Showing posts with label military spending. Show all posts
Showing posts with label military spending. Show all posts
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Thursday, September 13, 2007
15 permanent bases (and an embassy city) are reality, the rest is talk...
That's in Iraq. We couldn't get the hospitals, electricity or water plants working, but we have an Imperial Stormtrooper Star Wars Garrison in the center of the oil puddle of the world.
We have 737(publicly known) military bases in other countries. What for? To make trade free? To spread democracy? To make the world love us?
Chalmers Johnson has said we cannot live as a domestic democracy and an imperial empire at the same time.
Senator Hagel said it... "for What?" ...every death in Iraq from this day forward is "for What?"
During his campaign Dubya wanted us to wait 6 months until the (Consigliere) Baker Commission came up with a plan for Iraq. Then he ignored it.
Then Dubya asked us to wait 6 more months to see if his Surge (Trademark) worked and General Betrayus could recommend a plan.
Dubya is playing out he clock, and meanwhile Congress keeps draining the treasury for him, and China keeps loaning us money for our grandchildren to repay.
Hope you don't think the dollar is going to keep it's value forever.
How's your home's value going? Can you sell it? Do you have a defined benefit pension any more? Our longevity is 41st in the world, our rate of infant mortality is atrocious, and we pay twice as much for medical insurance to cover only half our population.
This is the meaning of the Federalist Society who want to erase the Constitution, the Chicago School of Trickle Down Economics, the National Guard replaced by Blackwater 'Security', and the curse of Grover Norquist. Privatize everything, and shear the sheep at gunpoint. Bread and circuses will entertain the taxpayers while Rome burns.
Cameras and propaganda pointed at our own people.
Democracy or Empire. Too late.
We have 737(publicly known) military bases in other countries. What for? To make trade free? To spread democracy? To make the world love us?
Chalmers Johnson has said we cannot live as a domestic democracy and an imperial empire at the same time.
Senator Hagel said it... "for What?" ...every death in Iraq from this day forward is "for What?"
During his campaign Dubya wanted us to wait 6 months until the (Consigliere) Baker Commission came up with a plan for Iraq. Then he ignored it.
Then Dubya asked us to wait 6 more months to see if his Surge (Trademark) worked and General Betrayus could recommend a plan.
Dubya is playing out he clock, and meanwhile Congress keeps draining the treasury for him, and China keeps loaning us money for our grandchildren to repay.
Hope you don't think the dollar is going to keep it's value forever.
How's your home's value going? Can you sell it? Do you have a defined benefit pension any more? Our longevity is 41st in the world, our rate of infant mortality is atrocious, and we pay twice as much for medical insurance to cover only half our population.
This is the meaning of the Federalist Society who want to erase the Constitution, the Chicago School of Trickle Down Economics, the National Guard replaced by Blackwater 'Security', and the curse of Grover Norquist. Privatize everything, and shear the sheep at gunpoint. Bread and circuses will entertain the taxpayers while Rome burns.
Cameras and propaganda pointed at our own people.
Democracy or Empire. Too late.
Friday, August 24, 2007
The Lord of War Speaks and Fog comes out - Catapulting a ball of confusion
Dubya is delusional, but at least he is warming to the idea of a Vietnam-Iraq analogy, after all these years of dismissing the concept.
He is one of the power group who conveniently find it unprofitable to learn from mistakes (or history), although America knew that he was a failed business executive (multiple failures) and they hired him anyway. (I know, I know, Gore did win, but the numbers were so close that they could be finagled.)
Does anybody have Dubya on tape during his first election campaign repeating that America should not be into nation building! I remember I saw him say it in a debate with Gore.
If wishes were ponies, Laura would slip a copy of Fog of War into his dvd mix, but I doubt he would understand it.
Fog of War... Let's see, if it took our politicians years to finally admit the error of invading Vietnam, even after they knew it was a mistake to go on for one more minute, and about half, or 26 or 27 thousand extra American soldiers (and untold "collateral" Vietnamese "damage") lives were wasted in the name of political face, then we are looking for Dubya and his henchman Dirty Dick to sacrifice a whole lot more American soldiers and "collateral" Iraqi "damage".
Which is probably why the 14 spankin' new permanent bases are built in Iraq but the hospitals, roads, schools, power grid and civil law and order infrastructure are all still a shocked and awed shambles.
But the potential for profit is still on the upside!
Isn't that what Capitalism is all about?
Blood for oil, arms sales, bloated privatized military contracts... Didn't one of those neo-con snake oil salesmen once say on the edge of chaos is where the potential for profit lays?
Iraq is not the only sheep being shorn here folks.
If you were slightly stirred by the scarey images of horror that Dubya catapulted at the Vet convention, I would like you to remember, we bombed Cambodia for politics, to impress the folks at home, that is why all those things Dubya catapulted on about happened under the Pol Pot regime.
I even am hearing the repetitious right wing meme that we can install a strong man in Iraq and pull out (to the permanent bases.) If horrors are to happen, wouldn't a strong man do them, worse than a civil war.
I say, let the Iraqis lead themselves for a change. We might all be surprised.
And what, aside from the astonishing fog-blowing act Dubya performed for the Vets, makes you think that the Iraqis will follow us home to make war on us here? Like the Vietnamese followed us home to make war on us? The American public must have ADD and memory loss if they believe Dubya's bull shit.
I listened to the words he was saying and kept thinking "WHAT is he TALKIN' about! WHAT KIND of LOGIC is he making? Do other Americans, like those Vets at that convention, REALLY drink this man's KOOLAIDE without a single question, without the smallest twinge of cognitive dissonance?
Those guys at the convention should have known history better than that and booed him off the stage. What is America coming to, when political patriotism supplants memory, judgement, and honesty?
I've always said it - terrorism is a criminal act. Treat it like a crime and it'll get solved. Get military involved, and you'll lose more than your shirt to the war machine. You'll lose a lot of your soldiers.
We need to end war.
We need to begin diplomacy.
We need to regain our sanity.
He is one of the power group who conveniently find it unprofitable to learn from mistakes (or history), although America knew that he was a failed business executive (multiple failures) and they hired him anyway. (I know, I know, Gore did win, but the numbers were so close that they could be finagled.)
Does anybody have Dubya on tape during his first election campaign repeating that America should not be into nation building! I remember I saw him say it in a debate with Gore.
If wishes were ponies, Laura would slip a copy of Fog of War into his dvd mix, but I doubt he would understand it.
Fog of War... Let's see, if it took our politicians years to finally admit the error of invading Vietnam, even after they knew it was a mistake to go on for one more minute, and about half, or 26 or 27 thousand extra American soldiers (and untold "collateral" Vietnamese "damage") lives were wasted in the name of political face, then we are looking for Dubya and his henchman Dirty Dick to sacrifice a whole lot more American soldiers and "collateral" Iraqi "damage".
Which is probably why the 14 spankin' new permanent bases are built in Iraq but the hospitals, roads, schools, power grid and civil law and order infrastructure are all still a shocked and awed shambles.
But the potential for profit is still on the upside!
Isn't that what Capitalism is all about?
Blood for oil, arms sales, bloated privatized military contracts... Didn't one of those neo-con snake oil salesmen once say on the edge of chaos is where the potential for profit lays?
Iraq is not the only sheep being shorn here folks.
If you were slightly stirred by the scarey images of horror that Dubya catapulted at the Vet convention, I would like you to remember, we bombed Cambodia for politics, to impress the folks at home, that is why all those things Dubya catapulted on about happened under the Pol Pot regime.
I even am hearing the repetitious right wing meme that we can install a strong man in Iraq and pull out (to the permanent bases.) If horrors are to happen, wouldn't a strong man do them, worse than a civil war.
I say, let the Iraqis lead themselves for a change. We might all be surprised.
And what, aside from the astonishing fog-blowing act Dubya performed for the Vets, makes you think that the Iraqis will follow us home to make war on us here? Like the Vietnamese followed us home to make war on us? The American public must have ADD and memory loss if they believe Dubya's bull shit.
I listened to the words he was saying and kept thinking "WHAT is he TALKIN' about! WHAT KIND of LOGIC is he making? Do other Americans, like those Vets at that convention, REALLY drink this man's KOOLAIDE without a single question, without the smallest twinge of cognitive dissonance?
Those guys at the convention should have known history better than that and booed him off the stage. What is America coming to, when political patriotism supplants memory, judgement, and honesty?
I've always said it - terrorism is a criminal act. Treat it like a crime and it'll get solved. Get military involved, and you'll lose more than your shirt to the war machine. You'll lose a lot of your soldiers.
We need to end war.
We need to begin diplomacy.
We need to regain our sanity.
Monday, July 09, 2007
remember when oil was 20 dollars a barrrel?
And Bush's war only cost We the People (the American taxpayers) a billion a week?
Good thing we have soma (24-7 television coverage of a rock concert for dead Diana, and Paris-and-Brittany's latest doin's) to paralyze our brain cells... otherwise... We'd be ticked.
