Friday, March 7, 2003

War Against Ourselves 2 QUOTES FOR TODAY "We can't forget that war is inherently violent. People are going to die. As hard as we try to limit civilian casualties, it will occur. We need to condition people that that is war. People get the idea this is going to be antiseptic. Well, it's not going to be." - - Gen. Richard Myers "God is not on your side if you invade Iraq". - - Pope John Paul II   (in a recent message to G.W. Bush) http://truthout.org/docs_03/030703A.shtml RHINO HERE: Rupert Murdoch's Australian website claims  as early as Wednesday, shrub will give Saddam  an ultimatum to disarm within 72 hours or face war.  What?  Ultimatum Monday 3-10, Bombing Thursday 3-13, Invasion Monday 3-17.  Need we wonder how the honcho of Fox would know these things? http://news.com.au/common/story_page/0,4057,6087665%255E401,00.html NY Times reports that originally shrub's "Shock and Awe"  attack on Iraq was to be 600-800 missiles over 2 days, producing destruction comparable to the A-bomb attack on Hiroshima. Apparently that wasn't enough to terrify Saddam into surrendering, so now Gen. Richard Myers has upped the ante to 3,000 missiles over 2 days - equivalent to an H-bomb. How many innocent men, women, and children will die? Better yet, how few of Baghdad's 5 million civilians will survive? Rhino wonders what's the difference in the profit margin between 800 missiles and 3000. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/05/international/middleeast/05IRAQ.html Then there's the beltway's most celeb doctor, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist who pledged Tuesday to support veterans concerned about President Bush's health care proposals, but also said veterans and others will have to make sacrifices should the nation go to war with Iraq. He stated that the costs of the Iraq war would mean "we all have to sacrifice in various ways as we likely engage in military conflict, which we could not have anticipated a year ago, which is not fully budgeted and which ultimately will have to compete with what many of us want." http://www.startribune.com/stories/844/3732256.html Same ol' same ol' send'em off ta war & if they make it back, short change 'em at  the V.A. OPERATION DIRE DISTRESS - VETERANS AGAINST IRAQ WAR MARCH 22-24 IN WASHINGTON, DC TEACH-IN & SPEAKOUT - SATURDAY, MARCH 22 1-5 PM  -  American University-Kay Chapel DEMONSTRATION -SUNDAY MARCH 23 Assemble 12 Noon at Constitution Gardens - Solemn Procession to Vietnam, Korea,WW II Memorials & March to VA, White House, Rally on the Ellipse LOBBYING-MONDAY MARCH 24 Meetings with Congressional allies and state reps. All veterans, active-duty GI's, reservists, family members & supporters are welcome and encouraged to attend. Wear your medals, ribbons, uniforms, vets organization colors etc., bring flags, banners, signs. FOR MORE INFO, INCLUDING THE "VETERANS AGAINST IRAQ WAR STATEMENT OF PURPOSE" CHECK THESE SITES Veterans Against Iraq War http://www.vaiw.org participating organizations: Veterans For Peace http://www.veteransforpeace.org Vietnam Veterans Against the War http://www.vvaw.org Veterans for Common Sense http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation http://www.vvaf.org Military Familes Speak Out http://www.mfso.org THE BOTTOM LINE is an interview with Major Doug Rokke who besides having a PhD in health physics and was originally trained as a forensic scientist, when the Gulf War started, he was assigned to prepare soldiers to respond to nuclear, biological, & chemical warfare.  He was sent to the Gulf where his entire perspective on military life changed. He's now a passionate voice for peace. 8:29:36 AM    comment

The War Against Ourselves - An Interview with Major Doug Rokke Yes Magazine, conducted by the director of the Traprock Peace Center, Sunny Miller, supplemented with questions from YES! editors. QUESTION: Any viewer who saw the war on television had the impression this was an easy war, fought from a distance and soldiers coming back relatively unharmed. Is this an accurate picture? ROKKE: At the completion of the Gulf War, when we came back to the United States in the fall of 1991, we had a total casualty count of 760: 294 dead, a little over 400 wounded or ill. But the casualty rate now for Gulf War veterans is approximately 30 percent. Of those stationed in the theater, including after the conflict, 221,000 have been awarded disability, according to a Veterans Affairs (VA) report issued September 10, 2002.  Many of the US casualties died as a direct result of uranium munitions friendly fire. US forces killed and wounded US forces. We recommended care for anybody downwind of any uranium dust, anybody working in and around uranium contamination, and anyone within a vehicle, structure, or building that's struck with uranium munitions. That's thousands upon thousands of individuals, but not only US troops. You should provide medical care not only for the enemy soldiers but for the Iraqi women and children affected, and clean up all of the contamination in Iraq. And it's not just children in Iraq. It's children born to soldiers after they came back home. The military admitted that they were finding uranium excreted in the semen of the soldiers. If you've got uranium in the semen, the genetics are messed up. So when the children were conceived-the alpha particles cause such tremendous cell damage and genetics damage that everything goes bad. Studies have found that male soldiers who served in the Gulf War were almost twice as likely to have a child with a birth defect and female soldiers almost three times as likely. Q: You have been a military man for over 35 years. You served in Vietnam as a bombardier and you are still in the US Army Reserves. Now you're going around the country speaking about the dangers of depleted uranium (DU). What made you decide you had to speak publicly about DU? ROKKE: Everybody on my team was getting sick. My best friend John Sitton was dying. The military refused him medical care, and he died. John set up the medical evacuation communication system for the entire theater. Then he got contaminated doing the work. READ THE ENTIRE INTERVIEW AT: http://www.yesmagazine.org/25environmentandhealth/rokke.htm For more information on DU, see the WISE Uranium Project, http://www.antenna.nl/wise/uranium/;  the National Gulf War Resource Center, http://www.ngwrc.org; or Veterans for Common Sense, http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org. Sunny Miller's interview was originally broadcast on WMFO (Boston) in November 2002 and is available for re-broadcast at http://www.traprockpeace.org. "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 8:09:07 AM    comment

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