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Indignities Endured by U.S. Military:
How the Bush Cartel Disrespects and Short Sheets Our Soldiers

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Considering that the Bush administration had been planning an invasion of Iraq for some time, with or without the support of the United Nations and with or without just cause, the conditions under which the U.S. military has endured are nothing short of abhorrent. 

From ill-fitting uniforms to non-working equipment, young men and women from across the country, many of whom joined the military with dreams of college and a steady future, have been shortchanged by a government that pressed for war without full regard of the costs.

After being sent to do battle in Iraq, some have had to battle their own government for promised pay and benefits. They have been lied to regarding the length of stay, and they've been forced to buy their own tickets home when offered two-week leave. Frightened parents have purchased basic protective gear for their sons and daughters that the military did not provide. And fears of another wave of mysterious illnesses for which no protection is known have already been ignited.

In all, 922 soldiers have died as of Aug. 6, 2004. The greatest betrayal, as those with family members and loved ones in the military are quick to point out, was Bush's proclamation on May 1 that major hostilities had ended. 

Prior to that date, 139 troops had died in Iraq. Since Bush declared "Mission Accomplished," however, an additional 783 U.S. soldiers have died. 

In addition, more than 6,000 troops have been injured, and thousands more have been sent home due to illness or stress.  

“Support our troops.”

If there ever was any doubt that President Bush and the Republican-led Congress have failed to offer support to U.S. troops sent to fight an unnecessary and costly war, this compendium of excerpts from news stories, editorials and speeches makes the case. This list will be updated periodically, and we welcome your suggestions.

* * *

(A note about the links.)

An Army of Debt
The Progressive

Across the country, in small towns and big cities, the families of our National Guard and military Reserves are having trouble paying the bills. Many are barely treading water. Some go under.

Many households of Reservists -- 30 percent, according to a 2002 Pentagon estimate -- lose income when activated. In 2002, the U.S. Department of Defense also surveyed the spouses of Reservists who had been activated. Out of the 30 percent who said they had lost household income, the Pentagon survey indicated, half had monthly decreases of between $500 and $2,000 per month. Another 23 percent forfeited in excess of $2,001 monthly.

Poor pay and economic strife are conditions the Reserves and National Guard share with others in the regular military. "Lower-ranking enlisted people qualify for food stamps. It's not how we're used to thinking about government employees, but there it is," says Kathleen Gilberd, co-chair of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild. "Active duty pay has traditionally not been enough to help people get by." Extreme financial crises set in when service people are deployed because they then have no opportunity to get a second job to supplement their income.

But Reservists and National Guard members are especially hard hit. "The ones who do experience income loss, it's usually a significant income loss," says Shirley Calhoun, spokeswoman for the National Military Family Association. Many have good-paying jobs in the civilian world. But in the military ranks, the same people may not yet have made officer, "so they are at a lower pay level," says Calhoun.

Broken US troops face bigger enemy at home
The Guardian

All Jason Gunn ever wanted was to be a soldier. He put on the uniform three days after high school graduation, and served six years with distinction. But in the last real conversation he had with his mother he swore he would never go back to Iraq.

The army specialist came within inches of death last November 15, when the Humvee he was driving hit a roadside bomb, killing his sergeant. The entire left side of Gunn's body was splattered with shrapnel, his elbow was shattered and, as he lay in the US military hospital bed in Germany, he was tortured by nightmares.

Late on March 23, Gunn told his mother, Pat, that his commanders were putting pressure on him to return to Iraq, but there was no way he was getting on that plane. A few hours later, he was airborne. This week, Gunn's distraught mother, who is herself a navy veteran, received a first official response to her demands to know why a soldier, who was being treated by military doctors for combat stress, was sent back to the war.

The note, which acknowledged Gunn suffered post-traumatic stress, said: "After discussion of his case it was determined ... this may be in his best interest mentally to overcome his fear by facing it. Therefore, he has been cleared for redeployment."

Gunn is not the only broken soldier being sent to battle. The Guardian has uncovered more than a dozen instances in which ill or injured soldiers were sent to war by a US military whose resources have been stretched near to breaking point by the simultaneous fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its investigation, the Guardian learned of soldiers who were deployed with almost wilful disregard to their medical histories, and with the most cursory physical examinations. Soldiers went to war with chronic illnesses such as coronary disease, mental illness, arthritis, diabetes and the nervous condition, Tourette's syndrome, or after undergoing recent surgery.

* * *

Medical evacuations in Iraq war hit 18,000
UPI

In the first year of war in Iraq, the military has made 18,004 medical evacuations during Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Pentagon's top health official told Congress Tuesday.

The new data, through March 13, is nearly two-thirds higher than the 11,200 evacuations through Feb. 5 cited just last month to Congress by the same official, William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs.

In both cases, Winkenwerder described the evacuations as "total evacuations out of theater," and he said both times that the majority of evacuations represented routine medical treatment and not life-threatening injuries.

* * *

A Red Flag for Military Sponsorship 
Fort-Worth Star Telegram (commentary)

More than 200,000 race fans will pour into Texas Motor Speedway this weekend to see the stars of NASCAR make their annual visit to Fort Worth. These attendees will dish out hundreds of dollars each for tickets, concessions and souvenirs, without realizing that their costliest purchases are actually racing on the track.

This year, the U.S. military will spend more than $30 million of American taxpayers' money to fund the armed forces' involvement in NASCAR.

Pacing the spending is the Army, which for a second year fleeced taxpayers to the tune of $16 million a year to sponsor the Joe Nemechek-driven No. 01 MB2 Motorsports stockcar.

Last season, the Army claimed that its sponsorship of the No. 01 car would generate 1,200 new recruits. In reality, the Army's association with NASCAR produced less than half that number, ultimately costing Americans a staggering $30,000 per recruit.

With the same money, the Army could offer $5,000 enlistment bonuses or student loan repayments to 3,200 recruits -- undoubtedly a much more useful recruiting tool than an "Army of One" race team sticker.

* * *

Army Spouses Expect Reenlistment Problems
Washington Post

The extended, or repeated, deployments that have characterized the Army since then have intensified the burdens traditionally borne by military families. And most of the spouses who have remained behind are wondering how long the Army can keep it up.

This change is reflected in a recent poll conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, and in dozens of supplemental interviews. The poll, the first nongovernmental survey of military spouses conducted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, included more than 1,000 spouses living on or near the 10 heaviest-deploying Army bases.

While most of them said they have coped well, three-quarters said they believe the Army is likely to encounter personnel problems as soldiers and their families tire of the pace and leave for civilian lives.

* * *

Military deploys unfit GIs to Iraq
Twin Cities Pioneer Press

To meet the demand for troops in Iraq, the military has been deploying some National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers who aren't fit for combat.

More than a dozen members of the Guard and reserves told Knight Ridder they were shipped off to battle with little attention paid to their medical histories.

Those histories included ailments such as asthma, diabetes, recent surgery and hearing loss. Once in Iraq, the soldiers faced severe conditions that aggravated their medical problems and the medical care available to them was limited.

David Lloyd, a 44-year-old mechanic with the Tennessee National Guard, died of a heart attack in Iraq in August. His wife, Pamela Lloyd, said her husband didn't know he'd had a problem, but his autopsy showed three blockages in his coronary arteries.

"He should have never been deployed," she said. "He was supposed to have been given a thorough physical. He had none. The only thing he had was the shots."

* * *

National Guard Redefined By Iraq War
The Hartford Courant

Staff Sgt. John Noone was approaching a quarter-century in the National Guard, and in that long stretch had never been sent overseas.

Retirement drew nearer, and he would soon be just John Noone, Danbury train mechanic.

Then the orders came.

Noone, 42, was one of 130,000 troops sent to fight a war in Iraq that began a year ago today.

It was a year of sacrifice for all, but especially for members of the National Guard, who had long been accustomed to the sidelines. They found themselves doing the same jobs as the professional soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines beside them - and dying the same deaths.

The first year in Iraq rewrote some of the basic tenets of the National Guard, America's oldest fighting force. The weekend warriors were suddenly working around the clock, in a transformation of the U.S. military in need of part-time troops.

* * *

Army Learns Lessons On Equipping Troops
Tampa Tribune

Forget the adage about how an army travels on its stomach. Soldiers move on their feet - and if their boots can't hack it, the trip is a rough one.

U.S. military officials got an earful last year from troops in Iraq unhappy with standard- issue desert combat boots. An Army ``lessons learned'' report said soldiers complained the boots cut into their feet, held too much moisture and couldn't stand up to the rough terrain.

* * *

An Insult to Our Soldiers 
The New York Times (op-ed)

Tom Davis, a Virginia Republican, is chairman of the House Committee on Government Reform. He tells a story about Sgt. Daniel Romero of the Colorado Army National Guard, who was sent to fight in Afghanistan.

In a letter dated March 23, 2002, Sergeant Romero asked a fellow sergeant: "Are they really fixing pay issues [or] are they putting them off until we return? If they are waiting, then what happens to those who (God forbid) don't make it back?"

As Mr. Davis said at a hearing this past January, "Sergeant Romero was killed in action in Afghanistan in April 2002." The congressman added, "I would really like to hear today that his family isn't wasting their time and energy fixing errors in his pay."

As we mobilize troops from around the country and send them off to fight and possibly die in that crucible of terror known as combat, is it too much to ask that they be paid in a timely way?

Researchers from the General Accounting Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, studied the payroll processes of six Army National Guard units that were called up to active duty. What they found wasn't pretty.

There were significant pay problems in all six units. A report released last November said, "Some soldiers did not receive payments for up to six months after mobilization and others still had not received certain payments by the conclusion of our audit work."

* * *

Army sent mentally ill troops to Iraq
UPI

The Army appears to have "inappropriately" deployed soldiers to Iraq who already were diagnosed with mental problems, according to documents obtained by United Press International.

More than two dozen suicides by U.S. troops in Iraq, and hundreds of medical evacuations for psychiatric problems, have raised concerns about the mental health of soldiers in Operation Iraqi Freedom. An Army Medical Department after-action report obtained by UPI suggests that the Army sent some soldiers to war who were mentally unfit in the first place.

"Variability in predeployment screening guidelines for mental health issues may have resulted in some soldiers with mental health diagnoses being inappropriately deployed," the report said. That could "create the impression that some soldiers develop problems in theater, when, in some cases, they actually have pre-existing conditions."

* * *

Military Families vs. the War
Organized Opposition Is Small, but Some See It as Historic
Washington Post

On the night last month he learned that his son had died in Iraq, Richard Dvorin couldn't sleep. He lay in bed, "thinking and thinking and thinking," got up at 4 a.m., made a pot of coffee. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and wrote a letter to the president.

When the invasion of Iraq began, Dvorin -- a 61-year-old Air Force veteran and a retired cop -- thought the commander in chief deserved his support. "I believed we were destroying part of the axis of evil," he says. "I truly believed that Saddam Hussein was a madman and that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and wouldn't hesitate to use them."