Report: Wars Cost US $12 Billion a Month
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.
All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.
The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.
For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.
The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.
The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.
Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.
But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.
If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.
Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said.
The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war.
Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.
The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items.
The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion _ almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq.
"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
Good thing we have soma (24-7 television coverage of a rock concert for dead Diana, and Paris-and-Brittany's latest doin's) to paralyze our brain cells... otherwise... We'd be ticked.
Report: Wars Cost US $12 Billion a Month
By ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - The boost in troop levels in Iraq has increased the cost of war there and in Afghanistan to $12 billion a month, and the total for Iraq alone is nearing a half-trillion dollars, congressional analysts say.
All told, Congress has appropriated $610 billion in war-related money since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror assaults, roughly the same as the war in Vietnam. Iraq alone has cost $450 billion.
The figures come from the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, which provides research and analysis to lawmakers.
For the 2007 budget year, CRS says, the $166 billion appropriated to the Pentagon represents a 40 percent increase over 2006.
The Vietnam War, after accounting for inflation, cost taxpayers $650 billion, according to separate CRS estimates.
The $12 billion a month "burn rate" includes $10 billion for Iraq and almost $2 billion for Afghanistan, plus other minor costs. That's higher than Pentagon estimates earlier this year of $10 billion a month for both operations. Two years ago, the average monthly cost was about $8 billion.
Among the reasons for the higher costs is the cost of repairing and replacing equipment worn out in harsh conditions or destroyed in combat.
But the estimates call into question the Pentagon's estimate that the increase in troop strength and intensifying pace of operations in Baghdad and Anbar province would cost only $5.6 billion through the end of September.
If Congress approves President Bush's pending request for another $147 billion for the budget year starting Oct. 1, the total bill for the war on terror since Sept. 11 would reach more than three-fourths of a trillion dollars, with appropriations for Iraq reaching $567 billion.
Also, if the increase in war tempo continues beyond September, the Pentagon's request "would presumably be inadequate," CRS said.
The latest estimates come as support for the war in Iraq among Bush's GOP allies in Congress is beginning to erode. Senior Republicans such as Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Richard Lugar of Indiana have called for a shift in strategy in Iraq and a battle over funding the war will resume in September, when Democrats in Congress begin work on a funding bill for the war.
Congress approved $99 billion in war funding in May after a protracted battle and a Bush veto of an earlier measure over Democrats' attempt to set a timeline for withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq.
The report faults the Pentagon for using the Iraq war as a pretext for boosting the Pentagon's non-war budget by costs such as procurement, increasing the size of the military and procurement of replacement aircraft as war-related items.
The new estimate comes as the White House and Democrats are fighting over spending bills for next year. That battle is over about $22 billion _ almost the cost of two months' fighting in Iraq.
"Think about what $10 billion a month would mean to protecting Americans from terrorism, improving security at our ports and airports, and increasing border security," said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
why I love Michael Moore
a hometown boy does good, damn good
How many people can you name in the mainstream media who have been as correct, right, prescient, and humane as Michael Moore?
How many people can you name in the mainstream media who have been as correct, right, prescient, and humane as Michael Moore?
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Why are we in Iraq when Flint Michigan looks like a bomb dropped?
There is an alternative.
"Let's get out of Iraq and rebuild America first."
--Merle Haggard
"Let's get out of Iraq and rebuild America first."
--Merle Haggard
Sunday, May 27, 2007
The 14 NO votes
The 14 N0 votes:
These are the only loyal opposition left.
The rest have essentially voted for Emperor Bush to do as he pleases, and he pleases to invade Iran and rob the American taxpayer's treasury.
DemocRATs, you will be blamed in years to come for your spinelessness.
Fill your pockets now, boys, then go home and stay there.
Senator Levin, where were you?
Is your loyalty to Israeli lobbyists trumping you oath to the American Constitution?
Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
These are the only loyal opposition left.
The rest have essentially voted for Emperor Bush to do as he pleases, and he pleases to invade Iran and rob the American taxpayer's treasury.
DemocRATs, you will be blamed in years to come for your spinelessness.
Fill your pockets now, boys, then go home and stay there.
Senator Levin, where were you?
Is your loyalty to Israeli lobbyists trumping you oath to the American Constitution?
Boxer (D-CA)
Burr (R-NC)
Clinton (D-NY)
Coburn (R-OK)
Dodd (D-CT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Feingold (D-WI)
Kennedy (D-MA)
Kerry (D-MA)
Leahy (D-VT)
Obama (D-IL)
Sanders (I-VT)
Whitehouse (D-RI)
Wyden (D-OR)
Thursday, May 10, 2007
But the contractors on the humvee job are Makin' OUT!
Milkin' the Cash Cow A.k.a. the American taxpayer ... for years on end.
(I happen to know this for a fact from the ground level, not from reading the news.)
Maybe we had other priorities for our tax dollars?
Naw...
Remember when the Humvees were top heavy and rolling over? Now...
Humvee Doors Trap Troops
United Press International
May 08, 2007
WASHINGTON - Doors that jam shut during an attack are an unintended consequence of the Pentagon's effort to add armor to Humvees transporting U.S. troops in Iraq.
Due to the jamming problem, records show the Army must fix the doors of some 18,000 armored Humvees that serve as the main troop transport vehicle, USA Today reports.
One quick fix to the problem is to weld hooks to the Humvee doors so another truck can rip them off with a cable and release the troops.
"Every Humvee outside (a fortified base) will have a hook," says Lt. Col. William Wiggins, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon.
The Army plans to spend $284 million this year on Humvee armor kits to protect U.S. troops from makeshift roadside bombs.
Improvised explosive devices are the No. 1 killer of U.S. troops in Iraq, causing 70 percent of injuries and death.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
the cake under the sink, the rats in the kitchen
While I was reading Commondreams.org today I came across this story about then Defense Secretary, now head of World Bank- Paul Wolfowitz's girlfriend being sent by the World Bank to Iraq in 2003 (link).
What caught my eye was the appearance of SAIC in the scenario. Remember the SAIC - Defense Secretary Robert Gates connection I drew so long ago? and the SAIC - Black Box Voting connection? and the recent Antiwar.com Charles Goyette interview I wrote about concerning SAIC's contracts in the Iraq /Afgan/Mideast Wars?
Some real journalists should be pulling the threads of this story!!!
Thank Vanity Fair and the Government Accountability Project for following the story of how our democracy has been looted by a bunch of NeoCon pirates. You don't see this on television news, now do you.
I remember a famous Neocon once said in a fit of truthiness, "If you don't want rats in the kitchen you don't store a cake under the sink." It was either Krystol or Norquist, can't recall.
I think we stored the bloody cake under the sink and the rats are in the kitchen.
What caught my eye was the appearance of SAIC in the scenario. Remember the SAIC - Defense Secretary Robert Gates connection I drew so long ago? and the SAIC - Black Box Voting connection? and the recent Antiwar.com Charles Goyette interview I wrote about concerning SAIC's contracts in the Iraq /Afgan/Mideast Wars?
Some real journalists should be pulling the threads of this story!!!
Thank Vanity Fair and the Government Accountability Project for following the story of how our democracy has been looted by a bunch of NeoCon pirates. You don't see this on television news, now do you.
I remember a famous Neocon once said in a fit of truthiness, "If you don't want rats in the kitchen you don't store a cake under the sink." It was either Krystol or Norquist, can't recall.
I think we stored the bloody cake under the sink and the rats are in the kitchen.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Dear Senator John McCain
A person has to ask themself, why would John McCain indulge in such fantastic absurdism.
'Walking safely in Baghdad', indeed.
Put two and two together. The guy is running for Presdient... and hence he covets MONEY, like the Anointed Mitt and the Predestined Hillary.
Well, coincidentally, this weekend I heard a great interview of Donald Bartlett and James Steele by Charles Goyette on Antiwar Radio (link & listen) all about their recent article in Vanity Fair about SAIC, the biggest military contractor in history. (Remember during the confirmation hearings I wrote about SAIC in reference to Robert Gates, our new Secretary of Defense.)
SAIC, Halliburton, Blackwater, B&R, CACI, Bechtel, are the biggest piggies on the American taxpayer's teat.
And they pay war candidates to run for president.
For further investigation, Bartlett and Steele should write another investigative article about SAIC's contracts with the elections commission and Diebold.
'Walking safely in Baghdad', indeed.
Put two and two together. The guy is running for Presdient... and hence he covets MONEY, like the Anointed Mitt and the Predestined Hillary.
Well, coincidentally, this weekend I heard a great interview of Donald Bartlett and James Steele by Charles Goyette on Antiwar Radio (link & listen) all about their recent article in Vanity Fair about SAIC, the biggest military contractor in history. (Remember during the confirmation hearings I wrote about SAIC in reference to Robert Gates, our new Secretary of Defense.)
