Soldiers' Right to Heal violation sustains US war crimes
The US continues its illegal and immoral wars, murdering innocent children, women and innocent men daily, by redeploying soldiers with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Traumatic Brain Injuries and Military Sexual Trauma. Veterans view this as cruel, inhumane, and dangerous and know that without repeated use of traumatized soldiers on the battlefield, the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations could not continue. By winning troops Right to Heal, Iraq Veterans Against the War believes Americans can end the war and war crimes committed daily in their names.
On October 7, the 9th anniversary of the Afghanistan invasion, Iraq Veterans Against the War will announce its strategic campaign, Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops.
IVAW members plan to assemble at Walter Reed Army Medical Center to conduct outreach to soldiers there, affirming their Right to Heal. After that, they will begin a 6-mile symbolic march from Walter Reed to Capital Hill.
"With each step of this march we will bring the traumas of war from the failing military health institutions into plain view of generals and lawmakers," reports IVAW.
"When we arrive at the Capital we will hold a press conference to announce our new National Campaign, Operation Recovery. Ethan McCord and others will give testimony to their experiences of being denied health services and being retained in a traumatic environment or redeployed with ongoing health issues."
Mark Thompson in his article, Invisible Wounds: Mental Health and the Military in TIME Magazine reported on Ethan McCord:
"US Army specialist Ethan McCord was one of the first on the scene when a group of suspected insurgents was blown up on a Baghdad street in 2007, hit by 30-mm bursts from an Apache Helicopter. 'The top of one guy's head was completely off,' he recalls. 'Another guy was ripped open from groin to neck. A third had lost a leg... Their insides were out and exposed. I'd never seen anything like this before.' Then McCord heard a child crying from a black minivan caught in the barrage. Inside, he found a frightened and wounded girl, perhaps 4. Next to her was a boy of 7 or so, soaked in blood. Their father, McCord says, was slumped over on his side, like he was trying to protect the children, but he was just destroyed. McCord couldn't look away from the kids. 'I started seeing images of my own two children back home in Kansas.'
IVAW states that after that tragic incident, McCord sought help but was denied. Instead he was abused.
'Get the sand out of your vagina'
Mr. Thompson continues, That night, he told his staff sergeant he needed help. 'Get the sand out of your vagina,' McCord says his sergeant responded. 'He told me I was being a homo and needed to suck it up.'
That was a violation of McCord's Right to Heal: the right that he and other IVAW members are fighting for.
Bravo Company 216's soldier, Ethan McCord was seen pulling wounded children out of the van in the 'leaked video,' Collateral Damage. He stated at the recent Veterans For Peace 25th National Convention that what he saw the US doing in Iraq is "reminiscent of ethnic cleansing." (See McCord's interview in the article by Dupre, D. US ethnic cleansing Iraq due to 911 psyop: Salute to soldier seen in Wikileaks video, Examiner, Sept 12, 2010)
McCord stated at the Convention that the US is committing war crimes by saying, "What that video shows is not special in any way because it shows a daily occurence in Iraq. We’re killing innocent people daily in Iraq. Killing children daily. Women daily."
On October 7th, McCord will be take his testimony to DC with other Veterans and GIs to announce Operation Recovery: A Campaign to Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops according to IVAW.
"We will then walk to the offices of each member of the Senate Armed Services Committee to deliver a Notice that the sector responsible for the deployment of traumatized Troops is now on watch and that we are going to find out who is responsible for this inhumane practice and stop them."
IVAW reports:
"The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are continuing through the use of exhausted troops who have been on multiple tours of duty and suffer deeply from the trauma of war. It is cruel and inhumane to deploy soldiers who are medically unfit for combat. In a 2008 TIME article America's Medicated Army,Thompson writes, 'Data contained in the Army's fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicated that, according to an anonymous survey of US troops taken last fall, 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription antidepressants or sleeping pills to help them cope.' By winning our Right to Heal we will be withdrawing this 12 to 17 percent from the fighting force, crippling the military's ability to continue the occupations."
In the coming weeks, the Examiner human rights national news reporter will be joining IVAW in calling on the Examiner human rights readers and others across the nation to help identify those responsible for deploying traumatized troops in your local area.
Join IVAW's campaign now by making a Pledge of Support.
Deborah Dupré, with post-graduate science and education degrees from U.S. and Australian universities, has been a human and environmental rights advocate for over 25 years in the U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Support her work by subscribing to her articles and forwarding the link of this article to friends and colleagues or reposting only the title and first paragraph linked to this Examiner page. Dupré welcomes emails: info@DeborahDupre.com See her Vaccine Liberty or Death book plus Compassion Film Project DVDs.