By the time Army 2nd Lt. Seth Dvorin was sent to Iraq last September, however, his father was having doubts. And now that Seth had been killed, at 24, by an "improvised explosive device" south of Baghdad, doubt had turned to anger.

"Where are all the weapons of Mass Destruction?" Richard Dvorin demanded in his letter. "Where are the stockpiles of Chemical and Biological weapons?" His son's life, he wrote, "has been snuffed out in a meaningless war."

His is not the only military family to think so.

* * *

Iraq death spurs push for Humvee armor
Boston Globe

In the days before his death, Private First Class John D. Hart called his father to tell him how unsafe he felt riding around Iraq in a Humvee that lacked bulletproof shielding or even metal doors.

It would be the last conversation Brian T. Hart would have with his 20-year-old son. On Oct. 18 near Kirkuk, Saddam Hussein loyalists ambushed his son's Army convoy, killing two. A hail of bullets felled the Bedford High School graduate while he fought from his Humvee.

"When he died, all his ammunition had been spent," the unit commander wrote in a letter to Hart's parents. "Your son gave everything he had for the safety of others. . . . As a commander, I struggle to find words that adequately capture the depth to which we honor Private First Class Hart."

For Brian Hart, a 44-year-old Bedford businessman, his only son's last words have come to haunt him, especially after learning that other families who lost loved ones in Humvee attacks had complained to the Pentagon about the lack of armor in vehicles.

In fact, an average sport utility vehicle found on US roads provides more protection than Hart's Humvee. "He would have been better off in a Toyota Highlander," the father said.

Turning grief into action, Hart cobbled together a loose network of soldiers, their relatives, politicians, and defense contractors to pressure the military to beef up its Humvees. Since his son's death, Hart has seen results: Since January, the Marine Corps has ordered $9 million worth of bulletproof Humvee door panels from Foster-Miller Inc. of Waltham, and last week the Army said it would double its order of heavily armored Humvees from its contractor.

More Humvees in Iraq still need extra protection, but Hart's headway is remarkable for how quickly he has navigated the byzantine military-procurement system. Senator Edward M. Kennedy, Democrat of Massachusetts, whom Hart enlisted in his cause, believes the father's success can come only from a parent who "feels a desperate sense of loss that he doesn't want it to happen to another parent."

* * *

US contractor recruits guards for Iraq in Chile
The Guardian

The US is hiring mercenaries in Chile to replace its soldiers on security duty in Iraq. A Pentagon contractor has begun recruiting former commandos, other soldiers and seamen, paying them up to $4,000 (£2,193) a month to guard oil wells against attack by insurgents.

Last month Blackwater USA flew a first group of about 60 former commandos, many of who had trained under the military government of Augusto Pinochet, from Santiago to a 2,400-acre (970-hectare) training camp in North Carolina.

From there they will be taken to Iraq, where they are expected to stay between six months and a year, the president of Blackwater USA, Gary Jackson, told the Guardian by telephone.

"We scour the ends of the earth to find professionals - the Chilean commandos are very, very professional and they fit within the Blackwater system," he said.

* * *

Slow return of state's Guard troops criticized
Miami Herald

Florida's top National Guard officer, echoing the frustration of many South Florida soldier families, lashed out Tuesday at delays in getting National Guard troops back to the United States now that their mission in Iraq is over.

''The nation wasted no time mobilizing these soldiers, sometimes in 24 hours, taking them from their jobs and their families,'' said Maj. Gen. Douglas Burnett, commander of the Florida National Guard. ``I want them to feel this nation didn't forget them on the last mission -- of bringing them home.''

More than 1,500 Florida National Guard troops have returned or are on their way back from Iraq. Some have endured near-freezing nights in unheated tents because they left their encampment to go to a staging area to fly home, only to have the flight canceled. Many had to buy blankets just to keep warm, Burnett said.

* * *

DOD Now Eyes Lariam In Suicides
UPI

The Pentagon reversed course Wednesday and told Congress it would look into whether an anti-malaria drug developed by the Army might be causing suicides, one month after asserting the drug could not be a factor.

Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs Dr. William Winkenwerder Jr. told a House Armed Services Committee panel he would launch a study into side effects of Lariam, "to include suicide and neuropsychiatric outcomes."

He said the Pentagon would appoint a panel to help design the study, but said it could take months or years to complete. Pentagon health officials also said they would no longer use Lariam in Iraq because the malaria risk does not warrant it.

The Pentagon is studying suicides in Iraq and Kuwait during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Winkenwerder said 21 Army soldiers from units assigned to the operation have committed suicide. Army Surgeon General Lt. Gen. James B. Peake told the panel the Army is investigating another five deaths in Iraq as possible suicides, along with six deaths among soldiers in Iraq who returned to the United States and then killed themselves.

* * *

Is the Army sandbagging its anticipated ‘suicide report’?
Newsweek (Commentary)

Military members and their families are asking the same question: Where is the Army’s so-called suicide report? It’s the work of the 12-member Mental Health Advisory Team, commissioned by the top generals in charge of the Iraq war after a string of battlefield suicides. It was initially due out last Thanksgiving. Then it was supposed to be released in early February. Now, there’s talk that it’s been shelved indefinitely.

Is the Army deliberately sitting on the report? Perhaps. Or perhaps it’s just focusing on other priorities in rebuilding Iraq and preparing to hand back sovereignty to its citizens. No one would argue these aren’t massive missions. And, to be sure, the vast majority of soldiers, even those exposed to the most grotesque and horrific combat trauma, may experience only mild post-traumatic stress disorder that requires minor counseling before they bounce back. But evidence suggests that a wave of combat-fatigued soldiers—as many as 20 percent of the 130,000 troops in the field—not seen since the aftermath of the Vietnam War is about to come crashing onto American shores.

Suicides Among Soldiers Who Served in Iraq
Editor & Publisher

For me, a Vietnam veteran and former post traumatic stress disorder counselor, research at the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation on soldier suicides is triggering something akin to déjà vu. We see tip-of-the-iceberg indicators that portend a post-Iraq psychiatric disaster for some returning soldiers, one that the country is ill-prepared to deal with and one that the Pentagon appears to be spinning like a top.

The army reports that 21 soldiers in Iraq and Kuwait have killed themselves since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom but this number will increase as suspicious non-combat deaths that have already occurred and might be suicides await classification by the army's Criminal Investigation Division (CID). We have learned from a Pentagon source that the CID may not rule on these deaths until after the operation is over. Even the number of 21 is well above the average Army rate.

The army's peculiar calculus also excludes suicides that occur outside the "theater," that is, soldiers who served in Iraq or Kuwait but kill themselves once they get home. The media is toting these up ad hoc. United Press International discovered two at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and The Sun of Baltimore recently reported on one that occurred in a Shoney's Inn. But most of these tragedies will unfold anonymously since family members are often reluctant to speak publicly about a subject they consider taboo.

Reservists told to shoulder greater burdens in Iraq
Dan Rather (Syndicated Column)

A massive rotation of U.S. forces is now under way in Iraq. One of the goals of this movement is to bring home troops who have been "in country" for almost a year now. Another is to reduce the overall number of U.S. troops. But there is one aspect of the U.S. military contingent in Iraq that will not decrease but rather will grow once the rotations are completed, and that is the role played by National Guardsmen and reservists.

Before the rotations, these citizen soldiers comprised a little more than 20 percent of the total U.S. force in Iraq. Once the rotations are complete, they will make up almost 40 percent of the American force there. And that's something worth thinking about.

* * *

Suicides in Iraq, Questions at Home
Washington Post

The silver grave cover bore colorful wreaths and American flags -- a nod to Suell's three years of military service. He was deployed to Iraq in April 2003 as an Army petroleum supply specialist out of Fort Sill, Okla. Less than two months later, he was dead.

A report provided to the family at their request says that the 24-year-old died of a drug overdose on Father's Day, one of 22 suicides reported among troops in Iraq last year.

According to William Winkenwerder Jr., assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, who discussed the suicides in a briefing last month, that represents a rate of more than 13.5 per 100,000 troops, about 20 percent higher than the recent Army average of 10.5 to 11. The Pentagon plans to release the findings of a team sent to Iraq last fall to investigate the mental health of the troops, including suicides.

The number Winkenwerder cited does not include cases under investigation, so the actual number may be higher. It also excludes the suicides by soldiers who have returned to the United States.

Hummer Bummer
Slate

You've read the story countless times: An American convoy in Baghdad or Fallujah or Tikrit is attacked; a GI is killed and others are wounded. Nearly all those convoys include the all-purpose Humvee, which, it is becoming clear, lacks sufficient armor. Many feature no more than canvas roofs and doors. "We're kind of sitting ducks in the vehicles we have," one lieutenant colonel told Newsday.

The Army has acknowledged that it miscalculated the intensity of the guerrilla war in Iraq and subsequently goofed on the number of armored Humvees it needed. "We do not have as many armored Humvees as we would like," the Army's vice chief of staff testified before Congress in late September.

So how is the White House proposing to deal with this? By underfunding the program to armor Humvees.

* * *

Deployments strain National Guard pay system
Government Executive Magazine

More than two years of constant military operations and extensive reserve deployments have essentially derailed the system used to pay Army National Guard personnel, Pentagon officials told lawmakers Wednesday.

The current system was designed to pay personnel based on their participation in periodic drills, but it has been severely taxed by the extended deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq.

"This payroll system was created for a different time," said Lt. Gen. Roger Schultz, director of the Army National Guard, during a hearing of the House Government Reform Committee.

A General Accounting Office survey of 481 Army National Guard members from six states found that 450 of them had experienced pay problems. National Guard personnel were overpaid, underpaid and paid late, according to Gregory Kutz, director for financial management and assurance at GAO. In a still unresolved situation, 34 members of a Colorado Special Forces reserve unit were mistakenly assigned an average of $48,000 in debt, according to GAO.

Many soldiers and their families were required to spend considerable time, sometimes while the soldiers were deployed in remote, hostile environments overseas, seeking corrections to active duty pays and allowances," the report stated (GAO-04-413T).

* * *

Armor From Home: Amid Shortage of Gear, Some U.S. Soldiers Must Equip Themselves
ABC News

Pene Palifka, a proud and protective mother, worries about her son, Billy, a specialist with the National Guard deployed in Iraq. She reads his letters home almost daily.

"I just can't wait for him to come home," she said. "We'll celebrate that day."

Concerned about her son's safety, Palifka recently spent $1,100 of her own money on armored chest plates to protect him and others from enemy fire.

"[By] purchasing something for my son, then that means hopefully somewhere down the line somebody else that's overseas will have adequate equipment," Pene Palifka said.

It's become an almost routine practice for deploying troops and their families.

Despite efforts to produce more vests with the armored plates, the Pentagon says there still aren't enough, especially among guardsmen and reservists. All troops rotating out of Iraq are now being required to leave their vests behind so incoming troops can use them.

