that there is hope and that we're making serious progress.
IRAQ WAR REPORTS
Soldier From Stanwood Killed In Iraq
Nov. 20, 2006 Associated Press
STANWOOD, Mich.: A Mecosta County man serving in the Army National Guard
was
killed in Iraq over the weekend, his wife said.
Spc. Brad Shilling died Saturday, his wife D.J. Shilling said. He
was 22.
"I've only realized how it's made me stronger," she told
Cadillac television station
WWTV-WWUP. "It made me realize a lot about myself. It made me realize
I can handle
a lot more than I thought I could."
Brad Shilling had been serving in Iraq since this summer, his wife said.
"I'm still adjusting," said D.J. Shilling, who was wearing a
T-shirt with "ARMY" across the
front. "I just always expected him to come back."
She said her husband was always helping others.
"If you needed him, he'd be there," she said. "I'm sure the
guys over there right now
would probably say the same thing."
Brad Shilling also leaves behind a 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Abbie, and a 3
1/2-month-old
son, Jordan. The family lives near Stanwood, about 30 miles west of Mount
Pleasant.
"He really didn't get a lot of time with Jordan ... but I know he's
going to miss him - he's
going to miss that," D.J. Shilling said. "He'll be here
watching."
Texas Soldier Killed In Baquba
Army Spc. Mitchel T. Mutz, 23, Falls City, Texas, died Nov. 15, 2006, in
Baquba, Iraq, of
injuries suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near the
vehicle he
was in during combat operations. (AP Photo/Family Photo via San Antonio
Express-
News)
Michigan National Guard Soldier Killed
Army National Guard Spc. Brad Shilling Nov. 18, 2006, in Iraq, his wife
D.J. Shilling said.
He was 22. (AP Photo/Family photo via WPBN-TV)
Harrisonburg Soldier Recovering In Iraq;
Roadside Bomb Injures Unit In Baghdad
2006-11-20 By Kelly Jasper, Daily News-Record
HARRISONBURG: A Harrisonburg solider is recovering in Baghdad this week
from
injuries sustained in a roadside bomb attack.
Alice and Mike Minnis of Nelson Drive got the news last week in a call
from an Army
official in Alexandria. The official told the family that their son, Cpl.
Michael Minnis, had
been injured in combat.
Minnis, 22, is a fire-support specialist with Company A, 23rd Infantry
Division, 1st
Battalion. He was deployed to Iraq in June.
Thankfully, Alice said, her son only suffered a concussion and busted
eardrum in the
incident.
Details were sparse at first, but now, a week after the improvised
explosive device blew
up near Minnis’ platoon near Baghdad, she knows he’s doing OK. It’s not
clear where
exactly Minnis and his unit were at the time of the explosion or what type
of vehicle they
were traveling in.
"We just know he was in Baghdad," Alice said. "We weren’t
told much else."
While others from his unit were injured, no one was killed in the
attack, Alice said.
"They were very lucky," she said from her home on Sunday.
Alice said she doesn’t know the extent of the other soldiers’ injuries but
that Michael was
traveling with a 12-person striker unit.
The IED that exploded near the unit is a common roadside bomb responsible
for more
than half of all American fatalities in Iraq, according to
Icasualties.org, a Web site that
tracks U.S. military casualties.
The Harrisonburg family said they talked to Michael online last week.
He told them he was hospitalized for a day and a half at the base hospital
in Baghdad.
"He said, "Everybody’s doing just fine," Alice said.
As of Sunday, her son wasn’t back to full duty just yet, she said.
"It could be within the next couple of days," she said. He’s
still on medication to help
with the concussion, she said.
Minnis is scheduled to return home next summer.
Throughout her son’s deployment, Alice says the community has been
supportive.
In September, her neighbors tied dozens of yellow ribbons and bows around
trees and
mailboxes on Nelson Drive.
"We appreciate all the community support and prayer," she said.
