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Today's
Stories
October 14,
2004
Nicole Colson
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
October 13,
2004
Bishop Thomas
Gumbleton and Bill Quigley
Aftermath
of a Coup: The Other Disaster in Haiti
Sharon Smith
Barak
O-Bomb-a?: Democrats Target Iran
Christopher Brauchli
God and the Bush Administration
Mike Whitney
The Real Meaning of the Hamdi Case
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: a False Beacon?
Website of
the Day
Operation
Truth
October 12,
2004
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
"Indian
Country"
Greg Bates
The Year of Voting Dangerously: a Survey Request of Nader Voters
in Swing States
Steven Conn
Progressives as Pawns: Kerry's War on Nader
Jason Leopold
Under Cheney, Halliburton Helped Saddam Siphon Billions from
UN Oil-for-Food Program
Security Scholars
for a Sensible Foreign Policy
Time for a Change of Course
Timothy J. Freeman
Dying for a Mistake
Pierre Tristam
Deconstructing Bush
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The 2nd Debate: the Blurring of Act and Audience
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Israel as Sideshow
Website of the Day
John Kerry's Personal Off-Shore Tax Shelters
October 11,
2004
Robert Fisk
Iraq:
Unforgivable Betrayals and Broken Promises
Kevin Pina
The
Untold Story of Aristide's Departure from Haiti
Patrick Gavin
Rethinking
Columbus Day
Chris Floyd
Tribes with Flags in the New Afghanistan
Daniel Wolff
Radioactive Money: Entergy, Political Cash and America's Most
Dangerous Nuclear Plant
Walter Brasch
The Only Ones Who Believe Saddam Had WMDs are Bush, Cheney...and
40% of All Americans
Mike Whitney
The Phony Afghan Elections: Ballot of the Disappearing Ink
Ari Shavit
"He Talks to Condi Rice Every Day": an Interview with
Sharon's Lawyer
Paul Craig
Roberts
The
Debates and the Big Lie
Website of the Day
Dylan's Greatest Recording?
October 9 /
10, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
"There
Are No Innocents"
Paul de Rooij
Northern Ireland is Still the Issue: a Conversation with Gerry
Adams
M. Shahid Alam
Making Sense of Our Times
Laura Carlsen
Protest and Populism in Latin America
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: ASA Goes to Court
Col. Dan Smith
Bush's Credibility Gap
Paul Craig
Roberts
Faith-Based Economics
Greg Bates
What If Nader Critics Get What They Demand?
Joshua Frank
Cobb, the Greens and the Collapse of the Left
Felice Pace
Wilderness, Politics and the Oligarchy: How the Pew Charitable
Trust is Smothering the Grassroots Environmental Movement
Walter A. Davis
Of Pynchon, Thanatos and Depleted Uranium
William A.
Cook
The Agony of Colin Powell
Phyllis Pollack
Twas No Crank Call Love Affair: London Calling, 25 Years Later
Poets' Basement
Klipschutz, Albert, Ford
Website of the Weekend
Abu Ghraib: the Taguba Annexes
October 8,
2004
Jennifer Loewenstein
The
Israeli Invasion of Gaza
Moshe Adler
Edwards' Gambit: He Hoped No One Would Notice the Similarities
David Swanson
Media Blackout: Press Continues to Ignore Labor's Opposition
to Iraq War
Dave Zirin
CounterPunch Contest: Let's Name the New DC Baseball Team!
Rep. Ron Paul
The Draft is a Form of Slavery
William S. Lind
Keeping Our SA Up
Samar Assad
Kerry v. Bush: No Difference When It Comes to Israel / Palestine
Jim Ingalls
and Sonali Kolhatkar
The Elections in Afghanistan
October 7,
2004
Dave Lindorff
All
Out of Volunteers: A Draft is in the Air
Masha Hamilton
Fear in Kandahar
Christopher
Brauchli
Master of Corruption: the Ripening Scandals of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Is There Still Time to Impeach Bush?
