Columnist Tim Rutten has it right. The U.S.A. is fast becoming one of the world's great killing fields.  The major factor in this shameful phenomenon is the proliferation of guns. Thanks, in large part, to the National Rifle Association's deification of these instruments of death, the U.S. leads the world -- well, with the exception of our U.S.-created killing field in Iraq -- in murders and violent deaths. Guns kill about 80 Americans a day here in the U.S. and wound twice that many. We've been on a real run lately, with the 33 killed at Virginia Tech last year to the six at NIU earlier this year. Interspersed were 6 at a town council meeting in Missouri and 9 at a mall near Omaha. Those are in addition to victims who went down one or two or three at a time. Worse can be expected ahead.  The NRA is not satisfied with the estimated 200 to 250 million guns in the U.S., one for every sentient adult in the country.  Our gun controls are internationally famous for their absence or laxity, again thanks in large part to the NRA whose members will apparently not be satisfied until everyone in the country over the age of six is armed with one or more guns -- preferrably more than one. No other developed nation suffers anything close to the killing we do. Now the NRA is on a virtual crusade pushing for state laws that would allow employees, students, shoppers, library patrons and even church goers to arm themselves with concealed weapons!  Their rationale is that if everyone is armed, no one would dare to shoot you because they'd be afraid that you could outdraw them. (Thanks to columnist Tom Teepen for that observation.)  Of course, the gun culture in the U.S. is only the most obvious aspect of the problem.  The entire culture of violence is at the root of what is wrong.  It's hard to find a video game, or a movie that doesn't feature violence of some kind.  Kids learn that killing others is just a part of life.  Yesterday's headline should be the only proof we need, when we discovered that a group of third grade girls and boys had developed a rather sophisticated plot to murder their teacher!  That the plot involved handcuffs, duct tape and a knife and not a gun, should be little consolation.  You think that scenario is scary?  The really scary thing is that in the current election campaigns, there is hardly a whisper about our culture of violence here at home. Los Angeles Times columnist, Tim Rutten, takes a look at that phenomenon in today's featured article. It was published in Liberal Opinion Week, http://www.liberalopinion.com.  --  Bryce   

You Can't Pray Away Guns

By Tim Rutten

(February 2008 was) a grim and bloody month on one of the world's greatest killing fields -- the United States of America.

On Friday (Feb. 15), Los Angeles paused for the largest police funeral in its history when it buried Officer Randal Simmons, a 51 year old father of two and the L.A.P.D.'s first SWAT team member to die in the line of duty. Simmons was shot dead and Officer James Veenstra was badly wounded when they -- along with others in their unit -- rushed into a home where a disturbed young man had killed three members of his family and was believed to be holding others hostage.

A bit farther up the coast in Oxnard, (the week before) an eighth-grader walked into a classroom and fatally shot a classmate in the head, apparently because the boy was gay.

(The day before Officer Simmons death) at Northern Illinois University, a graduate student walked into a lecture hall, shot five students to death and wounded 16 other people before committing suicide.

There had been three other campus shootings (between Feb. 8 and 19), including one at Louisana Technical College, where a woman shot two students to death before killing herself.

Earlier in the month, a gunman in Kirkwood, MO, burst into a City Council meeting, killed five people and wounded the town's mayor. A few days before that a gunman herded five women in a suburban Chicago clothing store into a back room and shot them all to death in what authorities believe was a botched robbery.

All these wrenchingly tragic crimes are linked by a common factor -- the ubiquity of guns in America.  Given that we're in the midst of the most hotly contested presidential campaign in recent memory, you'd think that all this bloodletting might become a campaign issue. If you thought that, you'd have reckoned without regard to the gun lobby's near total victory among the politicians of both political parties. The Second Amendment fundamentalists who cluster around the National Rifle Association are the most successful single-issue constituency in modern American politics.

The truth is that guns make the malicious, the malcontent and the mad powerful. They confer the power of life and death on the demented and the deranged -- and yet we do nothing.  There are more guns circulating in the U.S. today than ever, somewhere around 250 million according to projections by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The only one of the candidates who even nodded to the Illinois college massacre was Sen. Barack Obama, who happens to vote an easy drive from the campus.  Campaigning in Wisconsin, he said "prayers" were with the victims and their families, then quickly added that he believes the Second Amendment confers an "individual right" to gun ownership.

The reason for that bob and weave is that the latter point is the gun loggy's current cause celebre.  Over the years, 11 of the 13 federal appellate districts have held that Second Amendment rights are collective, pertaining , as the Constitution says, to the maintenance of "a well ordered militia."  Recently, however, a court in the District of Columbia struck down that jurisdiction's handgun ban, ruling that the Second Amendment confers individual rights to gun ownership. The case -- District of Columbia vs Heller -- is before the Supreme Court.  Vice President Cheney, 55 senators and 350 members of the House have filed a brief supporting the individual rights position to which Obama hastened to show such deference.