Fruita Man Wounded In Iraq, Expected
To Recover
November 14, 2006 By SARAH PROTZMAN The Daily Sentinel
A 2004 graduate of R-5 High School was wounded in Iraq and is expected to
make a full
recovery.
Mark Daniel Renshaw, 20, was shot in the stomach around midday Monday.
Doctors at a trauma hospital repaired Renshaw’s kidney, and the prognosis
is good,
family friend Rusty Boyd said.
Renshaw is the son of Grand Junction real estate agent Theresa Manthei.
Manthei said
she believes her son is in Haditha, northwest of Baghdad.
She said officials told her Renshaw was in surgery within 45 minutes of
the incident.
“They called to say he was stable, and that’s all we know,” she said
Monday.
“I’m just waiting.”
Renshaw, who grew up in Fruita and also attended Fruita Monument High
School, left
for Iraq in mid-September, Boyd said.
Renshaw also served seven months in Afghanistan in 2005, after which he
was awarded
the Bronze Star for valor for saving four Afghan troops while under fire
an eastern
Afghanistan village.
“Terrorism is an idea and will never be able to be killed,” Renshaw told
The Daily
Sentinel in February upon his homecoming to Walker Field Airport. “But we
can at least
make it not worth their efforts.”
Renshaw’s great-uncle, Joseph Francis Tallarico; great-great uncle, Joseph
Santoro;
and grandfather, Robert Tallarico, also served in the Marines.
Renshaw enlisted in summer 2004, spurred by the terrorist attacks of Sept.
11, 2001, his
family told the Sentinel earlier this year. “He’ll probably be very angry
that he was shot,”
Boyd said Monday, “because he won’t get to finish what he set out to do.”
FUTILE EXERCISE:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW!
172nd Stryker Brigade Combat Team soldier checks car in central Baghdad's
Karradah
district, Oct. 24, 2006. (AP Photo/Hadi Mizban)
Great Moments In U.S. Military
History:
Occupation Butchers More
Civilians In Sadr City:
“I Will Not Return To Parliament Until
The Occupation Troops Leave The
Country”
Women grieve next to a bloodstained blanket in a room where a baby died
and another
relative was wounded after a U.S. air strike in Baghdad's Sadr city
November 21, 2006.
A U.S. air strike in Baghdad's Sadr City district killed at least three
people on Tuesday.
U.S. military spokesman Colonel Christopher Garver said he was checking
the reports.
REUTERS/Kareem Raheem (IRAQ)
[Thanks to Pham Binh, Traveling Soldier, who sent this in. He writes:
Playing with
fire.]
11.21.06 AP & By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) U.S. and Iraqi forces raided the overwhelmingly
Shiite Sadr City
slum on Tuesday.
Tuesday's raid in Sadr City was the third in four days by U.S. and Iraqi
forces in the
slum, which is the headquarters of the Madhi Army.
At least three people were killed.
The 3 a.m. assault in the east Baghdad grid of streets lined with
tumbledown concrete
block structures and vacant lots was the third in four days by U.S. and
Iraqi forces.
Angry Shiites denounced the raid.
Health Ministry spokesman, Qassem Abdul Hadi, said the dead included a
six-month-old
infant, while up to 50 had been wounded and were being treated at the
local Imam Ali
Hospital.
Iraqi Police Capt. Mohammed Ismail said a young boy and two other people
were killed
in the early morning raid and 15 people were wounded. Several houses were
damaged.
After Tuesday's raid, a Shiite legislator Saleh Al-Ukailli cradled the
body of the dead
child outside the hospital morgue and angrily condemned Iraq's government
for allowing
such attacks.
"I am suspending my membership in parliament since it remains silent
about crimes
such as this against the Iraqi people," al-Ukailli said. "I will
not return to parliament until
the occupation troops leave the country."
The boy's body was wrapped in a bloodstained cloth, with only the face
visible. Nearby,
minivans left with two wooden caskets on their roofs.