Police give bulletproof vests to reservists
The Detroit News

Clinton Township police officers have donated more than 30 bulletproof vests to a U.S. Army reserve unit that has been activated and is headed for Iraq. The Clinton officers receive new vests every five years, Captain Doug Mills said Wednesday. The Kevlar panels in the old vests are used by soldiers to line the insides of their Humvees and other vehicles in combat zones. Mills said the vest donations resulted from a local news report. “I got a call from a (police) officer in Columbus, Ohio, who heard about it. Now he’s sending us some of his old vests, too,” Mills said.

Tainted Water in the Land of Semper Fi: Marines Want to Know Why Base Did Not Close Wells When Toxins Were Found
Washington Post

A military engineer assigned in 1980 to test the drinking water at this sprawling Marine Corps base punctuated his findings with a handwritten exclamation point.

"WATER HIGHLY CONTAMINATED WITH . . . CHLORINATED HYDROCARBONS (SOLVENTS)!" William C. Neal wrote in capital letters on one of his surveillance reports in early 1981.

A private firm followed up with tests the next year. One of its samples showed an astonishing result: 1,400 parts per billion -- 280 times the level now considered safe for drinking water -- of trichloroethylene, a likely cancer-causing chemical used for degreasing machinery that can impair the development of fetuses, weaken the immune system, and damage kidneys and livers. Other samples showed as little as 1 part per billion to as many as 104 parts per billion -- more than 20 times the level now considered safe -- of tetrachloroethylene, a toxic dry-cleaning chemical that can seep into body fat and slowly release cancer-causing compounds.

The number of people who may have drunk the tainted water, bathed in it, had water fights with it is staggering: The Marine Corps estimates 50,000 Marines and their families lived in base housing areas that may have been fed by the wells before they were closed in 1985. Victim advocacy groups place the figure even higher, at 200,000, which would make Camp Lejeune one of the largest contaminated-water cases in U.S. history.

Already, more than 270 tort claims have been filed with the Navy's judge advocate general's office by former residents, who are required by law to file claims with the military before proceeding with any possible action in civilian courts.

Call of duty could come again: Retired reservists in Capital Region could be reactivated for Iraq tour
Albany Times Union

The newspaper, quoting two officials with the Army's 1st Armored Division in an article last week, reported that "for security reasons, only those preselected got into the facility during Bush's visit. ... The soldiers who dined while the president visited were selected by their chain of command, and were notified a short time before the visit."

* * *

R&R task force 'doing what we can' to cover troops' travel costs in U.S.
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

There is no guarantee Uncle Sam will pay commercial travel costs within the United States for troops venturing home for some R&R from Iraq and Afghanistan. But one Army official tells troops that one way or another, they’ll get you home.

“We’re doing what we can legally and financially,” said Rhonda Paige, a spokeswoman for the Army’s R&R task force. “We want to make sure this is about the soldier and his family; we want them to get the break. What we can’t do because of a lack of funding, we’ll explore other [options].”

While Congress passed an amendment to the 2004 Defense spending bill that sets aside $55 million for domestic flights and other travel costs for troops on the military’s 15-day Rest and Recuperation program, the measure only “recommends” the Army foot the bill. President Bush signed the measure into law Nov. 24.

There are two snags: The $55 million is nowhere near enough, according to a Congressional Research Service memo quoting Army officials, and the law states the Army “may” pay for these flights, but isn’t bound by law.

* * *

Dearly Deported
Salon

U.S. Army soldier Zeferino Colunga Jr. died four months ago from a mysterious illness he contracted while serving in Iraq and was buried with full honors in a Texas cemetery. Last week, with the family still in mourning, the soldier's father was deported to Mexico as an illegal immigrant. Now family members wonder if the deportation of Zeferino Colunga Sr. was connected to their public demand for an independent investigation into the young soldier's death.

The son's passing, and now the father's deportation, have shocked and saddened many in the small Texas community of Bellville, 60 miles west of Houston, where the Colungas have lived for nearly 20 years. But the U.S. Department of Homeland Security insists the death and the deportation were completely unrelated. And a review of the facts suggests the family may simply be suffering from a cruel twist of fate. But even the Austin County, Texas, sheriff who handled the case doesn't think it's fair that the still-grieving father was deported so soon after his son was buried.

* * *

The bodies come home
The Village Voice

In the eight months and three weeks of the Iraq war, roughly 450 American soldiers have died, 69 percent in battle and the rest in "non-hostile" incidents that include friendly fire, suicides, and vehicle accidents. Another 2,500 have been wounded, all but 360 in combat. An additional few thousand have been MedEvacked out of the country for treatment of illnesses; more than 500 in this group were listed as psychiatric cases related to "combat stress, depression, anxiety."

* * *

Paying a high price
Sacramento Bee

Some families of reservists deployed to Iraq are grappling with more than fear for their loved one's safety. They are struggling to pay their bills.

"It's not just his absence that we're dealing with," said Korina Self of Lockeford, whose husband, California National Guard Spc. James Self, is serving in Iraq. "We're dealing with absolute financial devastation. We're on the verge of losing everything."

As reservists' tours of duty in Iraq drag on, some of their families are fighting to live on significantly lower incomes. And as their incomes have dropped, those families are paying higher phone, shipping and other bills that arise from having a loved one serving halfway around the world.

* * *

Denial of Purple Heart medals raises questions about casualty count
Knight Ridder Newspapers

An influential Mississippi congressman has raised the possibility that the Pentagon has undercounted combat casualties in Iraq after he learned that five members of the Mississippi National Guard who were injured Sept. 12 by a booby trap in Iraq were denied Purple Heart medals.

The guardsmen were wounded by an artillery shell that detonated as their convoy passed the tree in which it was hidden, but their injuries were classified as "noncombat," according to Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss. Taylor, a senior member of the House Armed Services Committee, learned of the classification when he visited the most seriously injured of the guardsmen, Spc. Carl Sampson, 35, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington.

"How could no one have caught this?" Taylor said.

* * *

Sympathy Forms
Newsweek

No president has ever attended every funeral of every soldier. Even President Clinton was selective in his visits. He didn’t want to set the precedent of having to go to every one or being seen to play favorites, his former aides recall. And yet the Bush White House has at times acted defensively about Bush’s approach. Sometimes aides suggest that Clinton was just an attention seeker (which set off a new round of barbs between the Bushies and the Clintonites). Other times they point out that Bush is “writing” letters to each of the soldiers’ families instead of going to the services.

So I asked some families about the sympathy letters they had received. I assumed that they were in the Bush family style. Both his father and his mother come from a generation of note writers. His mother’s Christmas list is notoriously long and his father is famous for his handwritten notes. This Bush has followed suit, often using his thick Sharpie to pen short notes to friends, foes and fund-raisers.

But those are not the letters Bush is “writing.” They are form letters. With the exception of the salutation and a reference to the fallen soldier in the text, the letters the families shared with me are all the same.

* * *

Troops pay price as military skimps
Los Angeles Times

The day after her son was killed in Iraq, Jane Bright didn't know exactly how he died. When I met with her, she only knew that Army Sgt. Evan Ashcraft, 24, was ambushed on a mission near the northern city of Mosul.

Several weeks after his death in July, I started thinking about Ashcraft again when I saw one of the more astounding stories of the entire war.

Parents were buying flak jackets and sending them to sons and daughters in Iraq because soldiers were using outdated vests. To this day, thousands of men and women still don't have Interceptor vests, a high-tech model that has saved the lives of soldiers shot in the chest with AK-47 bullets.

* * *

Body armor saves U.S. lives in Iraq
Washington Post

Soldiers will not patrol without the armor — if they can get it. But as of now, there is not enough to go around. Going into the war in Iraq, the Army decided to outfit only dismounted combat soldiers with the plated vests, which cost about $1,500 each. But when Iraqi insurgents began ambushing convoys and killing clerks as well as combat troops, controversy erupted.

Last month, Rep. Ted Strickland (D-Ohio) and 102 other House members wrote to Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, to demand hearings on why the Pentagon had been unable to provide all U.S. service members in Iraq with the latest body armor. In the letter, the lawmakers cited reports that soldiers’ parents had been purchasing body armor with ceramic plates and sending it to their children in Iraq.

The demand came after Gen. John Abizaid, head of the U.S. Central Command and commander of all military forces in Iraq, told a House Appropriations subcommittee in September that he could not “answer for the record why we started this war with protective vests that were in short supply.”

* * *

Some communities in Germany, Japan, S. Korea face closing of commissaries
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

Despite angry opposition from top Army officials, the Department of Defense’s Personnel and Readiness Office is sticking with cost-cutting plans to close as many as 10 commissaries in Germany, Japan and South Korea before the end of September.

Those targeted for certain closure are Idar-Oberstein, Neubrücke, and Panzer Casern in Germany; Camp Kure, Sagami Depot and Sagamihara in Japan; and Chinhae Naval Air Station in Korea.

Three others at Kelley Barracks, Stuttgart, Germany; Hario, Japan; and Pusan, South Korea, await the verdict of Pentagon accountants. If they are found to have fallen short of cost-efficiency goals during the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, then they also will be closed this fiscal year, according to an Oct. 22 Personnel and Readiness Office information paper obtained by Stars and Stripes.

The announcements, not surprisingly, have been met with gloom in the affected communities, several of which are home to units currently deployed to Iraq.

* * *

Error hits soldiers in wallet
Indianapolis Star

Charity Hall has plenty to worry about. Her husband, Spc. Marcus Allen Hall, has been in the Middle East with his Indiana Army National Guard unit since February, and he likely won't be home until March. She runs the family's cement-pouring business without him, and his Guard pay alone doesn't cover the bills.

"We're already tighter as it is because he's over there," said Hall, 28, who cares for their 5-year-old daughter, Aspen, at their home near Poland, Ind.

This week, the Halls and other families of the 1st Battalion of the 152nd Infantry Regiment got another headache: large deductions from most of the 650 guardsmen's paychecks because of a paperwork error that resulted in the soldiers being overpaid a total of about $200 each since they were deployed.

The Army has been correcting the mistake through a complex system of debits and credits that has dismayed some soldiers and their families.

* * *

Body armor/Humvees
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes (Letter to the Editor)

I’m serving in Kosovo. Almost all the members of my task force and I have been issued Interceptor Body Armor with ballistic plates. We received these vests shortly after arriving in Kosovo back in July.

There’s little to no threat to any of us here compared to the troops in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. Certainly there always exists the possibility of something happening here. But in Iraq it’s not simply a possibility. Several times a day, day after day, the need for this body armor is demonstrated. With every incident that occurs in Iraq in which a soldier is lost due to substandard body armor, the other soldiers and I who have the armor but don’t need it have to live with the guilt of their loss.

Another letter (on same page - scroll to bottom):

AFN should remove show
This letter isn’t about radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, who recently said that all drug addicts should be put in the same jail cells as drug pushers. This is about American Forces Network’s decision to continue broadcasting Limbaugh’s show. This show has no place on AFN. It provides no service to our servicemembers. It’s just political propaganda at its worst. The entire show is nothing more than continuous, vicious attacks against one of America’s prominent political parties.

