tagged w/ U.S.military
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"It is an occupation. The palace is the country, it represents our power, our face, our pride," denounced some witnesses as they watch the first of 13,000 U.S. troops arrive and take over their Presidential Palace.
http://www.cadenagramonte.cubaweb.cu/english/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1440:haiti-under-us-occupation-threat-&catid=3:world&Itemid=14
Meanwhile, President Evo Morales said Wednesday that Bolivia would seek U.N. condemnation of what he called the U.S. military occupation of earthquake-stricken Haiti.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR2010012003897.html
"The United States cannot use a natural disaster to militarily occupy Haiti," he told reporters at the presidential palace.
"Haiti doesn't need more blood," Morales added, implying that the militarized U.S. humanitarian mission could lead to bloodshed.
His criticism echoed that of fellow leftist, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who said Sunday that "it appears the gringos are militarily occupying Haiti."
Washington has dispatched some 11,500 troops to the poor Caribbean nation since the Jan. 12 quake and says the number could reach 16,000 by the weekend.
Looks like the number of troops keeps rising and rising."It is an occupation. The palace is the country, it represents our power, our... more
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Military bases and the civilian health care system are bracing themselves for a surge in demand for mental health care resources.
Crunch expected as President-elect Barack Obama is committed to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq within 16 months (Reuters).
According to a report from a Congressional hearing on mental health problems confronting soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, about 20% of the 1.5 million soldiers deployed to those war fronts will return from battle suffering from mental health problems.
The reports projects that about 20% or 300,000 (the size of a large city) will return suffering with clinical anxiety, depression, sleeplessness or post-traumatic stress disorder. A more recent survey found that in fact half of the National Guard troops returning from battle report mental health problems.
These illnesses not only affect the returning soldiers, but they have a cascading effect on the families including the approximately 700,000 children in the United States with at least one parent returning from battle. The expected hundreds of thousands of cases will overflow from the VA and the Department of Defense into the civilian health care system. Bettina Rasmussen, CEO of BachFlower.com says that Bach Flower has a remedy for that.
Ms. Rasmussen (BFRP) is a Bach Centre licensed practitioner and an author on natural remedies. She recently sent a letter to the Department of Defense asking them to explore the cost-effective benefits of all-natural remedies for reducing the symptoms associated with PTSD as part of the recovery regime.
The first wave of 15,000 returning soldiers landed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky; and military health officials at the Department of Defense are bracing for the surge in mental health cases wondering if there are sufficient resources to handle it. The next large wave is expected to arrive in February. Col. Richard Thomas, the Fort Campbell director of health services, has roughly doubled his staff of psychologists and behavioral specialists and is searching for more.
A report by the Army's Mental Health Advisory Team released in 2007 found that 28 percent of soldiers who had been in high-intensity combat were experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, or acute stress.
It also found that the percentage of soldiers with severe stress, emotional, alcohol or family problems had risen more than 85 percent since the invasion of Iraq five years ago.
According to Fort Campbell military health officials, more than 3,000 of the initial 15,000 troops returning home will experience headaches, sleep disorders, irritability, memory loss, bouts of violence, sense of hopelessness, relationship strains or other symptoms linked to stress disorder.
Some veterans suffering from stress are finding their own solution, suicide
Over 120 vets are committing suicide every week, a rate double the general population.
On the war theater, suicide is inching up to 1/3 of all deaths
The result was that Rescue Remedy was found to be "an effective over-the-counter stress reliever with a comparable effect to traditional pharmaceutical drugs yet without any of the known adverse side effects, including addiction."Military bases and the civilian health care system are bracing themselves for a surge... more
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1674 of 100000 people have signed – see totals by state and Congressional District.
Paris Says: No Pardons!
Thanks to the extraordinary efforts of Rep. Dennis Kucinich, President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney stand accused of 39 grave and impeachable offenses.
Most of these offenses, including war crimes, are felonies for which Bush and Cheney can be criminally prosecuted after they leave office, even if they are not impeached by Congress.
