Today's Stories

March 6-8 , 2009

Chris Floyd
Tangled Up in Karl

Uri Avnery
Remember Ophira?

David Ker Thomson
Against Work

March 5 , 2009

James G. Abourezk
This Time It's Mrs. Clinton's Turn

Kathleen and Bill Christison
U.S. Military Aid to Israel

Robert Weissman
Wall Street's Best Investment: Paying for Public Policy

Patrick Cockburn
My Day at the Terror "Charity"

William Blum
Being Serious About Torture...Or Not

Robert Fantina
From Iraq to Afghanistan: Augmentation All Over Again

Saul Landau
The Unseen Crisis

Benjamin Dangl
Striking a Blow Against the Beer Cartel: a Grassroots Victory in Utah

Christopher Brauchli
The New Leaders of the GOP

Website of the Day
The Angola 3: 36 Years of Solitude

March 4, 2009

Marjorie Cohn
Blueprints for a Police State

Mike Whitney
Blowing Up the Economy: How Securitization Lit the Fuse

Ron Jacobs
The Banality of Occupation: the Rand Papers

Ashley Smith
War by Another Name

Joanne Mariner
Obama's War on Terror

Dan Bacher
The California Water Wars: Why It's Not a Conflict Between Fish and People

Mark Engler
Will the Winds of Change Reach El Salvador?

Franklin Lamb
"What's Hezbollah Done for Us Lately?"

Cal Winslow
Slugging It Out in California

David Mandelzys
Apartheid Week

Website of the Day
Guantánamo: the Definitive Prisoner List

March 3, 2009

Conn Hallinan
Ethnic Cleansing and Israel

Fawzia Afzal-Khan
The Long, Dark Night of Pakistan

Brian M. Downing
The Changing Game in Afghanistan

Robert Larson
External Damnation: Companies are Designed for Destruction

Daniel P. Wirt, MD
Single-Payer Health Reform

Russell Mokhiber
Burn Your Health Insurance Bill!

William Loren Katz
Obama, One Ape and Two Newspapers

Kathy Sanborn
The Lazy Man's Guide to the Economic Crisis

Pauline Imbach
A New Start for the World Social Forum?

Christopher Ketcham
The Best Journalism You'll Write is Priceless

Website of the Day
The Surveillance Self-Defense Project

March 2, 2009

Andrea Peacock
A Poisoned Town's Shot at Justice

Paul Craig Roberts
Obama's Budget

Peter Lee
Pakistan Lurches Toward the Abyss

John Blair
Locking Down Big Coal

Peter Morici
Treasury's Flawed Plan for Citigroup

Uri Avnery
10 Ways to Kill Fatah

Michael Donnelly
Resistance to the War on the Wild

Fred Gardner
The Judge Who Ruled Marijuana is Medicine

Sonia Nettnin
Middle East Medical Mission Heroes

Andrew Lehman
A New Deal for the Web

Website of the Day
Pentagon Papers II?

Feb. 27 - March 1, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
Is Nancy Pelosi Really Against War Crimes?

Harry Browne
Where the Cheats Have No Shame

Anthony DiMaggio
From Bush to Obama: Seven Years of Wartime Propaganda

Sasan Fayazmanesh
Dennis Ross and Iran: the Fox and the Chicken Coop

Mischa Gaus
The Banks' War on Workers

Felice Pace
The Economy and the Big Picture

Mike Whitney
Is Free Market Capitalism Possible Without Accountability?

Lee Sustar
Blaming the Autoworkers

Peter Lee
The Other Side of the Coin in Afghanistan

Nicole Colson
Ruining Young Lives for Profit

Roger Burbach
Et Tu, Daniel? The Betrayal of the Sandinista Revolution

Rannie Amiri
King Abdullah Has No Robes

Missy Beattie
Owning Disaster

Dave Lindorff
America's Stupid Health Care Debate

Robert David Steele Vivas
Intelligence for the President--and Everyone Else

John Ross
Teotihuacan Gets Mickey-Moused

Ralph Nader
Civic Heroism Awards

Yves Engler
Haiti's Harsh Realities

Alan Farago
The Story of Leonard Abess, Banker

Zulfikar Majid
Understanding Kashmir

David Yearsley
Don't Stay Up Too Late, Johan!