How could the Department of Defense approve this show for AFN? Is the DOD championing one political party over another for its servicemembers? Will unit voting assistance officers start pushing the same political party that AFN pushes with the Limbaugh show? The Defense Media Center, which oversees AFN, claims it’s just giving the public what it wants.

* * *

Lorain County couple raise money to buy flak jacket for son in Iraq
Associated Press

A couple helped raise $1,500 to buy the military's best bulletproof vest to send their soldier son in Iraq because the government has not been able to get the vests to all troops.

Charles and Marilyn Zvosechz didn't want their 32-year-old son to wait. Army Sgt. David Zvosechz is stationed at the Baghdad Airport.

The flak jacket, The Interceptor, has ceramic plates that can stop assault rifle rounds and can shield a soldier from shrapnel, according to the Pentagon. Older-model vests can protect against shrapnel and other low-speed projectiles, but not high-velocity rifle rounds.

Nearly one-quarter of the 130,000 American troops in Iraq had not been issued the newest body armor as of last month. Delays in funding, production and shipping mean the last of the needed 30,000 sets of body armor won't be delivered to Iraq until December - more than eight months after the war began.

* * *

3rd Army commanders felt ammunition was short before Iraq invasion, internal report says
Associated Press

Soldiers with the Army's 3rd Infantry Division charged into Iraq in April short of the ammunition their commanders had said was necessary to invade, according to the division's postwar evaluation of the fighting.

It was one of a number of supply problems encountered by the 3rd Infantry before and during its 21-day dash to Baghdad from Kuwait, according to the internal review, a 293-page after-action report created by the division's senior officers and troops.

During the run-up to the war, division commanders requested additional ammunition be delivered to front-line units. The request was approved, but the troops could not obtain all the ordnance despite months of war preparations.

"Every attempt to gain the ammunition assets resulted in some agency or another denying requests, short-loading trucks or turning away soldiers," the report said. "The entire situation became utter chaos. ... The division crossed (into Iraq) short the ammunition it had declared necessary to commit to combat."

* * *

Guard troops in pay “meltdown”
Gannett News Service

The Defense Department offers no excuses for massive pay problems uncovered by a congressional watchdog agency that found 94 percent of mobilized National Guard personnel have had problems with their military pay.

"That's not just a significant rate of error. It's a virtual systemic meltdown," said Rep. Christopher Shays, R-Conn., the House Government Reform Committee member who asked for the report.

Defense officials promised action.

"Paying our soldiers accurately and timely is a top priority," according to an Oct. 29 letter signed by the National Guard Bureau chief, the Defense Finance and Accounting Service director and the Army comptroller.

The Nov. 13 report by the General Accounting Office, they agreed, "indicates we have not lived up to that commitment as it relates to our National Guard members."

* * *

Gag order leaves troops, reporters speechless
Rocky Mountain News commentary

Before the press was herded into the giant hangar in advance of George W. Bush's pep rally/photo op with the Fort Carson troops, we were given the rules.

No talking to the troops before the rally.

No talking to the troops during the rally.

No talking to the troops after the rally.

In other words, if I've done the math right, that means no conversation at all - at least, while on base - with any soldiers. After all, who knows where that kind of thing could lead?

Just as an example: It could lead to a discussion about why the president has time to get to so many fund-raisers and no time to attend a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq.

* * *

Reservists reflect on anxious call to duty
Christian Science Monitor

But as his unit, the 744th Transportation Company, prepares to ship out for Iraq again, more than a decade later, Sergeant Tirrell and the 20 other veterans of Desert Storm in his unit are anxious that this tour of duty in the sands of the Middle East may be far worse.

Army Misreads Green Beret’s Disease
Seattle Times

[His parents] drove 600 miles from East Texas to find a son who'd lost 30 pounds and could no longer drink from a glass, use a telephone, button his shirt or say Amber, the name of his soldier wife who was still stationed in the Middle East. A month and several hospitals later, Alford's family learned he was dying of a disease eating away his brain. He had Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), an extremely rare and fatal degenerative brain disorder akin to "mad-cow" disease that causes rapid, progressive dementia.

Now, as the 25-year-old soldier wastes away in his boyhood home, his parents and his wife are struggling to understand how the military could have misdiagnosed Alford's erratic, forgetful behavior as nothing more than the symptoms of a sloppy, incompetent soldier.

"He had to hold his hands to keep them from shaking, but they saw nothing wrong with my child," his mother, Gail Alford, a nine-year Army veteran, said recently from her home in a rural community near Marshall, Texas.

Alford's parents say the Special Forces staff told them that a doctor in Kuwait found nothing wrong with him and that a psychiatrist there had said Alford was "faking it." Army officials have acknowledged that the 5th Special Forces Group erred and, more than eight months after Alford's demotion, they reinstated his staff-sergeant rank.

But the dying soldier's family wants more. They want a public apology for the ridicule and disgrace they say filled Alford's final days of service.

* * *

Iraq suicide reports spark questions
Tyler Morning Telegraph

Rebecca Suell wants answers, and not the ones the U.S. Army is giving her.

Why does the Army keep calling the last letter her husband sent to her, the one he mailed from Iraq on June 15, a suicide note? Can taking a bottle of Tylenol really kill you? And how did he get his hands on a bottle of Tylenol in the middle of the desert anyway?

The questions may differ, but experts say the desperate search for answers - and the denial - are usually the same.

Since April, the military says, at least 17 Americans - 15 Army soldiers and two Marines - have taken their own lives in Iraq. The true number is almost certainly higher. At least two dozen non-combat deaths, some of them possible suicides, are under investigation according to an AP review of Army casualty reports.

When soldiers go without pay checks
The New York Times (Editorial)

Members of the National Guard and the various military reserves joined up to be part-time civilian soldiers, called up during domestic emergencies and in time of war. This model was coming to an end even before the war in Iraq. Stretched thin by the peacekeeping missions of the
1990's, the Pentagon was already calling up more part-timers and stationing them abroad for longer. But the invasion and occupation of Iraq have magnified the problem.

If the Defense Department wants the reservists to be full-time, long-term soldiers, it is especially important that it end the unfair practice of paying them late - or not at all - for months on end. A new report from the General Accounting Office blames a payroll system so primitive and error-prone that few people fully understand it. The system fails because the people who run it often do not know how to process active-duty pay for mobilized reservists. As a result, soldiers sometimes spend months waiting for the pay they have earned

* * *

Bush administration mistreats military
Chicago Maroon

The Bush administration is either incredibly out of touch with the medical care of America’s troops, or it knows about major problems but simply doesn’t care.

You decide.

In January, when the President actually had the decency to visit wounded troops, he said: “Having been here and seeing the care that these troops get is comforting for me and Laura. We…should and must provide the best care for anybody who is willing to put his or her life in harm’s way. And I can report to the American people that these five soldiers — badly injured in the line of service — are getting the best possible care. And our government is providing it to them.” That same day the Washington Post reported that the White House cut 164,000 veterans access to health care benefits. Score one for not caring.

U.S. casualties from Iraq war top 9,000
UPI

The number of U.S. casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom -- troops killed, wounded or evacuated due to injury or illness -- has passed 9,000, according to new Pentagon data.

In addition to the 397 service members who have died and the 1,967 wounded, 6,861 troops were medically evacuated for non-combat conditions between March 19 and Oct. 30, the Army Surgeon General's office said.

That brings total casualties among all services to more than 9,200, and represents an increase of nearly 3,000 non-combat medical evacuations reported since the first week of October. The Army offered no immediate explanation for the increase.

A leading veterans' advocate expressed concern.

"We are shocked at the dramatic increase in casualties," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center.

A high price for speaking up
ABC News

Two U.S. Army pilots charged with ferrying American military brass around Iraq decided to speak out about the vulnerability of their aircraft. Their reward: criminal charges.

Chief Warrant Officers William Lovett and Robert Jones have 53 years of service between them in the active duty and Army Reserves. Jones has flown in Vietnam, the Persian Gulf and Bosnia.

But their current mission in central Iraq may be their last. Long before U.S. helicopters were being shot down, the reserve pilots told National Defense Magazine their planes were not properly equipped to fly in a war zone. That interview, which appeared in the September 2003 issue of the magazine, has now led to the charges of dereliction of duty against the pilots for disclosing "vulnerabilities" of the "mission, procedures, and aircraft." […]

The reserve pilots fly the VIPs around in C-12 and UC -35 aircraft — the military equivalent of a Beechcraft King Air and a Cessna Citation.

But there aren't many differences between the military and the civilian aircraft. Both are defenseless.

Stop loss set for Army units preparing to deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

For the second time this year, the Army is imposing a stop-loss/stop-movement order on all active-duty units preparing to deploy into Iraq and Afghanistan — this time, to serve in the second major rotations of operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, service officials said Monday. […]

Stop-loss restrictions prevent servicemembers from retiring or leaving the service at their scheduled time, while stop movements prevent permanent changes of station (PCS) moves.

The new unit stop-loss orders, approved over the weekend by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, places active-duty soldiers in the same boat as the Army Reserve and National Guard units now in Iraq and Afghanistan.

With war in Iraq imminent in January, the Army placed unit stop-loss/stop-movement restrictions on all soldiers deploying to the Middle East , both active and reserves. That order was lifted for active units May 29 — but not for reserve units, whom officials said would be dealt with “at a later time.”

The Army's new decision to place active soldiers on a unit stop loss, too, “provides equity for all components and ensures unit stability from alert through redeployment/demobilization,” according to a draft version of the Army's stop-loss press release obtained by Stars and Stripes.

* * *

U.S. casualties from Iraq war top 9,000
UPI

The number of U.S. casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom -- troops killed, wounded or evacuated due to injury or illness -- has passed 9,000, according to new Pentagon data.

In addition to the 397 service members who have died and the 1,967 wounded, 6,861 troops were medically evacuated for non-combat conditions between March 19 and Oct. 30, the Army Surgeon General's office said.

That brings total casualties among all services to more than 9,200, and represents an increase of nearly 3,000 non-combat medical evacuations reported since the first week of October. The Army offered no immediate explanation for the increase.

A leading veterans' advocate expressed concern.

"We are shocked at the dramatic increase in casualties," said Steve Robinson, executive director of the National Gulf War Resource Center.

* * *

Army used copters known to lack defenses
Copley News Service

For 18 months before it was deployed to Iraq, a combined Illinois-Iowa National Guard helicopter unit reported to the Army that most of the unit's helicopters lacked basic missile defense systems.

Despite that, the Army sent the Chinook helicopters to Iraq and used them in missions.

"There is clearly a dispute about the information that was given from the Guard to the Army before mobilization," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said yesterday. "I cannot understand how that unit can be activated with only three of 14 helicopters properly equipped."
Since at least October 2001, the Bartonville, Ill.-based Guard unit had reported that 10 of its 14 helicopters lacked basic missile defense systems, a spokeswoman for the Illinois National Guard said.

We clearly reported it and showed the unit's deficiencies," said Lt. Col. Alicia Tate-Nadeau of the Illinois National Guard. "The information was there for them to view."

