Counterpunch Article Comes into Question

A comment by someone who has provoked many in my local peace and justice group calls the Counterpunch article into question because of a citing of research by Ted Sampley. Sampley is a man linked to the smearing of McCain by the Bush campaign in South Carolina in the 2000 primaries.
As with anything you read online or offline don't trust the sources, the story or the writer to have it correct. Find out for yourself. I do have an agenda against the hero image of John McCain. Anything that calls it into question needs to be reviewed since it has become clearly obvious McCain plans on using this image to get into the White House.
McCain's ad says anybody that talks romantically or longingly about war is either a fool or a fraud. Then he glamorizes his family and his involvement in wars. Self proclaimed heroes should send a chill up the collective spine of Americans. But check it out for yourself and decide for yourself.

John "Wane" Being Swift-Boated??

From Glory Boy to PW Songbird
John McCain: War Hero or North Vietnam's Go-To Collaborator?
By Douglas Valentine
13/06/08 "Counterpunch" -- -- If you have no idea what war is about, thank your gods. It is not what you see in Mel Gibson movies, nor is it hidden within the Big Lie Big Brother tells you about Pat Tillman’s heroic “Army of One” in Iraq and Afghanistan.
When my father was in New Guinea with the 32nd Division in 1942, his fellow American soldiers would point their long Springfield rifles skywards and shoot at American pilots flying overhead.
“Glory Boys,” the long-suffering ground troops called them.
The pilots had comfortable quarters beside the airstrip in Port Moresby. When orders for a mission came down, they’d climb in their planes, rattle down the runway, and soar over the Owen Stanley Mountains with the clouds in spotless uniforms, breathing fresh clean air. The Glory Boys weren’t trapped in the broiling jungle, in the mud and pouring rain, their skin rotting away, chewed by ghastly insects, bitten by poisonous snakes, stricken with cerebral malaria, yellow fever, dysentery, and a host of unknown diseases delivered by unknown parasites.
If the Fly Boys perished, it was in a blaze of glory, not from a landmine, or a misdirected American mortar, or a Japanese bayonet in the brain.
One day my father and his last remaining friend, Charlie Ferguson, were walking through the jungle up to the front line. One the way they passed a group of bare-chested Aussies in khaki shorts sitting round a grindstone sharpening their knives. Every once in a while one of the Aussies would hoist his rife and casually put a bullet into a Japanese sniper who had tied himself into the top of a nearby tree. Not in any place that would outright kill him, but some place painful enough to make the point.
A little further toward the front line, my father and Charlie came upon Master Sergeant Harry Blackman, an adult man in his forties, regular army, a grizzled combat veteran. A few days earlier in a fight with the Japanese, a young lieutenant, a “90-Day Wonder,” had curled up in a fetal position when he should have been directing mortar fire. As a result, US mortar rounds landed on several US soldiers. Blackman, in front of everyone, took the lieutenant behind a tree and blew his brains out.
As my father and Charlie waked through the jungle they saw Harry Blackman perched on the lower limb of a huge tropical tree, babbling incoherently among the butterflies and flowering vines, driven stark raving mad by sorrow and jungle war with the Japanese.
Several days later my father was sent on a patrol into Japanese held territory. He was the last man in a formation moving single file through the jungle. Plagued by malaria and exhaustion, he kept falling behind. Around noon, a group of Japanese soldiers sitting high up in trees dropped concussion grenades on the patrol. As he lay on the ground, unable to move, my father watched the Japanese slide down the trees. Starting with the point man on patrol, they pulled down the pants and castrated each man, before clubbing him to death with their rifle butts or running a bayonet into his gut.
War. If you’re a Glory Boy like John Sidney McCain III, you really have no idea what it is. You drop bombs on cities, on civilians, maybe on enemy forces, maybe on your own troops. Glory Boys like John McCain rarely get a taste of the horror they inflict on others. Their suffering rarely extends beyond the high anxiety that they might get shot down and that some bombarded mob on the ground might take its revenge.
Magically, my father was spared that day when his patrol was slaughtered. Against regulations, he had stolen a cross-swords patch and sewn it on his shirt sleeve. At the age of 16, he thought it looked cool. On the morning of the patrol, when the new “90-Day Wonder” told him to take it off, my father said “Sure.” He and the lieutenant stared at each other for a while and then the lieutenant moved away. Insubordination was the least of anyone’s worries. No one expected to survive the patrol, anyway.
When the Japanese who had ambushed the patrol got to my father, they stood poised to mutilate and kill him. Then they saw the cross-swords patch. They apparently felt that dear old dad was an important person with inside information about American forces. Instead of killing him, they took him prisoner. When they realized he was just a stupid kid, the Japanese sent him to a POW camp in the Philippines.
Being a POW is what my father and John McCain have in common; although their experience as POWs was as different as their class and their character.
Class indeed has privileges, and while the government refused to provide my combat-veteran father with medical benefits for his malaria, McCain, who spent ten hours of his life in mortal danger, was decorated with the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star Medal and the Purple Heart.
And thus the “war hero” myth was born.
McNasty
In the fall of 1967, Navy pilot John McCain was routinely bombing Hanoi from an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea. On October 26, he was trying to level a power plant in a heavily populated area when a surface-to-air missile knocked a wing off his jet. Banged-up John McCain and what was left of plane splashed into Truc Bach Lake.
A compassionate Vietnamese civilian left his air raid shelter and swam out to McCain. McCain’s arm and leg were fractured and he was tangled up in his parachute underwater. He was drowning. The Vietnamese man saved McCain’s sorry ass, and yet McCain has nothing but hatred for “the gooks” who allegedly tortured him. As he told reporters on his campaign bus (The Straight Talk Express) in 2000, “I will hate them as long as I live.” (1)
Americans have to hate people, and dehumanize them as “gooks” or “rag-heads” in order to drop bombs on them. Stirring up such hatred is the forte of the US government, as witnessed by its Israeli-driven PR campaign against Arabs and Moslems. That’s why Bush and his media minions tied “brutal dictator” Saddam Hussein to 9/11 – so Americans would hate Iraqis enough to kill and abuse them in a thousand ways, everyday, for five years. Or, according to McCain, for 100 years if necessary.
The flip side to the equation is that people generally hate those who drop bombs on them. When the Germans dropped bombs on London, the Allies called it Terror Bombing. The French resistance especially hated the Germans, especially after the Gestapo set up shop in occupied France in 1940.
Likewise, Iraqi and Afghani resistance fighters hate the Americans (who more and more resemble the Germans of 1940) for occupying their countries. They especially hate our Gestapo – the CIA – and its torturers. But that’s War for you, and John McCain is lucky the locals didn’t eat him alive – like Uzbek nationalists trapped in a horrid prison camp in Afghanistan nibbled on CIA officer John “Mike” Spann shortly after Spann summarily executed a prisoner. Spann was killed in the ensuing riot, shortly before the CIA and its Afghan collaborators massacred the remaining Uzbek prisoners on 28 November 2001.
The Vietnamese had good reason to hate McCain. On his previous 22 missions, he had dropped God knows how many bombs killing God knows how many innocent civilians. “I am a war criminal,” he confessed on “60 Minutes” in 1997. “I bombed innocent women and children.” (2)
If he is sincere when he says that, why isn’t he being tried for war crimes by the U.S .Government?
In any event, the man who rescued McCain tried to ward off an angry mob, which stomped on McCain for a while until the local cops turned him over to the military. McCain was in pain, but suffering no mortal wounds. He was, however, in enough pain to break down and start collaborating with the Vietnamese after three days in a hospital receiving treatment from qualified doctors – something no other POW ever enjoyed.
War is one thing, collaborating with the enemy is another; it is a legitimate campaign issue that strikes at the heart of McCain’s character…or lack thereof.
There are certainly degrees of collaboration. As a famous novelist once asked, “If you’re a barber and you cut a German’s hair, does that make you a collaborator?”
Being an informant for the Gestapo, or its stepson the CIA in Iraq, and informing on the resistance and sending them to their death, is different than being a barber. In occupied countries like Iraq, or France in World War Two, collaboration to that extent is an automatic death sentence.
The question is: “What kind of collaborator was John McCain, the admitted war criminal who will hate his alleged torturers for the rest of his life?”
Put another way, how psychologically twisted is McCain? And what actually happened to him in his POW camp that twisted him? Was it abuse, as he claims, or was it the fact that he collaborated and has to cover up?
Covering-up can take a lot of energy. The truth is lurking in his subconscious, waiting to explode. A number of US officials, including Andrew Card, have commented on McCain’s inexplicable angry outbursts.
In a July 5 2006 NewsMax.com article, former Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), was quoted as having said about McCain: “I have witnessed incidents where he has used profanity at colleagues.... He would disagree about something and then explode.” Smith called it “irrational behavior. We've all had incidents where we have gotten angry, but I've never seen anyone act like that."
So, you say, McCain has a short fuse behind the plastered TV smile. So he calls his colleagues assholes and shit-heads. In high school they called him “McNasty.” That’s just how he is. Always was, always will be.
Well, maybe. And maybe it’s not a quality we want in a president. And maybe that repressed anger actually has its roots in a Vietnamese POW camp, where John McCain betrayed his forefathers and his country.
The Admiral’s Bad Boy
In the forced-labor camp where my father was tortured by the Japanese, the POWs killed anyone who collaborated. Indeed, the ranking POW in my father’s camp, an English Major, made a deal with the Japanese guaranteeing that no one would attempt to escape. When four prisoners escaped, the Major reported it. The Japanese sent out a search party, which found the POWs and brought them back to camp, where they were beheaded on Christmas morning 1943.
The POWs held a war council that night. They drew straws, and the three who got short were given a mission. A few hours later, under cover of darkness, they crept to the major’s hut. My father had gotten one of the short straws and kept watch while the other two POWs strangled the Major in his sleep.
That’s how it happens in real life.
McCain, in his carefully prepared statements, claims he was tortured while in solitary confinement, and that is why he signed a confession saying, “I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died and the Vietnamese people saved my life, thanks to the doctors.” (3)