Charles R. Larson
Sleeping with Dogs

Kim Nicolini
Spitting at Dark Times: Mike Leigh's "Happy-Go-Lucky"

Lorenzo Wolff
So You Wanna Be a Garage Rock Star

Poets' Basement
Puthoff, Payne, Gaffney and Gray

Website of the Weekend
Sleep Now in the Fire

February 26, 2009

Dave Lindorff
Obama's Address to Congress

Jonathan Cook
Israel's Military Mephistopheles

Patrick Cockburn
Did the US Learn Anything in Iraq?

Mike Whitney
The Geithner Put

Eamonn McCann
"Make Bono Pay Tax"

Tim Wise
Eric Holder and the Whitewashing of Racism

Tom Barry
Napolitano's Hard Line

Harvey Wasserman
Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Adam Turl
The Enemies of Unions and the Lies They Tell

David Macaray
When People are Fired Illegally

James McEnteer
Rush to the Rescue: Limbaugh's Secret Plan to Save the Economy

Website of the Day
The Carbon Casino

February 25, 2009

Chris Sands
Afghanistan: Chaos Central

M. Shahid Alam
Israel in 1948: Poised for Expansion

Chris Floyd
Obama's Non-Withdrawal Withdrawal Plan

Dave Lindorff
Wall Street and Bernanke: the Blind Leading the Blind

Norman Solomon
The Slow Pullout Method

Rachel Godfrey Wood
Neoliberals Do The Amazon

Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Teacher and Student: the New Class Struggle

Ron Jacobs
It Ain't Over Till It's Over

Nadia Hijab
The First Waltz

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Website of the Day
Hitchens Gets Stomped by Syrian Nerd

February 24, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
How the Economy was Lost

Uri Avnery
Coalition Theory

Peter Morici
Is Nationalization Inevitable?

Jonathan Cook
Arab Parties Face Most Hostile Knesset in History

Paul Fitzgerald /
Elizabeth Gould
The Man Who Shouldn't be King (of Afghanistan)

Andy Worthington
Who is Binyam Mohamed?

Brian Horejsi
Crisis Creates Hope for Reality

Julia Stein
I was a Writer for the Government

Norm Kent
How Judges Disgrace the Bench

Rachel Smolker /
Brian Tokar
Biofuels, Promise or Threat?

Dennis Loo
The Water Line: Doing What Must be Done

James McEnteer
The Oscar for Denial

Website of the Day
How to Destroy a Fox News Anchor

February 23, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Language of Looting

Mike Roselle
On Cherry Pond: Going Up Against Big Coal in W. Virginia

Patrick Cockburn
The New War in Iraq

Franklin Spinney
Obama Steps on the Pentagon Escalator

Einar Már Guðmundsson
A War Cry From the North

Ralph Nader
How Credit Unions Survived the Crash

Jordan Flaherty
A New Orleans Intifada?

Helen Redmond
Ted's Table: Kennedy and the Corporate Lobbyists Craft a Health Plan

Dennis Loo
The Water Line

Harvey Wasserman
Jet Crashes and Nuclear Reactors: Feds Ignore a Serious Risk

Terry Lodge
The Intelligence is Wrong

Website of the Day
BadCreditReport.Com

February 20 / 22, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
The Lawyer's Tale

Michael Neumann /
Osha Neumann
Remove Our Grandmother's Name from the Wall at Yad Vashem

Ismael Hossein-zadeh
Herbert Hoover Copycats

Paul Craig Roberts
Bill of Rights Under Fire

Linn Washington Jr.
The NY Post's Chimpanzee Cartoon

Saul Landau
On the Road Again

Marjorie Cohn
War Criminals Must be Prosecuted (And Their Lawyers Too)

Binoy Kampmark
Cricket and Cartels: the Fall of Sir Allen Stanford

Dave Lindorff
Using the Recession to Hammer Workers

David Yearsley
Edward Said's Greatest Musical Writings

David Macaray
A Closer Look at the Employee Free Choice Act

James McEnteer
Last Mambo in Minnehaha

Rick Salutin
A Canadian Looks at Obama

Wayne Clark
South Carolina Nears the Abyss

Richard Rhames
Got Farms?

