.

 

A roadside bomb wounded four policemen in Basra, police said.

 

In Basra, police killed a man who threw a hand grenade at police forces, said Capt. Mushtaq Khadim.  Two civilians and two policemen were wounded.

 

In Baquba, north-east of Baghdad, a policeman was killed and four by-standing civilians wounded in exchange of fire with insurgents.

 

Partisans in a minibus attacked a police patrol in Khalil Basha region, a suburban area of Baquba and exchange of fire broke out, causing casualties.  Police arrested four.

 

Two successive bombs took place in the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing one policemen and one civilian and injuring a total of 20 civilians and policemen.

 

The witnesses said an explosive bomb placed near a shop for CDs near Tahrir Square in the bosom of Baghdad went off. When a police patrol arrived, the second bomb exploded, killing an officer and a civilian and wounding five policemen.

 

A militant group said it has executed an Iraqi special forces lieutenant general and posted a video of the captive on the Internet on Tuesday.

 

The Army of Ansar al-Sunna video showed the man in military uniform identifying himself as Dera Mohammad Mahrous.  "I work at the command of the special forces," he told an off-camera militant, adding that he lived in the northern city of Kirkuk.

 

The middle-aged man held up what appeared to be identity cards as masked insurgents stood by with assault rifles.

 

"Our sharia (Islamic law) panel has sentenced him to death by shooting and the sentence was carried out so that he can be an example to others," the group said on the video, which did not show him being killed.

 

 

 

 

 

An Iraqi policeman inspects a damaged police vehicle after a bomb attack in Baghdad February 7, 2006. (Namir Noor-Eldeen/Reuters

 

 

FORWARD OBSERVATIONS

 

 

Another Betrayal By UFPJ:

“But Once Again NO VETERANS!!”

 

From: G

To: Veterans For Peace

Subject: Major Mobilization Set for April 29^th

Date: 31 Jan 2006

 

Do these people ever learn??

 

They seem to be duplicating their same error of Sept. 24.

 

Take a peek at the organizations listed: "Friends of the Earth', U.S. Labor, NOW, Climate Control, etc. [below]

 

But once again NO VETERANS!!

 

Surely there is enough time to let our sentiments be heard.

 

We must demand that veterans are included on the podium as featured speakers, not as 5 second sound bites.

 

These are not stupid people, so I can only assume that their actions to insult veterans are deliberate.(which does make them stupid).

 

Anyone of us can call UFPJ, but I believe an official letter from VFP would be more appropriate.

 

At any major anti war rally the voice of Veterans must be heard.

 

What say you??

 

G

 

ACTION ALERT * UNITED FOR PEACE AND JUSTICE

www.unitedforpeace.org 212-868-5545

 

Dear Friends,

 

We are pleased to announce the kick-off for the organizing of what promises to be a major national mobilization on Saturday, April 29th.

 

Today, each of the initiating groups (see list below) is announcing this mobilization.

 

Our organizations have agreed to work together on this project for several reasons:

 

a. The April 29th mobilization will highlight our call for an immediate end to the war on Iraq.  We are also raising several other critical issues that are directly connected to one another.

 

b. It is time for our constituencies to work more closely: connecting the issues we work on by bringing diverse communities into a common project.

 

c. It is important for our movements to help set the agenda for the Congressional elections later in the year.  Our unified action in the streets is a vital part of that process.

 

Please share the April 29th call widely, and please use the links at the end of the call to endorse this timely mobilization and to sign up for email updates.

 

April 29th Initiating Organizations

United for Peace and Justice

Rainbow/PUSH Coalition

National Organization for Women

Friends of the Earth

U.S. Labor Against the War

Climate Crisis Coalition

Peoples' Hurricane Relief Fund

 

 

OCCUPATION REPORT

 

 

U.S. OCCUPATION RECRUITING DRIVE IN HIGH GEAR;

RECRUITING FOR THE ARMED RESISTANCE THAT IS

An Iraqi man lies on the ground during a raid by U.S. soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division in Ramadi Feb. 1, 2006.  (AP Photo/Jacob Silberberg)

 

[Fair is fair.  Let’s bring 150,000 Iraqis over here to the USA.  They can kill people at checkpoints, bust into their houses with force and violence, overthrow the government, put a new one in office they like better and call it “sovereign,” and “detain” anybody who doesn’t like it in some prison without any charges being filed against them, or any trial.]

 

[Those Iraqis are sure a bunch of backward primitives.  They actually resent this help, have the absurd notion that it’s bad their country is occupied by a foreign military dictatorship, and consider it their patriotic duty to fight and kill the soldiers sent to grab their country.  What a bunch of silly people.  How fortunate they are to live under a military dictatorship run by George Bush.  Why, how could anybody not love that?  You’d want that in your home town, right?]

 

 

DANGER: POLITICIANS AT WORK

 

 

[Thanks to David Honish, Veterans For Peace, for sending in.

 

 

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