However, on March 25, 1999, two of his fellow POWs, Ted Guy and Gordon "Swede" Larson told the Phoenix New Times that, while they could not guarantee that McCain was not physically harmed, they doubted it.
As Larson said, "My only contention with the McCain deal is that while he was at The Plantation, to the best of my knowledge and Ted's knowledge, he was not physically abused in any way. No one was in that camp. It was the camp that people were released from."
Guy and Larson’s claims are given credence by McCain’s vehement opposition to releasing the government’s debriefings of Vietnam War POWs. McCain gave Michael Isikoff a peek at his debriefs, and Isikoff declared there was “nothing incriminating” in them, apart from the redactions. (4)
McCain had a unique POW experience. Initially, he was taken to the infamous Hanoi Hilton prison camp, where he was interrogated. By McCain’s own account, after three or four days, he cracked. He promised his Vietnamese captors, "I'll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital."
His Vietnamese capturers soon realized their POW, John Sidney McCain III, came from a well-bred line of American military elites. McCain’s father, John Jr., and grandfather, John Sr., were both full Admirals. A destroyer, the USS John S. McCain, is named after both of them.
While his son was held captive in Hanoi, John McCain Jr., from 1968 to 1972, was the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Pacific Command; Admiral McCain was in charge of all US forces in the Pacific including those fighting in Vietnam.
One can only wonder when the concierge at the Hanoi Hilton started taking calls from Admiral McCain. Rather quickly, one surmises, for the Vietnamese soon took John Boy McCain to a hospital reserved for Vietnamese officers. Unlike his fellow POWs, he received care from a Soviet doctor.
“This poor stooge has propaganda value,” the Vietnamese realized. The Admiral’s bad boy was used to special treatment and his captors knew that. They were working him.
For his part, McCain acknowledges that the Vietnamese rushed him to a hospital, but denies he was given any "special medical treatment."
However….two weeks into his stay at the Vietnamese hospital, the Hanoi press began quoting him. It was not “name rank and serial number, or kill me,” as specified by the military code of conduct. McCain divulged specific military information: he gave the name of the aircraft carrier on which he was based, the number of US pilots that had been lost, the number of aircraft in his flight formation, as well as information about the location of rescue ships. (5)
So McCain leveraged some details to get some medical attention. That’s not anything too contemptible. And who among us civilians is to judge someone in the position?
On the other hand, according to one source, McCain’s collaboration may have had very real consequences. Retired Army Colonel Earl Hopper, a veteran of World War II, Korea and Vietnam, contends that the information that McCain divulged classified information North Vietnam used to hone their air defense system.
Hopper’s son, Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Earl Pearson Hopper was, like McCain, shot down over North Vietnam. Hopper the younger, however, was declared “Missing in Action.” Stemming from the loss of his son, the elder Hopper co-founded the National League of Families, an organization devoted to the return of Vietnam War POWs.
According to the elder Hopper, McCain told his North Vietnamese captors, “highly classified information, the most important of which was the package routes, which were routes used to bomb North Vietnam. He gave in detail the altitude they were flying, the direction, if they made a turn… he gave them what primary targets the United States was interested in.” Hopper contends that the information McCain provided allowed the North Vietnamese to adjust their air-defenses. As result, Hopper claims, the US lost sixty percent more aircraft and in 1968, “called off the bombing of North Vietnam, because of the information McCain had given to them.” 6
The Psywar Stooge
McCain was held for five and half years. Collaborating during the first two weeks might have been pragmatic, but he soon became North Vietnam’s go-to collaborator for the next three years. Given the quality of the military information he allegedly shared, his situation isn’t as innocuous as the pragmatic French barber who cuts the hair of the German occupier. McCain was repaying his captors for their kindness and mercy.
This is the lesson of McCain’s experience as a POW: a true politician, a hollow man, his only allegiance is to power. The Vietnamese, like McCain’s campaign contributors today, protected and promoted him and in return, he danced to their tune.
Not content with divulging military information, McCain provided his voice in radio broadcasts used by the North Vietnamese to demoralize American soldiers.
Vietnamese radio propagandists made good use out of McCain. On June 4, 1969, a U.S. wire service headlined a story entitled "PW Songbird Is Pilot Son of Admiral.” (7)
The story reported that McCain collaborated in psywar offensives aimed at American servicemen. "The broadcast was beamed to American servicemen in South Vietnam as a part of a propaganda series attempting to counter charges by U.S. Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that American prisoners are being mistreated in North Vietnam."
On one occasion, General Vo Nguyen Giap, the top Vietnamese commander and a nationalist celebrity of the time, personally interviewed McCain. His compliance during this command performance was a moment of affirmation for the Vietnamese. His Vietnamese handlers thereafter used him regularly as prop at meetings with foreign delegations.
In the custody of enemy psywar specialists, McCain became what he is today: a professional psywar stooge.
It is impossible to prove exactly what happened to McCain short of traveling to Vietnam and tracking down his captors, and picking up thee trail where it begins. According to The Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain, McCain says he only collaborated when he brutally tortured by his Vietnamese captors and a wicked Cuban he referred to as Fidel. (8)
He says his confession led him to a suicide attempt.
“In the anguished days right after my confession,” McCain said in his autobiography Faith of My Fathers, “I had dreaded just such a discovery by my father.”
But as McCain discovered, dear old dad did know.
“I only recently learned that the tape I dreamed I heard playing over the loudspeaker in my cell had been real; it had been broadcast outside the prison and had come to the attention of my father,” McCain said. “If I had known at the time my father had heard about my confession, I would have been distressed beyond imagination, and might not have recovered from the experience as quickly as I did.”
But wait! McCain did not commit suicide. In fact, he’s alive, running for President on the “war hero” ticket, and promoting more war everywhere. The new McCain feels no distress at having been a collaborator or a war criminal – if he ever did.
According to Fernando Barral, a Cuban psychologist who questioned McCain in January 1970, “McCain was "boastful" during their interview and "without remorse" for any civilian deaths that occurred "when he bombed Hanoi." McCain has a similar recollection, writing in his [autobiography] that he responded, "No, I do not" when Barral asked if he felt remorse.” (9)
McCain told [Barral] that he had not been subjected to “physical or moral violence,” and “lamented in the interview that ‘if I hadn't been shot down, I would have become an admiral at a younger age than my father.’”
“Barral said McCain boasted that he was the best pilot in the Navy and that he wanted to be an astronaut.” The Cuban psychologist concluded that McCain was [a] ‘psychopath.’” (10)
"He felt superior to the Vietnamese up there in his plane, with all his training," Barral recalled.
Psychopath McCain emerges, now, as a contemptible elitist, stewing in the crucible of his class conscience, the ultimate right wing psywar stooge.
McJekyll and McHyde
There are no public records from other POWs to confirm McCain's self-aggrandizing claims, but his detractors, like fellow POWs Ted Guy and Gordon "Swede" Larson, and Colonel Hopper, have yet to be discredited or silenced by McCain’s PR team.
Hopper, Guy and Larson are part of a larger movement concerned with the fate of the 2,000 American veterans still missing in Vietnam. They’ve been pressing McCain to own up to his POW experience, drop the “war hero” posturing, and do more to provide a full accounting of the POWs and MIAs who were not as fortunate, privileged, or willing to collaborate as the would-be president.
McCain’s supporters are trying to quiet detractors by ignoring them. "Nobody believes these idiots. They're a bunch of jerks. Forget them," said Mark Salter, McCain's chief mythologist. Salter is credited by casting McCain as a modern Teddy Roosevelt, “the war hero turned domestic reformer.” (11)
By in large the Salter strategy has worked. The American media accepts McCain’s “war hero” myth as gospel and, in so doing, bolsters the “straight talk” image so essential to his success in politics. In a recent TV interview with John Kerry, victim of the Swift Boat Heroes for Truth Movement in the last election, another “fortunate son,” Chris Wallace, actually took umbrage when Kerry criticized McCain. Son of media admiral Mike Wallace, Chris made Kerry admit that McCain was a hero.
When it comes to psywar, the Vietnamese have nothing on the good old USA.
McCain learned his lesson well from the Vietnamese propagandists who used him for their psywar projects. But it’s not the collaboration that makes John McCain unfit for office; it’s the fact that he has managed to rewrite his collaboration into political capital. “He’s a war hero, respect him, or die.”
As a pedigree, the McCain family’s stature rests on the status and prestige of its achievements in the military: rank, medals, and most importantly to John McCain’s presidential campaign, the image of warrior masculinity: the straight talking maverick of the Republican Party, the 21st century rendering of Teddy Roosevelt.
Not exactly. In his current presidential campaign, he’s cozying up to the hate-mongering Christian right he once criticized. He’s reversed positions on so many issues that his Democratic rivals have assembled his contrasting statements into “The Great McCain Versus McCain Debates. (12)
Underlying the Jekyll-Hyde reversals is McCain’s hidden past of collaboration. Somewhere in the unplumbed human part of John Sidney McCain III, he knows his POW experience contradicts the war hero image he projects. This essential dishonesty, this lie of the soul, is a sign of a larger lack of character - like the major in my father’s POW camp, but without the come-uppance.
McCain is not some principled leader, not a maverick cowboy fighting the powerful. He’s a sycophant. He believes in nothing but power and will do anything to attain it. He explodes in anger when challenged because, when a criticism hits to close to home, it goes to straight his deep-seeded shame.
McCain’s handlers have turned his unspeakable reality into a myth worthy of Teddy Roosevelt. No wonder the Glory Boy has stuck around Washington so long.
Doug Valentine is the author of The Hotel Tacloban, the story of his father’s experiences in a Japanese POW camp in World War Two. The Hotel Tacloban is available at Mr Valentine’s websites http://www.DouglasValentine.com and http://valentine.sb2.authorsguild.net
Brendan McQuade assisted Mr Valentine by providing timely research for this article.
Mr McQuade can be reached for interviews about this article at: 860-334-3661
Notes
1. C W Nevius, Marc Sandalow, John Wildemuth, “McCain Criticized for Slur,” San Francisco Chronicle, 18 February 2000
2. Ted Rall, CommonDreams.org. February 6, 2008.