* * *

Army National Guard members experience pay problems
GovExec.com
[Ed. note: the GAO report referenced in this article can be read in full, in PDF format]

Army National Guard members called to active duty often experience problems in the processing of their paychecks, according to a new General Accounting Office report.

As a result of convoluted and error-prone manual data entry payroll processing systems, members of the Army National Guard are often underpaid or not paid at all after they are called to active duty, GAO reported. Soldiers are then burdened with trying to resolve the pay issues, and resulting financial problems, often while they are stationed in remote combat areas.

One sergeant had to make a trip to Kuwait from Uzbekistan to resolve pay problems for his unit, and during the trip the sergeant's plane came under enemy fire, GAO discovered. In another instance, active-duty orders were entered incorrectly for a group of soldiers, causing them to receive statements saying they owed the government an average of $48,000.

* * *

Uncertainties of war
Bergen Record

Two things really bother Spec. Ray Murdock about his duty in Iraq , he says: the bullets and the lies.

But that's life nowadays in the National Guard and Reserves, he says. So when the Bass River Township resident hears that the Pentagon is trying to lighten the load for the homesick overseas troops - many of whom put aside their full-time careers for this - Murdock treats the news as he always does: skeptically.

"They tell my kids, my family, 'You're coming home for Christmas.' Then they tell us it won't be until April," said Murdock, an Army guardsman who returned to Iraq on Wednesday, ending a two-week leave at home. "And I'm saying, 'OK, now you're ruining my life because I'm not going to come home for Christmas.'"

Murdock exemplifies the growing fear and frustration of New Jersey 's part-time military forces. They remain patriotic, wanting to combat terrorism and bring peace to Iraq . But many worry that the war will disrupt their lives for years to come. And service to their country, they say, may come at a high price.

* * *

Pentagon Limits Funeral Coverage: Arlington to Keep Reporters Away
Washington Post

The Army tightened rules yesterday on press coverage of funerals at Arlington National Cemetery, directing that reporters be kept far enough away from the graveside that they would likely be unable to hear a chaplain's eulogy.

Reporters will be restricted to a roped-in "bullpen" that is generally far enough away that words spoken at graveside cannot be heard, officials said.

Jack Metzler Jr., the superintendent of Arlington National Cemetery, said the cemetery will be following rules that were already in the books but had not been strictly observed in recent years.

"We're just enforcing what was already in place," he said.

* * *

Pentagon takes aim at family values
The Roanoke Times (op-ed)

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would spare no expense in certain aspects of his makeover of the U.S. military, which has a curious congruence with the commercial interests of the military-industrial complex.

Other aspects, tending to involve mere service personnel and their families, inspire in Rumsfeld a passion for parsimony in the Bush administration's crusade, before Congress intervened Wednesday, to trim or hold steady growth in pay and benefits, including combat pay, health care services and the death gratuity paid to survivors of personnel who put undue pressure on the federal budget by dying while on active duty.

* * *

Who really supported troops?
Knoxville News Sentinel (op-ed)

So just who truly supported the troops? Those who sent them to Iraq with no clear plan for bringing them home again or those who warned, don't go there, it's a quagmire?

Donald Rumsfeld once said with a wink and a grin that you can't have a quagmire in the desert - it's too dry - but if this is not a quagmire, then give me another word for it. We can't move forward, we can't back out. We pour money and human lives into it, and it only gets worse.

* * *

Durbin: Guard aircraft shortchanged
Chicago Tribune

Citing tips from military personnel stationed in Iraq, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) charged Tuesday that many of the aircraft operated by National Guard units are not equipped with the anti-missile defense systems and crew protection material necessary to safeguard troops.

Durbin's broadside on the Senate floor came two days after a missile took down a Chinook helicopter, killing 15 soldiers and wounding 21 others. One of the pilots killed in the attack was Illinois National Guard 1st Lt. Brian Slavenas of Genoa.

"These guard units come in and have to take hand-me-down equipment and scavenge equipment and plead for the same kind of protection that regular Army helicopter crews have," Durbin said in an interview.

"This crash last Sunday proves that they're all vulnerable," he added. "They cannot be treated like second-class soldiers. They deserve to be treated like all the men and women in uniform, with the same dignity and the same protection."

* * *

U.S. Military Upholds TV Cover Ban on Iraq Coffins
Reuters

The U.S. military said Monday it was sticking to a policy forbidding television camera crews and photographers from filming coffins of soldiers killed in Iraq at a U.S. air base in southwestern Germany.

Officials at Ramstein, a major U.S. air base which serves as a transfer point, had allowed media access in the past to honor guard ceremonies and transfers of American-flag covered coffins onto U.S.-bound military transport planes. But rules banning coverage were strictly enforced just before the Iraq war began.

While U.S. officials say the policy was created out of respect for relatives, others criticize the lack of media access, arguing its aim is to prevent the public from seeing large numbers of coffins that could turn public opinion against the war.

* * *

An act of ‘Betrayal': In the midst of war, key family benefits face cuts
Navy Times

Commissaries and the Defense Department's stateside schools are in the crosshairs of Pentagon budget cutters, and military advocates, families and even base commanders are up in arms. Defense officials notified the services in mid-October that they intend to close 19 commissaries and consider closing 19 more, mostly in remote areas.

At the same time, the Pentagon is finishing a study to determine whether to close or transfer control of the 58 schools it operates on 14 military installations in the continental United States.

The two initiatives are the latest in a string of actions by the Bush administration to cut or hold down growth in pay and benefits, including basic pay, combat pay, health-care benefits and the death gratuity paid to survivors of troops who die on active duty.

The roots of all these efforts reach back to the highest levels of the Defense Department.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made no secret of his desire to get the military out of support activities that are not central to its core war-fighting functions, said Joseph Tafoya, director of the Department of Defense Education Activity. As soon as he arrived at the Pentagon three years ago, Tafoya said, Rumsfeld began asking: “Why am I running stores? Why am I in education?”

* * * 

Malfunctioning gear frustrates soldiers
Army Times

Paratroopers in Iraq are finding that the Army's high-tech navigational gear is a bit off course.

Before leaving for Iraq in August, some soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division's 1st Battalion, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, were issued Commanders Digital Assistants, a hand-held device designed to help leaders keep track of themselves and their soldiers in relation to the enemy and other friendly units.

The system is equipped with a global positioning satellite. It worked in the lab but so far has failed to help leaders keep track of forces once on missions in Iraq .

* * * 

Pentagon keeps dead out of sight: Bush team doesn't want people to see human cost of war; Even body bags are now sanitized as `transfer tubes'
Toronto Star

[...] In order to continue to sell an increasingly unpopular Iraqi invasion to the American people, President George W. Bush's administration sweeps the messy parts of war — the grieving families, the flag-draped coffins, the soldiers who have lost limbs — into a far corner of the nation's attic.

No television cameras are allowed at Dover.

Bush does not attend the funerals of soldiers who gave their lives in his war on terrorism. [...]

Buehring of Winter Springs, Fla., described as "a great American" by his commanding officer, had two sons, 12 and 9, was active in the Boy Scouts and his church and had served his country for 18 years.

No government official has said a word publicly about him.

If stories of wounded soldiers are told, they are told by hometown papers, but there is no national attention given to the recuperating veterans here in the nation's capital.

More than 1,700 Americans have been wounded in Iraq since the March invasion.

"You can call it news control or information control or flat-out propaganda," says Christopher Simpson, a communications professor at Washington 's American University .
"Whatever you call it, this is the most extensive effort at spinning a war that the department of defense has ever undertaken in this country."

* * * 

Bush ignores soldiers' burials
AlterNet

On Monday and Tuesday, amid the suicide bombing carnage that left at least 34 Iraqis dead, three more U.S. servicemen were killed in combat in Iraq . In the coming days their bodies will be boxed up and sent home for burial.

While en route, the coffins will be deliberately shielded from view, lest the media capture the dark image of this ultimate sacrifice on film. It is almost certain, as well, that like all of the hundreds of U.S. troops killed in this war to date, these dead soldiers will be interred or memorialized without the solemn presence of the President of the United States.

Increasingly, this proclivity on the part of President Bush to avoid the normal duty of a commander-in-chief to honor dead soldiers is causing rising irritation among some veterans and their families who have noticed what appears to be a historically anomalous slight.

* * *

Emergency leave policy baffles many troops
European and Pacific Stars and Stripes

During several weeks of interviewing American troops across Iraq , dozens of soldiers and Marines told Stars and Stripes that it was not even clear what constituted emergency leave.

Whatever the policy, they said, it was applied unequally between units, commands took too long to grant leave requests, and soldiers were left demoralized.
Marine Sgt. Anthony Heckenger said his unit struggled as other Marines dealt with the deaths of grandparents, a sibling who needed surgery and a parent fighting lung cancer.

“As a Marine, when we are in the field we are at our best,” said Heckenger, of the 3rd Battalion, 5th Regiment of the 1st Marine Division camped near Diwaniyah. “But these guys who are worrying about loved ones ... they aren't the best war-fighting machines they should be. Maybe they should go home. I didn't understand why they couldn't go.”

* * *

Sick soldiers wait for treatment
UPI

More than 400 sick and injured soldiers, including some who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, are stuck at Fort Knox, waiting weeks and sometimes months for medical treatment, a score of soldiers said in interviews.

The delays appear to have demolished morale -- many said they had lost faith in the Army and would not serve again -- and could jeopardize some soldiers' health, the soldiers said.
The Army Reserve and National Guard soldiers are in what the Army calls "medical hold," like roughly 600 soldiers under similar circumstances waiting for doctors at Fort Stewart, Ga.

The apparent lack of care at both locations raises the specter that Reserve and Guard soldiers, including many who returned from Iraq, could be languishing at locations across the country, according to Senate investigators.

* * *

Senators Bond And Leahy Call For Action: Treatment Of Troops At Ft. Stewart Is "Unacceptable"
Release from Sen. Patrick Leahy's Office

Senators Kit Bond and Patrick Leahy, co-chairs of the U.S. Senate National Guard Caucus, dispatched their aides to Ft. Stewart to investigate reports that activated Guard and Reserve members were being poorly housed, with inadequate medical attention, while on "medical hold."

Approximately 650 members of the National Guard and the Army Reserve who have answered the call-to-duty and in many cases were wounded, injured or became ill while serving in Iraq, are currently on medical hold at Ft. Stewart, Ga. Army base.

As a result of an investigation by a reporter and expeditious follow-up by a veteran service organization representative it has come to our attention that these National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers have been receiving inadequate medical attention and counsel while being housed in living accommodations totally inappropriate to their condition.

* * *

Congress nixes extra pay for some troops
Associated Press

House-Senate negotiators considering an $87 billion package for Iraq and Afghanistan have rejected a Democratic proposal to compensate federal employees on active duty with the National Guard and reserves.

The proposal by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., would have made up the differences between the workers' regular salaries and their service incomes, as many states and private employers are already doing. He said 23,000 federal employees would be affected.