SAIC, Halliburton, Blackwater, B&R, CACI, Bechtel, are the biggest piggies on the American taxpayer's teat.
And they pay war candidates to run for president.
For further investigation, Bartlett and Steele should write another investigative article about SAIC's contracts with the elections commission and Diebold.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
coincidences
first coincidence:
After I posted this Gil Scott Heron rap on the MIC below, someone gave me a relevant DVD to watch. Lord of War is a panned Nick Cage movie that tells the story of the proliferation of weapons after the end of the cold war, historical fact as the basis for a semifictional story supposedly told by a playa in the military-industrial complex, a weapons dealer.
Sure Cage is stone faced throughout, but the story is the star. It's in the video store now, for your edification.
second coincidence:
The television is on in the middle of the night to soothe a guest, and who is on CSPAN2 book notes but Joseph Cirincione, flogging his new book on nuclear proliferation.
This guy is so smart, he is someone who can hold up his history and say, "I was right about Iraq".
I understood from day one that the Bush Administration was lying about Iraq harboring WMDs, and it was because of a few great individuals: Seymour Hersh,
Scott Ritter, Joe Cirincione. And the bloggers who pointed them out to me, especially the writers on Anti-War.com.
You should realize, the same guys who lied about Iraq are lying about Iran. Go back and Google the facts. Who said what.
The same guys who tried to save us before, and are on record as being right, are trying to save us now.
Try to catch him in a rerun, or online.
Antiwar.com has been doing a great favor for us .mp3 listeners, with its interview show, now called (link) AntiWar Radio. Scott Horton and Charles Goyette have been doing some great and important interviews lately, so go, listen.NOTHING will freeze your blood like hearing Helen Caldicott in the middle of the night describe the devistation of a single H-bomb dropped on a city, and what would follow. She is concise...
...and the Imperial Warlord Bush has dropped us out of all those international treaties based on his takeover of of all three branches that once governed our late Republic, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
After I posted this Gil Scott Heron rap on the MIC below, someone gave me a relevant DVD to watch. Lord of War is a panned Nick Cage movie that tells the story of the proliferation of weapons after the end of the cold war, historical fact as the basis for a semifictional story supposedly told by a playa in the military-industrial complex, a weapons dealer.
Sure Cage is stone faced throughout, but the story is the star. It's in the video store now, for your edification.
second coincidence:
The television is on in the middle of the night to soothe a guest, and who is on CSPAN2 book notes but Joseph Cirincione, flogging his new book on nuclear proliferation.
This guy is so smart, he is someone who can hold up his history and say, "I was right about Iraq".
I understood from day one that the Bush Administration was lying about Iraq harboring WMDs, and it was because of a few great individuals: Seymour Hersh,
Scott Ritter, Joe Cirincione. And the bloggers who pointed them out to me, especially the writers on Anti-War.com.
You should realize, the same guys who lied about Iraq are lying about Iran. Go back and Google the facts. Who said what.
The same guys who tried to save us before, and are on record as being right, are trying to save us now.
Try to catch him in a rerun, or online.
Antiwar.com has been doing a great favor for us .mp3 listeners, with its interview show, now called (link) AntiWar Radio. Scott Horton and Charles Goyette have been doing some great and important interviews lately, so go, listen.NOTHING will freeze your blood like hearing Helen Caldicott in the middle of the night describe the devistation of a single H-bomb dropped on a city, and what would follow. She is concise...
...and the Imperial Warlord Bush has dropped us out of all those international treaties based on his takeover of of all three branches that once governed our late Republic, including the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Background music
Background on the past five years, that is. Dave Rovic's "Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL)" is a perfect accompaniment to this article by Christian Parenti in the new Nation Magazine, "Who Will Get the OIL?", or this article which reminds us of the secret Cheney Energy taskforce.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
President Bush Spits on Returning Soldiers
...figuratively speaking, of course.
He can't spit on returning soldiers in the Vet's hospitals if he doesn't visit them.
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.
They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.
Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.
While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.
On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.
Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.
"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."
Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.
"It creates resentment and disenfranchisement," said Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker at Walter Reed. "These soldiers will withdraw and stay in their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are meant to be helpful."
Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed, said soldiers "get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved," but, "Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, 'You saved me for what?' The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This leads to anger."
This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their regular visits to the hospital's spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.
"We owe them all we can give them," Bush said during his last visit, a few days before Christmas. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."
Along with the government promises, the American public, determined not to repeat the divisive Vietnam experience, has embraced the soldiers even as the war grows more controversial at home. Walter Reed is awash in the generosity of volunteers, businesses and celebrities who donate money, plane tickets, telephone cards and steak dinners.
Yet at a deeper level, the soldiers say they feel alone and frustrated. Seventy-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their experience was "stressful." Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the narrative here.
Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."
Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed staff members.
Evis Morales's severely wounded son was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for surgery shortly after she arrived at Walter Reed. She had checked into her government-paid room on post, but she slept in the lobby of the Bethesda hospital for two weeks because no one told her there is a free shuttle between the two facilities. "They just let me off the bus and said 'Bye-bye,' " recalled Morales, a Puerto Rico resident.
Morales found help after she ran out of money, when she called a hotline number and a Spanish-speaking operator happened to answer.
"If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can't they have Spanish-speaking translators when he's injured?" Morales asked. "It's so confusing, so disorienting."
Soldiers, wives, mothers, social workers and the heads of volunteer organizations have complained repeatedly to the military command about what one called "The Handbook No One Gets" that would explain life as an outpatient. Most soldiers polled in the March survey said they got their information from friends. Only 12 percent said any Army literature had been helpful.
"They've been behind from Day One," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investigated problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities. "Even the stuff they've fixed has only been patched."
Among the public, Davis said, "there's vast appreciation for soldiers, but there's a lack of focus on what happens to them" when they return. "It's awful."
Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, said in an interview last week that a major reason outpatients stay so long, a change from the days when injured soldiers were discharged as quickly as possible, is that the Army wants to be able to hang on to as many soldiers as it can, "because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with an all-volunteer force since the Revolution."
Acknowledging the problems with outpatient care, Weightman said Walter Reed has taken steps over the past year to improve conditions for the outpatient army, which at its peak in summer 2005 numbered nearly 900, not to mention the hundreds of family members who come to care for them. One platoon sergeant used to be in charge of 125 patients; now each one manages 30. Platoon sergeants with psychological problems are more carefully screened. And officials have increased the numbers of case managers and patient advocates to help with the complex disability benefit process, which Weightman called "one of the biggest sources of delay."
And to help steer the wounded and their families through the complicated bureaucracy, Weightman said, Walter Reed has recently begun holding twice-weekly informational meetings. "We felt we were pushing information out before, but the reality is, it was overwhelming," he said. "Is it fail-proof? No. But we've put more resources on it."
He said a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq has Walter Reed bracing for "potentially a lot more" casualties.
Bureaucratic Battles
The best known of the Army's medical centers, Walter Reed opened in 1909 with 10 patients. It has treated the wounded from every war since, and nearly one of every four service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The outpatients are assigned to one of five buildings attached to the post, including Building 18, just across from the front gates on Georgia Avenue. To accommodate the overflow, some are sent to nearby hotels and apartments. Living conditions range from the disrepair of Building 18 to the relative elegance of Mologne House, a hotel that opened on the post in 1998, when the typical guest was a visiting family member or a retiree on vacation.
The Pentagon has announced plans to close Walter Reed by 2011, but that hasn't stopped the flow of casualties. Three times a week, school buses painted white and fitted with stretchers and blackened windows stream down Georgia Avenue. Sirens blaring, they deliver soldiers groggy from a pain-relief cocktail at the end of their long trip from Iraq via Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Andrews Air Force Base.
Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed's hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.
A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn't even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions.
Shannon had led the 2nd Infantry Division's Ghost Recon Platoon until he was felled in a gun battle in Ramadi. He liked the solitary work of a sniper; "Lone Wolf" was his call name. But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.
"I thought, 'Shouldn't they contact me?' " he said. "I didn't understand the paperwork. I'd start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: 'I'm your case manager. Where have you been?'
"Well, I've been here! Jeez Louise, people, I'm your hospital patient!"
Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.
One outpatient, a 57-year-old staff sergeant who had a heart attack in Afghanistan, was given 200 rooms to supervise at the end of 2005. He quickly discovered that some outpatients had left the post months earlier and would check in by phone. "We called them 'call-in patients,' " said Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley, whose dormant PTSD from Vietnam was triggered by what he saw on the job: so many young and wounded, and three bodies being carried from the hospital.
Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands -- most of them off-post -- to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases.
The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there, after a clerk couldn't find a record of her service.
Shannon, who wears an eye patch and a visible skull implant, said he had to prove he had served in Iraq when he tried to get a free uniform to replace the bloody one left behind on a medic's stretcher. When he finally tracked down the supply clerk, he discovered the problem: His name was mistakenly left off the "GWOT list" -- the list of "Global War on Terrorism" patients with priority funding from the Defense Department.