3.Ted Rall, CommonDreams.org. February 6, 2008
4. Sydney Schanberg, APBNews.com, 25 April 2000, citing Isikoff, Newsweek, 1 January 2000.
5. Ted Sampley, “Luck Of The Admiral's Son Not For "Grunts" U.S. Veteran Dispatch, October 1999.
6. Sampley page.
7. See attached PDF version of Eugene Cannon 2 June 69 press release.
8. http://www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnmccain.com/index.htm
9. Manuel Roig-Franzia, Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, March 11, 2008; C01
10. Ibid.
11. Sasha Issenberg, Boston Globe.
12. http://www.democrats.org/page/content/mccaindebates And here is the rest of it.

Chemical Warfare

Life is strange. I work in mental health and have seen every kind of psychiatric condition listed in the manuals of abnormal psychology. I've worked with drunks, addicts, psychotics and personality disordered clients. I've worked with assaultive and abusive clients. And I've excelled as a RN in the treatment of all the many clients I've come across. I've come to recognize the incredible bravery of my clients trying to function in our dysfunctional world with the many issues they have. So often my clients have shown great courage in overcoming daily struggles to sort through thinking and emotions that adversely affect them. So often they have shown me kindness and concern even as they struggled so greatly to maintain a semblance of stability. I've often been in total awe of them in watching them overcome their demons.

I wish I could do it as well as my sickest clients. My demons constantly display themselves and cause me to lose the path of my heart. They haunt me in the struggles I see my sons going through because of the sins of their father.

Both my sons are addicts. The worst kind of addicts; they're addicted to crack cocaine. Crack, along with meth, is such a powerfully addictive drug there are few treatment programs for those caught in the horrible spider web of its addiction.

Crack is like a death sentence that insidiously kills its victims in a long drawn out death of many horrors. The horrors of the addict seem almost matched by the horrors of those loving them as they watch the destruction of the body and soul of the child they love.

Crack is part of a war that goes on without recognition of the victims. A crack addict is sentenced to a life of an eroding soul. Dante couldn't have imagined a more horrible part of the living dead in his "inferno".

Crack is a political drug along with all the other addictive agents dumped on the streets of America. The stories of the pusher-man in dark corners of the urban jungle are more urban myth than real. The pusher-man is a small time part of a bigger reality of a war against young, black, brown and marginalized citizens by their own government.

A conspiracy of a government intent on dividing and subduing dissent against the powerful and elite is a war against the people of any nation. Sheepish citizens free of the addiction wars refuse to listen to the facts of the conspiracy. The mention of conspiracy makes their minds close and their eyes roll until…..until one of their children is captured by addiction.

Too often, though, the desperation of parents and families to find an answer and a cure blinds them to the conspiracy that made their loved ones prisoners of war. Only after exhausting all avenues of hope do we come to understand our sons and daughters have been sacrificed to keep the rich and powerful in control.

The American people don't want to believe "their" government would sanction black bag jobs of the CIA being paid for by the drug money the agency garners in supporting local drug lords around the world. From the "Golden Triangle" of the Vietnam War's era, to Nicaraguan contras to Taliban drug lords, CIA involvement is well documented. The majority of Americans don't want to know these alleged patriots have introduced drugs like heroin and cocaine into American cities in an obvious ethnic cleansing.

The young black male was the perfect target for this secretive distribution. The dumping of narcotics into the areas of Los Angeles disenfranchised by layoffs at automobile factories created carnage and wasted potential for generations. The destroyed areas of Detroit were ripe for invasion.

The CIA doesn't care that they played a role in the addiction of my two sons with their drug sales to finance illegal activities around the world. They don't care if they addict your daughter or my granddaughter. They don't care if they cause the incarceration of a huge portion of the black males in this nation. They don't care if they took part in an ethnic cleansing of black and brown neighborhoods. They don't care that my high school friend; my best friend in grade school, died in a prison after being strung out on heroin and imprisoned for crimes committed to feed his habit. Billy Padilla didn't mean a damn thing to them. Kids don't mean a damn thing to them.

Addiction was the logical way to attack the communities likely to have the greatest grievances against a racist, sexist and imperialistic government. Addiction is perceived as a "choice" of an individual. Like an individual would choose the hell of an addict's life. Sadly, few in this nation want to accept addiction and alcoholism is a physical illness quite often having a genetic predisposition. Far too many still believe addiction is a character flaw that can be controlled if only the addict wanted to do so.

If the CIA had spread cholera or the plague, the outrage would likely have been there from the American people. But no money was to be made from those diseases. The victim of those diseases wouldn't be seen as lowlifes or criminals.

No, the CIA saw it could not only fund immoral actions such as the Phoenix Program in Vietnam but also shut the marginalized communities up by spreading the "plague" of addiction in those communities. The CIA went to war against its own people and my sons became their prisoners. Millions of POW's have been taken in their war. And the American people stand on the sidelines just as much in this war as they have for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Funding for treatment continues to decline while addiction continues unabated in the targeted communities. But what the hell, it's only some blacks, white trailer trash or poor and marginalized most often the victims.



ADDENDUM:

Addiction is treatable and the addict must want to find recovery but recovery is a lifelong struggle. Like diabetes or other lifelong illnesses, addiction requires treatment for the rest of the addict's life. 12 Step programs such as AA or NA have been the most successful programs for crack addicts. That could be because there's a plethora of 12 Step programs or that there's such a dearth of viable treatment programs that last long enough to get true lasting recovery. Recovery isn't something that comes and stays forever. Relapses are expected in the recovery process but the addict needs to identify the "triggers" that lead to relapse and develop safety plans to avoid repeating the same behaviors.

Families of addicts are damned if they do and damned if they don't in supporting the addict. Parents have a natural instinct to protect their child from harm. An addict or alcoholic often uses that instinct against the parent in order to "score" or get safe haven after a binge. If the addict won't go into treatment or return to treatment, the family only enables them by offering safe haven.