It isn't as if our lawmakers aren't willing to do something to protect our students.  Twelve state legislatures -- those in Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Washington -- are considering bills that would allow students who obtain concealed-weapons permits to carry guns on campus. Presumably, they'll only fire in self-defense.

Confronted with this sort of social idiocy, it's hard to know whether to chortle or choke.

How many times can we really stomach another politician telling us, as Obama did (after NIU) and Bush did after Virginia Tech -- that their "prayers" are with the victims of that day's gun-inflicted atrocity?  Prayers won't bring the dead back or make the living safer.  Our children don't need prayers; they need leaders with a modicum of courage.

Nobody is asking anybody to commit political suicide.  But it would be better than edifying to watch just one of these dreary temporizers exhibit a fraction of the courage Randal Simmons, James Veenstra and their comrades showed when they put themselves at risk for people they believed were hostage to violence.

At the moment we are a nation held hostage to the pandemic of gun violence. We need leaders brave enough to admit that, and to offer out children something more than a collective shrug and the chance to join the arms race that has made our school campuses a killing ground.

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NOTICE: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, environmental, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and/or educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. -- Bryce

Little did I ever expect to be posting a story written for Business Week!  And, no, this is not an April Fools joke.  The lineup of advocates for a single-payer, not-for-profit, national healthcare insurance system for the U.S. just keeps on growing. I'd known that in a major break with the past more and more doctors in this country were opening their eyes and minds and coming around to favor such a system -- I just didn't know how many.  A recent survey indicates that nearly 60% of U.S. doctors now advocate such a system. A switch to a much needed single-payer system now has an excellent chance of being enacted.  Aside from the pharmaceutical and private for-profit insurance industry the only group that steadfastly refuses to back a universal, single-payer healthcare system for the U.S., are politicians. The right-wing, know-nothing, anti-government brand of politicians will never support such a system. For them an obsolete ideology that they cling to against all reason is more important than the health and lives of the vast majority of our citizenry.  For the Democrats and others who call themselves liberals or progressives, it is a pathological timidity that stifles their voices. We must make an all-out effort to stiffen the spines of these well-meaning but fearful legislators and political operatives by letting them know that they will not be committing political suicide by doing what is right and convincing them that single-payer is the single answer to our present health care shame. The writer of this report is Catherine Arnst, a senior writer for Business Week, http://www.businessweek.com,  who is based in New York. Her report was posted onling by Google's Single-Payer News.  --  Bryce

Like John McCain, economics has never been a major interest of mine.  I don't follow economic issues closely and understand only the broader workings of the economy. From time to time, however, some factor involving the economy comes to the fore that even I can understand.  That the end cost of that tragic "war" in Iraq will cost the U.S. between $2 and $3 trillion (that's trillion, with a "t" and in U.S. parlance is equal to a thousand billion) is one of those factors. And that the Bush administration has been funding the "war" in Iraq almost entirely on borrowed money (and most of that from China), thus exploding the amount of our national debt, is another. Never before in our history has a U.S. government cut taxes while the country is fighting a war, declared or undeclared.  The result of these three facts, in the words of columnist Bob Herbert, is like "a cancer inside the American economy."  (Slight digression: Last night my wife interrupted my reading to go and watch a man with two degrees (one a Master's Degree) from prestigious universities, compete on the the TV program "Are You Smarter Than a Five Year Old?" He confidently predicted that he would win the grand prize. He failed on the 2nd question which was a 2nd Grade English question. I would have missed it, too, as I would also have done on any level math question. On a question dealing with economics, I might have gotten to a 5th grade level, but I can't be sure.)  I CAN, however, grasp the notion that unlimited spending of borrowed money while cutting back on income is not likely to have a healthy impact on our national economy.  The March 19 issue of Liberal Opinion Week, carried a long article, "Iraq War Will Cost $3 Trillion and More," by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia U. professor and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration and Linda Bilmes,  a former chief financial officer of the U.S. Commerce Dept., who now teaches at Harvard U.'s Kennedy School of Government.  I'm not sure whether either of them is smarter than a 5th grader, but they have co-authored a book called, The Three Billion Dollar War: The True Cost of the Iraq Conflict.  Even the Liberal Opinion article is too long to print here, but in the same publication Bob Herbert addresses the same issues.  I feel fairly confident the three of them together know as much, possibly even more, than many 5th graders, at least on economic questions. Herbert's report was posted online by TruthOut, http://www.truthout.org.  Sadly, the corporate news media have maintained a characteristic near silence on this matter.--  Bryce

The $2 Trillion Nightmare
 

By Bob Herbert  -  for the N.Y. Times
   

    We've been hearing a lot about "Saturday Night Live" and the fun it has been having with the presidential race. But hardly a whisper has been heard about a Congressional hearing in Washington last week on a topic that could have been drawn, in all its tragic monstrosity, from the theater of the absurd.