Stephen Martin
Silver Mist Descending

Mitu Sengupta
Slumdog Millionaire's Dehumanizing View of India's Poor

Charles R. Larson
Slumdog Reality?

Richard Morse
Carnival Ramble in Haiti

Lorenzo Wolff
Desperation in an Unavoidable Groove

Poets' Basement
Three Poems of Tu Fu (Trans. K. Rexroth)

Website of the Weekend
Ron Paul: What If the People Wake Up?

February 19, 2009

Norman Finkelstein
The Cleanser: Lobbyists Whistle Up Cordesman to "Prove" Israel Waged a Clean War in Gaza

Harry Browne
How Ireland Went Bust

Robert Bryce
Why the Promise of Biofuels is a Lie

Brian M. Downing
The Winding Road: From Western Europe to Kyrgyzstan

Fred Gardner
The DEA Chief's $123,000 Flight

Andy Worthington
Obama's Uighur Problem

Wajahat Ali
Aftermath of a Beheading

Laura Carlsen
A New Attitude at the White House Toward Bolivia and Venezuela?

Deb Reich
Gaza: Choose Life!

Christopher Ketcham
Crisis? What Crisis?

Website of the Day
Taking Back NYU

February 18, 2009

Paul Craig Roberts
President of Special Interests

Mike Whitney
Trouble at Treasury

M. Shahid Alam
Afghan Pitfalls

Patrick Cockburn
A Real Surge at Last

Conn Hallinan
Death's Laboratory

Dave Lindorff
Whatever Happened to Antitrust?

Rannie Amiri
The Perils of Blogging in Egypt

Gareth Porter
Pushing Back Against Petraeus on Pullout Risks

Eric Hobsbawm
Remembering V. G. Kiernan

Christopher Brauchli
The Pope's Predicament

Martha Rosenberg
It's the Cymbalta Stupid

Website of the Day
Red Gold

February 17, 2009

Michael Hudson
The Oligarchs' Escape Plan

Mike Whitney
The Global Ditch

Ralph Nader
The One-Dimensional Congress

Joanne Mariner
Benchmarking Obama: How to Evaluate the New Administration's Counter-Terrorism Policies

John Ross
Commodifying the Revolution: Zapatista Villages Become Hot
Tourist Destinations

Belén Fernández
The Venezuelan Referendum From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Mats Svensson
Who is a Terrorist?

David Macaray
Why America Needs Labor Unions

Gregory Vickrey
$400 in Change

M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
Another Hamastan?

Michael Dickinson
Unrest in Istanbul

Website of the Day
Take a Stand for Open Access

February 16, 2009

Patrick Cockburn
Iraq Reconstruction: the Greatest Fraud in US History?

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera
The Truth About Colombia's New Emperor

Paul Craig Roberts
Who Remembers Guns and Butter?

Uri Avnery
Livni's Bitter Options

P. Sainath
The Meltdown: Whose Crisis Is It?

Dedrick Muhammad / Michael Brown
White Recession, Black Depression

Carla Blank
A New New Deal for the Arts

Patrick Irelan
Venezuela Ends Term Limits

Dan Bacher
Is Delta Pumping Driving Salmon and Orca Decline?

Fidel Castro
Chavez's Clarion Call

Harvey Wasserman
Hail to the Spleef: Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

Website of the Day
Mining Black Mesa

February 13 - 15, 2009

Alexander Cockburn
On the Rocks

Joshua Frank
The Myth of Clean Coal

Mike Whitney
Geithner's Coming Out Party

George Ciccariello-Maher
Venezuela's Term Limits: More Hypocrisy From the NYT

Nikolas Kozloff
Venezuela Beyond the Referendum

Brian M. Downing
Pakistan on the Brink

Paul Craig Roberts
Deficit Nonchalance

Christopher Ketcham
Israel's Ball Boys

Ron Jacobs
At a Campus Sit-In Against Israeli Occupation

Dave Lindorff
Why Can Judd Gregg See What Obama Can't?

