the ban HAS been lifted

and i for one couldn't be happier. well NOT happy about how the men and women i'm talking about are coming home. i'm happy their families get to decide if we, the public gets to see pictures of their arrival at dover. war is human. it has a FACE AND LOVED ONES

Media Ban Lifted For Bodies' Return
Families Will Decide Privacy Level

By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates announced yesterday that he is lifting a 1991 government ban on news coverage of the return of the remains of fallen service members to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware and will let families decide whether to allow photographs and videos.

The ban, upheld by both Republican and Democratic administrations, has generated lawsuits as well as conflicting emotions on the part of military families.

"After receiving input from a number of sources, including all of the military services and the organizations representing military families, I have decided that the decision regarding media coverage of the dignified transfer process at Dover should be made by those most directly affected: on an individual basis by the families of the fallen," Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "We ought not presume to make that decision in their place."................

this my dears is a VERY telling story

let's say we BELIEVED them at the time. we (some of us that is) believed king george and his court that iraq had wmd didn't we? and then some of us (some NEVER learn their lessons do they?) believed king george when he said iran was making zillions of weapons and just TOSSIN' 'EM across to the iraqis like beads from a balcony at mardi gras.

i must sit here and wonder though, we sort of know how many actual weapons of iran the iraqis have. i wonder how many of the weapons of let's say BLACKWATER they have? think on that why don't cha

(note: i do NOT like iran. well the powers that be of iran. don't get me wrong. i'm NOT sticking up for them.. i'm pointing out the lies of our OWN king and his court. lies people continue to support and believe. WAKE UP MY PEEPS)

POLITICS: U.S. Task Force Found Few Iranian Arms in Iraq
By Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, Nov 15 (IPS) - Last April, top George W. Bush administration officials, desperate to exploit any possible crack in the close relationship between the Nouri al-Maliki government and Iran, launched a new round of charges that Iran had stepped up covert arms assistance to Shi'a militias.

Secretary of Defence Robert M. Gates suggested that there was "some sense of an increased level of [Iranian] supply of weapons and support to these groups." And Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung was told by military officials that the "plentiful, high quality weaponry" the militia was then using in Basra was "recently manufactured in Iran".

But a U.S. military task force had been passing on data to the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNFI) command that told a very different story. The data collected by the task force in the previous six weeks showed that relatively few of the weapons found in Shi'a militia caches were manufactured in Iran.

According to the data compiled by the task force, and made available to an academic research project last July, only 70 weapons believed to have been manufactured in Iran had been found in post-invasion weapons caches between mid-February and the second week in April. And those weapons represented only 17 percent of the weapons found in caches that had any Iranian weapons in them during that period.

The actual proportion of Iranian-made weapons to total weapons found, however, was significantly lower than that, because the task force was finding many more weapons caches in Shi'a areas that did not have any Iranian weapons in them.

The task force database identified 98 caches over the five-month period with at least one Iranian weapon, excluding caches believed to have been hidden prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion. ...........

i refuse to believe this

i absolutely believe when sarevil was mayor of wasilla, women had to pay for their rape kits. THAT i believe

i cannot believe or i will NOT believe the military charges for them (off base BUT that should not matter)

please, i beg you, tell me someone got their information wrong (although i know they didn't)

Raped in the Military? You'll Have to Pay for Your Own Forensic Exam Kit
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet.

Sarah Palin's decision not to pay for rape kits when she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, was an issue in the campaign for the White House. But allow me to introduce the large pink elephant that has been sitting quietly in the corner of the room: TRICARE, the Pentagon's Military Health System that covers active duty members, doesn't pay for off-base rape kits, either.

Spec. Patricia McCann, who served in Iraq with the Illinois Army National Guard from 2003 to 2004, raised the issue at the Winter Soldier Investigation in March. McCann read a memo issued to all MEDCOM commanders clarifying that "SAD kits" -- which are forensic rape kits -- "are not included in TRICARE coverage." *

That would put Alaska and the military in a very special category.

Women in the military are twice as likely to be raped as their civilian counterparts. In fact, "women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq," Congresswoman Jane Harman, D-Calif., told the House Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs in May.

Harman said, "The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Health Center where I met female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41 percent of the female veterans seen there say they were victims of sexual assault while serving in the military, and 29 percent said they were raped during their military service."