He brought his Purple Heart to the clerk to prove he was in Iraq.
Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors.
The Army has tried to re-create the organization of a typical military unit at Walter Reed. Soldiers are assigned to one of two companies while they are outpatients -- the Medical Holding Company (Medhold) for active-duty soldiers and the Medical Holdover Company for Reserve and National Guard soldiers. The companies are broken into platoons that are led by platoon sergeants, the Army equivalent of a parent.
Under normal circumstances, good sergeants know everything about the soldiers under their charge: vices and talents, moods and bad habits, even family stresses.
At Walter Reed, however, outpatients have been drafted to serve as platoon sergeants and have struggled with their responsibilities. Sgt. David Thomas, a 42-year-old amputee with the Tennessee National Guard, said his platoon sergeant couldn't remember his name. "We wondered if he had mental problems," Thomas said. "Sometimes I'd wear my leg, other times I'd take my wheelchair. He would think I was a different person. We thought, 'My God, has this man lost it?' "
Civilian care coordinators and case managers are supposed to track injured soldiers and help them with appointments, but government investigators and soldiers complain that they are poorly trained and often do not understand the system.
One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. "I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me," he said.
Finally, his wife met an aide to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who got the erroneous paperwork corrected with one phone call. When the aide called with the news, he told the soldier, "They don't even know you exist."
"They didn't know who I was or where I was," the soldier said. "And I was in contact with my platoon sergeant every day."
The lack of accountability weighed on Shannon. He hated the isolation of the younger troops. The Army's failure to account for them each day wore on him. When a 19-year-old soldier down the hall died, Shannon knew he had to take action.
The soldier, Cpl. Jeremy Harper, returned from Iraq with PTSD after seeing three buddies die. He kept his room dark, refused his combat medals and always seemed heavily medicated, said people who knew him. According to his mother, Harper was drunkenly wandering the lobby of the Mologne House on New Year's Eve 2004, looking for a ride home to West Virginia. The next morning he was found dead in his room. An autopsy showed alcohol poisoning, she said.
"I can't understand how they could have let kids under the age of 21 have liquor," said Victoria Harper, crying. "He was supposed to be right there at Walter Reed hospital. . . . I feel that they didn't take care of him or watch him as close as they should have."
The Army posthumously awarded Harper a Bronze Star for his actions in Iraq.
Shannon viewed Harper's death as symptomatic of a larger tragedy -- the Army had broken its covenant with its troops. "Somebody didn't take care of him," he would later say. "It makes me want to cry. "
Shannon and another soldier decided to keep tabs on the brain injury ward. "I'm a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, and I take care of people," he said. The two soldiers walked the ward every day with a list of names. If a name dropped off the large white board at the nurses' station, Shannon would hound the nurses to check their files and figure out where the soldier had gone.
Sometimes the patients had been transferred to another hospital. If they had been released to one of the residences on post, Shannon and his buddy would pester the front desk managers to make sure the new charges were indeed there. "But two out of 10, when I asked where they were, they'd just say, 'They're gone,' " Shannon said.
Even after Weightman and his commanders instituted new measures to keep better track of soldiers, two young men left post one night in November and died in a high-speed car crash in Virginia. The driver was supposed to be restricted to Walter Reed because he had tested positive for illegal drugs, Weightman said.
Part of the tension at Walter Reed comes from a setting that is both military and medical. Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, the squad leader who lost one leg and the use of his other in a grenade attack, said his recovery was made more difficult by a Marine liaison officer who had never seen combat but dogged him about having his mother in his room on post. The rules allowed her to be there, but the officer said she was taking up valuable bed space.
"When you join the Marine Corps, they tell you, you can forget about your mama. 'You have no mama. We are your mama,' " Groves said. "That training works in combat. It doesn't work when you are wounded."
Frustration at Every Turn
The frustrations of an outpatient's day begin before dawn. On a dark, rain-soaked morning this winter, Sgt. Archie Benware, 53, hobbled over to his National Guard platoon office at Walter Reed. Benware had done two tours in Iraq. His head had been crushed between two 2,100-pound concrete barriers in Ramadi, and now it was dented like a tin can. His legs were stiff from knee surgery. But here he was, trying to take care of business.
At the platoon office, he scanned the white board on the wall. Six soldiers were listed as AWOL. The platoon sergeant was nowhere to be found, leaving several soldiers stranded with their requests.
Benware walked around the corner to arrange a dental appointment -- his teeth were knocked out in the accident. He was told by a case manager that another case worker, not his doctor, would have to approve the procedure.
"Goddamn it, that's unbelievable!" snapped his wife, Barb, who accompanied him because he can no longer remember all of his appointments.
Not as unbelievable as the time he received a manila envelope containing the gynecological report of a young female soldier.
Next came 7 a.m. formation, one way Walter Reed tries to keep track of hundreds of wounded. Formation is also held to maintain some discipline. Soldiers limp to the old Red Cross building in rain, ice and snow. Army regulations say they can't use umbrellas, even here. A triple amputee has mastered the art of putting on his uniform by himself and rolling in just in time. Others are so gorked out on pills that they seem on the verge of nodding off.
"Fall in!" a platoon sergeant shouted at Friday formation. The noisy room of soldiers turned silent.
An Army chaplain opened with a verse from the Bible. "Why are we here?" she asked. She talked about heroes and service to country. "We were injured in many ways."
Someone announced free tickets to hockey games, a Ravens game, a movie screening, a dinner at McCormick and Schmick's, all compliments of local businesses.
Every formation includes a safety briefing. Usually it is a warning about mixing alcohol with meds, or driving too fast, or domestic abuse. "Do not beat your spouse or children. Do not let your spouse or children beat you," a sergeant said, to laughter. This morning's briefing included a warning about black ice, a particular menace to the amputees.
Dress warm, the sergeant said. "I see some guys rolling around in their wheelchairs in 30 degrees in T-shirts."
Soldiers hate formation for its petty condescension. They gutted out a year in the desert, and now they are being treated like children.
"I'm trying to think outside the box here, maybe moving formation to Wagner Gym," the commander said, addressing concerns that formation was too far from soldiers' quarters in the cold weather. "But guess what? Those are nice wood floors. They have to be covered by a tarp. There's a tarp that's got to be rolled out over the wooden floors. Then it has to be cleaned, with 400 soldiers stepping all over it. Then it's got to be rolled up."
"Now, who thinks Wagner Gym is a good idea?"
Explaining this strange world to family members is not easy. At an orientation for new arrivals, a staff sergeant walked them through the idiosyncrasies of Army financing. He said one relative could receive a 15-day advance on the $64 per diem either in cash or as an electronic transfer: "I highly recommend that you take the cash," he said. "There's no guarantee the transfer will get to your bank." The audience yawned.
Actually, he went on, relatives can collect only 80 percent of this advance, which comes to $51.20 a day. "The cashier has no change, so we drop to $50. We give you the rest" -- the $1.20 a day -- "when you leave."
The crowd was anxious, exhausted. A child crawled on the floor. The sergeant plowed on. "You need to figure out how long your loved one is going to be an inpatient," he said, something even the doctors can't accurately predict from day to day. "Because if you sign up for the lodging advance," which is $150 a day, "and they get out the next day, you owe the government the advance back of $150 a day."
A case manager took the floor to remind everyone that soldiers are required to be in uniform most of the time, though some of the wounded are amputees or their legs are pinned together by bulky braces. "We have break-away clothing with Velcro!" she announced with a smile. "Welcome to Walter Reed!"
A Bleak Life in Building 18
"Building 18! There is a rodent infestation issue!" bellowed the commander to his troops one morning at formation. "It doesn't help when you live like a rodent! I can't believe people live like that! I was appalled by some of your rooms!"
Life in Building 18 is the bleakest homecoming for men and women whose government promised them good care in return for their sacrifices.
One case manager was so disgusted, she bought roach bombs for the rooms. Mouse traps are handed out. It doesn't help that soldiers there subsist on carry-out food because the hospital cafeteria is such a hike on cold nights. They make do with microwaves and hot plates.
Army officials say they "started an aggressive campaign to deal with the mice infestation" last October and that the problem is now at a "manageable level." They also say they will "review all outstanding work orders" in the next 30 days.
Soldiers discharged from the psychiatric ward are often assigned to Building 18. Buses and ambulances blare all night. While injured soldiers pull guard duty in the foyer, a broken garage door allows unmonitored entry from the rear. Struggling with schizophrenia, PTSD, paranoid delusional disorder and traumatic brain injury, soldiers feel especially vulnerable in that setting, just outside the post gates, on a street where drug dealers work the corner at night.
"I've been close to mortars. I've held my own pretty good," said Spec. George Romero, 25, who came back from Iraq with a psychological disorder. "But here . . . I think it has affected my ability to get over it . . . dealing with potential threats every day."