Alan Maass
Lincoln at 200

Chuck Spinney
Grassley Sounds Off on Obama's Man at the Pentagon

Phil Gasper
Mr. Darwin's Reluctant Revolution

Stephen Lendman
A Short History of Business Handouts

Charles Thomson
Tate Cruises: Caveat Emptor on the High Seas

Kathy Sanborn
The Suicide Rush

Saul Landau
Bowled Over

Len Wengraf
The Nightmare in Somalia

Harvey Wasserman
Striking a Blow Against Nuclear Power

David Macaray
An Easy Call for Obama on Joining a Union

Tom Stephens
Four Freedoms, Four Changes

Seth Sandronsky
Lincoln and the Collective Mind

David Yearsley
On the Road Again

Lorenzo Wolff
Freaking Out With Danny Barnes

Kim Nicolini
The Body of the Worker: What "The Wrestler" Says About the State of America

Poets' Basement
Anderson, Buknatski and French

Website of the Weekend
The Iranian Revoution and the US Dual Containment Policy: a Presentation

Weekend Edition
March 6-8 , 2009

Tragedy Strikes at Home

Soldier Suicides

By PHIL ALIFF

In the early morning hours of October 20, 2008, Pfc. Timothy Alderman took his own life in his barracks at Fort Carson, Colo. He died of an apparent prescription drug overdose.

The 21-year-old had been stationed in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Before his long deployment to the Middle East, he had never suffered from any mental health problems. In fact, according to his medical records, he didn't think he would have difficulty returning home because he "mostly had fun killing people and getting paid for it."

But like hundreds of thousands of other veterans who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, Alderman left the battlefield, but the battlefield didn't leave him.

He began struggling with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), the medical condition that has become the signature wound of the U.S. "war on terror."

According to an investigative series by Salon.com's Mark Benjamin and Michael de Yoanna [1], Alderman sought help from his chain of command upon his return, but was met with demeaning comments from his company sergeants, such as, "I wish you would just go ahead and kill yourself. It would save us a lot of paperwork."

On October 13, only a week prior to his suicide, Alderman joined a small group of soldiers in writing sworn statements about their experiences in Iraq. In his statement, he describes dealing with repeated nightmares about a February 2007 combat experience in which he pulled the dismembered corpse of a fellow soldier from a vehicle that had been hit by a roadside bomb.

"I am seeking help, but I feel like I'm not being treated right," wrote Alderman in the statement. "I mean mental help. I struggle every day with it."

Though the Army has ruled his death a suicide, there is another possibility: Alderman may have died as a result of a lethal interaction of the many powerful drugs prescribed to him by Army medical personnel because of his mental condition. According to Benjamin and de Yoanna:

On discharge, records show, doctors had Alderman on 0.5 mg of Klonopin for anxiety, three times a day; 800 mg of Neurotin, an anti-seizure medication, three times a day; 100 mg of Ultram, a narcotic-like pain reliever, three times a day; 20 mg of Geodon at Noon and then another 80 mg at night, as a treatment for bipolar disorder; 0.1 mg of Clonodine, a blood pressure medication also used for withdrawal symptoms, three times a day; 60 mg of Remeron, for depression, once a day; and 10 mg of Prozac twice a day.

Alderman is also reported to have taken Xanax and morphine.

Though the Army is quick to dismiss his death as yet another tragic case of suicide, evidence suggests that there was negligence by his caregivers in identifying and treating his symptoms properly.

In fact, Benjamin and de Yoanna contacted an Army psychiatrist to ask about the list of drugs and dosages Alderman was taking. "Oh God," the psychiatrist replied. "That's shitty. That breaks all the rules. He was overmedicated. That's bad medicine."

As evidence for declaring Alderman's death a suicide, the Army points to a letter that Alderman pinned to his wall, addressing his deceased mother. But according to Alderman's military friends, the letter didn't read like a suicide note.

Regardless of whether it was a suicide or accidental death, one conclusion is inescapable: the military could have done much more to ensure that Alderman was taken care of when he returned home.

Alderman's former roommate puts responsibility for Alderman's death squarely on the military. "I know he didn't commit suicide," he told Benjamin and de Yoanna. "I don't think he should have been released from the hospital. I know for a fact the Army killed my friend. I want something done. The Army is killing people left and right, and nobody cares."