In July, a House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee hearing subpoenaed Kaye Whitley, director of the Pentagon's Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office (SAPRO), to explain what the department is doing to stop the escalating sexual violence in the military. Her boss, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, ordered her not to appear..................

robert gates is a steamin' pile o' SHITE

i ask myself if i think he (robert gates) would do what Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta did. i answer myself HELL NO. i don't know the man but i KNOW gates would never in a kazillion years do what sgt peralta did. please DO click on the story link and read the rest of it. please please please.

sgt peralta was NOT even an american citizen. he got his green card the day after he enlisted in the marine corps. he gave his LIFE for his adopted country.

to the family and friends and especially those whose lives sgt peralta saved, i am so very sorry for your loss

to those people and our whole country sgt peralta WAS A HERO of the HIGHEST ORDER

(where is king george? can't he make one of those executive decisions he's famous for? get sgt peralta the medal he RIGHTLY deserves - well his family. of course sgt peralta GAVE HIS LIFE FOR HIS COUNTRY)

Marine Denied Medal of Honor

Sergeant Took Grenade's Blast in Fallujah, Was Lauded by Bush

By Ann Scott Tyson

Washington Post Staff Writer
According to the secretary of the Navy, Marine Sgt. Rafael Peralta gave his life to save his comrades in the Iraqi city of Fallujah in 2004, grabbing a hostile grenade, pulling it to his body and absorbing the brunt of the blast. President Bush later praised Peralta as a hero.

But a decision by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates not to recommend him for the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military honor, stirred an outcry yesterday by his family and Marines whose lives he saved.

Peralta instead will be posthumously awarded the second-highest award for valor in combat, the Navy Cross, the military announced Tuesday.

Peralta's family members said they could not understand the decision, which was delivered to Peralta's mother, Rosa, by a Marine general on Tuesday.......

ahhhhhhhhhhhh

they just make this shite up as they go along. if it's going 'good' they have one story. if it gets a little bad, they have another. if it worsens, yet another. then if it's over the edge, they start pointing fingers at phantoms. he did it. no, she did it. no, he. no, that one. no him. no her. and on and on. when i say going good, i only mean no us troop deaths. i do NOT in any circumstance mean going good for the iraqi people. we've disrupted their lives and their country for generations to come.
if it's al-qaeda or iran or whomever, WE DID IT. we are 100% responsible.

Iran Top Threat To Iraq, U.S. Says
Focus on Al-Qaeda Now Diminishing

By Karen DeYoung Washington Post Staff Writer
Last week's violence in Basra and Baghdad has convinced the Bush administration that actions by Iran, and not al-Qaeda, are the primary threat inside Iraq, and has sparked a broad reassessment of policy in the region, according to senior U.S. officials.
Evidence of an increase in Iranian weapons, training and direction for the Shiite militias that battled U.S. and Iraqi security forces in those two cities has fixed new U.S. attention on what Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates yesterday called Tehran's "malign" influence, the officials said.
The intensified focus on Iran coincides with diminished emphasis on al-Qaeda in Iraq as the leading justification for an ongoing U.S. military presence in Iraq.
In congressional hearings this week, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus said the U.S. military has driven al-Qaeda from Baghdad, Anbar province and central Iraq, and he depicted the group as now largely concentrated in a reduced territory around the northern city of Mosul.
During their Washington visit, Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker barely mentioned al-Qaeda in Iraq but spoke extensively of Iran. .....

whoops!

and it's NOT a whoops as in i forgot to take the frozen lasagna out of the freezer so we'll have to have sandwiches tonight kind of whoops. it's a whoops i really DID leave the iron on and we're halfway to bridgeport

we ARE our own worse enemy (terrorists - schmerorists)
Nuclear Parts Sent To Taiwan In Error
U.S. Just Learned Of 2006 Mix-Up

By Josh WhiteWashington Post Staff Writer
The Defense Department mistakenly shipped secret nuclear missile fuses to Taiwan more than 18 months ago and did not learn that the items were missing until late last week, Pentagon officials acknowledged yesterday, deepening concerns about the security of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Officials with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA) sent four nose-cone fuse assemblies to Taiwan in August 2006 instead of four replacement battery packs for use in Taiwan's fleet of UH-1 Huey helicopters. The fuses help trigger nuclear warheads on Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles as they near their point of impact. It was unclear yesterday how the two very different items were mixed up at a warehouse at Hill Air Force Base in Utah and how they were shipped out of the country without notice. ...........