Obviously Bush and Cheney do not want to be prosecuted. So to protect themselves, George Bush's last official act will likely be pardons for himself, Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and everyone else who committed crimes as part of the Bush Administration.
While most lawyers assume pardons cannot precede convictions, Gerald Ford set a powerful precedent by pardoning Richard Nixon in 1972 before he was even indicted, let alone convicted. If Ford could legally pardon Nixon, then George Bush can legally pardon himself.
So there is only one way to stop George Bush from pre-emptively pardoning himself, Cheney, and everyone else in his administration: Congress must impeach Bush and Cheney before Bush can issue such pardons.
The Founding Fathers clearly anticipated a corrupt President might pardon his co-conspirators, and specified impeachment as the remedy.
George Mason, the father of the Bill of Rights (1791-2002), argued at the Constitutional Convention that the President might use his pardoning power to "pardon crimes which were advised by himself" or, before indictment or conviction, "to stop inquiry and prevent detection."
James Madison, the father of the U.S. Constitution (1788-2007), added that "if the President be connected, in any suspicious manner, with any person, and there be grounds to believe he will shelter [pardon] him, the House of Representatives can impeach him; they can remove him if found guilty."
As your constituent, I urge you to impeach George Bush and Dick Cheney before they pardon themselves.1674 of 100000 people have signed – see totals by state and Congressional... more
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Truthout gives a detailed explanation of military spending and why!
Over the past eight years, the Pentagon has developed a pattern of requesting war spending through supplemental bills, which are not included in the general defense budget, making the defense budget look much smaller than it is, even as it grows. This is why the $611 billion authorization bill looks so huge: it includes both war and nonwar defense costs, which aren't grouped together in any other single bill.
Moreover, Sharp noted that the Pentagon regularly inserts war-related funding into its general defense budget, and tacks general defense costs, like new equipment, onto the supplemental bills that are used to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This type of messy budgeting can conceal skyrocketing military expenditures, many of which are unnecessary, according to Sharp.
"If the defense budget is indeed going to decline, the Pentagon will have to do something it hasn't done in years," Sharp said. "It will have to choose what to spend money on instead of just buying everything it wants."
Winslow Wheeler, director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information, points out in a recent report in Armed Forces Journal that, in contrast with their price tag, our military forces are smaller than they have been since the end of World War II, and major military equipment is older than it has ever been. Wheeler attributes this strange disparity to gross misappropriation of funding, with more money now being used to buy fewer weapons - some of which will not even be used in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Additionally, Sharp noted the high price tag of "high-risk missile defense programs," as well as Cold-War-era weapons systems that are not only costly, but also out of date.
"There's lots of low-hanging fruit, if ever there were a Congress or a Secretary of Defense willing to make cuts," Wheeler told Truthout.
Rethinking military spending right now is trickier than it might look, according to Craig Jennings, federal fiscal policy analyst at the government watchdog group OMB Watch. In a time of deep economic crisis, Jennings told Truthout, it doesn't make sense to cut government funding. Yet, a shifting of funds from the military to other priorities could work well.
"Defense spending is largely a white-collar jobs program...conti.. Truthout gives a detailed explanation of military spending and why!
Over the... more
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U.S. soldiers and veterans have been illegally hit up by Pentagon debt collectors for millions of dollars in payments over military credit card debt, according to the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
"It is shocking that a U.S. government agency would illegally take this money from veterans who have served our country well," said Deepak Gupta of Public Citizen.
Public Citizen and consumer lawyers have filed a class-action lawsuit against the Army and Air Force Exchange Services (AAFES), which issues credit cards to U.S. service members to buy goods at military stores. The suit alleges that AAFES improperly took money from military credit card users for expired debt and inflated penalties and fees. Unlike civilian debt collectors who use phone calls and letters to try to collect payment, the military simply deducted the money from service members' government benefits or tax refunds, the suit contends.
"To take away these benefits because of old debt incurred during military service to buy things like uniforms and equipment is outrageous," said Gupta.
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Way to support the troops, huh?
U.S. soldiers and veterans have been illegally hit up by Pentagon debt collectors for... more
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