Comments
I think these Veterans need to be careful too.Remember what they did those soldiers who dared protest and walked in Washington,only to have MacArthur the horseman then lead a group of government killers.Some very able bodied types maybe needed on the flanks in front and behind.With the present President,if something bad happened to them,he would continue to read his TV Prompter.Seems impervious so far,isn't that the evidence!?
Absolutely disgusting.How can US sink any lower?If war destroyed whole federal government it would only help.
Absolutely disgusting.How can US sink any lower?If war destroyed whole federal government it would only help.
Thanks for posting such truth, you are a breathe of fresh air. Never in my imagination would I have guess you are writing in AK. Its so wonderful having you! We seriously appreciate your guts. Thank God for you. Alaska is so lucky to have such a special reporter.
What people control your criminal gov?Think about what jews are doing in Palestine.They are one and the same,children of satan,ASKENAZI devils.
www.realzionistnews.com
Well the lives of these young men will be destroyed by what they have seen. But Israel will be safer and the Big Oil Companies will get their pipe line through Afganistan, doesn't that make it all worthwhile?
USA cares about no one but the Israeli dirty zionist jews.take out israhell n the world will prosper.
Thankyou for your patriotism on this issue. You are an American Hero.
This discussion seems so childish to me.
What were you thinking what happens in a war? That's never a cakewalk.
If you are for any war, you are for ripping people apart.
So war has to be stopped altogether. That's the difficult part if the equation: convincing people to solve problems by other means than violence, and learning to justifyingly trust each other.
Obummer's Company and the rest of US, the crowd.
http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2010/09/26/1031258?sac=Mil
Our own son, before he was medically disharged and prescribed over 10 medications to help his migraines, constant nightmares and insomnia, and entrenched pain syndrome from multiple fractures and head injury...all those meds only masked the conditions, or had horrible side affects. Military doctors gave him a permanent profile after months of non-treatment (though he repeatedly requested treatment through his battalion clinic). His sergeant at Ft. Bragg, even with our son's permanent profile, forced him to work anyway (to include in the heat of the summer sun and our son wearing red heat casualty dog tags for heat stroke in Iraq), continually yelling at him to "Suck it up" "Be a man!" and calling him a "Wus" and "I don't care if you have a medical profile--suck it up and be a man!". Because of his injuries, his command he believes, refused to pin his E-4 rank on him even though he was given the official Army paperwork for his earned rank many months before, while the non-injured soldiers received their rank without the waiting for months. Injured soldiers go through absolute hell and stigmatization by their command structure, greatly adding to their stress, as does having to wait for up to a year for their disability rating after they are medically discharged while watching their savings dwindle and resultingly have vehicles repossessed all leading to feeling increasingly rejected and cast on the trash heap of the nation they were willing to die for.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46vYZFU1Dew
This is how our military command "rewarded" our returning soldiers once they survived Iraq and/or Afghanistan.
Cold blooded reptiles are in charge of the US government!
"Veterans view this as cruel, inhumane, and dangerous and know that without repeated use of traumatized soldiers on the battlefield, the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations could not continue. By winning troops Right to Heal, Iraq Veterans Against the War believes Americans can end the war and war crimes committed daily in their names."
At least you're honest enough to admit that this has nothing to do with helping troops heal, and everything to do with starving the military of soldiers as a means of sabotaging the war effort. This is why people hate you. You try to dress up something very sinister (sabotaging the war effort) with something very good ("the right to heal"). Who could be against that?! As if no one has caught on to your bull.
Hilpert, that sounds like your son is telling you a story.
OIF veteran, Ben.
Hilpert, you don't care about soldiers' barracks. You care about sabotaging the war.
OIF veteran, Ben
I love how you refer to terrorists as "suspected insurgents"!
Yes, they're "suspected". Do you understand that a battlefield is not a court of law? No, you don't. What do we do, stop all of them and give them a trial before we kill them?
Incidentally, you didn't use the same wiggle words with our troops. "Mentally injured troops used to murder women and children daily". Really? Is that a fact? Have all oif these soldiers been tried? It's such a preposterous lie, but you don't even use the word "allegedly".
Our guys are guily until proven innocent. Their guys are poor victims.
Please srop doing people the disservice of your misinformation campaign.
OIF veteran, BEN
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