I've been accused of abandoning my son after I told him he could no longer live with us if he wouldn't go into treatment. After more than twenty relapses and nights we spent wondering if he was dead in some seedy motel, we came to the sad conclusion we had to let him go and hope he'd hit bottom to see how bad it was and decide to go into treatment.

I have a friend who told me from her own experience as an addict that the addict will expect their family to forgive and forget all that has occurred. She said the addict will constantly keep the family wrapped up in their drama. Looking back, I realize she was exactly right.

Another friend told me I had abandoned my son. It stung to hear such criticism. I can only say unless you've lived the twenty years my wife and I have lived with two sons being addicts, you can never know how false a statement it is to say we abandoned them.

I have a friend who is the Pastor of a Presbyterian church. He told me it was more like we abandoned our sons when we continued to allow them the safe haven without strong expectations they be in treatment and stay in treatment. I agreed. The problem with such simple answers is the heart of a father and mother doesn't create practical and common sense answers like these. Our hearts think first of protecting our children. We live in the here and now with that.

Like I said, damned if we do and damned if we don't. The tragedy is the loss of spectacular potential for lives that can experience times of peace. The tragedy is the loss of potential for lives that can work to bring peace and justice to all people.

My wife and I have to either carry on or perish. It's that simple. We would be devastated if we do get the phone call telling us one of our sons is dead from overdosing on drugs. But, as the cynical veteran I am, I see that our loss would be no worse than the loss of an Iraqi mother pulling the lifeless body of her small child out of the rubble of an area bombed by American planes. The loss would be no worse than the parent who stays awake all night worrying about a son or daughter deployed and the day comes they see the uniformed team getting out of a government car to "regrettfully inform" them of the death.

Easy to say while my sons have managed to survive. But I've resigned myself that the call could come any day. But, again as a veteran, I know any day could be the day death hits me or any member of my family. I saw in Vietnam that death is commonplace and without rhyme or reason.

Hopefully, I will live long enough to see both sons in recovery and at peace. The saying that sounds trite but rings so very true is "one day at a time".

What'd we say in 'Nam...."it don't mean nothing"? It does mean something. We must resist the forces that create children needing to self medicate and in the process lose their lives.

I spent many years not speaking about my kids' addiction. It was my denial. I bear some responsibility for the conditions that led them to drugs and alcohol. But I went into treatment and stay in treatment for the PTSD that made the childhood of my kids chaotic at best. Now my kids need to make choices to reclaim their own lives for themselves.
One day at a time....peace.





Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

Denver VVAW member

USMC combat veteran – Vietnam (67-69)

Another Look At Another Look

So, I got this response about the Bill Moyer’s article on Jeremiah Wright and his recent comments that led Obama to throw the Reverend “under the bus” to avoid being tied to Wright. Being me, I couldn’t refrain replying cause that’s just who I am.

"Many years ago...there was talk of how HIV came to be. I believe that
the conspiracy theory of HIV of a government backed program to develop
specific pathogens to race was floated by individuals in the activist
community...this is not new ideas except for the fact that the corporate
media has decided to give it some air time."

My reply:
Just to clarify - the intent of posting this article wasn't to support
or deny any conspiracy but to point out Moyers' recollection of the slow
response of the government in the 1980's when HIV was spreading
throughout the gay community and considered a gay disease. Reagan's
administration had little urgency despite growing evidence the virus was
deadly and spreading at alarming rates. As for the etiology of HIV,
"science" hasn't found conclusive evidence to support any one theory.

The main point of this post was to demonstrate the incongruent reaction
of the mainstream media to Jeremiah Wright's comments in comparison to
those of the white racists associated with guys like McCain, Nixon and
other white "leaders".

The implication something was "floated" by any group wasn't the main
point of the article or my comments. It detracts from the government's
experimentation on unknowing subjects in alleged research of disease. It
also deflects from the message Reverend Wright's comments aren't as
outlandish as the media has portrayed them given the history of the feds
in experimenting on unknowing citizens; many who were non-white. The two
examples given in Moyers' article aren't inclusive and don't include the
use of LSD on unknowing subjects, the involuntary sterilization of black
females and the uses of Agent Orange, DU and other agents known to have
lethal effects.

It would be easier to think those in power wouldn't intentionally harm
innocent citizens to accomplish whatever secretive goals it has but that
just isn't the case. And if a black minister implies there is an evil
underbelly of government that has no regard for the marginalized the
backlash by the mainstream is blatantly racist.

I certainly won't say Reverend Wright is MLK or Malcolm but I do
remember the same reactions to both when they dared to speak the truth
about racism and oppression. The "masters" don't want the ugly truths of
the "plantation AmeriKa" to be revealed. It might wake up the sheep.

Another Look At Reverend Wright's Comments

Someone sent me this article about Wright from Bill Moyers. While not a big fan of Moyers, I think the recollection about governmental failure to intercede with HIV early on and the syphyllis "experiments" with blacks touch upon the denial of the issues Reverend Wright has had the temerity to bring up in the "national" press.
Published on Sunday, May 4, 2008 by PBS.org
Beware The Simplifiers
by Bill Moyers
I once asked a reporter back from Vietnam, "Who's telling the truth over there?" "Everyone, he said. "Everyone sees what's happening through the lens of their own experience." That's how people see Jeremiah Wright. In my conversation with him on this broadcast a week ago and in his dramatic public appearances since, he revealed himself to be far more complex than the sound bites that propelled him onto the public stage. Over 2000 of you have written me about him, and your opinions vary widely. Some sting: "Jeremiah Wright is nothing more than a race-hustling, American hating radical," one viewer wrote. A "nut case," said another. Others were far more were sympathetic to him.
Many of you have asked for some rational explanation for Wright's transition from reasonable conversation to shocking anger at the National Press Club. A psychologist might pull back some of the layers and see this complicated man more clearly, but I'm not a psychologist. Many black preachers I've known - scholarly, smart, and gentle in person - uncorked fire and brimstone in the pulpit. Of course I've known many white preachers like that, too.
But where I grew up in the south, before the civil rights movement, the pulpit was a safe place for black men to express anger for which they would have been punished anywhere else; a safe place for the fierce thunder of dignity denied, justice delayed. I think I would have been angry if my ancestors had been transported thousands of miles in the hellish hole of a slave ship, then sold at auction, humiliated, whipped, and lynched. Or if my great-great grandfather had been but three-fifths of a person in a constitution that proclaimed, "We the people." Or if my own parents had been subjected to the racial vitriol of Jim Crow, Strom Thurmond, Bull Connor, and Jesse Helms. Even so, the anger of black preachers I've known and heard about and reported on was, for them, very personal and cathartic.
That's not how Jeremiah Wright came across in those sound bites or in his defiant performances this week. What white America is hearing in his most inflammatory words is an attack on the America they cherish and that many of their sons have died for in battle forgetting that black Americans have fought and bled beside them, and that Wright himself has a record of honored service in the Navy. Hardly anyone took the "chickens come home to roost" remark to convey the message that intervention in the political battles of other nations is sure to bring retaliation in some form, which is not to justify the particular savagery of 9/11 but to understand that actions have consequences. My friend Bernard Weisberger, the historian, says, yes, people are understandably seething with indignation over Wright's absurd charge that the United States deliberately brought an HIV epidemic into being. But it is a fact, he says, that within living memory the U.S. Public Health Service conducted a study that deliberately deceived black men with syphilis into believing that they were being treated, while actually letting them die for the sake of a scientific test. Does this excuse Wright's anger? His exaggerations or distortions? You'll have to decide or yourself. At least it helps me to understand the why of them.
But in this multimedia age the pulpit isn't only available on Sunday mornings. There's round the clock media - the beast whose hunger is never satisfied, especially for the fast food with emotional content. So the preacher starts with rational discussion and after much prodding throws more and more gasoline on the fire that will eventually consume everything it touches. He had help - people who for their own reasons set out to conflate the man in the pulpit who wasn't running for president with the man in the pew who was.
Behold the double standard: John McCain sought out the endorsement of John Hagee, the war-mongering Catholic-bashing Texas preacher who said the people of New Orleans got what they deserved for their sins. But no one suggests McCain shares Hagee's delusions, or thinks AIDS is God's punishment for homosexuality. Pat Robertson called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and asked God to remove Supreme Court justices, yet he remains a force in the Republican religious right. After 9/11 Jerry Falwell said the attack was God's judgment on America for having been driven out of our schools and the public square, but when McCain goes after the endorsement of the preacher he once condemned as an agent of intolerance, the press gives him a pass.
Jon Stewart recently played a tape from the Nixon White House in which Billy Graham talks in the oval office about how he has friends who are Jewish, but he knows in his heart that they are undermining America. This is crazy; this is wrong - white preachers are given leeway in politics that others aren't.
Which means it is all about race, isn't it? Wright's offensive opinions and inflammatory appearances are judged differently. He doesn't fire a shot in anger, put a noose around anyone's neck, call for insurrection, or plant a bomb in a church with children in Sunday school. What he does is to speak his mind in a language and style that unsettle some people, and says some things so outlandish and ill-advised that he finally leaves Obama no choice but to end their friendship. We are often exposed us to the corroding acid of the politics of personal destruction, but I've never seen anything like this. I've never seen this wrenching break between pastor and parishioner before our very eyes. Both men no doubt will carry the grief to their graves. All the rest of us should hang our heads in shame for letting it come to this in America, where the gluttony of the non-stop media grinder consumes us all and prevents an honest conversation on race. It is the price we are paying for failing to heed the great historian Jacob Burckhardt, who said "beware the terrible simplifiers".
Bill Moyers is a journalist and host of PBS' Bill Moyers Journal.
© 2008 PBS
Article printed from www.CommonDreams.org

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/05/04/8707/
And here is the rest of it.