    The war in Iraq will ultimately cost U.S. taxpayers not hundreds of billions of dollars, but an astonishing $2 trillion, and perhaps more. There has been very little in the way of public conversation, even in the presidential campaigns, about the consequences of these costs, which are like a cancer inside the American economy.

   (Recently), the Joint Economic Committee, chaired by Senator Chuck Schumer, conducted a public examination of the costs of the war. The witnesses included the Nobel Prize-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz (who believes the overall costs of the war - not just the cost to taxpayers - will reach $3 trillion), and Robert Hormats, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International.

    Both men talked about large opportunities lost because of the money poured into the war. "For a fraction of the cost of this war," said Mr. Stiglitz, "we could have put Social Security on a sound footing for the next half-century or more."

    Mr. Hormats mentioned Social Security and Medicare, saying that both could have been put "on a more sustainable basis." And he cited the committee's own calculations from last fall that showed that the money spent on the war each day is enough to enroll an additional 58,000 children in Head Start for a year, or make a year of college affordable for 160,000 low-income students through Pell Grants, or pay the annual salaries of nearly 11,000 additional border patrol agents or 14,000 more police officers.

    What we're getting instead is the stuff of nightmares. Mr. Stiglitz, a professor at Columbia, has been working with a colleague at Harvard, Linda Bilmes, to document, among other things, some of the less obvious costs of the war. These include the obligation to provide health care and disability benefits for returning veterans. Those costs will be with us for decades.

    Mr. Stiglitz noted that nearly 40 percent of the 700,000 troops from the first gulf war, which lasted just a month, have become eligible for disability benefits. The current war is (now over) five years in duration.

    "Imagine then," said Mr. Stiglitz, "what a war - that will almost surely involve more than 2 million troops and will almost surely last more than six or seven years - will cost. Already we are seeing large numbers of returning veterans showing up at V.A. hospitals for treatment, large numbers applying for disability and large numbers with severe psychological problems."

    The Bush administration has tried its best to conceal the horrendous costs of the war. It has bypassed the normal budgetary process, financing the war almost entirely through "emergency" appropriations that get far less scrutiny.

    Even the most basic wartime information is difficult to come by. Mr. Stiglitz, who has written a new book with Ms. Bilmes called "The Three Trillion Dollar War," said they had to go to veterans' groups, who in turn had to resort to the Freedom of Information Act, just to find out how many Americans had been injured in Iraq.

    Mr. Stiglitz and Mr. Hormats both addressed the foolhardiness of waging war at the same time that the government is cutting taxes and sharply increasing non-war-related expenditures.

    Mr. Hormats told the committee:

    "Normally, when America goes to war, nonessential spending programs are reduced to make room in the budget for the higher costs of the war. Individual programs that benefit specific constituencies are sacrificed for the common good ... And taxes have never been cut during a major American war. For example, President Eisenhower adamantly resisted pressure from Senate Republicans for a tax cut during the Korean War."

    Said Mr. Stiglitz: "Because the administration actually cut taxes as we went to war, when we were already running huge deficits, this war has, effectively, been entirely financed by deficits. The national debt has increased by some $2.5 trillion since the beginning of the war, and of this, almost $1 trillion is due directly to the war itself ... By 2017, we estimate that the national debt will have increased, just because of the war, by some $2 trillion."

    Some former presidents - Washington, Franklin Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower - were quoted at the hearing on the need for accountability and shared sacrifice during wartime. But this is the 21st century. That ancient rhetoric can hardly be expected to compete for media attention, even in a time of war, with the giddy fun of S.N.L.

    It's a new era.

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NOTICE: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, environmental, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and/or educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. -- Bryce

Last Sunday I posted an article here under the title "Times That Try Men's Souls" about the recent "Winter Soldier" testimony by Iraq veterans.  Here is another piece on the same topic.  This was written by the intrepid "unembedded' correspondent, Dahr Jamail.  His reporting has been the most honest of any of those coming out of Iraq. The Winter Soldier testimony confirms the horrible truth about what the Bush administration policies have done to our troops there and it is an awful picture.  It has put them in the position of being perpetrators of almost unbelievable atrocities against the people we say we are there to save from a life of fear and suffering under a tyrant.  And it is all being done in your name and mine.  In all too many instances we are "saving" them by killing them, or by inflicting suffering far worse than anything concieved by the brutal Saddam Hussein.  Warning: What follows is not pleasant reading. However, it is neccessary reading. Necessary in order to grasp what we are doing both to our own troops and to the Iraqi people in the name of "freedom."  Bush is fond of saying that those Muslims who oppose us do so because they "hate freedom."  If what we've inflicted on them is our definition of "freedom" -- and that is how it appears to them -- then it's no wonder they hate it.  It also explains the unprecedented number of returned U.S. veterans who suffer from PTSD and the sharply increased incidence of suicide among returned vets. Contrast what you read here with the gibberish coming from the mouths of the Bush cabal which now includes the two-faced John McCain. "We're winning!"  "We're making progress."  They're lying. Dahr Jamail's comments on the "Winter Soldier" hearings were published in the April 2008 issue of The Progressive, http://www.theprogressive.com.  --  Bryce