The Senate had included the provision in its version of the Iraq spending bill, but senators in the conference agreed to eliminate it Tuesday in a 16-13 vote that was mainly along party lines.

* * *

Iraq vets join ranks of have-nots under Bush administration
Chicago Sun Times (op-ed)

Former POW Shoshana Johnson has finally returned home, still suffering from injuries she received in the military. But now her postwar wounds are exceeding her war wounds.

First, she had to fight simply to get an assessment of her injuries so she could get medical care and disability payments. She had been shot in both ankles, beaten and imprisoned for 22 days, and her military career was cut short. For all this, she has received $600 a month disability compensation, far beneath her needs or what she deserves.

But Johnson isn't an exception. America 's soldiers and veterans seem to be at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to Iraq.

Dick Cheney's former company Halliburton is earning hundreds of millions charging U.S. taxpayers 85 percent more than Iraqi companies to import oil into Iraq . This tidy profit is on top of what Halliburton will earn for the multimillion dollar, no-bid contract it was awarded to rebuild Iraq 's oil fields.

* * *

Extended duty of guardsmen, reservists leaves families reeling
The Times-Picayune

The wives of the soldiers of 1083rd Transportation Company of the Louisiana National Guard are a brave and patriotic bunch, but their patience is running thin, considering that Christmas may come and be long gone before they get their men back home.

And what really gets their gall is the suspicion that guardsmen and reservists aren't getting treated fairly.

For example, whereas active duty troops who've served out their service — what's called ETS in military lingo, which stands for "enlisted time of service" — get to go home, the military isn't affording reservists the same.

That's on top of a Pentagon announcement in September that 20,000 guardsmen and reservists may be kept in Iraq for up to a year, an extension of duty by six months.

The soldiers of the 1083rd, a north Louisiana-based unit, got word of the order last month.
"They called formation, and everyone was jubilant thinking they were going to be told they were going home," said Leah Bailey, relating how her husband, Staff Sgt. David Bailey, described the chain of events to her.

"The commander came out, and they were told that they were going to be there at least until April, possibly longer. (David) said people were crying in formation and that you would have had to use a spatula to pick people up off the ground because of how low morale was."

* * *

U.S. bars torture settlement, to ex-POWs' dismay
Newhouse News Service

The Bush administration is quietly piling up victories in a legal battle to block payments to 17 U.S. combat veterans who were captured and tortured in the first Gulf War and won a suit against Iraq for nearly a billion dollars.

The former POWs -- whipped, beaten, burned, electrically shocked and starved by their Iraqi captors in 1991 -- say they are baffled by the administration's refusal to let them collect any of the assets of Iraq now under U.S. control, and by the Justice Department's efforts to overturn a federal court decision upholding their claims to compensation.

"I don't understand why they want to see this case go away," said Lt. Col. Dave Storr of Spokane , Wash. , one of the POWs who today is an airline pilot and serves in the Air National Guard.

"My country can be mistaken," Storr said, "but I'll still serve it and love it. I'm proud to wear the uniform, no matter what comes."

In court filings, the government asserts sweeping presidential power to block the claims because of the "weighty foreign policy interests at stake."

It does not dispute details of the POWs' suffering.

* * *  

AWOL State of Mind: Calls from Soldiers Desperate to Leave Iraq Flood Hotline
New York Post

Morale among some war-weary GIs in Iraq is so low that a growing number of soldiers - including some now home on R&R - are researching the consequences of going AWOL, according to a leading support group.

The GI Rights Hotline, a national soldiers' support service, has logged a 75 percent increase in calls in the last 12 weeks, with more than 100 of those calls from soldiers, or people on their behalf, asking about the penalties associated with going AWOL - "absent without leave" - according to volunteers and staffers who man the service.

Many of the calls have come from soldiers who are among those now on the first wave of 15-day authorized leaves that began almost two weeks ago. Some hotline callers have indicated they may not return, staffers said.

* * *

Democrats say Bush not backing U.S. Guard, Reserve
Reuters

Democrats Saturday criticized President Bush for opposing expanded health care insurance for U.S. National Guard and Reserve troops as they are pressed into extended service in Iraq.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont , giving the Democrats' weekly radio address, said the Bush administration wants $87 billion to rebuild Iraq and keep U.S. troops there but opposes a Senate-passed measure to guarantee health care coverage to all members of the Guard and Reserve.

"They say it's not related to the war effort. But they're wrong," Leahy said. "And it's time for the country to come together to support our reservists, their families and their employers."

* * *

Senators: Conditions 'unacceptable' for sick reservists at Fort Stewart
Associated Press

More than 600 sick and injured Army reservists enduring long waits for medical treatment while living in spartan barracks should be sent to less crowded military facilities closer to their homes, two U.S. senators said in a report Friday.

The report by Sens. Kit Bond, R-Mo., and Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., blamed Army commanders for ignoring requests from Fort Stewart for additional medical staff to handle the needs of more than 20,000 active-duty and reserve troops who returned from Iraq in late summer.

It also said the Army needs to renovate the concrete barracks - with open bunks, detached toilets and often no air-conditioning - being used to house sick reservists.
Regardless of the nature of the medical malady, these soldiers have been enduring unacceptable conditions for as many as 10 months, said the report by Bond and Leahy, co-chairmen of the Senate National Guard Caucus.

* * *

Political heat rising over reservist complaints at Fort Stewart
Savannah Morning News

The outcry from reservists over medical care and perceived second-class treatment at Fort Stewart has reached all the way to Acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee. He is traveling to Hinesville this weekend to personally check out the complaints.

This week, the outcry also triggered visits from congressional representatives as well as the Army's deputy surgeon general, who led a team to investigate the complaints.

Army commanders are also re-evaluating policies toward mobilized reservists who cannot deploy and are looking for better ways to use doctors.

Maj. Gen. Glenn Webster , Fort Stewart's commander, said he has spoken with Lt. Gen. James Peake, the Army surgeon general, about concerns that Fort Stewart doctors in Iraq – especially those in units known as Forward Surgical Teams – are sitting idle in the desert when their skills could be better used at home.

Lt. Col. Greer Noonburg, an orthopedic surgeon who is serving with the 240th Forward Surgical Team in Iraq , reported that his unit has performed only nine surgeries since arriving overseas in March.

* * *

Stars & Stripes poll reveals growing anger among U.S. troops in Iraq
World Socialist Web Site

An in-depth investigative report published over the past two weeks by the military newspaper Stars & Stripes provides an insight into the disintegrating state of morale among US troops in Iraq. Moreover, it indicates that the military is wracked with tensions and divisions, not only over the foreign policy of the Bush administration, but between different branches of the armed forces and between officers and enlisted men.

From August 10 to August 31, three teams of Stars & Stripes reporters surveyed 1,935 military personnel in Iraq, observed first-hand the conditions they were living under, and conducted a number of interviews. The paper, which is independently edited, though partially funded by the Pentagon, was given unparalleled access to US troops. Its reporters visited nearly 50 camps, ranging from major bases to relatively isolated outposts. […]

While the survey's sample was not considered scientific by the standards of official opinion polls, its results are nonetheless revealing. They indicate that large numbers of soldiers feel the US has no business being in Iraq and that the Bush administration lied to them about the reasons for the war.

* * *  

U.S., not troops' families, should supply body armor
The Virginian-Pilot (Editorial)

Many of our troops in Iraq have not been issued body armor that can withstand assault rifle rounds. Heavy-duty ceramic-plated vests, known as “interceptors,” have not been issued to 44,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Instead, they are stuffed with the standard-issue Kevlar vest. Kevlar is highly effective against shrapnel, but not assault rifle bullets. Soldiers with the new vests can use multiple ceramic plates to safely withstand machine-gun and rifle fire.

In April, lawmakers approved $310 million to buy 300,000 interceptor vests. Thirty-thousand of those are earmarked for troops serving in Iraq . But so far, only $75 million has reached the Army office that oversees distribution of equipment. A sluggish supply chain has forced soldiers' families to shell out more than $1,000 each for the vests and ship them to loved ones serving in Iraq .

* * * 

Army Investigates Treatment of Ill Iraq Veterans
The New York Times

The Army is investigating complaints that hundreds of sick and wounded soldiers who just returned from Iraq are languishing in crudely furnished barracks without proper medical care at the Fort Stewart military base, army officials disclosed on Monday.

Many of the soldiers have been housed in short-term training barracks with concrete floors and outdoor latrines. Many have had to wait weeks to see a doctor.

"Some of these soldiers are certainly not happy," said Col. John Kidd, garrison commander at Fort Stewart. "But we're asking for more resources. And we're open to any suggestions on how to fix this."

* * *

Sick, Injured Reservists Rip Army Care
Associated Press

Spc. Joseph Eason came to Fort Stewart for medical treatment in August after leaving Iraq with five metal shards lodged in his lower body from a mortar round.

Eason, a citizen-soldier in the Florida National Guard, says he would prefer to go home and let a civilian physician treat his wounds. But that's not an option as long as he remains on active duty.

Instead, he's spent the past two months living in spartan concrete barracks at Fort Stewart , where he says his treatment has amounted to one doctor appointment, a visit to a physician's assistant and one physical therapy session.

"The medical care here, in my personal opinion, I feel is substandard if any," said Eason, 35, from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.

Reports that sick or injured reservists complained of long waits for health care and uncomfortable housing put the Army on the defensive Monday, with post officials saying they're doing the best they can with what they have.

* * *

Troops' wish list: Straight talk from commanders, better phone and e-mail access
European and Pacific Stars and Stripes

Blistering heat, lurking dangers and long separations are some things military leaders can do nothing about in Iraq. Troops understand this.

But there are some issues leaders can address, according to troops in Iraq questioned by Stars and Stripes. Here are the most-mentioned items that troops on the ground said would improve their lives. [BuzzFlash ed. note: The list includes mid-tour leave, a clarified mission, beer rations and boots.]

It's not unusual to see soldiers wearing the green woodland fatigues because their desert uniforms have fallen apart from heavy use or they never received the desert fatigues. A soldier at Camp Dogwood said she was issued boots a size too large because that's what was available. As a result, she said, she battles chronic blisters and discomfort.

* * *

Curtains Ordered for Media Coverage of Returning Coffins
Washington Post

Since the end of the Vietnam War, presidents have worried that their military actions would lose support once the public glimpsed the remains of U.S. soldiers arriving at air bases in flag-draped caskets.

To this problem, the Bush administration has found a simple solution: It has ended the public dissemination of such images by banning news coverage and photography of dead soldiers' homecomings on all military bases.

* * *

Congressional Oversight?
Tom Paine.com
(Excerpt from a letter from First Sgt. Gerry Mosley, an Army Reserve soldier wounded in Iraq , to Art Wu, a House Subcommittee on Veterans Affairs staffer, concerning the living conditions and medical care at Ft. Stewart, Ga.)

To this date I still do not know what will be done to correct my medical shortcomings. We have been told numerous times to accept what is offered because when we get home the VA will take care of us.