Combat PTSD - Disorder or Sane Response?

It's well known I'm an advocate for the treatment of PTSD and TBI. I have been since it became obvious the Bush administration would start the illegal and immoral wars.

I've continued with preaching, ranting and obnoxious nagging about this issue both publicly and behind the scenes. I've sent letters to local mental health centers asking they start programs for veterans, family and community members impacted by PTSD and TBI. Even sent one to the Governor.

After a while it reaches an absurd point of studying the studies and redundant and obvious conclusions. There's a problem that has reached a crisis. It really doesn't take the expertise of the mental health professionals of this nation to reach that conclusion. Just ask a parent, spouse or kid of one of the returned vets. Just ask a vet.

It does seem the time and money spent studying this problem might now be better spent on treating the veterans and those who are affected. Prevention has always been an afterthought in the American healthcare system. A visit to the emergency room of most hospitals will expose the wasted potential of preventative care.
And still, I can't help but wonder if Americans aren't the lucky and pampered ones when it comes to PTSD and all the other emotional and physical wounds of war. I can't help but wonder if any studies have been done on the larger group of victims in war; the 90% who become casualties of war.....the innocent civilians. The 40% of that larger group who are children. Where are the studies of their PTSD?

Where are the studies of the Palestinian youth who throw rocks and get back automatic rifle fire, tank rounds and artillery? I wonder if the ongoing trauma of all these humans has anything to do with their hatred of the American-Israeli masters of war. I wonder if the symptoms of rage, depression and hyper-vigilance create the makings of suicide bombers or insurgents.

As usual the narcissistic Americans and their allies take precedence in their grief and their losses. We continue to only see a small portion of the huge trauma that is going on in our world. In one violent storm the Burmese have lost more souls than Americans will likely lose in ten years of war. Already the Iraqi people have lost 650,000-1.5 million in this senseless war. Americans need to become true citizens of this world and recognize we've been blessed in comparison to others in their losses.

I wonder sometimes if PTSD isn't just an American and European thing because the rest of the world is too damn occupied with daily traumas. I think of my time in New Orleans and the surrounding areas hit by Hurricane Katrina and remember the enduring spirit of the survivors. Many that I interacted with were black and had known hard times much of their lives. They were much better equipped to endure and to adapt to the bad things that happened than the middle class and wealthy of the area. PTSD was often a foreign concept because there was never any treatment offered in the past and none was expected after the shameful events of Katrina.

I wonder what we did before there was PTSD. Really, I know because I spent 12 years after being a combat Marine in Vietnam without the diagnosis being in existence. I knew something was wrong and I correctly connected it to my time in combat. When the diagnosis came about I suddenly had a label for it.

Then came treatment and drugs and psychobabble. I became the diagnosis. Instead of Terry, the pipefitter, the father, the RN or the grandfather I was a vet with PTSD. And I became immersed in the cause of preventative care for others who followed.

I've come to see I'm more than just PTSD and I've been lucky to have had treatment. I've also come to see most of the world doesn't have the luxury to have treatment or even recognition for the traumas they endure in their lives. I've come to see so much of that trauma has been a result of my government's failure to embrace peace and justice. I think of the resources we've used to kill and maim in this nation and I'm embarrassed and ashamed. How can I love my country if we continue on such a shameful path?

Yes, we do need to intervene when the troops come home to prevent the drastic effects of PTSD and TBI but we also need to remember it isn't just about us. We are not alone in this world in our grief and our trauma. I grieve the loss of my brothers in Vietnam and my brothers and sisters in Iraq and Afghanistan but I have to grieve my brothers and sisters lost by the bombs of my nation. I have to remember the lives lost because food and resources used in wars denied help the impoverished needed to survive.

I've come to realize PTSD isn't a disease. It's a sane response to an insane condition of war. Those who have the symptoms of PTSD are responding normally to such insanity. I worry more about those who see the carnage and the violence and are unaffected than those with PTSD symptoms. And apparently there are too many unaffected because we continue to engage in war after war without end.

We can take all the Effexor, Paxil and Ambien in the world but it will never cure PTSD. We can drink ourselves into blackouts or smoke crack and pot but it won't erase the memories until we've damaged our brains beyond repair. I believe the only true cure for the American troops' PTSD is peace with justice.

Our memories of the insanity are important to remind people war won 't bring us peace or justice. Enough of the parades, the heroes and the weapon displays! Enough of the saber rattling immaturity! Enough of the baby killing bombs! How stupid is it to send a human to such insanity and then decide they have a mental disorder on their return?

The true mentally ill are the self-centered, egocentric bastards that have sold their souls to the devils of corporate greed and power. They reside in Washington D.C. living in the White House and doing business in the chambers of Congress. They are responsible for the lives ruined. We are responsible for allowing it to happen.

Why I Can't Spell Hillary's Name Correctly

There's been a few comments about my misspelling of Hillary Clinton's first name. Sorry about that but some Freudian slip has caused me to add an extra letter i to her name.

Somehow when I first noticed my spelling error I wanted to hold onto it because it seems so very appropriately misspelled. I mean Hillary doesn't do for me what Hilliary does. So I think I'll just keep on with the incorrect version of Ms. Clinton's first name with tongue placed firmly in cheek.
For Hillary supporters I can only suggest looking up the record of the Senator to determine if Hilliary isn't a better suited spelling. Oh, I know I'll be accused of misogyny because I've continued to rant about Clinton's chameleon like qualities. And no doubt I'm a racist because I've continued to rant about Obama's disingenuous attempt to be both black and white.

The truth is both candidates of the Democratic Oligarchy have failed to give this nation hope for anything but more of the same. It don't matter if one is female and the other black because both belong to the out of touch political systems that allow the rich to become ultra rich like the new laundry soaps become 2x more powerful. It only takes half as much bullshit from either of these two and/or John "Wane" McCain to max out my bs meter and trigger my gag reflex.

I drive around my neighborhood which is the number one area code for home foreclosures (80219) in the state and rated very high in the nation and I see the effects of what Hilliary and Obama have been part of achieving. My local city councilman, Paul Rodriguez (former SEIU organizer) put it best in a recent interview about my community's number one status. He told the reporter when he looks at the empty houses with the foreclosure signs in front he sees a home where a family once lived.

Hell, I'm one paycheck away from being at the crisis point of missing one payment or the other caused by my foolish phase of materialism. One illness, one accident or one emergency can financially wreck my wife and me. The odds are pretty good one of these things will happen. If I keep things in perspective I still live a better life than 80% of the people in the world. Senators Obama and Clinton, on the other hand, have it better than 99% of the world and I have to ask what they've given to make it better...or as Hilliary might say, a better village.

Disaffected and disillusioned? Damn right! The millions of dollars spent on the ruse of democratic elections in this nation is as immoral and sinful as it gets. Everybody bitches about the sham of sound bites and attack ads during elections but it never changes.

I noticed Ken Gordon recently wrote of the importance of voting or not voting. Does anyone feel empowered when they go to their local precinct to cast a vote or when sendin in the mail ballot? Does anybody think it will be a "new day" in America because of the results of the 2008 election?

I think it will be a new day in America as a result of the 2008 election. When John "Wane" McCain takes over the Presidency this nation will slip even futher down the moral slippery slope. The United States of America will slip even closer to becoming a third world nation. But, then, I've always been a cynic about this nation's leadership since the days of Vietnam. If one of the other two win, the prognosis seems the same to me.

We've been blessed by wealth of resources and personal wealth in this nation. We thought it would never end. When the rest of the world needed our guidance we've betrayed them with wars and the propping up of tyrants. For some ungodly reason this nation is responsible for arming much of the world for war but has failed in helping the world live in peace with justice.