admiral william fallon is retiring

is it because he's done his duty and just wants to retire. OR is it because his commandant in chief is a lunatic who wants to start YET ANOTHER WAR? i guess we'll just have to wait (for more people to be killed, displaced, tortured and gravely wounded)
Mideast military chief resigns after magazine article
Defense Secretary Robert Gates says that Admiral William Fallon, the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East, is resigning.
Gates said Fallon had asked Gates for permission to retire and that Gates agreed.
Fallon was the subject of an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed him as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.
In one passage, the magazine said:
So while Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler (a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to Fallon--and apparently Fallon alone--to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: "This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."
Gates described as "ridiculous" any notion that Fallon's departure signals the United States is planning to go to war with Iran. And he said "there is a misperception" that Fallon disagrees with the administration's approach to Iran.......

and this:
Middle East commander resigned by phone from Iraq
By Nancy A. Youssef McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON — Adm. William J. Fallon, the commander of all U.S. military operations in the Middle East, abruptly ended his nearly 42-year military career Tuesday with a phone call from Iraq in which he asked to resign because of controversy caused by his criticism of the Bush administration's Iran policy.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said Tuesday in a hastily convened news conference that he accepted Fallon's resignation because it was the "right thing to do."
Fallon's phone call, and Gates' decision to accept his resignation, ended weeks of speculation within military circles about how long a military commander who appeared to challenge Bush administration policy could hold onto his job.
Army Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey, Fallon's deputy and a one-time commander of efforts to train Iraq's security forces, will lead U.S. Central Command until the Senate can confirm a permanent replacement, Gates said. Fallon's resignation is effective March 31.............

i had no idea

king george and his court wanted us to deny the genocide of armenians in 1915. turkey can deny it all they like. it happened. hey, i'm italian and THEY did some NASTY things throughout history. i don't LIKE it, but i'm NOT going to DENY it. when you deny things such as this it just makes it MUCH EASIER for it to happen again.

i have a question for king george and his court-what next, the holocaust (cause you don't want to piss off the germans)?
AND
to all of those who backed out of supporting this measure. you are a bunch of COWARDS
Panel Labels Armenian Killings Genocide

By Elizabeth Williamson Washington Post Staff Writer
A House panel voted yesterday to approve calling the mass killings of Armenians that began in 1915 genocide, defying the White House, which warned that the measure could damage U.S.-Turkey relations.
The Foreign Affairs Committee passed the nonbinding resolution on a 27 to 21 bipartisan vote. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has promised she will bring the resolution to the full House for a vote.
Turkey, one of Washington's most staunch Islamic allies, lobbied hard to kill the measure, launching a multimillion dollar campaign and threatening to curtail its cooperation in the Iraq war. President Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates were joined by eight former secretaries of state and three former defense secretaries in condemning the proposal. ......

where is it coming from?

Increase In War Funding Sought
$42 Billion Boost Would Raise 2008 Total to $190 Billion

?
?
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children's health insurance
care for the elderly
social security
funds for natural disasters
education

?
?
?

our heroes are being treated like shite

do you see that man? he was injured in iraq. he lost the use of an eye. he lost half of his scull. he has tbi and of course suffers from ptsd. you would imagine all of that would be enough of a pile of problems. you'd be wrong. he (and his family) have ONE MORE problem.

walter reed:::::::::::::::::

Almost Home, but Facing More Delays at Walter Reed
Soldier Is Told Paperwork Errors Will Slow Retirement


By Dana Priest and Anne Hull Washington Post Staff Writers

After nearly three years as an outpatient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon had begun the wrenching process of turning himself into a civilian.
He no longer wore the uniform he loved so much. He sported a short beard and traded his black beret for a baseball cap. Granted a 30-day leave to prepare for retirement as his disability case finally made it through the system, he moved his family to Suffolk, Va., and began to babysit his two kids, clean the house and grow vegetables. Given what had happened to him in Iraq -- the traumatic brain injury from an AK-47 round that shattered one eye and half his skull -- and the chronic post-traumatic stress disorder that followed, that was about all he could handle.
Last week, Shannon, 43, was back at Walter Reed, but not to say goodbye. The doctors' signatures on two time-sensitive forms in his disability file had expired. He would have to be reexamined by his doctors, he was told, and his medical summaries would have to be written all over again. Unfortunately, the sergeant in charge of his disability paperwork had not stayed on top of his case...........


if i was king george, i wouldn't even THINK of taking ONE DAY OFF, a vacation, i wouldn't even THINK of relaxing until i was CERTAIN every single veteran (not just from iraq and afghanistan either) was cared for. what i don't understand is, why are people still enlisting when travesties like this keep occurring?


"I don't even know what 'going on with my life' means," said Staff Sgt. John Daniel Shannon, after being told that paperwork glitches would delay his release from Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Photo Credit: Photos By Michel Du Cille -- The Washington Post Photo