After Spec. Jeremy Duncan, 30, got out of the hospital and was assigned to Building 18, he had to navigate across the traffic of Georgia Avenue for appointments. Even after knee surgery, he had to limp back and forth on crutches and in pain. Over time, black mold invaded his room.
But Duncan would rather suffer with the mold than move to another room and share his convalescence in tight quarters with a wounded stranger. "I have mold on the walls, a hole in the shower ceiling, but . . . I don't want someone waking me up coming in."
Wilson, the clinical social worker at Walter Reed, was part of a staff team that recognized Building 18's toll on the wounded. He mapped out a plan and, in September, was given a $30,000 grant from the Commander's Initiative Account for improvements. He ordered some equipment, including a pool table and air hockey table, which have not yet arrived. A Psychiatry Department functionary held up the rest of the money because she feared that buying a lot of recreational equipment close to Christmas would trigger an audit, Wilson said.
In January, Wilson was told that the funds were no longer available and that he would have to submit a new request. "It's absurd," he said. "Seven months of work down the drain. I have nothing to show for this project. It's a great example of what we're up against."
A pool table and two flat-screen TVs were eventually donated from elsewhere.
But Wilson had had enough. Three weeks ago he turned in his resignation. "It's too difficult to get anything done with this broken-down bureaucracy," he said.
At town hall meetings, the soldiers of Building 18 keep pushing commanders to improve conditions. But some things have gotten worse. In December, a contracting dispute held up building repairs.
"I hate it," said Romero, who stays in his room all day. "There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water. . . . I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. . . . My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up!' "
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report
He can't spit on returning soldiers in the Vet's hospitals if he doesn't visit them.
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
By Dana Priest and Anne Hull
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, February 18, 2007; A01
Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.
They suffer from brain injuries, severed arms and legs, organ and back damage, and various degrees of post-traumatic stress. Their legions have grown so exponentially -- they outnumber hospital patients at Walter Reed 17 to 1 -- that they take up every available bed on post and spill into dozens of nearby hotels and apartments leased by the Army. The average stay is 10 months, but some have been stuck there for as long as two years.
Not all of the quarters are as bleak as Duncan's, but the despair of Building 18 symbolizes a larger problem in Walter Reed's treatment of the wounded, according to dozens of soldiers, family members, veterans aid groups, and current and former Walter Reed staff members interviewed by two Washington Post reporters, who spent more than four months visiting the outpatient world without the knowledge or permission of Walter Reed officials. Many agreed to be quoted by name; others said they feared Army retribution if they complained publicly.
While the hospital is a place of scrubbed-down order and daily miracles, with medical advances saving more soldiers than ever, the outpatients in the Other Walter Reed encounter a messy bureaucratic battlefield nearly as chaotic as the real battlefields they faced overseas.
On the worst days, soldiers say they feel like they are living a chapter of "Catch-22." The wounded manage other wounded. Soldiers dealing with psychological disorders of their own have been put in charge of others at risk of suicide.
Disengaged clerks, unqualified platoon sergeants and overworked case managers fumble with simple needs: feeding soldiers' families who are close to poverty, replacing a uniform ripped off by medics in the desert sand or helping a brain-damaged soldier remember his next appointment.
"We've done our duty. We fought the war. We came home wounded. Fine. But whoever the people are back here who are supposed to give us the easy transition should be doing it," said Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, 26, an amputee who lived at Walter Reed for 16 months. "We don't know what to do. The people who are supposed to know don't have the answers. It's a nonstop process of stalling."
Soldiers, family members, volunteers and caregivers who have tried to fix the system say each mishap seems trivial by itself, but the cumulative effect wears down the spirits of the wounded and can stall their recovery.
"It creates resentment and disenfranchisement," said Joe Wilson, a clinical social worker at Walter Reed. "These soldiers will withdraw and stay in their rooms. They will actively avoid the very treatment and services that are meant to be helpful."
Danny Soto, a national service officer for Disabled American Veterans who helps dozens of wounded service members each week at Walter Reed, said soldiers "get awesome medical care and their lives are being saved," but, "Then they get into the administrative part of it and they are like, 'You saved me for what?' The soldiers feel like they are not getting proper respect. This leads to anger."
This world is invisible to outsiders. Walter Reed occasionally showcases the heroism of these wounded soldiers and emphasizes that all is well under the circumstances. President Bush, former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and members of Congress have promised the best care during their regular visits to the hospital's spit-polished amputee unit, Ward 57.
"We owe them all we can give them," Bush said during his last visit, a few days before Christmas. "Not only for when they're in harm's way, but when they come home to help them adjust if they have wounds, or help them adjust after their time in service."
Along with the government promises, the American public, determined not to repeat the divisive Vietnam experience, has embraced the soldiers even as the war grows more controversial at home. Walter Reed is awash in the generosity of volunteers, businesses and celebrities who donate money, plane tickets, telephone cards and steak dinners.
Yet at a deeper level, the soldiers say they feel alone and frustrated. Seventy-five percent of the troops polled by Walter Reed last March said their experience was "stressful." Suicide attempts and unintentional overdoses from prescription drugs and alcohol, which is sold on post, are part of the narrative here.
Vera Heron spent 15 frustrating months living on post to help care for her son. "It just absolutely took forever to get anything done," Heron said. "They do the paperwork, they lose the paperwork. Then they have to redo the paperwork. You are talking about guys and girls whose lives are disrupted for the rest of their lives, and they don't put any priority on it."
Family members who speak only Spanish have had to rely on Salvadoran housekeepers, a Cuban bus driver, the Panamanian bartender and a Mexican floor cleaner for help. Walter Reed maintains a list of bilingual staffers, but they are rarely called on, according to soldiers and families and Walter Reed staff members.
Evis Morales's severely wounded son was transferred to the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda for surgery shortly after she arrived at Walter Reed. She had checked into her government-paid room on post, but she slept in the lobby of the Bethesda hospital for two weeks because no one told her there is a free shuttle between the two facilities. "They just let me off the bus and said 'Bye-bye,' " recalled Morales, a Puerto Rico resident.
Morales found help after she ran out of money, when she called a hotline number and a Spanish-speaking operator happened to answer.
"If they can have Spanish-speaking recruits to convince my son to go into the Army, why can't they have Spanish-speaking translators when he's injured?" Morales asked. "It's so confusing, so disorienting."
Soldiers, wives, mothers, social workers and the heads of volunteer organizations have complained repeatedly to the military command about what one called "The Handbook No One Gets" that would explain life as an outpatient. Most soldiers polled in the March survey said they got their information from friends. Only 12 percent said any Army literature had been helpful.
"They've been behind from Day One," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who headed the House Government Reform Committee, which investigated problems at Walter Reed and other Army facilities. "Even the stuff they've fixed has only been patched."
Among the public, Davis said, "there's vast appreciation for soldiers, but there's a lack of focus on what happens to them" when they return. "It's awful."
Maj. Gen. George W. Weightman, commander at Walter Reed, said in an interview last week that a major reason outpatients stay so long, a change from the days when injured soldiers were discharged as quickly as possible, is that the Army wants to be able to hang on to as many soldiers as it can, "because this is the first time this country has fought a war for so long with an all-volunteer force since the Revolution."
Acknowledging the problems with outpatient care, Weightman said Walter Reed has taken steps over the past year to improve conditions for the outpatient army, which at its peak in summer 2005 numbered nearly 900, not to mention the hundreds of family members who come to care for them. One platoon sergeant used to be in charge of 125 patients; now each one manages 30. Platoon sergeants with psychological problems are more carefully screened. And officials have increased the numbers of case managers and patient advocates to help with the complex disability benefit process, which Weightman called "one of the biggest sources of delay."
And to help steer the wounded and their families through the complicated bureaucracy, Weightman said, Walter Reed has recently begun holding twice-weekly informational meetings. "We felt we were pushing information out before, but the reality is, it was overwhelming," he said. "Is it fail-proof? No. But we've put more resources on it."
He said a 21,500-troop increase in Iraq has Walter Reed bracing for "potentially a lot more" casualties.
Bureaucratic Battles
The best known of the Army's medical centers, Walter Reed opened in 1909 with 10 patients. It has treated the wounded from every war since, and nearly one of every four service members injured in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The outpatients are assigned to one of five buildings attached to the post, including Building 18, just across from the front gates on Georgia Avenue. To accommodate the overflow, some are sent to nearby hotels and apartments. Living conditions range from the disrepair of Building 18 to the relative elegance of Mologne House, a hotel that opened on the post in 1998, when the typical guest was a visiting family member or a retiree on vacation.
The Pentagon has announced plans to close Walter Reed by 2011, but that hasn't stopped the flow of casualties. Three times a week, school buses painted white and fitted with stretchers and blackened windows stream down Georgia Avenue. Sirens blaring, they deliver soldiers groggy from a pain-relief cocktail at the end of their long trip from Iraq via Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany and Andrews Air Force Base.
Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, 43, came in on one of those buses in November 2004 and spent several weeks on the fifth floor of Walter Reed's hospital. His eye and skull were shattered by an AK-47 round. His odyssey in the Other Walter Reed has lasted more than two years, but it began when someone handed him a map of the grounds and told him to find his room across post.
A reconnaissance and land-navigation expert, Shannon was so disoriented that he couldn't even find north. Holding the map, he stumbled around outside the hospital, sliding against walls and trying to keep himself upright, he said. He asked anyone he found for directions.
Shannon had led the 2nd Infantry Division's Ghost Recon Platoon until he was felled in a gun battle in Ramadi. He liked the solitary work of a sniper; "Lone Wolf" was his call name. But he did not expect to be left alone by the Army after such serious surgery and a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. He had appointments during his first two weeks as an outpatient, then nothing.
"I thought, 'Shouldn't they contact me?' " he said. "I didn't understand the paperwork. I'd start calling phone numbers, asking if I had appointments. I finally ran across someone who said: 'I'm your case manager. Where have you been?'
"Well, I've been here! Jeez Louise, people, I'm your hospital patient!"
Like Shannon, many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from the staff to arrange them. Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.
One outpatient, a 57-year-old staff sergeant who had a heart attack in Afghanistan, was given 200 rooms to supervise at the end of 2005. He quickly discovered that some outpatients had left the post months earlier and would check in by phone. "We called them 'call-in patients,' " said Staff Sgt. Mike McCauley, whose dormant PTSD from Vietnam was triggered by what he saw on the job: so many young and wounded, and three bodies being carried from the hospital.
Life beyond the hospital bed is a frustrating mountain of paperwork. The typical soldier is required to file 22 documents with eight different commands -- most of them off-post -- to enter and exit the medical processing world, according to government investigators. Sixteen different information systems are used to process the forms, but few of them can communicate with one another. The Army's three personnel databases cannot read each other's files and can't interact with the separate pay system or the medical recordkeeping databases.
The disappearance of necessary forms and records is the most common reason soldiers languish at Walter Reed longer than they should, according to soldiers, family members and staffers. Sometimes the Army has no record that a soldier even served in Iraq. A combat medic who did three tours had to bring in letters and photos of herself in Iraq to show she that had been there, after a clerk couldn't find a record of her service.
Shannon, who wears an eye patch and a visible skull implant, said he had to prove he had served in Iraq when he tried to get a free uniform to replace the bloody one left behind on a medic's stretcher. When he finally tracked down the supply clerk, he discovered the problem: His name was mistakenly left off the "GWOT list" -- the list of "Global War on Terrorism" patients with priority funding from the Defense Department.
He brought his Purple Heart to the clerk to prove he was in Iraq.
Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors.
The Army has tried to re-create the organization of a typical military unit at Walter Reed. Soldiers are assigned to one of two companies while they are outpatients -- the Medical Holding Company (Medhold) for active-duty soldiers and the Medical Holdover Company for Reserve and National Guard soldiers. The companies are broken into platoons that are led by platoon sergeants, the Army equivalent of a parent.
Under normal circumstances, good sergeants know everything about the soldiers under their charge: vices and talents, moods and bad habits, even family stresses.
At Walter Reed, however, outpatients have been drafted to serve as platoon sergeants and have struggled with their responsibilities. Sgt. David Thomas, a 42-year-old amputee with the Tennessee National Guard, said his platoon sergeant couldn't remember his name. "We wondered if he had mental problems," Thomas said. "Sometimes I'd wear my leg, other times I'd take my wheelchair. He would think I was a different person. We thought, 'My God, has this man lost it?' "
Civilian care coordinators and case managers are supposed to track injured soldiers and help them with appointments, but government investigators and soldiers complain that they are poorly trained and often do not understand the system.
One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication. "I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me," he said.
Finally, his wife met an aide to then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who got the erroneous paperwork corrected with one phone call. When the aide called with the news, he told the soldier, "They don't even know you exist."
"They didn't know who I was or where I was," the soldier said. "And I was in contact with my platoon sergeant every day."
The lack of accountability weighed on Shannon. He hated the isolation of the younger troops. The Army's failure to account for them each day wore on him. When a 19-year-old soldier down the hall died, Shannon knew he had to take action.
The soldier, Cpl. Jeremy Harper, returned from Iraq with PTSD after seeing three buddies die. He kept his room dark, refused his combat medals and always seemed heavily medicated, said people who knew him. According to his mother, Harper was drunkenly wandering the lobby of the Mologne House on New Year's Eve 2004, looking for a ride home to West Virginia. The next morning he was found dead in his room. An autopsy showed alcohol poisoning, she said.
"I can't understand how they could have let kids under the age of 21 have liquor," said Victoria Harper, crying. "He was supposed to be right there at Walter Reed hospital. . . . I feel that they didn't take care of him or watch him as close as they should have."
The Army posthumously awarded Harper a Bronze Star for his actions in Iraq.
Shannon viewed Harper's death as symptomatic of a larger tragedy -- the Army had broken its covenant with its troops. "Somebody didn't take care of him," he would later say. "It makes me want to cry. "
Shannon and another soldier decided to keep tabs on the brain injury ward. "I'm a staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, and I take care of people," he said. The two soldiers walked the ward every day with a list of names. If a name dropped off the large white board at the nurses' station, Shannon would hound the nurses to check their files and figure out where the soldier had gone.
Sometimes the patients had been transferred to another hospital. If they had been released to one of the residences on post, Shannon and his buddy would pester the front desk managers to make sure the new charges were indeed there. "But two out of 10, when I asked where they were, they'd just say, 'They're gone,' " Shannon said.
Even after Weightman and his commanders instituted new measures to keep better track of soldiers, two young men left post one night in November and died in a high-speed car crash in Virginia. The driver was supposed to be restricted to Walter Reed because he had tested positive for illegal drugs, Weightman said.
Part of the tension at Walter Reed comes from a setting that is both military and medical. Marine Sgt. Ryan Groves, the squad leader who lost one leg and the use of his other in a grenade attack, said his recovery was made more difficult by a Marine liaison officer who had never seen combat but dogged him about having his mother in his room on post. The rules allowed her to be there, but the officer said she was taking up valuable bed space.
"When you join the Marine Corps, they tell you, you can forget about your mama. 'You have no mama. We are your mama,' " Groves said. "That training works in combat. It doesn't work when you are wounded."
Frustration at Every Turn
The frustrations of an outpatient's day begin before dawn. On a dark, rain-soaked morning this winter, Sgt. Archie Benware, 53, hobbled over to his National Guard platoon office at Walter Reed. Benware had done two tours in Iraq. His head had been crushed between two 2,100-pound concrete barriers in Ramadi, and now it was dented like a tin can. His legs were stiff from knee surgery. But here he was, trying to take care of business.
At the platoon office, he scanned the white board on the wall. Six soldiers were listed as AWOL. The platoon sergeant was nowhere to be found, leaving several soldiers stranded with their requests.
Benware walked around the corner to arrange a dental appointment -- his teeth were knocked out in the accident. He was told by a case manager that another case worker, not his doctor, would have to approve the procedure.
"Goddamn it, that's unbelievable!" snapped his wife, Barb, who accompanied him because he can no longer remember all of his appointments.
Not as unbelievable as the time he received a manila envelope containing the gynecological report of a young female soldier.
Next came 7 a.m. formation, one way Walter Reed tries to keep track of hundreds of wounded. Formation is also held to maintain some discipline. Soldiers limp to the old Red Cross building in rain, ice and snow. Army regulations say they can't use umbrellas, even here. A triple amputee has mastered the art of putting on his uniform by himself and rolling in just in time. Others are so gorked out on pills that they seem on the verge of nodding off.
"Fall in!" a platoon sergeant shouted at Friday formation. The noisy room of soldiers turned silent.
An Army chaplain opened with a verse from the Bible. "Why are we here?" she asked. She talked about heroes and service to country. "We were injured in many ways."
Someone announced free tickets to hockey games, a Ravens game, a movie screening, a dinner at McCormick and Schmick's, all compliments of local businesses.
Every formation includes a safety briefing. Usually it is a warning about mixing alcohol with meds, or driving too fast, or domestic abuse. "Do not beat your spouse or children. Do not let your spouse or children beat you," a sergeant said, to laughter. This morning's briefing included a warning about black ice, a particular menace to the amputees.
Dress warm, the sergeant said. "I see some guys rolling around in their wheelchairs in 30 degrees in T-shirts."
Soldiers hate formation for its petty condescension. They gutted out a year in the desert, and now they are being treated like children.
"I'm trying to think outside the box here, maybe moving formation to Wagner Gym," the commander said, addressing concerns that formation was too far from soldiers' quarters in the cold weather. "But guess what? Those are nice wood floors. They have to be covered by a tarp. There's a tarp that's got to be rolled out over the wooden floors. Then it has to be cleaned, with 400 soldiers stepping all over it. Then it's got to be rolled up."