Winter Soldiers Sound Off

By Dahr Jamail

Jason Moon suffers from persistent insomnia as he wrestles with memories of his time in Iraq. “While on our initial convoy into Iraq in early June 2003, we were given a direct order that if any children or civilians got in front of the vehicles in our convoy, we were not to stop, we were not to slow down, we were to keep driving,” says the former National Guard and Army Reserve member. “In the event an insurgent attacked us from behind human shields, we were supposed to count. If there were thirty or less civilians we were allowed to fire into the area. If there were over thirty, we were supposed to take fire and send it up the chain of command. These were the rules of engagement. I don’t know about you, but if you are getting shot at from a crowd of people, how fast are you going to count, and how accurately?”

Robert Scheer wonders if, after Bush is back on his ranch clearing brush, he'll ever reflect on his decisions as president and wonder if he might better have listened to his father's advice?  Personally, I think it's a moot question.  Even if George W. were to have such thoughts, he would never admit to having them.  No, not even to himself.  Reality never seems to filter through George W.'s hubris, smugness, self-righteousness, foolishness, stubborness, and conceit. How else can we explain his failure to understand -- or unwillingness to admit -- the reality of the monstrous derangement he has created, both at home and abroad, of everything his clumsy hand has touched?  Whatever he touches, he seems to bring about the opposite of what he has set out to do.  Instead of an idyllic free and prosperous Iraq, overflowing with goodwill for it's "liberator," he's created -- well it's hard to find words that would adequately describe what he's created in Iraq.  Now, perversely, while he's set a course to overthrow the government of Iran, his actions are in fact strengthening its influence in Iraq and elsewhere.  Bush's self-appointed arch foe, Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is emerging as his nemesis, and as an ally of the government Bush created in Iraq.  Its ironic that when Bush recently visited Iraq he had to be airlifted in unnanounced and slipped, under heavy guard, to a fortified secure base which he never left.  On the other hand Ahmadinejad was warmly welcomed by Iraqis, entered Baghdad from the airport in broad daylight along a route that even U.S. soldiers fear to travel, and was not confined to the fortified Green Zone as Bush was.  How ironic that Bush's current Enemy Number 1 is welcome in Iraq, while it's "liberators" are not.  Referring to Bush's neocon chicken-hawks who led him into the morass of Iraq, Sheer quotes the old adage that there is no need to attribute to mendacity what can be explained by ordinary stupidity. Robert Scheer's blog site is TruthDig, http://www.truthdig.com.  --  Bryce

 Iran on top - thanks to Bush

Are the media dumb or just out to lunch?

Sorry to be intemperate, but how else can one explain the meager attention paid to the truly historic visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Iraq? Not only is he the first Mideast head of state to visit the country since its alleged liberation, but the very warm official welcome offered by the Iraqi government to the most vociferous critic of the United States speaks volumes to the abject failure of the Bush doctrine.

Condoleezza Rice reiterated the administration's position that Iran is behind the turmoil that has engulfed the Mideast from Beirut to Baghdad and, most recently, Israel, where what she claims are Iranian-supplied rockets have totally destroyed the belated Bush peace plan.

There is also the matter of Iran's nuclear program, which President Bush condemned once again over the weekend. But what leverage does the United States have over Iran when, as the image of Ahmadinejad holding hands with the top leaders of Iraq demonstrated to the world, we have put the disciples of the Iranian ayatollahs in power in Baghdad? There is no face-saving exit from Iraq without the cooperation of Tehran, and the folks who call America the "Great Satan" now hold the high cards.

How interesting that Ahmadinejad, unlike a U.S. president who has to be airlifted unannounced into ultra-secure bases, was able to convoy in from the airport in broad daylight on a road that U.S. dignitaries fear to travel. His love-fest with Iraq President Jalal Talabani, a Kurd who fought on Iran's side against Iraq and who speaks Farsi, even took place outside of the safety of the Green Zone, adding emphasis to Ahmadinejad's claim that while he is welcome in Iraq, the Americans are not.

Nor did the Iraqi leaders take exception to Ahmadinejad's insistence that the United States has only brought terror to the region and that the continued American presence is the main obstacle to peace. On the contrary, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pronounced his talks with fellow Shiite Ahmadinejad "friendly, positive and full of trust." Video of Talabani, who asked that Ahmadinejad call him "Uncle Jalal" after holding hands and exchanging kisses with the Iranian president, was broadcast throughout the region.

Saddam Hussein went to war with Iran, but George W. Bush has given his Iranian foes a Shiite-run ally. Iran is now a major trading partner of Iraq that has offered a $1 billion loan, the border is increasingly porous as religious pilgrimages have become the norm, and many investment projects supervised by Iranians are in the works.