* * *

ALDERMAN WENT on some 250 combat missions in Iraq and had 16 confirmed kills, according to members of his unit. Now, he is one of 128 soldiers who committed suicide in 2008. According to the Army's own statistics, this is the highest suicide rate for soldiers in three decades.

There are several barriers that veterans like Alderman face when seeking help for combat-related mental health disorders.

First, there's the stigma. Even when the symptoms of trauma are crystal clear, a soldier who acknowledges such an issue must confront the conflict between seeking help and the constant pressure within the military to send soldiers to the battlefield. Already, many soldiers have been sent on multiple deployments, and especially in the macho culture of the military, mental health issues generally aren't considered serious enough to warrant real attention.

Then, there are worries about admitting to a mental health disorder because it might affect a future promotion.

There has also been widespread negligence by the military in providing adequate health care, especially mental health care, for soldiers. Whether it is failing to recognize and treat PTSD, or overmedicating soldiers who suffer from stress or injuries, the trauma associated with war has created a crisis for veterans who are not receiving proper care when they return home.

The Veterans Administration, which deals with health care for veterans when they are discharged from the military, has not been any less negligent than the military when it comes to dealing with suicides and treatment for trauma.

Both the military and VA have failed to put adequate resources into addressing the huge needs that active-duty personnel and veterans have as the U.S. enters the eighth year of its "war on terror."

As one example, some 300,000 veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly one in five, suffer from major depression or PTSD upon returning home, but only about half of them seek treatment--at least in part due to the long wait times for appointments with doctors and other therapies.

According to a CBS News report last April, the head of mental health for the VA, Ira Katz, said the following in an internal VA email regarding suicide attempts by veterans:

Shh! Our suicide prevention coordinators are identifying about 1,000 suicide attempts per month among veterans we see in our medical facilities. Is this something we should (carefully) address ourselves in some sort of release before someone stumbles on it?

Speaking on the record in November 2007, however, Katz told CBS News, "There is no epidemic in suicide in the VA." But if 1,000 veterans a month attempting suicide is not an epidemic, then what is?

Katz's duplicity is chilling--not only for the veterans who are already enrolled in the VA, but also for soldiers who are being ordered to Iraq and Afghanistan today, and are likely to return home to a mental health system even more overburdened than it is currently.

* * *

IN OCTOBER 2006, Spc. Zach Choate, who served as a scout with the Army's 10th Mountain Division in southern Baghdad, was riding in his vehicle on a combat patrol when a roadside bomb detonated, ejecting him from the gunner's turret. After returning to the U.S. for treatment, he was awarded the Purple Heart. He was also diagnosed with PTSD.

After receiving his military discharge, he waited seven months for his disability claim to go through. This was after waiting more than a year to get his medical records back from the military. He now regularly receives treatment at the VA Hospital in Atlanta where he says his problems with PTSD are not being adequately addressed.

"The only questions my doctor asks me to identify how I am doing with PTSD is whether I am suicidal and how I am medicating," he said in an interview. "It seems like she is not properly trained to deal with my issues."

For most veterans, the transition from military health care to the VA is already the hardest transition that they face. Along with the waiting time for a disability claim to be approved, there is also the trouble associated with injured veterans who did not serve two full years in the military. Without two years of service, a soldier is not eligible for VA care, no matter what their injury from combat may be.

This policy jeopardizes the well-being of veterans who are being sent to Iraq and Afghanistan immediately after finishing basic training.

With the Obama administration taking over in Washington, hopes are higher than ever that veterans will be taken care of when they come home. This is especially true after the glaring failures of the Bush administration, which even opposed improving education benefits for veterans because it feared that GIs might then leave the military in order to go to college.

But with the escalation of wars overseas and the economic crisis at home, the money needed to take care of veterans will not be allocated without veterans and civilians alike making this a central demand from the new administration. Putting force behind the demand "Money for jobs and education, not for war and occupation" is essential if veterans are to get the benefits they deserve.

Phil Aliff was deployed to Iraq with the Army's 10th Mountain Division and is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW). In March 2007, he helped start IVAW's first active-duty chapter and became a dedicated antiwar activist.

This article originally appeared in the Socialist Worker.

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