Hilliary and Obama have continued to support the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan as evidenced by their votes or their failures to stand up for what's moral and just. John "Wane" McCain has continued to vote for funding these wars and has no plan to withdraw the troops. He seeks the illusive victory of war. The problem with that mindset is there is no fucking victory in war! There are winners, however. The rich and powerful.

And that, my friends (and hopefully not too many enemies), is why I spell Hillary's name incorrectly. And intend to continue doing so.

Wm. Terry Leichner, RN

VVAW member -Denver

Disaffected combat veteran
.

Bullshit Observations

Sometimes it just seems there’s so much bullshit in the news that trying to comment on any of it seems futile. But why should I be sane when I can join the millions of bloggers who have an opinion about everything. And we all know what opinions are like. No? Like assholes we all have them.
First off, I wonder when the mainstream media will actually start talking about the racial coding the Clintons are getting away with toward Barack Obama. Don’t get me wrong about defending Obama. I’m not enamored with him since he seems to want to overlook being a black man in hopes all us white racists will also do the same. Barack, you’re black, brother! Live with it and celebrate it! And call out the overtly racist comments of Billiary.
Code, what code? Does anybody get it other than the independent press and every black and brown brother and sister who hears it? The recent flap over Obama saying Americans were bitter and disaffected and therefore seek solace in their religion and guns is an example of what starts the coding. Hilliary and Bill immediately start calling Barack an elitist out of touch with the people. In other words, he’s uppity…right Hilliary?
What’s so outrageously stupid about their statements and those of John “Wayne” McCain is that all of you people are out of touch!! C’mon Bill is a Rhodes Scholar, Hill is a Yale grad after a tour of Wellesley and John “Wane” is a Naval Academy grad. How long has it been since any of these people drove themselves around town or gone grocery shopping on a weekly basis? How long has it been since any of them have mowed a yard or fixed a leaky faucet? How long since any have lived in a roach infested place with bad plumbing and inefficient heating system? How many of them will live on a fixed income in their later years. No, a cushy pension from Congress and as an ex-President doesn’t count.
Obama is the most likely to have experienced any of the real life situations the average American faces on a daily basis in the past twenty five years. He’s more likely to have contact with folks who have experienced them in the last ten years.
But Barack has shown his true “roots” in his recent handling of the remarks by his former mentor and pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Wright was figuratively thrown under the bus by Obama when white AmeriKKKa objected to his remarks about the terrorism of our wars and the continued racism here in the homeland.
Obama disavowed himself from the Reverend Wright after the remarks became public in convenient YouTube formats which take them out of context. Of course Clinton wasn’t to blame. The code here is she doesn’t mind that the remarks became public and created the racial firestorm that led Obama to giving a speech on the racial divide in this country. The remarks just can’t be traced back to her or Bill in their origin.
The problem with throwing someone under the proverbial bus is sometimes that bus fails to stop long enough to make sure the victim is dead. Reverend Wright gloriously tipped the bus over and came back to haunt the Judas, Obama.
So, today (April 29, 2008) Obama is back out on the road trying to get the bus to back up and run over the reverend one more time with his disavowals of the content of the remarks made by Wright. Testicle implants seem to be needed by the Senator from Illinois at this time.
All these folks are elitists and we’d be fools to think otherwise. I’m with the rock singer, Prince, who says in his song, Writing a Letter….”I’m tired of y’all”.
Another example of the bullshit is the recent joke of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.N., Dan Gillerman, calling Jimmy Carter a “bigot” because he met with a leader of Hamas in an attempt to broker compromise and some semblance of peace between Palestinians and Israelis. Can this fool be real?
He represents a country that has systematically attempted to rid the area around Israel of the indigenous peoples of many centuries. The land grab of Palestine from Palestinians was well conceived by Ben-Gurion and others well ahead of the overthrow of the British in 1948. Ben-Gurion is quoted extensively about ridding the area of the Arabs. Moshe Dayan is quoted as carrying out a terroristic program of collective punishment any time an Israeli was killed by an Arab.
The purge of Palestinians has continued to this day with walls being erected to create a ghetto much like the ones so vividly described by survivors of the holocaust in Warsaw and other Nazi held areas of Europe during World War II. There’s no hiding the contempt and disregard for Palestinians by the Israeli government’s Zionists. They’ve continued a policy of dehumanization and violence against all dark skinned Semites since before 1948. And to equate Zionism with Judaism is the doublespeak of liars and imperialistic power mongers. The Zionists could care less about Judaism except when it helps further their movement.
There are several references to David Ben-Gurion stating the holocaust was a defining moment to create the Jewish state of Israel. He felt it was probably good it happened so Zionism could be brought to fruition in the Middle East.
So, Dan Gillerman has the audacity to tell the world what a bigot an ex-President is when that person tries non-violent negotiation with a radical branch of Palestinian. The notion Hamas and the radicals can’t or won’t be part of any settlement is absurd.
The refusal of the Zionists to include them is a definite sign of the need for the Zionist movement to have the scapegoat to continue conflict in the area. Why continue conflict? It keeps Zionism in power with a huge military budget and the Israeli population in fear of the dark skinned Semites who lived for centuries on the land Israelis now control. It keeps the U.S. military funding coming in and continues the duped American public’s collective guilt about the Holocaust. It keeps the dupes thinking Zionism is Judaism and to question the actions of the government of Israel is anti-Semitism.
If the American people weren’t so damn ignorant and intellectually lazy they might realize Israelis are not the only groups of Semites existing on this planet. The knowledge of American people about the history of the Palestinian and Israeli conflict seems to be only what is put out by the Israeli political action committee, AIPAC. That message is “megaphoned” by every mainstream media group existing in the U.S. and abroad.
The occupation of the lands of Palestinians is akin to the occupation of the lands of the indigenous peoples of the Americas by the Europeans in the 1400’s. Violence and terror were used to displace those people from the lands occupied by a hundred generations of their people. Despite the revisionist attempts of Gellerman and Zionists across the world, the displacement and eventual ghettoizing of the Palestinian people in refugee camps and occupied territories is as racist as the Native Americans being placed on reservations. It is as racist as the enslavement of Africans by white Europeans in North America.
The characterization of bigotry by Gellerman toward Carter is nothing but the continued obfuscation of Zionists to throw the world off the trail of their continued bigotry aimed at Semites of color such as Palestinians. The constant use of the Holocaust to justify the oppression of the Israeli government has worn thin and cannot excuse Israeli government use of the same tactics used by Hitler against Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and other “deviants” defined by the Third Reich.
Meanwhile back in the U.S. New York City cops have been absolved of shooting a bride groom in Harlem who exited a strip club with a friend following a bachelor party. The use of fifty plus rounds by the cops to contain the groom was seen as a justifiable use of force. The fact the groom was black isn’t a big surprise in the annals of American police shootings. The fact the groom was unarmed isn’t a surprise. The “whitewash” by the court exonerating the undercover cops isn’t a surprise either.
I can’t help but wonder why Bill and Hilliary Clinton, beloved citizens of the black community of Harlem, haven’t spoken out about this shooting. It would seem the Rev. Butts of the Abyssinian church of Harlem would also be front and center. He’s the recipient of Queen Pork Hilliary’s 1.5 million dollars in private grants. He recently repaid that bacon with his endorsement of the white female candidate over the black male candidate.
I also wonder where Obama is when it comes to the violence of police toward people of color. Surely living in the Chicago area he’s heard many stories from constituents about police brutality. Is this dirty little secret of serving and protecting by means of racial profiling and constant rousts of the non-white communities something we should continue to allow in this nation? Is the criminalization of young blacks and Latinos for petty offenses or inequitable sentencing something that should be allowed to continue? Where are the questions of candidates about such things in the “race” for the presidency?
But the whole incident is huge code by the AmeriKKKan society concerning the police brutality toward the black and non-white communities in this nation. Had the victims in Harlem been two whites walking out of a strip club in Manhattan shot by black cops, there is no doubt in my mind those cops would have done time and the public outcry would have been continuously loud. Code is words but it is also deeds, reactions and lack of reactions. The code of police shootings by white cops of black and non-white victims is loud and clear when there is such lack of response by the white community.
Of course the racist will point to affirmative action and black anger as the same thing as what they are accused of in their racism. There’s no doubt a white man is looked upon with suspicion when he enters a black community or encounters a group of blacks. Why the hell shouldn’t he be suspected is the question that needs to be asked.
Affirmative action is the favorite racist target today, also. I was recently asked to sign a petition to do away with racism in government when I exited my local grocery store. My first impulse was “sounds good to me”. But, I asked what the petition really meant to accomplish. It turned out the petition was an attempt to do away with “quotas” (code for affirmative action). My angry response to the petition stooge took him by surprise. It seemed almost every white person that stopped to listen to them signed the petition.
Middle class and working class whites need to get it together. They somehow think they’re victims of quotas and illegals in the loss of jobs and livable income. They need to get the shit out of their brains so they can see they’re the victims of greedy multi-national corporations taking jobs to third world countries for the cheap labor costs. They need to wise up to the fact they are victims of the military industrial complex that continues incessant wars costing billions of dollars. I fail to understand why these sheep don’t get the connections between the costs of war and the price of tuition, groceries, gas and all other so-called “essentials” of their lives.
Fear makes sheep group together and sacrifice one another to the wolf. The wolves of war have asked the sheep to give more, more, more. They give their sons and daughters in exchange for a fake security. They give their rights to the wolves hoping they can live a fake life of freedom. They give their souls for the materialistic garbage of a shallow and empty life. None of this will ever give the sheep security or safety or happiness. They live a fairy tale world of Disney, Survival, NASCAR, NFL, NBA, NHL and expend more energy and passion there than for starving children in Darfur or Iraq. They live a lie while the majority of the world lives the true game of survival.
I can’t say for sure but maybe this fairy tale world is what Reverend Wright is talking about when he says “God damn America”. For surely God will damn this immoral life we’ve sold as the benchmark of living.
It’s really all bullshit. A person can go crazy thinking about such things. Wonder what’s on HBO.