Instead of isolating the "rogue regime" of Iran, the Bush administration has catapulted the theocrats of Tehran into the center of Mideast political power. There can be no peace, whether in Lebanon, Gaza or Iraq, without the cooperation of the ayatollahs of Iran. If that was the intention of the neoconservative cabal that led Bush into this folly, its members should be tried for treason.

That was, however, obviously not what the neocons expected from the invasion of Iraq, which they engineered in the wake of 9-11 with a much rosier scenario in mind. The saying that there is no need to attribute to mendacity what can be explained by ordinary stupidity aptly defines the neoconservative folly. Clearly, the neocons were conned by the likes of Ahmed Chalabi, the rogue banker accused by the CIA of slipping U.S. secrets to Tehran, into believing that a "liberated" Iraq would advance democracy in the region, not to mention the security of Israel. That the opposite has occurred is no big problem for them, as they emerge with their careers intact.

The leading neocon publicist, William Kristol, has even been rewarded for never getting it right with a premier spot on the New York Times opinion pages – so yes, in the punditry business, one does fail upward.

But for Bush, his signature issue, the battle against terrorism, is a shambles. The terrorists are very much on the rise in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which Bush neglected for an Iraq sideshow that has cost over a trillion dollars and tens of thousands of lives. But the long-run price will be far higher, with the blowback from the massive instability that he has engendered in the region.

When Bush has finally retired to that ranch, cutting sagebrush to his heart's content, his all-consuming smugness might ever so subtly be troubled by the memory of a father who knew best, and who warned against the terminal foolishness of seizing Baghdad.

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NOTICE: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, environmental, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed an interest in receiving the included information for research and/or educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. -- Bryce

The occasion of the death of the 4,000th U.S. serviceperson in Iraq has dominated the news over the past day. As lamentable as that event is, it is only part of the story of pain and suffering that has resulted from the totally unnecessary, unjustified and unprovoked atrocity committed by the Bush administration in launching the invasion of that country.  (And never forget that the suffering and deaths of Americans is a drop in the proverbial bucket when compared to what we have inflicted on the people of Iraq.)  Almost lost in the laudable concern over the 4000th death among U.S. service personnel in Iraq is the plight of many more who have survived but only at the cost of dreadful injuries, both physical and mental (or both). We keep a rough score of what is happening in the war zone, but quickly lose track of those who have returned home suffering from these diabolic afflictions. Some of them, especially those with mainly physical injuries are more fortunate than others in that they recieve aid and treatment that eases the suffering. But too many, most especially those with psychic injuries, find themselves lost in a "landscape without maps," unable to find the help they deserve and desperately need.  The following article, written for the N.Y. Times by Lawrence Downes and posted online by TruthOut, http://www.truthout.org, tells of three of these men, whose suffering -- along with that of their families -- is not over but will continue with only the vaguest end in sight.  Yes, 4000 U.S. troops have died in Iraq.  I've nowhere seen any figure on the number of casualties that still live but not as whole, functioning persons. In the meantime, for many of them, their families try in vain to find their way through that "landscape without maps" in an excruciatingly frustrating search for the help they need and deserve.  The admonition "support our troops" should involve a great deal more than repeating a slogan, applying a sticker to your car, flying a flag in front of your house, or pledging allegiance to a corrupt, dishonest and incompetent administration.  --  Bryce

For Wounded Veterans and Their Families, a Journey Without Maps    

By Lawrence Downes  -  The New York Times  -  Monday 24 March 2008 

    How much more can this country keep demanding of Justin Bunce, Daniel Verbeke and Michael McMichael?

    The men - a marine, a sailor and a National Guardsman - went to Iraq to fight as ordered, served honorably and suffered grave injuries. When they came home another struggle began, to find the care to make them whole again.

    At a recent hearing in Washington before the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee, the men's families told anguished tales of trips through bureaucratic hell in the transition between the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs. That terrain is notorious for its paperwork mountains and tripwires of red tape, but especially treacherous for those with traumatic brain injuries, the signature affliction of this five-year-old war.

    Mr. Bunce lost an eye in a roadside bomb blast that also thrust shrapnel into his frontal lobe. His father, Peter, said his care was so "stovepiped," with nobody knowing what anyone else was doing, that doctors working on his head ignored his broken leg. Technicians nearly did an M.R.I. on his brain, not realizing - because scans had not been done - the danger from the metal in his skull. Nobody tried to coordinate his many medications.

    Time and again his parents had to cross the country looking for the right therapies and treatment. Whatever expertise they found they stumbled on; there was no one but them to manage his case. The V.A. relied on the brain-damaged young corporal to evaluate his own mental state, and once sent him a letter threatening to cut off benefits because he could not manage his affairs.