It is now to the point that we are told if we want to go home we can sign a waiver releasing claim to medical care and will be released from active duty and returned home. Some of the soldiers have elected to do this.

I have served this country for 30 ½ years (3 active and 27 ½ reserves) and never thought I would see the Army "take care of their own" like they are doing. I feel so strongly against the military service now that if they start the draft and it appears my son would be drafted I would pack my family up and learn to live in Canada or elsewhere. The price of freedom has been paid for by Reservist as well as Active Duty soldiers and is still being paid for by both.

* * *

600 Sick, wounded U.S. troops held in squalor
UPI

Hundreds of sick and wounded U.S. soldiers including many who served in the Iraq war are languishing in hot cement barracks here [Fort Stewart, Ga.] while they wait -- sometimes for months -- to see doctors.

The National Guard and Army Reserve soldiers' living conditions are so substandard, and the medical care so poor, that many of them believe the Army is trying push them out with reduced benefits for their ailments. One document shown to UPI states that no more doctor appointments are available from Oct. 14 through Nov. 11 -- Veterans Day.

[…] One month after President Bush greeted soldiers at Fort Stewart -- home of the famed Third Infantry Division -- as heroes on their return from Iraq, approximately 600 sick or injured members of the Army Reserves and National Guard are warehoused in rows of spare, steamy and dark cement barracks in a sandy field, waiting for doctors to treat their wounds or illnesses.

The Reserve and National Guard soldiers are on what the Army calls "medical hold," while the Army decides how sick or disabled they are and what benefits -- if any -- they should get as a result.

* * *

Military families protest big jump in price of soldiers' calls from Iraq
St. Louis-Post Dispatch

Some American soldiers in Iraq have made heavy use of phones there to keep in touch with families back home. Now some military families say those calls have virtually stopped because of a hefty increase in phone charges.

"The guys are very upset over there," Edith Beach of Kirksville said Thursday.
Her husband is an Army reservist stationed in Baghdad . Sgt. 1st Class David Beach survived an ambush in which one of his comrades was wounded. He and his
wife last spoke Monday night.

"My husband said morale stinks," Edith Beach said. She said he and his comrades now were paying up to $2 a minute to call home. The phone problem appears to be partly a result of access to government phones that allow soldiers to call home less expensively. Also at issue are the rates AT&T is charging at calling centers.

* * * 

Many soldiers, same letter : Newspapers around U.S. get identical missives from Iraq
The Olympian

Letters from hometown soldiers describing their successes rebuilding Iraq have been appearing in newspapers across the country as U.S. public opinion on the mission sours. And all the letters are the same.

A Gannett News Service search found identical letters from different soldiers with the 2nd Battalion of the 503rd Airborne Infantry Regiment, also known as "The Rock," in 11 newspapers, including Snohomish, Wash.

The Olympian received two identical letters signed by different hometown soldiers: Spc. Joshua Ackler and Spc. Alex Marois, who is now a sergeant. The paper declined to run either because of a policy not to publish form letters.

The five-paragraph letter talks about the soldiers' efforts to re-establish police and fire departments, and build water and sewer plants in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk , where the unit is based.

"The quality of life and security for the citizens has been largely restored, and we are a large part of why that has happened," the letter reads.

It describes people waving at passing troops and children running up to shake their hands and say thank you.

* * *

Frustration over leave priority simmers for tired soldiers in line for R&R
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

Troops, commanders and families back home are expressing confusion over the new “rest and recuperation” policy aimed at giving deployed troops in Iraq and surrounding countries 15 days leave.

Last week, that confusion plagued the 368th Engineering Battalion out of New England , in which 58 reservists thought they all would be going home for a few days of vacation. Turns out, planning officials had only given the battalion permission for nine soldiers.

“Apparently, the battalion leadership of the 368th, upon learning of the R&R program, arbitrarily assigned a 10 percent figure of the number of soldiers within that battalion who would be authorized to go on leave once the program began,” explained Central Command spokesman Maj. Pete Mitchell. “The problem with that decision had to do with the fact that there were a number of limited seats on the government aircraft, a number of limited seats by design.”

The commander told those 58 troops to instead buy commercial airline tickets, fares out of Kuwait International Airport to Manchester , N.H. , at prices ranging between $1,200 and $2,000 for a round trip — and later, the soldier would seek reimbursement from the Army.

* * *

U.S. ‘years' from cut in Iraq Force
Chicago Tribune

The U.S. Army general who heads coalition forces in Iraq says it will be years before the United States is able to "draw down" its forces here and he warned Americans to brace for more casualties, including a "significant engagement where tens of American soldiers or coalition soldiers" are killed.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Chicago Tribune, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez gave a frank assessment of the military situation in Iraq. He said the coalition forces are winning the war here despite the daily drumbeat of news reports that suggest the military is encountering more trouble than its commanders had anticipated.

He said he is "very comfortable" with the current force structure and size, which includes 140,000 soldiers, all but a few thousand of whom are American, and he said for the first time publicly that the coalition force level won't be reduced anytime soon.

* * *

Some still face cut if special pay rolled back
European and Pacific Stars & Stripes

The Department of Defense has asked Congress to roll back the Jan. 1 increases in Family Separation Allowance and Imminent Danger Pay enacted in April for deployed forces and, instead, to raise Hardship Duty Pay only for military personnel serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.

If Congress agrees, FSA for tens of thousands of personnel would fall in January, from $250 a month down to $100, and IDP would drop from $225 a month down to $150. So, depending on individual circumstance, the pay cut could range from $75 to $225 a month.

Among deployed forces, only troops in Afghanistan and Iraq would be spared an actual pay cut. Indeed, many in those theaters could see a pay gain. Their HDP would be raised Jan. 1 by at least $225 a month, an amount to match any combined drop in FSA and IDP. HDP, in fact, could be raised as much as $300.

The uncertainty, as of Oct. 1, reflected the fact that Defense officials still weren't prepared to discuss their plan to roll back FSA and IDP increases, and to raise HDP, even though broad details were revealed during a Sept. 25 hearing of Senate Appropriations Committee.

* * *

Guard, Reserves may get insurance
Gannett News Service

Buried in a massive, $87 billion measure to pay for the war in Iraq is a plan to extend the Pentagon's health insurance for full-time soldiers to National Guard and Reserve troops. […]

More than 1.2 million Americans serve in the Guard or Reserve nationwide. A recent General Accounting Office study estimated that 20 percent of Guard troops have no health insurance at all.

[…] The measure would cost about $400 million next year, which would add to the federal budget deficit. It would need to be adopted again annually. The Bush administration has said the health-care plan would be too expensive.

But supporters say the proposal would cost less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the total military budget. The Senate still must vote on the Iraq spending bill. The House version of the bill does not include the health-care proposal, but supporters think there is enough Senate support for the plan to keep it in the bill even if House leaders object.

* * *

More Military Funds Scrutinized
St. Petersburg Times

Pentagon officials are investigating allegations of a second case of the Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base hiding millions of dollars from Congress in its budget.
The latest allegation, Pentagon officials confirmed Wednesday, involves $25-million that Special Operations listed in its fiscal year 2004 budget, which took effect Wednesday.

[…] Pentagon investigators already had been conducting an audit, or a preliminary investigation, into how Special Operations -- at the Pentagon's request -- inflated budget proposals in fiscal year 2003 to "park," or hide, $20-million from Congress.

* * *

Military Stashes Covert Millions
St. Petersburg Times

The U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base inflated budget proposals at the Pentagon's request last year to hide $20-million from Congress, according to documents obtained by the St. Petersburg Times.

Special Operations officials divided the money among six projects so the money would not attract attention. They also instructed their own budget analysts not to mention it during briefings with congressional aides, the documents show.

[…] The plan, according to defense officials and documents obtained by the Times, called for Special Operations to pad its proposed budget by $20-million so the money could be used later by the Pentagon for some other purpose. The Pentagon initially wanted Special Operations to hide $40-million. The Special Operations Command, which oversees the nation's secret commando units, refused.

It is unclear what the Pentagon intended to do with the $20-million, or what became of the money.

* * *

Army Reserve battalion members, whose home leave was on, off and on again, not on return flight
Boston Globe

The saga of an Army Reserve battalion trying to get home from the Middle East on leave took another twist Sunday, when its members couldn't return to the United States because there wasn't room on their flight.

* * * 

U.S. failed to limit friendly fire in Iraq-report
Reuters

The Pentagon failed to do enough to prevent incidents of ''friendly fire'' in the Iraq war despite acute concern about the same problem after the 1991 Gulf War, the U.S. military said on Thursday.

A ''lessons learned'' report, compiled by the military and aimed at correcting mistakes made during the war, also criticized the way the Pentagon notified, mobilized and trained reservists and the slowness of assessing the amount of damage inflicted on Iraqi targets.
Two generals testified before Congress and briefed reporters about the findings, but declined to release the report.

* * *

Health problems, homelessness, awaits returning vets
Boston Globe

The U.S. mission in Iraq continues, but already one Connecticut soldier who served in the conflict is homeless and living at the state Veterans Home and Hospital in Rocky Hill.
There are about 1,800 members of the state National Guard and Reserve currently on active duty, in addition to those state residents enlisted in the armed forces.

State Veterans Affairs Commissioner Linda Spoonster Schwartz said she doesn't know how many of those soon-to-be veterans will be seeking state help. But last week, 15 vets, including a National Guardsman who served in Operation Iraqi Freedom, sought shelter at the veteran's home, she said.

''I was a little bit jolted that we had 15 in one week,'' she told The Associated Press this week.

* * *

Bush goes AWOL when soldiers need care
Palm Beach Post (op-ed)

The Bush administration is trying to cheat the veterans while continuing to send today's troops back into action, all at the same time, thereby creating more casualties and new disabled veterans who can be denied benefits. And don't think the troops don't know.

* * *

'Macbeth' to Tour U.S. Military Bases
Associated Press

The Pentagon is contributing $1 million to help a production of Shakespeare's “Macbeth” tour U.S. military bases, the National Endowment for the Arts announced Thursday.
[…] In the play, Macbeth, a successful general, takes over Scotland by murdering the king but is eventually defeated and killed by a rebel army.

* * *

No more meal bills for hospitalized troops
CNN

Wounded service members in U.S. military hospitals will no longer be presented with a bill for meals upon discharge, the Pentagon said Wednesday.

The idea -- not precisely true, as it turned out -- that U.S. troops, some of whom had lost limbs or were gravely wounded, were being charged $8.10 per day for meals while they were in military hospitals outraged some members of Congress.

What was happening was that the wounded patients were being asked to reimburse the government for what is known as their basic subsistence allowance -- money they get in their paychecks to cover meals.

Because they did not have to buy meals in the hospital, they were asked to return that allowance, a step required by law.

But Pentagon officials admit it seemed like adding insult to injury. Congress quickly changed the law, and effective Wednesday active-duty military patients will get meals free and be allowed to keep their meal allowance.