William Terry Leichner, RN
Combat veteran – Vietnam (67-69)
VVAW member - Denver

Can I Get A Waiver?

It is a proud day in AmeriKa. The military has finally adopted a “total” diversity program in which convicted felons may now enlist. Under the Orwellian term “moral waiver”, the program is meant to take up the slack of recruiting shortages.
Apparently the youth of AmeriKa has seen enough of their brothers and sisters going on repetitive deployments to combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq to realize the damage that’s been done to the troops.
In the beginning there was the “back door draft” and the “stop loss” troops that filled the ranks to fight the dastardly and godless terrorists (aka Muslims, hajji, Arabs, immigrant, rag head, sand ni**er etc.)
The back door draft is the ruthless and unethical recruitment of small towns and urban corridors lacking employment and opportunities for the young people living in those areas. Recruiters don’t so much lie about enlistment as they conveniently forget to tell all the facts about enlisting.
The “stop loss” troops continue to be held prisoner by “executive” order of the President which allows for an undetermined time of keeping troops due to discharge in the military at a time of “emergency”. Approximately 82,000 troops have been “stop lossed” since 2003.
It still remains a mystery what emergency exists. There is little risk to AmeriKa from the nations of Iraq and Afghanistan. Both have ruined infrastructures and lack capability of being a danger. Still the masters of war persist in trying to tie the events of September 11, 2001 to Iraq and Afghanistan even though the great majority of the bombing conspirators were from Saudi Arabia, ally of the AmeriKan power structure.
The newest policy of the military allows “moral waivers” for convicted felons so they might enlist. Close to 900 have enlisted so far. Among that group were nine or ten convicted sexual offenders. I’m sure the female troops find that reassuring along with the continuous sexual harassment and assaults that already occur with greater frequency than most would guess.
The other issue of this new moral waiver policy is exactly who comes into the service after felony convictions. If we’re to look at the demographics of AmeriKan gulags the large number of non-white inmates would suggest a likely similar percentage will turn to enlistment because of their limited choices on leaving prison. So the newest maneuver of the military to fill the ranks has become the open cell-door diversity draft. Blacks and browns to the front.
For some AmeriKans, I’m sure the use of felons to fight their wars is acceptable since the bias against any convicted felon has become one of blood thirsty retribution and vengeance. So, to have them go to a war zone to be maimed or killed seems like a perfect way to solve the problem of too many felons on the streets without jobs and desperate enough to reoffend.
It still remains uncertain how the new felon soldier fits in with the unit. Since trust is a key concept of the combat units in war it will be interesting to see how much trust there will be for the new “few and the proudest” and “Army strong” troops. Perhaps the military is planning on some form of the “dirty dozen”.
Sadly, the concept of rehabilitation and redemption has never been real big in the AmeriKan prisons. Ex-cons are expected to have gainful employment as part of parole yet few employers will hire them. Just recently a convict here in Colorado was released after many years in the “joint”. During his imprisonment he became a success story for rehabilitation. He earned a Master Electrician’s license from the State of Colorado. His skills were used by the department of corrections to repair electrical problems all over the state. He gained the trust of prison administration and the guards he worked with. Once released, however, the state decided to revoke his license as a matter of policy. They cited the possibility of danger to anybody whose house he might enter to perform the duties of electrician. Prison authorities and the employer the con worked with before the revocation are outraged by such stupidity. I’m sure the Army or Marines would be interested and care less about the license.
There could also be a possible recycling of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans from prisons back to the military. Since there’s an 800,000 waiting list at the VAMC and the mental health care of the returning veterans has been abysmal a large number of veterans end up imprisoned. The symptoms of rage and acting out behaviors caused by PTSD often leads the vets to breaking laws and going to prison at a greater rate than the percentage of vets in the general population. About 25% of the inmates of AmeriKan gulags are veterans.
So, once these vets are released and should they remain young enough they do have job skills needed by the military. And maybe their PTSD symptoms have been treated by the penal system mental health team. Not likely but maybe.
Another good place for recruiters could be the youth corrections programs. Maybe they could even set up tables at the schools of the programs as part of the No Child Left Behind law enacted by the Bush and Cheney team. Why wait for the young offenders to enter the adult penal system when they could be trained to kill in one of the wars?
If the military is looking for a really quick fix for their manpower problems they might also set up recruiting centers near public hospitals. Since there are about 30-40% of the AmeriKan population lacking health insurance the military could enlist the uninsured still healthy enough to fire weapons. It would be a win-win situation. Chemotherapy for humvee patrols. Insulin for sniper school. And since the terminally ill have nothing to lose anyway, they’d make great combat soldiers. Especially if they happen to be in the anger cycle of Kubler-Ross’ theory of dying. And the military could avoid paying life insurance for this group by using the “pre-existing condition” clause of their discharge policies. And should this group get killed in action they would leave behind the legacy of being one of the “heroic” soldiers or Marines who gave their lives to protect our freedom. Their family could receive a folded AmeriKan flag as a memento. The other good part of this plan would be the family being able to deny the illnesses of their loved ones and feel the patriotism other families feel when they sacrifice a son or daughter to the wars.
No doubt some will find these suggestions inappropriate but I’d argue if we are to continue killing one another in these endless wars, why not use the people who are a burden on society or their families? Like Dick Lamm once said, those who have serious and terminal illness should have some duty to die for the sake of the rest of us. Why waste those deaths when they could be used to protect our freedom?
As a grandparent I also think the military should enact a substitution waiver wherein grandparents can take the place of their grandkids on the battlefield. Since it is mostly grandparents who begin the wars anyway, why not let them fight them?
All in all, I believe the troop shortages can be alleviated with some creative thinking such as the “moral waiver”. But if we amp it up just a little there can be even more done so all of us get a chance to take part in the wars we’ve all come to love so much we can’t seem to ever stop them. And a bonus will be a thinning of the weaker, an economic stimulus for the arms industry and a return to a whiter and brighter AmeriKa.
And speaking of whiter, Doug Bruce here in Colorado gave me another idea on a source of troops to fight our wars. We can have a guest worker program of some “illiterate peasants” come up from Mexico and other Latin nations to help out our seasonal businesses but instead let them go to the wars to fight and let the troops there now do the field work the peasants would have done. That will also be an excellent way of getting rid of the non-English speakers who have invaded this nation. They won’t have to learn to speak English. They’ll be told they need to learn Farsi, Arabic or some other language of the Middle East. And maybe Doug Bruce will go with them as an interpreter in case they do need some English?
I’m sure there are some who feel I’m being callous and disrespectful but haven’t we already accomplished that with our lust for wars while forgetting the sick and frail of the world. In reality the whole idea of the military having a moral waiver at this time is disrespectful to humanity. AmeriKa has given itself a moral waiver for some time in most of its foreign policy and policies toward other humans. From water boarding and torture at Gitmo to the School of Americas to the endless wars for no other reason than to bully and conquer, morality has disappeared. Bush and Cheney have certainly made it worse than recent memories of most; except those my age who remember Johnson and Humphrey and Nixon and Kissinger.
God bless AmeriKa – more than any other place, please, God. And if you could, Lord…can we get a waiver to get into heaven?