    Mr. Verbeke's injuries, in a shipboard accident, were catastrophic. He cannot speak or control his limbs, though he can laugh and smile. His father, Robert, told of years of battling with the V.A. over treatment, tests, prescriptions and plans for therapy and assistance at home. "They can't plan or execute," he said. "The only logical conclusion is that they just don't care."

    The bomb blasts that crushed Mr. McMichael's vertebrae and damaged his brain did not take his life, at least not all at once. When he came home he seemed intact, but it soon became clear that his psyche was in shreds. His behavior put him in constant danger of losing his independence, his composure and dignity, his home, his family.

    His wife, Jackie, has refused to let that happen. As a National Guard spouse not immersed in military life, she had to rely on doggedness and patience and large measures of self-tutoring. It took her a year and a half, on her own, to assemble a support network for her husband.

    That forced self-reliance is the most difficult and baffling part of these veterans' struggles. Had they lost arms or legs, the process would have been much easier. But the quest for care for psychic injuries takes place on a landscape without maps.  All three families said that doctors and therapists were constantly handing out business cards, friendly advice and vague offers of help, but that it was nearly impossible to find firm guidance and quick, flexible, responsive care.

    At the hearing, representatives of the Pentagon and V.A. played to type, laying down a bewildering fog of acronyms and promises. Their central point was that things were moving now, that the two departments were "in the process of implementing more than 400 recommendations of five major studies."

    One involved hiring eight "recovery coordinators" to oversee care for 46 people. That's a droplet of care in an ocean of need: about 3,000 veterans have sustained traumatic injuries, by some rough estimates, and untold thousands of others are afflicted by post-traumatic stress disorder.

    The U.S. Naval Institute reported last month on the staggering immensity of paperwork that veterans confront. Defense Department records are on paper and often incomplete; the V.A.'s are electronic. Service members have to carry records between departments, never knowing what might be missing.

    The three families in this article were unusually, perhaps stunningly, well equipped to overcome those hurdles. Robert Verbeke is a corporate executive. So is Peter Bunce, who worked at the Pentagon as the Air Force's liaison to the House of Representatives. His wife, Patty, is an occupational therapist. Jackie McMichael has a master's degree in counseling, and practically grew up at the V.A. hospital in Durham, N.C., where her mother worked.

    As Ms. McMichael testified, Michael sat behind her, his back straight, hands gripping a cane and shaking so hard they looked as if they were plugged into something. Peace has not arrived for him, and may not come anytime soon.

    He is lucky in many ways: he has two young children and a wife who loves him and has sacrificed so much to travel the bureaucratic labyrinth for him. It is more than anyone could ask, but far less than any wounded soldier deserves.

    "I am educated, tenacious and resourceful," Ms. McMichael said of her work as a self-taught case manager. "And I was completely lost."

"These are the times that try men's souls," wrote Thomas Paine as the first line in his 1776 pamphlet "The Crisis."  He went on to chastise "the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot," who are vociferous  in  urging others on to war, but quiet down when things get tough. The pamphlet played a major role in rallying support for Washington's army in the dark days of Valley Forge.  Nearly 200 years later, a group of Vietnam veterans gathered in Detroit, to protest that ill-advised war, and give testimony to atrocities committed or witnessed, and adopted the name "Winter Soldiers" for their group.  Just over a week ago hundreds of veterans and active duty soldiers and Marines organized as the IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War) resurrected the name and gathered near Washington, DC, under the banner of "Winter Soldiers: Iraq and Afganistan," for the same purpose, to offer testimony about the horrors of war and atrocities committed or witnessed.  In contrast to the neocon "chicken hawks" who had never seen war first hand or up close, but who led us into the ill-advised invasions of those countries, these Winter Soldiers had "been there, seen that" and (in some cases) "done that."  Predictably, the four days of riveting testimony that followed was virtually ignored by the summer soldiers of the U.S. corporate media.  Yesterday's blog in this site documented that fact.  Here, Amy Goodman, the host of “Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650 stations in North America, goes into more detail on the Winter Soldier's conclave and the subsequent silence on the part of our corporate media.  Goodman's treatise was posted online by Robert Scheer's TruthDig, http://www.truthdig.com.  Our "news" media are playing an integral part in making the present a new time that tries men's (and women's) souls, by failing to inform the public about events that might be unpleasant and cast doubts on the party line of those in power.  --  Bryce 