Bruce K. Gagnon
Bombing the Panhandle: Fighting the Pentagon in Rural Florida
Meredith Kolodner
Where
is the Urgency?: The Anti-War Movement's Election Year Challenge
October 6,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
"Please,
Dude, Can I Take Them Out?": Targeting Civilians in Fallujah
Ron Jacobs
Going
Nuclear: the Ghost of Edward Teller Lives
Michael Colby
The National Flip-Flop: Suddenly Bush is Unfit to Lead?
Tarif Abboushi
More of the Same: Israel Wins the Debates
Matthew Behrens
Canadian Firms Profit from Iraqi Blood
Mike Whitney
Rethinking WMDs
John Pilger
Stealing Diego Garcia
Ben Tripp
Kerry's "Triumph"
Kevin McKiernan
Cheney's Poison Lab: Wrong Time, Wrong Target
Patrick Cockburn
Elections
Will Not End the Fighting in Iraq
Website of the Day
Is There an Islamic Problem?
October 5,
2004
Anthony Loewenstein
Rupert
Murdoch and the Marginals: "Personally Creating Outcomes"
Mark Clinton
and Tony Udell
The
Suicide of an Iraq War Veteran
Greg Bates
Trading
Idiots: an Open Letter to Eric Alterman
Dave Lindorff
What's
the Frequency, Karl?
Norm Dixon
Why Washington Won't Save Darfur Villagers
Larry Kearney
God Talk and Burning Children
Bill Linville
Dirty Politics in the Land of "Clean" Government
Gary Leupp
What
Edwards Should Ask Cheney
Website of
the Day
A Guide to Halliburton for Tonight's Debate
October 4,
2004
Diane Christian
The
Gates of Hell
Joshua Frank
An Interview with David Cobb
Doug Giebel
Incurious George: What If Bush Didn't Lie?
John Chuckman
Strange Victory: Sen. Obvious and the Pathetic Lump
Ramzy Baroud
Reverse the Picture: Anatomy of a Palestinian Outrage
Julia Stein
Remembering Mario Savio and the FSM
Sean Donahue
Outsourcing
Terror: Kerry and Special Forces
Website of
the Day
Mapping
Mt. St. Helens as She Rocks
October 2 /
3. 2004
Paul Wright
John
Kerry on Criminal Justice
Kathleen and Bill Christison
An Exchange with Israeli Historian Bennie Morris
Kathie Helmkamp
My Son Trent: a Marine Who Doesn't Want to Kill
Phillip Cryan
Indigenous Mobilization in Colombia
Lenni Brenner
The First Ex-Catholic Saint: Memories of Mario Savio
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: In Case You Missed "Montel"
Ron Jacobs
It Did Happen Here: When Neo-Nazis Terrorized Olympia
Ben Tripp
Sticker Shock
William S.
Lind
The Grand Illusion: Iraqi Security Forces
Dave Zirin
The Swindle of the Century: Baseball Comes to DC
Dave Lindorff
Lies from the Great Debate
Luscon Pierre-Charles
Haiti's Elections: a High-Tech Sham is Underway
Zoe Moskovitz
& Sasha Kramer
Separating Lies from Truth About Haiti
Nelson P. Valdes
Habana Night vs. Latin American Scholars in Vegas: 61 Banned
Cuban Academics
Alan Farago
The "Ownership Society" and the End of the Everglades
Nancy Haley
What is the Historical Jesus Trying to Tell Us?
Alex Billet
Long Live The Clash: London Still Calling After 25 Years
Steve Fesenmaier
Save and Burn: The War on Libraries
Poets' Basement
Smith, Holt, Albert
October 1,
2004
Steve Breyman
Kerry's
Missed Opportunities
Rose Gentle
My
Son Died for a Lie
Lee Sustar
Iran
in the Crosshairs
Ralph Nader
What
We Didn't Hear at the Debate: Where's the Exit Strategy?
Walter Andrews
We Are Less Secure Now Than Ever
Mike Whitney
Pandora's
Government
Mickey Z.
Debate
This
Saul Landau
The
Iraq Invasion: Lessons from the Pinochet Cases
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
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October 14, 2004
Hidden Story
of the Iraq War
Maimed
for Oil and Empire
By
NICOLE COLSON
"I THINK it's worth it,
Jim." During the September 30 presidential debate, George
Bush didn't hesitate when asked if the war on Iraq was worth
the hundreds of deaths and thousands of terrible injuries suffered
by U.S. troops.