William Terry Leichner, RN
USMC combat vet
Vietnam ’67-69

Ivy Leaguers and John "Wayne" McCain, Hero

On an episode of M*A*S*H, the television comedy about a mobile hospital near the front lines of the Korean war, a pilot was brought into the hospital. The pilot had forgotten his real name and was confused after an apparent head wound. He was telling the medical staff he was Jesus Christ.
Despite attempts to reorient the pilot he continued to insist he was Christ. One of the doctors disliked by others accused the pilot of trying to get out of his military duties by faking he was Christ. He reported the pilot to an insane military intelligence officer who was a gung ho stickler for rules.
The intelligence officer demanded the doctors release the pilot to return to his “duties” as an elite weapon of the USA. The other doctors resisted and called for a psychiatric evaluation.
A sympathetic military psychiatrist saw the pilot and determined the pilot sincerely believed he was Christ. Despite protests by the intelligence officer, the psychiatrist stated the pilot had lost himself after participation in numerous bombing raids. He believed the pilot could no longer accept the death and destruction he participated in leading him to take on the personality of Christ. The psychiatrist is asked if the pilot would ever fly in combat again. He says the pilot may reclaim his identity but would likely never be a pilot again.
During the show the pilot was told he was actually a pilot with duties of bombing the enemy. He looked at the psychiatrist with saddened face and tells him “Christ could never do such a thing”.
I keep thinking of that episode of M*A*S*H and find it ironic the fake Christ objects to the war. Since 9-11 and the beginning of the war in Iraq in 2003, there are many followers of Christ that seem to have no problem with pilots dropping bombs on areas with civilian populations. Some seem to think it is the duty of American men and women in the military to take on the “new Crusade” against god-less Muslims. In Vietnam, many clergy felt the war was justifiable because of godless communists.
The likely successor to George W. Bush is John McCain, alleged “hero” of the Vietnam War. With Obama and Clinton skewering each other in their lust for power ,the Democrats seem to have once again found a way to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory. In their attacks on one another they have given Republicans all the ammo they need to defeat either one of them.
Of course the differences between the three, besides the obvious anatomical, racial and age, are really minimal. All three belong to the elitist power structure despite all their attempts to portray themselves as candidates of the blue collar worker, the non-white community and the young and old. Recent attempts to attack Obama for telling a relative truthful fact about Americans being “bitter” and falling back on their religion and guns for relief are the theater of the absurd when Clinton and McCain call a black man elitist because he is a Harvard grad.
Clinton wants to have us to believe she hasn’t been part of the American “royalty” despite being a grad of Wellesley and Yale, a former first lady and current New York Senator. Clinton has run a campaign full of distortions, outright lies and a sense of entitlement to be the next President based on the experience she claims.
John McCain wants to play the humble ex-POW of Vietnam, whose son has been deployed to Iraq as a Marine. He plays down the role of “hero” but not enough to keep it from being a factor in his candidacy. He also plays the grandfather figure that Ronald Reagan made famous in his role of President of the U.S. And like Reagan, McCain may well have the onset of senility but keeps it well disguised with the help of campaign staff. And in the continued revisionist history of John McCain’s life, the American people are supposed to forget he was one of the “Keating Five” in Congress that were in bed with the robber barons of the 1980’s stock scandals. The five were joined by Neil Bush in ripping off the savings of the “common people” McCain, Obama and Clinton now try desperately to woo with lies about their own common people roots.
McCain, son of a higher ranking Admiral in the Navy, was appointed to the Naval Academy. To have us believe his father’s influence had nothing to do with the appointment is a bit much to expect. Just as the elite get their kids into Ivy League schools, military brass get their kids into the academy of the various services.
Is John McCain a war hero? No doubt in the eyes of Americans a man who enjoyed shooting rockets, dropping bombs and shooting off guns in war is the real deal. And after 22 bombing raids over North Vietnam in which he released bombs onto civilian areas as well as reported military targets, the hero was shot down and spent 5 ½ years as a POW.
Because his father was an Admiral, McCain spent a number of years being treated better than most POW’s. After some years of this preferential treatment, McCain did a heroic thing. He refused an early release so others held longer than him would be released. After that time McCain was no longer treated differently and endured violent interrogations.
McCain has been most vocal in his opposition to water-boarding and other “torture” techniques endorsed by the Bush people since 9-11. He uses the Geneva accords as his reason to oppose such actions. Like cafeteria Catholics or Baptists with only an Old Testament view, McCain fails in his Geneva accords test. He forgets the use of bombing raids on civilian populations is considered a violation of these accords. John McCain took part in such actions 23 times before being shot down.
As a young pilot for the Navy McCain would go on missions, drop his payload of bombs on areas without knowing the number of innocent civilians killed and return to his carrier. He could be drinking beers in the Officers’ Club after dinner. After a couple of weeks of flying he’d spend every third week carousing by his own report.
While John McCain may be seen as a hero to Americans, there are many in Vietnam who would say he is a criminal responsible for the deaths of their family members who were innocent civilians. Dropping bombs on North Vietnam wasn’t anything other than terrorism against the North Vietnamese in an attempt to get them to capitulate to American force. There weren’t tactical targets that presented as imminent or immediate danger to American troops in these bombing runs.
The bombing of North Vietnam was the same tactic Americans first started in World War II during the incineration of Dresden. In that campaign, engineers were assigned to develop bombing patterns that would create the terrorizing and deadly firestorms that killed hundreds of thousands of the civilians in Dresden. Firestorms were a familiar scene to residents of Hanoi and other North Vietnamese cities.
As a common grunt on the ground I loved hearing the bombs of American bombers thudding in the distance because I knew it would reduce the possibility of me and my fellow grunts getting killed.
As I look back, I can’t help but wonder how pilots knowingly dropped payloads on areas without thinking who would be killed by their actions. Unlike grunts that had to see the result of their destructive actions, pilots flew high above their victims and returned “home” after releasing their bombs. It was just a job. They never got to see the “crispy critters” grunts got to see after a napalm run. They never got to see kids after large pieces of shrapnel decapitated them.
Looking back, I remember grunts being called baby-killers as a result of My Lai and other actions with innocents being killed either intentionally or by accident. As I hear about similar events happening in Iraq and Afghanistan I now understand it’s always innocent that suffer most in wars. On John McCain’s missions, just one of the many bombs dropped could be capable of killing more than were ever killed in My Lai. Only one of the bombs dropped on Baghdad or Fallujah could kill more than ever were killed by Marines on the ground in Fallujah in one week.
The grunts are called baby killers. John McCain is a hero. Even if McCain had not been taken prisoner, he’d never have been held as responsible for the deaths of civilians as Privates, Corporals and Sergeants in an infantry unit killing them out of rage or fear or by accident. And McCain was responsible for more death of innocents than any of the grunts. This is the nature of heroism in America.
Walking the jungles or riding the streets in dangerous combat zones is tedious, exhausting and boring right before it becomes deadly. There are seldom times when the grunts can leave the war zone and carouse for a week before having to go back out. They certainly don’t have the thousands of feet between them and the deadly ground of the war zone the pilots have. And yet those who have to go face to face, gun to gun and sometimes bayonet to bayonet against their declared enemy also become villains much easier than the true dealers of death from the skies.
John Wayne and John McCain are heroes people associate with wars. One was a fictional war hero of the screen and the other fictitiously declared a hero after he failed his 23rd mission to drop bombs on a nation’s people whether they were combatants or not.
Here are a few excerpts of an interview with McCain from John McCain: Biography and Much More from Answers.Com
“As a young navy pilot, McCain was in his element. "I enjoyed shooting rockets and dropping bombs and shooting off guns," he recalled to Esquire's Charles P. Pierce. "Nobody in their right mind wouldn't enjoy that. . . . You're a young, single guy, and you go out and you fly for a couple of weeks, then you come in for a week and carouse . . . Nobody deserves to get paid for that." He gave up the single part of the equation in 1965, when he married Carol Shepp and adopted her two children (the couple later had a child of their own, too), but the lure of adventure was more difficult to abandon. So McCain volunteered for service in Vietnam.
Vietnam
In June of 1967, McCain (by then a lieutenant commander) set out for Vietnam from Norfolk, Virginia aboard the USS Forrestal. The carrier was in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, its crew preparing for the second launch of the fifth day of striking enemy targets in North Vietnam, when one of its own bombs detonated on deck. McCain narrowly escaped the resulting conflagration that killed 132 crewmen, with two others missing and presumed dead, and injured 62 more. It was one of the worst military accidents of the war.
A little less than three months later, on October 26, McCain was making his 23rd bombing mission over North Vietnam when his plane was hit by antiaircraft missile. Forced to eject, breaking both arms and a leg in the process, he landed in a lake near Hanoi and was captured. He spent the next five and a half years as a prisoner of war (POW) at the sarcastically nicknamed "Hanoi Hilton."”
http://www.answers.com/topic/john-mccain
William T. Leichner, RN
USMC combat veteran
Vietnam 1967-69