* * *

Floor statement of Senator Edward M. Kennedy on the need to protect our soldiers in Iraq
Release from Sen. Edward Kennedy's Office

Mr. President, this week, the Senate begins a debate on the most important question facing any government. It is not just about the Administration's policies and its conduct in Iraq. It is about the way we pursue American interests in a dangerous world. It is about the way our government makes one of its most important decision -- whether to send young American men and women to war.

Everything we do this week -- every amendment we consider and every word of our debate -- should be focused on protecting our men and women in uniform, providing for the support and care of their families, and helping them complete their mission and come home with honor.

* * *

Full Metal Jacket: Why must Americans in Iraq face death because of outmoded body armor?
Los Angeles Times (op-ed)

Suzanne Werfelman is a mother and a teacher who has been shopping for individual body armor. This is not in response to threats from her elementary-class students in Sciota , Pa.; it's a desperate attempt to protect her son in Iraq.

Like many other U.S. service members in Iraq , her son was given a Vietnam-era flak jacket that cannot stop the type of weapons used today. It appears that parents across the country are now purchasers of body armor because of the failure of the military to supply soldiers with modern vests.

Werfelman's son, Army Spc. Richard Murphy, is a military policeman in Iraq . He was also one of my law students last year before being sent off for a 20-month stint. Upon their arrival, members of Murphy's unit were shocked to learn that they would be given the old Vietnam-era vests rather than the modern Interceptor vest. (They were also given unarmored Humvees, which are vulnerable to even small-arms fire.)

Military officials admit that the standard flak jacket could not reliably stop a bullet, including AK-47 ammunition, used in Iraq and the most common ammunition in the world.

* * *

GAO finds flaws in health care protocols for deploying, returning troops
Army Times

U.S. troops could be deployed even though they are not well, and healthy troops could return home sick and have a difficult time getting needed care because the Defense Department is failing to comply with its policies to protect the health of deployed troops, according to a new report. (Read the report, in PDF format)

In a General Accounting Office review of selected Army and Air Force installations sending troops to Afghanistan and Kosovo, investigators found that one or both of the health assessments required before and after deployment was missing in 38 percent to 98 percent of the soldiers and airmen whose files were reviewed.

* * *

Is the Military Falling Out of Love With the GOP?
Slate

Is the love affair between the military and the GOP coming to an end?

For years it's been a given that the military is an eternally Republican constituency. Republicans, after all, want to spend more money on defense than Democrats do, and military bases are located disproportionately in the South and the West, two GOP strongholds. There are obvious cultural affinities between the military and the Republicans' traditional image as the party of manly discipline, as opposed to the Democrats' traditional image as the party of maternal indulgence. The military is a naturally conservative constituency, and it's one that votes […]

But Chatterbox has lately noticed signs of growing military disenchantment with this Republican administration. Individually, they might not mean much, but collectively, they could be the start of a new realignment.

* * *

Losing the Troops
Mother Jones

The military is stretched thin. Troops are staying in Iraq longer than expected. Reservists are being kept away from jobs and families longer than expected. Halliburton can't provide troops with adequate water and food. The Pentagon proposed a paycut for troops, and retracted in response to pubic pressure. Foreign help doesn't seem on it's way. Morale is low.

Wasn't President Bush supposed to be the pro-military President? Is this the same guy that wore a flight suit?

* * *

Bush Administration Poised to Break Promise to U. S. Reservists
Misleader.org

Six weeks after insisting the U. S. had "sufficient force to do what is required" in Iraq, the Bush Administration admitted yesterday more American reservists likely will be sent to the frontlines.

Thursday's announcement contradicts the promise of Joint Chiefs Chairman General Richard Myers who said on August 5th, "We're trying to put predictability into the lives of our soldiers, their families and the reservists and their employers."

* * *

Congress trying to help troops, families
Charleston Daily Mail

With longer tours of duty forecast for thousands of reservists, members of Congress are considering ways they can assist the troops and their families.

It remains unclear when West Virginia 's 2,861 National Guard and Reserve troops currently on active duty will be reunited with their families. The Army recently announced deployments could be extended to a full year in Iraq and the Persian Gulf region.

Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., sharply quizzed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Wednesday about whether he would support restrictions on the duration and frequency of reservists' service.

Byrd earlier this summer proposed limiting deployments of National Guard and Reserve members. The amendment did not succeed.

* * *

Byrd presses National Guard concerns with top military leaders
Release from Sen. Robert Byrd's Office

U.S. Senator Robert C. Byrd, D-W.Va., Wednesday pressed Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about concerns raised by the families of West Virginia National Guardsmen who have been sent to Iraq. "I have heard from many families anxious to know when their deployed loved ones might return home. All of these families expressed a deep frustration with the open-ended, unfocused deployment of Guard and Reserve units. After reviewing what some of these units have experienced, I understand the frustrations," Byrd told Rumsfeld at a Senate committee hearing.

"Our troops should be commended for their courage and sacrifice. But National Guardsmen and Reservists also have important responsibilities to their families, their employers, and their communities.  It is unreasonable to dip into the Guard and Reserves so frequently and expect them to serve with no indication of when their missions will end. We must do better to balance their commitments at home with their deployments overseas," Byrd said.

* * *

Letter to the Editor: $1,000 insult to troops
Bangor Daily News (letter to the editor)

My husband is with the 112th medical unit stationed in Iraq . He has been away since February. Recently the president announced that the troops will have to stay away for a full year. This means my husband will not return until March 2004. However, the Army is granting leave so that the troops may visit their families for about two weeks.

In order to visit home they are required to use civilian transportation. Since the Army cannot give them a specific date (after all, they are in the middle of a war), American Airlines is going to charge them in the neighborhood of $1,000 to travel from Baltimore , Md. (where the Army will drop them off) to Bangor.

Since all these soldiers are from Maine , this is unfair. How much are these men and women going to be required to give in the service of this country? Can't something be done to get these people back to Bangor so they can see their loved ones for at least two weeks?

* * *

The nation lets down its Guard
The Oregonian (editorial)

With few complaints, tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and military reserves have left their jobs, their spouses and their children to serve in Iraq, Afghanistan and other battlefields in the war on terror. These reservists are fulfilling their commitments and doing their duty.

In exchange, their country owes them more than thanks: decent health care and fair retirement benefits, attentive support for their families and, above all, the utmost respect for their service. They aren't getting it now. In ways big and small, the Congress, the Pentagon and the public are treating reservists with disdain or indifference.

[…] Meanwhile, the Pentagon recently abruptly announced that reservists must stay in service 12 months from the time they set foot in Iraq -- backtracking on a promise to count months of stateside training as part of a year in service. "That was a real punch in the gut," said one Oregon Guard official.

* * *

How to ruin a great army? See Donald Rumsfeld
Knight Ridder Newspapers (commentary)

It took the better part of 20 years to rebuild the Army from the wreckage of Vietnam . With the hard work of a generation of young officers, blooded in Vietnam and determined that the mistake would never be repeated, a new Army rose Phoenix-like from the ashes of the old, now perhaps the finest Army in history.

In just over two years, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and his civilian aides have done just about everything they could to destroy that Army.

* * *

Soldiers Medical Testing Faulted, Future Health Claims At Stake
The Hartford Courant

U.S. forces were sent to Iraq without the necessary medical testing to support future service-related health claims, veterans' advocates say.

Having investigated the history of similar claims brought by tens of thousands of 1991 Gulf War veterans, advocates fear history may be repeating itself, resulting in claims being rejected, or not settled quickly.

By failing to secure blood samples immediately before and after deployment, by refusing to use modern medical technology to re-evaluate samples from 1991 and by ignoring requests for more comprehensive medical evaluations, the Pentagon has made it difficult to establish direct links between exposures to biological and chemical agents and subsequent illnesses, critics say.

[…] According to recent U.S. Army figures, 5,381 soldiers have become ill during service in Iraq ; another 1,076 illnesses have been reported in Afghanistan . The Pentagon did not supply similar totals for the other services, despite repeated requests.

* * *

Stretched Thin, Lied to & Mistreated
The Nation

Trapped in the polluted heat, poorly supplied and cut off from regular news, the GIs are fighting a guerrilla war that they neither wanted, expected nor trained for. On the urban battlefields of central Iraq, "shock and awe" and all the other "new way of war" buzzwords are drowned out by the din of diesel-powered generators, Islamic prayer calls and the occasional pop of small-arms fire.

Here, the high-tech weaponry that so emboldens Pentagon bureaucrats is largely useless, and the grinding work of counterinsurgency is done the old-fashioned way--by hand. Not surprisingly, most of the American GIs stuck with the job are weary, frustrated and ready to go home.

* * *

United House votes to keep combat pay
San Francisco Chronicle

The House has voted unanimously to demand that combat pay and family separation allowances for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan be preserved when the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

The 406-0 vote late Wednesday night came almost a month after The Chronicle disclosed that the Bush administration wanted to cut such pay for the 136,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and the 9,000 in Afghanistan . The White House quickly backtracked after the story appeared, saying it would support extending the higher pay provisions.

But Congress must act in the next few weeks to ensure that the pay of those serving in the military's most dangerous assignments isn't cut. The House vote instructed its members in the conference committee with the Senate to insist on preserving the endangered pay when the final version of a military appropriations bill is drafted.

The Senate's bill already calls for making the higher pay permanent for military personnel deployed in any combat area, so it seems the planned cuts will be scotched.

* * *

An army travels on its stomach
Wired.com

The food may still taste like road kill. But if a new program from the U.S. Army works out, GIs' rations won't smell quite so bad.

The Natick Soldier Center is working on a project to make rations more palatable to grunts by embedding savory aromas into the food's packaging. If the food smells better, the thinking goes, the soldiers will be more likely to eat their MREs, or Meals, Ready to Eat, and will be better able to carry out their grueling tours of duty in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

The effort -- tongue-pleasingly titled Active Package Olfaction to Increase Soldier Acceptance of Field Rations -- could ultimately affect more than soldiers' appetites, however. Smells have been known to influence people's perception, energy and ability to learn. This project might be the beginning of a military foray into aromatherapy.

Nutrition experts are divided over whether the Army's plan for scents makes sense, however. While smell certainly plays a role in food's allure, no consensus exists among these specialists that improving the aroma of the MRE's packaging will actually make the rations any more tolerable.

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A Parent's Letter to Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson

As a parent of a young man serving in Iraq (U.S. Army) and retired Navy Chief, I'm very concern with many things taking place today that directly affects our young men and woman serving in Iraq.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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See also:

Military Families Speak Out
Military Families Speak Out is an organization of people who are opposed to war in Iraq and who have relatives or loved ones in the military

Take Back the Media: Army of One
A Flash animation depicts the rhetoric and reality surrounding the Bush administration's “support” of American troops

TV News Lies
A detailed chart reveals how the Bush administration and Republicans have hurt -- not helped -- military personnel and their families

Claim vs. Fact: Treatment of Troops at Time of War
The Center for American Progress (http://www.centerforamericanprogress.org) developed this chart comparing the words of Bush and members of his administration against recent media reports

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