Too bad debate moderator Jim
Lehrer couldn't ask Sgt. 1st Class Larry Daniels the same question.
Daniels is one of hundreds of U.S. troops with critical injuries
at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center, the U.S. military hospital
in Germany where nearly all ill or wounded troops from Iraq and
Afghanistan are sent.
In mid-September, Daniels and
his men were guarding Iraqi contractors repairing a chain-link
fence near the Baghdad airport when a car bomb exploded. Today,
his arms are pinned with metal rods and wrapped in bandages from
just below the shoulders to the tip of his fingers. Shrapnel
wounds scar his back, from behind his right ear to his ankles.
And Daniels is one of the "lucky ones"--because doctors
believe he'll make a full recovery and won't suffer disabilities.
Col. Earl Hecker, a critical
care doctor at Landstuhl, says that the casualty situation for
U.S. troops is far worse than most people in the U.S. can imagine.
"[The public has] no idea what's going on here, none whatsoever,"
he told New York Newsday. Then he blurted out, "Bush
is an idiot."
Hecker has every right to feel
angry. On an average day, he sees 35 young men and women transported
to Landstuhl, mainly from Iraq. Doctors and nurses at the hospital
say it is like something out of a nightmare--where "the
cost of the Iraq war is measured in amputated limbs, burst eyeballs,
shrapnel-torn bodies and shattered lives," wrote Toronto
Star reporter Sandro Contenta.
Since September 2001, more
than 18,000 military personnel have come to the hospital from
Iraq and Afghanistan--roughly 20 percent because of combat injuries,
the rest due to accidents or illness. While the Pentagon has
reported approximately 7,300 soldiers injured in combat in Iraq,
that number doesn't reflect soldiers evacuated for illnesses,
like diarrhea or persistent fever, which are often related to
living conditions.
And it doesn't count the thousands
of soldiers sent home because they are suffering from mental
health problems, like post-traumatic stress disorder. At Landstuhl
alone, more than 1,400 soldiers have been admitted for mental
health problems.
Back at home, the Pentagon
says that some 28,000 troops out of the 168,000 who have returned
from Iraq and Afghanistan have sought medical care from the Veterans
Administration. Nearly 20 percent of those--well over 5,000--have
done so for mental health reasons.
It's no wonder why. According
to a New England Journal of Medicine study released in
July, during the six weeks that the Iraq war lasted officially,
95 percent of Marines and Army soldiers surveyed said that they
had been shot at, 56 percent had killed an enemy combatant, and
94 percent had seen bodies and human remains. "It's probably
the biggest challenge to mental health [in the military] since
Vietnam," Col. Gary Southwell, chief of psychology services
at Landstuhl, told Newsday.
For these soldiers, help may
not be available, even if they manage to make it home alive.
The Veterans Administration (VA) has been overloaded for decades--and
has a current backlog of more than 300,000 claims.
Of the claims for benefits
filed by soldiers returned from Afghanistan or Iraq, fewer than
two-thirds have been processed--leaving more than 9,750 recent
veterans waiting for help, according to the Washington Post.
And a September 20 Government Accountability Office report concluded
that the VA isn't able to determine if it can handle a rush of
post-traumatic stress disorder cases.
Meanwhile, soldiers who are
injured in Iraq and sent home are in for a rude awakening--a
50 percent pay cut. When Marine Lance Cpl. James Crosby left
Iraq, he was unconscious, his legs paralyzed, his guts pierced
by shrapnel.
According to the Boston
Globe, that's when the military cut his pay. "Before
you leave the combat zone, they swipe your ID card through a
computer, and you go back to your base pay," said Crosby.
"You need that pay more than ever, to move your life around."
In a wheelchair and attached to a colostomy bag, Crosby told
the Globe: "I still have to fight the consequences
of what happened. I struggle every day.''
That struggle is leading more
troops and their families to question the war. "The army
is not going to like what I have to say, but I think we have
no business being there," Larry Daniels' wife, Cheryl, told
Newsday.
