20 June 2007

IRAQ MORATORIUM

i got word of this today via the out of iraq blogroll you see to the right there, in the sidebar. i think it's a swell idea and i've just signed on to the pledge. please join me. and join the OOIBC while you're at it...

on the third friday of each month, i vow to take a break from my daily routine to take some action in ending the iraq "war." it will begin september 21st and carry forward until this insanity ceases.

and just so you know - apparently, the military is exempt from the no-call list i added our number to years ago. i got a call this morning at the crack of dawn, asking if i would show my support for the troops ala a money donation that would send someone serving in the navy a care package so that they would know we haven't forgotten about them...

i asked if that care package would include an airline ticket, to support the troops the best way i know how - by bringing them. home. now.

silence.

it really chaps my ass. OF COURSE i haven't forgotten about them. how could i? how could anyone? i think about them everyday, for most of my waking hours. i think about them as they continue to come home in caskets, and wonder who will be next? because there will be anext and a next and another next. to have someone call my home and use guilt tactics to imply that i'm just going about my days, humming merrily along is ludicrous! seriously.

and meanwhile...

all i could think about was this - the troops that are so supported by those that sent them off to suit their own greedy purposes wrapped in deceit - like this guy:

Jon Town has spent the last few years fighting two battles, one against his body, the other against the US Army. Both began in October 2004 in Ramadi, Iraq. He was standing in the doorway of his battalion’s headquarters when a 107-millimeter rocket struck two feet above his head. The impact punched a piano-sized hole in the concrete facade, sparked a huge fireball and tossed the 25-year-old Army specialist to the floor, where he lay blacked out among the rubble.

“The next thing I remember is waking up on the ground.” Men from his unit had gathered around his body and were screaming his name. “They started shaking me. But I was numb all over,” he says. “And it’s weird because… because for a few minutes you feel like you’re not really there. I could see them, but I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t hear anything. I started shaking because I thought I was dead.”

Eventually the rocket shrapnel was removed from Town’s neck and his ears stopped leaking blood. But his hearing never really recovered, and in many ways, neither has his life. A soldier honored twelve times during his seven years in uniform, Town has spent the last three struggling with deafness, memory failure and depression. By September 2006 he and the Army agreed he was no longer combat-ready.

But instead of sending Town to a medical board and discharging him because of his injuries, doctors at Fort Carson, Colorado, did something strange: They claimed Town’s wounds were actually caused by a “personality disorder.” Town was then booted from the Army and told that under a personality disorder discharge, he would never receive disability or medical benefits.

Town is not alone. A six-month investigation has uncovered multiple cases in which soldiers wounded in Iraq are suspiciously diagnosed as having a personality disorder, then prevented from collecting benefits. The conditions of their discharge have infuriated many in the military community, including the injured soldiers and their families, veterans’ rights groups, even military officials required to process these dismissals.

They say the military is purposely misdiagnosing soldiers like Town and that it’s doing so for one reason: to cheat them out of a lifetime of disability and medical benefits, thereby saving billions in expenses. link.

uh, ya think? digressing from the point of the article - i just have to say that i'm not even over there and i'm on the verge from suffering from a personality disorder just reading about this mess day in and day out! and why aren't personality disorders covered, anyway? nothing quite like a bullshit war to cause severe psychological damage... to alter one's personality.

the ultimate in adding insult to injury.

unfreakingbelievable.

where's the care package for jon town? where is his support?




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posted by supergirlest @ Wednesday, June 20, 2007

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