"Now, who thinks Wagner Gym is a good idea?"
Explaining this strange world to family members is not easy. At an orientation for new arrivals, a staff sergeant walked them through the idiosyncrasies of Army financing. He said one relative could receive a 15-day advance on the $64 per diem either in cash or as an electronic transfer: "I highly recommend that you take the cash," he said. "There's no guarantee the transfer will get to your bank." The audience yawned.
Actually, he went on, relatives can collect only 80 percent of this advance, which comes to $51.20 a day. "The cashier has no change, so we drop to $50. We give you the rest" -- the $1.20 a day -- "when you leave."
The crowd was anxious, exhausted. A child crawled on the floor. The sergeant plowed on. "You need to figure out how long your loved one is going to be an inpatient," he said, something even the doctors can't accurately predict from day to day. "Because if you sign up for the lodging advance," which is $150 a day, "and they get out the next day, you owe the government the advance back of $150 a day."
A case manager took the floor to remind everyone that soldiers are required to be in uniform most of the time, though some of the wounded are amputees or their legs are pinned together by bulky braces. "We have break-away clothing with Velcro!" she announced with a smile. "Welcome to Walter Reed!"
A Bleak Life in Building 18
"Building 18! There is a rodent infestation issue!" bellowed the commander to his troops one morning at formation. "It doesn't help when you live like a rodent! I can't believe people live like that! I was appalled by some of your rooms!"
Life in Building 18 is the bleakest homecoming for men and women whose government promised them good care in return for their sacrifices.
One case manager was so disgusted, she bought roach bombs for the rooms. Mouse traps are handed out. It doesn't help that soldiers there subsist on carry-out food because the hospital cafeteria is such a hike on cold nights. They make do with microwaves and hot plates.
Army officials say they "started an aggressive campaign to deal with the mice infestation" last October and that the problem is now at a "manageable level." They also say they will "review all outstanding work orders" in the next 30 days.
Soldiers discharged from the psychiatric ward are often assigned to Building 18. Buses and ambulances blare all night. While injured soldiers pull guard duty in the foyer, a broken garage door allows unmonitored entry from the rear. Struggling with schizophrenia, PTSD, paranoid delusional disorder and traumatic brain injury, soldiers feel especially vulnerable in that setting, just outside the post gates, on a street where drug dealers work the corner at night.
"I've been close to mortars. I've held my own pretty good," said Spec. George Romero, 25, who came back from Iraq with a psychological disorder. "But here . . . I think it has affected my ability to get over it . . . dealing with potential threats every day."
After Spec. Jeremy Duncan, 30, got out of the hospital and was assigned to Building 18, he had to navigate across the traffic of Georgia Avenue for appointments. Even after knee surgery, he had to limp back and forth on crutches and in pain. Over time, black mold invaded his room.
But Duncan would rather suffer with the mold than move to another room and share his convalescence in tight quarters with a wounded stranger. "I have mold on the walls, a hole in the shower ceiling, but . . . I don't want someone waking me up coming in."
Wilson, the clinical social worker at Walter Reed, was part of a staff team that recognized Building 18's toll on the wounded. He mapped out a plan and, in September, was given a $30,000 grant from the Commander's Initiative Account for improvements. He ordered some equipment, including a pool table and air hockey table, which have not yet arrived. A Psychiatry Department functionary held up the rest of the money because she feared that buying a lot of recreational equipment close to Christmas would trigger an audit, Wilson said.
In January, Wilson was told that the funds were no longer available and that he would have to submit a new request. "It's absurd," he said. "Seven months of work down the drain. I have nothing to show for this project. It's a great example of what we're up against."
A pool table and two flat-screen TVs were eventually donated from elsewhere.
But Wilson had had enough. Three weeks ago he turned in his resignation. "It's too difficult to get anything done with this broken-down bureaucracy," he said.
At town hall meetings, the soldiers of Building 18 keep pushing commanders to improve conditions. But some things have gotten worse. In December, a contracting dispute held up building repairs.
"I hate it," said Romero, who stays in his room all day. "There are cockroaches. The elevator doesn't work. The garage door doesn't work. Sometimes there's no heat, no water. . . . I told my platoon sergeant I want to leave. I told the town hall meeting. I talked to the doctors and medical staff. They just said you kind of got to get used to the outside world. . . . My platoon sergeant said, 'Suck it up!' "
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report
Thursday, February 08, 2007
crony military contractor has six degrees of separation from Michigan
Anyone who hasn't heard the mothers of hirelings of military contractors killed in Iraq had a chance today to hear their testimony before Congress.
How their sons were under equipped and left in harm's way. How does this jibe with no bid and cost plus? PROFIT is JOB ONE!
(Jebsus would be Soo Proud of his little Christian Coalition military profiteers.)
Remember the vision of the burned dragged corpses hanging from the bridge?
Those mothers saw those images too.
Blackwater has a particular reputation that we should note. But Blackwater doesn't only contract in Iraq.
Remember N.O. LA after Katrina? The stadium, the guarded bridges out, the shooting at black "looters" (as opposed to white survivors) carrying loaves of old bread from flooded stores? Blackwater had that lucrative FEMA security contract.
And now Blackwater is contracting outsourcing "police" work in these United States as public police agencies are downsized underfunded and squeezed by Reaganomic politics.
Blackwater should also be of special interest to Michiganders who just voted down Dick DeVos' bid for governorship in 2006, a message in times when the downsizing of Michigan's manufacturing base has caused a crisis.
And Dick sunk a personal fortune into one of the richest races in history for any governorship.
Well, you ask, what is Blackwater's relationship to Michigan? Dick DeVos' wife Betsy, who once ran the Republican Party in Michigan, is Betsy Prince DeVos, her brother Eric Prince is the founder and CEO of Blackwater.
NOTE: I live by coincidence... I just Googled "CEO Eric Prince" to verify my memory, and right on top was this:
Erik Prince, Blackwater War Profiteer, Attacks Iraq for Sale
By Robert Greenwald on the Huffington Post
"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" tells the story of Erik Prince and Blackwater, and their consistent profiting from the war. As the film is seen across the United States, it is having a powerful effect on audiences. People are responding strongly to the emotional and gut wrenching story of Prince choosing profit over patriotism as he cuts corners at Blackwater in his relentless pursuit of money.
The film tells the story of two young men who are killed as a result of Blackwater focusing on profits, and their grieving and enraged mothers. These mothers are taking the fight to Blackwater and when they see the film, audiences are also activated to take steps to stop Blackwater.
Sadly, rather than working to help and heal the mothers who have suffered this loss, Prince and his profiteering co-horts, have gone into attack mode. And in this case, ironically so with a company who sent out an email after the '04 election saying, "Bush Wins Four More Years!! Hooyah!" attacking Iraq for Sale for being "election year left wing politics."
This from the man who after interning in the Bush Sr. Whitehouse said, "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with - homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills." This from a man whose car says "Bush: "Let's Roll" Kerry: "Let's Roll Over." This from a man who, together with his family have given over 2 million dollars to Republican candidates and use their political access to protect Blackwater from scrutiny.
We at Brave New Films are proud to be helping raise the issue of profiteering as the election approaches; it should be an issue we judge our candidates by. Are they protecting us? Are they protecting our tax dollars? The fact that Prince has hired a disrespected PR flack, Mark Corallo, whose claim to fame was defending the disgraced Bob Livingston for cheating on his wife, speaks to the issue of Prince's morality.
Profiteering during a time of war is indeed a serious and important issue. I invite Erik Prince to see the film, to meet with our researchers and to have a full and open discussion about the way he is profiteering.
And for those who would like to see the Prince story and the mansion, purchased from his profiteering, check out this video...
How their sons were under equipped and left in harm's way. How does this jibe with no bid and cost plus? PROFIT is JOB ONE!
(Jebsus would be Soo Proud of his little Christian Coalition military profiteers.)
Remember the vision of the burned dragged corpses hanging from the bridge?
Those mothers saw those images too.
Blackwater has a particular reputation that we should note. But Blackwater doesn't only contract in Iraq.
Remember N.O. LA after Katrina? The stadium, the guarded bridges out, the shooting at black "looters" (as opposed to white survivors) carrying loaves of old bread from flooded stores? Blackwater had that lucrative FEMA security contract.
And now Blackwater is contracting outsourcing "police" work in these United States as public police agencies are downsized underfunded and squeezed by Reaganomic politics.
Blackwater should also be of special interest to Michiganders who just voted down Dick DeVos' bid for governorship in 2006, a message in times when the downsizing of Michigan's manufacturing base has caused a crisis.
And Dick sunk a personal fortune into one of the richest races in history for any governorship.
Well, you ask, what is Blackwater's relationship to Michigan? Dick DeVos' wife Betsy, who once ran the Republican Party in Michigan, is Betsy Prince DeVos, her brother Eric Prince is the founder and CEO of Blackwater.