A boy cries after his nephew was killed after a U.S. air strike in
Baghdad's Sadr city
November 21, 2006. REUTERS/Kareem Raheem (IRAQ)
AFGHANISTAN WAR REPORTS
Collaborator Politicians Do Things The
American Way:
“Graft And Corruption, I Think, Are Just
Accepted” Sgt. Major Says
Tuesday, November 21, 2006 TOM GORDON, The Birmingham News staff writer
[Excerpt]
An Alabama National Guard sergeant who recently returned from Afghanistan
says
turning back the country's growing Taliban insurgency requires turning around
the
Afghan economy and curbing its corruption.
"You can kill them forever," Sgt. Maj. Kevin Griffin of Grayson
Valley said in a recent
interview. "But you also have to provide them the opportunity to not
want to fight. We
have to somehow figure out a way to get them back to work."
While Griffin came home concerned about the Afghan economy, he also was
bothered
by the pervasive corruption he observed among government officials.
"They didn't understand that, as elected officials, you are a servant
of the people,' Griffin
said.
"Graft and corruption, I think, are just accepted..."
What do you think? Comments from service men and women,
and veterans, are especially welcome. Write to The Military
Project, Box 126, 2576 Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657 or
request. Replies confidential. Same to unsubscribe.
TROOP NEWS
THIS IS HOW BUSH BRINGS THE TROOPS HOME:
BRING THEM ALL HOME NOW, ALIVE
The casket of Marine Lance Cpl. Ryan T. McCaughn at St. Anne-St. Augustin
Catholic
church in Manchester, N.H., Nov. 20, 2006. McCaughn, 19, died Nov. 7 while
conducting combat operations in Al Anbar province, Iraq. (AP Photo/Cheryl
Senter)
National Guardsman Says “No
More People Should Die In A
Mistaken War” At Rally In Duluth
[Thanks to Mark Shapiro, who sent this in.]
November 17, 2006 By Naomi Yaeger, American Chronicle [Excerpts]
Nov. 12 was the twelfth protest held by the Northland Anti-War Coalition
since it’s
inception in December of 2002. Many of the of the organizers and attendees
event live
in the Hillside, including Sharla Gardner and Joel Sipress The event was
planned long
before the Nov. 7 elections and would have been held no matter what the
outcome.
After the election the theme was “Demanding that the newly elected
government
honor the will of the people.”
A massive scroll of newsprint two feet wide by 20 feet long was signed by
the protesters
and will be mailed to Congress.
Speakers at the rally included: Daniel Fanning (a recently returned Iraq
war vet),
Fletcher Hines (a Vietnam vet, and leader of Veterans and Military
Families for
Progress), Joan Najbar (of Military Families Speak Out, and mother of a MN
National
Guardsman deployed in Iraq), Sharla Gardner (of AFSCME Local 66, who read a
statement from State Senator and Gold Star Mother Becky Lourey who was
unable to
attend the event) and Ellie Schoenfeld (local poet extraordinaire).
The talking points of the speakers were:
Daniel Fanning: A military member who said the occupation is doing more
harm
than good. No more people should die in a mistaken war.
Fletcher Hines: A Vietnam vet who listed numerous similarities between the
Iraqi War
and the Vietnam War. He said to bring peace the United States needs to
bring earnest
and effective engagement with the neighbors of Iraq.
Joan Najbar: the mother of a National Guard member who said for every ten soldiers
that are killed, seven are wounded, many of them with head and brain
injuries. Federal
funds to help wounded vets have been cut.
Do you have a friend or relative in the service? Forward GI Special
along,
or send us the address if you wish and we’ll send it regularly. Whether
in
Iraq or stuck on a base in the USA, this is extra important for your
service
friend, too often cut off from access to encouraging news of growing
resistance to the war, at home and inside the armed services. Send
requests to address up top or write to: The Military Project, Box 126,
2576
Broadway, New York, N.Y. 10025-5657
Shafting The Vets;
“A Returning Vet Must Wait An Average
Of 165 Days For A VA Decision On Initial
Disability Benefits. An Appeal Can Take
Up To Three Years”
Reserve and National Guard troops - who make up between 40 and 50% of
the
frontline troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - have a particular problem,
because their
military medical insurance benefits only cover conditions diagnosed in
the first
100 days. PTSD sometimes takes years, even decades to kick in.