Winter Soldier Marches Again

Posted on Mar 19, 2008

The corporate mainstream media in the U.S. is at it again.  News stories that they don't like, or are afraid to touch, they just ignore.  The only people that are aware of these news stories are those of us that rely heavily on alternative media sources available on the internet.  It's no wonder that a large number of people in this country still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, and that great "progress" is being made in Iraq. The latest example of this blackout by the media of news that makes them uncomfortable involves the "Winter Soldier" hearings held between March 13 and 16, 2008.  Organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, returned soldiers testified about atrocities they witnesses or participated in while serving in the Iraq occupation.  The hearings received a great deal of coverage in other countries, but practically none in the U.S.  Despite the Abu Ghraib photos and other documented instances of atrocities by our troops, they are dismissed by a large majority of the U.S. population as occasional aberrations comitted by a few "bad apples."  Thankfully, they are not actions participated in by a majortity of our troops. But, unfortunately, these kind of actions are far more common that we realize.  Although most people in this country prefer to close their eyes to the truth - and are assisted in this reaction by our corporate media who abdicate their responsibilities - but, we need to be aware that these actions are widely reported by the media in other countries whose people certainly do know about what is happening and we need to be aware of how these events shape their attitudes toward us.  This item was published by the media watchdog organization Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR) and posted online by AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org.  --  Bryce

Corporate Media's Virtual Blackout on Iraq Atrocity Hearings

By  FAIR

Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend for the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings (3/13/08-3/16/08), where they offered harrowing testimony about atrocities they had witnessed or participated in directly. The BBC predicted that the event, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, "could be dominating the headlines around the world this week" (3/7/08). The hearings were covered as far afield as the U.K. (Guardian, 3/17/08), Australia (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/14/08), Croatia (Javno, 3/16/08), and Iran (Press TV, 3/14/08). Yet there has been an almost complete media blackout on this historic news event in the U.S. corporate media.

Despite being noted in the New York Times' Paris-based International Herald Tribune (3/13/08), Winter Soldier has yet to be mentioned in the New York Times itself. No major U.S. newspaper has covered the hearings except as a story of local interest; the few stories major U.S. newspapers have published on the event have focused on the participation of local vets (Boston Globe, 3/16/08; Boston Herald, 3/16/08; Newsday, 3/16/08, Buffalo News, 3/16/08).

The Washington Post, too, published their account in the metro section (3/15/08). In contrast, the paper published an article about pro-war demonstrators protesting the Winter Soldier hearings in the A section (3/16/08), despite the fact that they were, according to the Post, "small in number."

None of the major broadcast TV networks (ABC, NBC, CBS) have mentioned the hearings in their newscasts. PBS has been silent as well.

But for a couple of exceptions (Time, 3/15/08; NPR, 3/16/08), the hearings have been virtually ignored by all but the independent media (Democracy Now!, 3/14/08; 3/17-19/08; In These Times, 3/17/08; Alternet, 3/14-3/18/08) and military publications (Stars and Stripes, 3/15/08 and the four Military Times newsweeklies, 3/15/08, 3/17/08), in a pattern reminiscent of the near complete corporate media blackout on the first Winter Soldier hearings. FAIR founder Jeff Cohen (Huffington Post, 3/16/08) traces the beginning of his career as a media critic back to his experience of watching as “one of the rare mainstream camera crews showed up at Winter Soldier ... and then abruptly packed up to leave in the middle of particularly gripping testimony.”

While the testimony of soldiers who had served multiple tours of duty was broadcast on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!, Free Speech TV, and the Real News network, the major broadcast networks and PBS instead devoted airtime to the pro-war assessments of Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. John McCain, both of whom have only made brief visits to Iraq (NBC Nightly News, ABC World News, CBS Evening News, PBS NewsHour, all 3/17/08).

Given the common media rhetoric of "supporting the troops" to ignore these same troops when they speak out about the horrors of the war is unconscionable. On the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War, it is particularly important that the media reverse this silence, and include the voices of the vets who are speaking out about their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan in national news coverage.

I might as well make a real campaign out of the single-payer health insurance issue. Instead of "experts" or professionals of any stripe, here are two "Letters to the Editor" one from an individual and one from a League of Women Voters group. The first is from Maryland and the second from Colorado. It's encouraging to learn that the single-payer concept is catching on with the general public.  If only the media and political "professionals" would realize that the idea has caught on and such a plan has a good chance of winning majority support from the public. The first letter is from Susan Rose of Columbia, MD, and appeared in the Baltimore Sun newspaper on March 15.  The second letter appeared last week in the Coloradoan of Fort Collins, CO.  Both were posted online on the Google Single-Payer News site, which I highly recommend to anyone wanting to keep informed on this vital issue.  --  Bryce

Well, I can't seem to get this particular monkey -- or elephant -- off my back.  I've got two more bullets to fire on the healthcare issue, and actually had a third which I seem to have lost. (And I apologize for using that uncongenial metaphor. I'll be coming back to the issue of gun control shortly.)  Anyway, the following discourse deals with the major weakness of the presidential candidate's positions on healthcare: their preoccupation with mandates.  Jacob S. Hacker is a Yale University political science professor and a fellow at the New America Foundation. He is the author of The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families, Health Care, and Retirement -- And How You Can Fight Back, as well as of the "Health Care for America" proposal recently released as part of the Economic Policy Institute's Agenda for Shared Prosperity. It's especially important, I think to understand how both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are missing the boat with their healthcare proposals. The focus of the Democrats on healthcare mandates may, in fact, be only a mandate for failure. (Never mind John McCain who will hew to the GOP party line of "choice" instead of a mandate.  Some choice! "If you're poor and sick or injured we give you a choice. You can go bankrupt or die.")  Hacker's story was posted online by AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org. --  Bryce