NOTE: I live by coincidence... I just Googled "CEO Eric Prince" to verify my memory, and right on top was this:
Erik Prince, Blackwater War Profiteer, Attacks Iraq for Sale
By Robert Greenwald on the Huffington Post
"Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers" tells the story of Erik Prince and Blackwater, and their consistent profiting from the war. As the film is seen across the United States, it is having a powerful effect on audiences. People are responding strongly to the emotional and gut wrenching story of Prince choosing profit over patriotism as he cuts corners at Blackwater in his relentless pursuit of money.
The film tells the story of two young men who are killed as a result of Blackwater focusing on profits, and their grieving and enraged mothers. These mothers are taking the fight to Blackwater and when they see the film, audiences are also activated to take steps to stop Blackwater.
Sadly, rather than working to help and heal the mothers who have suffered this loss, Prince and his profiteering co-horts, have gone into attack mode. And in this case, ironically so with a company who sent out an email after the '04 election saying, "Bush Wins Four More Years!! Hooyah!" attacking Iraq for Sale for being "election year left wing politics."
This from the man who after interning in the Bush Sr. Whitehouse said, "I saw a lot of things I didn't agree with - homosexual groups being invited in, the budget agreement, the Clean Air Act, those kind of bills." This from a man whose car says "Bush: "Let's Roll" Kerry: "Let's Roll Over." This from a man who, together with his family have given over 2 million dollars to Republican candidates and use their political access to protect Blackwater from scrutiny.
We at Brave New Films are proud to be helping raise the issue of profiteering as the election approaches; it should be an issue we judge our candidates by. Are they protecting us? Are they protecting our tax dollars? The fact that Prince has hired a disrespected PR flack, Mark Corallo, whose claim to fame was defending the disgraced Bob Livingston for cheating on his wife, speaks to the issue of Prince's morality.
Profiteering during a time of war is indeed a serious and important issue. I invite Erik Prince to see the film, to meet with our researchers and to have a full and open discussion about the way he is profiteering.
And for those who would like to see the Prince story and the mansion, purchased from his profiteering, check out this video...
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
a musical interlude
For all my Patrio-Christo-Fascist friends who think there is Somethin' Basically Wrong with Muslims, especially the camel jockey ragheads sittin' on OUR OILfields, and who along the same Reptilian lines think a budget that feeds Lockheed-martin and Caci and Blackwater and Halliburton and Bechtel, but which takes food and medical care out of the hands of children in the State of Michigan is "compassionate" conservatism... this vid is for you.
Monday, February 05, 2007
two hundred and fifty billion dollars
Dubya has an extravagant ego.
Choose 25 cities in America. Give them each $10 billion.
or
Choose 50 states in America. Give them each $5 billion.
or
Choose 250 cities in America. Give them each $1 billion.
or
Choose 250 colleges in America. Give them each $1 billion.
Just don't give Dubya $250 billion to spend on death.
Choose 25 cities in America. Give them each $10 billion.
or
Choose 50 states in America. Give them each $5 billion.
or
Choose 250 cities in America. Give them each $1 billion.
or
Choose 250 colleges in America. Give them each $1 billion.
Just don't give Dubya $250 billion to spend on death.
Saturday, February 03, 2007
on the other hand
I'm wondering who gets custody of all the limbs?
Maybe collect them for a tasteful display for the Bush Library?
Thursday, February 01, 2007
more BBC hilarity
Dubya on Social Security: "unfunded mandate"...
HAHAHAHAHA
LOL-ROLF-PIP
Dear Mr. Prez,
The mandate is plenty funded. You guys in the beltway just have been borrowing from it for years to pretend your budget balances!
YOU WANT UNFUNDED MANDATE?
How about putting YOUR War into the budget, instead of making separate off-budget requests to "support our troops" outside of the budget process?
YOU, personally, are bleeding the wealth of our country dry for your corporate cronies and imperial hubris.
HAHAHAHAHA
LOL-ROLF-PIP
Dear Mr. Prez,
The mandate is plenty funded. You guys in the beltway just have been borrowing from it for years to pretend your budget balances!
YOU WANT UNFUNDED MANDATE?
How about putting YOUR War into the budget, instead of making separate off-budget requests to "support our troops" outside of the budget process?
YOU, personally, are bleeding the wealth of our country dry for your corporate cronies and imperial hubris.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Thoughts on Ben Bernacke once again attacking our beloved social programs
Remember my Humpty-Dumpty analogy for the Bush Wars? Seems a lot of people started thinking along the same lines lately... and Dubya responded. Did anyone else hear his comment that he "doesn't think of Iraq as a broken egg", he "thinks it's more of a cracked egg"? (Duh? What's the difference, George? Exactly what planet are you from?)
I heard the sound clip one morning on NPR and didn't hear it again all day.
I think it says everything about our nation and what we have become.
You actually voted for this guy TWICE!
Remember when Bush's Invasion of Iraq was a *soldier a day* and a $ billion a week?
You knew it escalated to more blood and carnage a day, but did you know Bush's off-budget carte-blanche war is now costing your tax-sponsored credit card over two billion a week?
Couldn't we better spend that money here? On homeland security and shoring up successful social programs?
What is it about "fighting over there so we don't have to fight them here" that keeps "them" over "there"? Logically, "they" can do two things at the same time. We are not safer by invading other countries. We don't spread democracy, we spread hatred which will encourage someone sometime to act on that thought. Blowback is heck. Expect more blowback, and it will be heck. We are spending our life's blood on militarism for nothing...
Okay, so they have filled The Grover Noquist-described Bathtub to drown our government in.
We have been convinced by free traders and Madison Avenue to sell our birthright to the Godless Communist Chinese for cheaply made Walmart goods...
We have been lyed into spending over half of our wealth on militarism...
We have been sold on ignoring Peak Oil and Global Climate Change in favore of faith based armageddonist SUV driving...
We have been scared by scarey commercials about men in turbans, and wolves in the woods to the reactionary gutting of our Constitutional rights...
So folks, are you going to believe these proven to be lying bastards when they begin to proceed to dismantle your Social Security?
Ben Bernacke and George W. Bush are carrying Great Big Scissors to cut holes in your safety nets!
The Republic is dying okay you don't care about that, but are you going to bring Granny in to sleep in your spare room, or leave her on the side of the road?
----
*The now-shit-canned "An Army of One" advertising campaign took on new meaning with Bush's War, didn't it, when it became the blood price of conquest.
IU've marvelled at how the Righties seem to revel in ironic language... Federalist Society is exquisite, Crusade and Islamo-fascism, the short lived Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) changed to OIF, the code talking to the militant Christian Right, the litany of anti-environmental program names Blue Skies and Healthy Forests Initiatives, the evil No Child Left Behind... Is there a complete list online of this endless Luntz-speak I wonder?
I heard the sound clip one morning on NPR and didn't hear it again all day.
I think it says everything about our nation and what we have become.
You actually voted for this guy TWICE!
Remember when Bush's Invasion of Iraq was a *soldier a day* and a $ billion a week?
You knew it escalated to more blood and carnage a day, but did you know Bush's off-budget carte-blanche war is now costing your tax-sponsored credit card over two billion a week?
Couldn't we better spend that money here? On homeland security and shoring up successful social programs?
What is it about "fighting over there so we don't have to fight them here" that keeps "them" over "there"? Logically, "they" can do two things at the same time. We are not safer by invading other countries. We don't spread democracy, we spread hatred which will encourage someone sometime to act on that thought. Blowback is heck. Expect more blowback, and it will be heck. We are spending our life's blood on militarism for nothing...
Okay, so they have filled The Grover Noquist-described Bathtub to drown our government in.
We have been convinced by free traders and Madison Avenue to sell our birthright to the Godless Communist Chinese for cheaply made Walmart goods...
We have been lyed into spending over half of our wealth on militarism...
We have been sold on ignoring Peak Oil and Global Climate Change in favore of faith based armageddonist SUV driving...
We have been scared by scarey commercials about men in turbans, and wolves in the woods to the reactionary gutting of our Constitutional rights...
So folks, are you going to believe these proven to be lying bastards when they begin to proceed to dismantle your Social Security?
Ben Bernacke and George W. Bush are carrying Great Big Scissors to cut holes in your safety nets!
The Republic is dying okay you don't care about that, but are you going to bring Granny in to sleep in your spare room, or leave her on the side of the road?
----
*The now-shit-canned "An Army of One" advertising campaign took on new meaning with Bush's War, didn't it, when it became the blood price of conquest.
IU've marvelled at how the Righties seem to revel in ironic language... Federalist Society is exquisite, Crusade and Islamo-fascism, the short lived Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL) changed to OIF, the code talking to the militant Christian Right, the litany of anti-environmental program names Blue Skies and Healthy Forests Initiatives, the evil No Child Left Behind... Is there a complete list online of this endless Luntz-speak I wonder?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