November 20, 2006 By Conn Hallinan, Portside [Excerpts]
"War is hell," Union General William Tecumseh Sherman famously
said 14 years after
the end of the bloodiest conflict in US history. "It is only those
who have neither fired a
shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for
blood, more
vengeance, more desolation."
Clearly the U.S. Civil War is not on the reading list of psychiatrist
Sally Satel, a scholar at
the right- wing American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Indeed, Satel sees war less as hell than as a golden opportunity for
veteran lay-abouts
to milk the government by " overpathologizing the psychic pain of war."
Satel, whom the AEI trots out anytime the Bush administration needs
cover for
cutting veteran services and benefits, says the problem for former soldiers is not
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
"The real trouble for vets," she writes, is that "once a
patient receives a monthly
check based on his psychiatric diagnosis, his motivation to hold a job
wanes."
Her solution? "Don't offer disability benefits too quickly."
The commentary makes an interesting contrast to a powerful piece in the
October
2006 issue of the California Nurses Association's magazine Registered
Nurse
titled "The Battle at Home" by Caitlin Fischer and Diana
Reiss.
They found that "in veterans' hospitals across the country - and
in a growing
number of ill-prepared, under-funded psych and primary care clinics as
well -
Registered Nurses ... are treating soldiers ... and picking up the pieces of a
tattered army."
According to the authors, RNs across the country "have witnessed
the guilt, rage,
emotional numbness, and tormented flashbacks of GIs just back from Iraq
and
Afghanistan," as well as older vets from previous wars,
"whose half-century-old
trauma have been 'triggered' by the images of Iraq."
How many soldiers
returning from Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually fall victim to
PTSD is not clear, although a U.S. Defense Department study in 2006 found
that one in
six returnees suffer from depression or stress disorders, and 35% have
sought
counseling for emotional difficulties. The Veterans Administration (VA)
treated 20,638
Iraq vets for PTSD in just the first quarter of 2006 and is currently
processing a backlog
of 400,000 cases.
Out of 700,000 soldiers
who served in the 1991 Gulf War, 118,000 are suffering from
chronic fatigue, headaches, muscle spasms, joint pains, anxiety, memory
loss, and
balance problems, and 40% receive disability pay. Gulf vets are also twice
as likely to
develop amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and between
two and three
times more likely to have children with birth defects.
Modern battlefields are toxic nightmares, filled with depleted uranium
ammunition, exotic
explosives, and deadly cluster bomblets. The soldiers are shot up with experimental
vaccines that can have dangerous side effects from additives like
squalene. In short,
soldiers are not
only under fire, they are assaulted by their own weapons systems and
medical procedures.
Satel need have no worries about the VA rushing to hand out cash to
veteran
couch potatoes. According to Fischer and Reiss, "A returning vet
must wait an
average of 165 days for a VA decision on initial disability benefits.
An appeal can
take up to three years."
Reserve and National Guard troops - who make up between 40 and 50% of
the
frontline troops in Iraq and Afghanistan - have a particular problem,
because their
military medical insurance benefits only cover conditions diagnosed in
the first
100 days. PTSD sometimes takes years, even decades to kick in.
When they do complain, vets can expect that their ailments will be
dismissed or their
cause stonewalled.
When Gulf War vets complained about the symptoms which have come to be
called
"Gulf War Syndrome," the Pentagon told them it was in their
heads, in spite of studies by
the British Medical Journal and the U.S. Center for Disease Control that
showed the
returnees were suffering illnesses at 12 times the rate of non - Gulf vets.