Candidates' Focus on Mandates Hinders Health Care Reform

By Jacob S. Hacker

Back in the early 1990s when health reform went down in flames, there was one word that kindled rage in the hearts of reform's opponents: "mandate." This time around, Democrats insisted they would relegate the offending word to the dustbin of history. Now, employers would have a "choice" of providing coverage or helping their workers pay for it (no mandate there!), and Americans would get to pick their health plans from a new "menu" of options (just like at Denny's!). Universal health care had a kinder, gentler face.

So why in the world are presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton beating one another up about, of all things, health care mandates? Clinton has said that Obama's plan would leave millions more uninsured than hers, because it lacks a requirement that all adults obtain coverage (a so-called individual mandate). Meanwhile, Obama's campaign has countered -- in a mailing that's, sadly, a preview of what Republicans will say about mandates of any sort -- that a mandate would amount to forcing people to buy coverage they can't afford.

For anyone who follows health policy, it's a sordid spectacle. For anyone who doesn't, it must be totally incomprehensible -- like watching two rocket scientists boil a discussion of space travel down to a squabble over the angle of re-entry. And yet, arcane as it may seem, the debate carries real dangers. Fourteen years after President Clinton tried and failed to achieve universal coverage, Democrats are making the same old mistake of letting technical litmus tests blind them to the larger challenges they face on health care.

The current enthusiasm for individual mandates rests almost entirely on the experience of single state: Massachusetts, which was implementing an individual mandate just as Democrats were formulating their campaign plans. Never mind that the Massachusetts law has proved to be a mixed bag, with hundreds of thousands of residents still uninsured despite the mandate. A consensus was born that the mandate was the key to an odd-bedfellows coalition of Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, progressive activists and business leaders.

This consensus is largely mythical. Republicans -- including Mitt Romney, who supported the mandate as governor of Massachusetts -- have raced away from the idea faster than a speeding bullet point. Instead, top Republicans (and yes, that includes John McCain) are calling for the encouragement of Health Savings Accounts and new tax breaks for individually purchased insurance -- a far cry from even the relatively minimal Massachusetts approach of requiring that people obtain coverage and regulating insurance to ensure its availability.

Or consider California, where reform efforts fell apart last year. There, the individual mandate turned out to be not the key to compromise, but a major sticking point -- with many of the strongest supporters of reform reasonably worried that cash-strapped workers would be compelled to spend a huge share of their income on private insurance that provided them with little real protection.

What's clear from the abortive California battle and the checkered Massachusetts experience is that the individual mandate is no silver bullet, in policy or political terms. On its own, an individual mandate is either cruel or chimerical, forcing people to buy bad insurance that costs too much or failing to achieve its goal of universal coverage. Insurance needs to be affordable, and enrollment easy and automatic, for an individual mandate to work.

And thankfully, that's the role the individual mandate plays in Senator Clinton's plan. For all the shrill back and forth, both Clinton and Obama have focused their proposals on requiring employer contributions, signing up people for subsidized coverage through employment and public programs, and creating a new set of insurance options for those without workplace insurance, including a Medicare-like public insurance plan that can provide guaranteed coverage inexpensively.

All this is wise. It reassures Americans that they can continue to be covered by workplace insurance if their employer provides it, while also ensuring they have access to an affordable guaranteed plan -- a plan similar to, but more comprehensive than, the popular Medicare program. Moreover, this approach can restrain premiums much more effectively than proposals that simply rely on private insurers, as does the Massachusetts plan. And if done right, it can automatically cover nearly all Americans through the workplace, as is true for most working-age Americans who have private insurance today.

Thus, the mandate melee obscures the truly important features of Obama's and Clinton's plans -- how they would enroll people, how they would ensure premiums for coverage were low, and how they would keep costs down over time. Neither of the candidates has really answered these questions. Obama, for example, has not forthrightly endorsed so-called automatic enrollment through the workplace, in which people are required to opt out of coverage rather than opt in. And both plans exempt small businesses from the requirement that they must offer coverage or contribute on behalf of their workers. Given that most of the uninsured work for small firms, this exclusion could turn out to be as much of an obstacle to universal coverage as the Obama plan's lack of a mandate for adults.

But the policy objections are somewhat beside the point. The deeper problem is that Democrats are once again arguing about the least salable aspect of their vision for reform. And they're fighting over small internal differences, instead of taking on the starkly divergent Republican vision on health care. This doesn't just mean missing the real challenges that reformers confront. It may mean missing the chance to finally address an issue that has bedeviled Democrats for decades.