She says that she voted for
Bush in 2000, but has changed her mind this year. "I will
definitely vote for Kerry, not because I prefer Kerry over Bush,
but because I don't want Bush back in office," she says.
"I'm hoping that if Kerry takes office, we'll be pulling
out" of Iraq.
Unfortunately, as Kerry has
made all too clear, he won't answer the hopes of people like
Cheryl. During the first presidential debate, when asked if U.S.
soldiers were "dying for a mistake," Kerry answered
"No, and they don't have to...I believe that we have to
win this. The president and I have always agreed on that."
That means more U.S. troops killed and maimed for oil profits.
"I
don't want to go to Iraq"
WILL MORE troops be heading
to Iraq? No matter who sits in the White House in January, the
answer to that question is a definite yes--since both Bush and
Kerry have made it clear that they believe the U.S. has too much
at stake to withdraw.
That's why the Pentagon recently
announced plans to deploy an additional 15,000 troops to Iraq
in the first four months of 2005. But with the occupation spiraling
out of control, and thousands of troops killed or injured, the
military is facing a crisis--both in the number of troops on
the ground in Iraq, and in levels of recruitment and retention.
Last month, the Pentagon announced
that the Army National Guard fell nearly 10 percent short of
its 2004 recruiting goal of 56,000 enlistees--the first time
it has fallen short since 1994. This despite the fact that the
Army even eased some of its standards for people to qualify.
Meanwhile, the average mobilization
for members of the Reserves throughout the military has more
than doubled--to 342 days this year, from 156 days during the
1991 Gulf War. The Pentagon has issued a controversial stop-loss
order, preventing soldiers whose tours of duty were up or who
were scheduled to retire from leaving the military.
And the brass have called up
more than 4,400 Individual Ready Reservists, former soldiers
honorably discharged after finishing their active-duty tours,
but who remained technically eligible for call-up. As of September
28, 1,765 Individual Ready Reservists had been scheduled to report
for duty. But, according to the Army, some 622--about 30 percent--failed
to show up.
Of course, when orders don't
work, the Army figures that threats will do the trick. According
to the Rocky Mountain News, soldiers from a Fort Carson
combat unit were recently issued an ultimatum--re-enlist for
three more years, or be transferred to other units expected to
deploy to Iraq.
"They said if you refuse
to re-enlist with the 3rd Brigade, we'll send you down to the
3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, which is going to Iraq for a year,
and you can stay with them, or we'll send you to Korea, or to
Fort Riley [in Kansas], where they're going to Iraq," said
one of the soldiers, a sergeant. "I don't want to go back
to Iraq. I went through a lot of things for the Army that weren't
necessary and were risky. Iraq has changed a lot of people.''
Nicole Colson writes for the Socialist
Worker and is a frequent contributor to CounterPunch.
Weekend
Edition Features for September 18 / 19, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Forgeries,
Fingerprints and Forensic Fakery
Jeffrey St. Clair
High Plains Grifter: Bush's Mask of Anarchy
Patrick Cockburn
Into the Abyss: the Week Iraq's Dream of Peace Fell Apart
Fred Gardner
Pot Shots: Financial Torture (Asset Forfeiture)
Joe Allen
The Comrades Kerry Abandoned: the Real Story of Vietnam Vets
Against the War
George Corsetti
Poletown Revisited: Finally, Some Vindication
Scott Handleman
The Knock-Knock of a Sledgehammer: Sequestered in Nablus
Richard Ward
Two Weeks in Beit Arabiya
Conn Hallinan
Ashcroft and Indonesia
Lori Smith
Health Care in America: And Then I Got Sick...
Dave Zirin
Hold the Booyah!: SportsCenter Out of the Middle East
John L. Hess
Rather Will Take the Heat, As Bush's War Deteriorates
Brian J. Foley
W is for Wimp: So Why do Manly Men Love Him?
Mickey Z.
Pat Tillman and Osama bin Laden: Odd Juxtapositions
Poets' Basement
Vest, Landau & Albert
Website of the Weekend
Eye on the NYTs
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