I Cogitate

So you say you want to be a soldier eh? To defend this country from foreign threats, put your life on the line to spread liberty, democracy and human rights throughout the world? All the time knowing that the upper echelon of the civilian government and the military, who gush with such pride at your selfless endeavors, always has your back.

Well, don't join the armed forces of the United States.

For you will only become a Dylanesque 'pawn in the game,' a body deemed expendable for reasons of 'greater national good' by the leaders who personally sacrifice nothing while wrapping themselves in the very same flag that will drape your casket.

Am I being unpatriotic, just another of those negative liberals berating the men and women protecting my freedom to write this blog entry?

Hardly.

But if you still think so, read on:

Here is an excerpt from today's Michael Moss-written New York Times article on the travails of some U. S. Marines who are not being properly supported, despite the means to do so, by the very same individuals who placed them in harm's way:

"On May 29, 2004, a station wagon that Iraqi insurgents had packed with C-4 explosives blew up on a highway in Ramadi, killing four American marines who died for lack of a few inches of steel.

The four were returning to camp in an unarmored Humvee that their unit had rigged with scrap metal, but the makeshift shields rose only as high as their shoulders, photographs of the Humvee show, and the shrapnel from the bomb shot over the top.

"The steel was not high enough," said Staff Sgt. Jose S. Valerio, their motor transport chief, who along with the unit's commanding officers said the men would have lived had their vehicle been properly armored. "Most of the shrapnel wounds were to their heads."

Among those killed were Rafael Reynosa, a 28-year-old lance corporal from Santa Ana, Calif., whose wife was expecting twins, and Cody S. Calavan, a 19-year-old private first class from Lake Stevens, Wash., who had the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, tattooed across his back.

They were not the only losses for Company E during its six-month stint last year in Ramadi. In all, more than one-third of the unit's 185 troops were killed or wounded, the highest casualty rate of any company in the war, Marine Corps officials say.

In returning home, the leaders and Marine infantrymen have chosen to break an institutional code of silence and tell their story, one they say was punctuated not only by a lack of armor, but also by a shortage of men and planning that further hampered their efforts in battle, destroyed morale and ruined the careers of some of their fiercest warriors.

The saga of Company E, part of a lionized battalion nicknamed the Magnificent Bastards, is also one of fortitude and ingenuity. The marines, based at Camp Pendleton in southern California, had been asked to rid the provincial capital of one of the most persistent insurgencies, and in enduring 26 firefights, 90 mortar attacks and more than 90 homemade bombs, they shipped their dead home and powered on. Their tour has become legendary among other Marine units now serving in Iraq and facing some of the same problems..."

Here is a Reuter's article from today on the Bush Administration choosing to support foreign interests over those of tortured U.S. prisoners of war:

US top court rejects appeal by 1991 POWs in Iraq

25 Apr 2005

Source: Reuters
By James Vicini

"This cases raises important and recurring questions concerning the ability of U.S. citizens who are victims of state-sponsored terrorism to seek redress against terrorist states in federal courts," they said. Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department said further review of the case by the Supreme Court was unwarranted.

WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - Seventeen American prisoners of war in the 1991 Gulf War failed on Monday to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review of a ruling that threw out a nearly $1 billion judgment against Iraq, Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi Intelligence Service.

The justices refused to review a U.S. appeals court ruling that dismissed the lawsuit by the 17 servicemen and by 37 of their immediate family members on the grounds they could not bring the case under the law at issue.

Bush administration attorneys opposed the appeal by the POWs and argued the lawsuit had been properly dismissed. President George W. Bush had determined such judgments "would seriously undermine funding for the essential tasks of the new Iraqi government," they said.

The lawsuit was filed in April 2002 under a 1996 federal law that allows lawsuits by U.S. citizens against state sponsors of terrorism. The servicemen said they had been brutally tortured while held captive by Iraq during the war.

Iraq never responded to the lawsuit. Several months after U.S.-led forces ousted Saddam, a federal judge in July 2003 awarded the plaintiffs $653 million in compensatory damages and $306 million in punitive damages.

Two weeks after the ruling, the U.S. Justice Department sought to intervene in the case.

Department attorneys argued the 1996 law no longer applied and they cited an emergency appropriations law adopted by Congress in April 2003 that authorized Bush to suspend sanctions against Iraq and to take it off the list of state sponsors of terrorism.

APPEALS RULING

The appeals court ruled the plaintiffs were not legally entitled to the judgment.

It said the law on foreign sovereign immunity and one of its previous ruling made clear such lawsuits cannot be brought against a foreign state or a leader who acts in an official capacity.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs appealed to the high court.

A U.S. citizen who has been tortured by a state sponsor of terrorism can bring a case against a foreign sovereign under state or federal law or for violating international legal norms against torture, they said.

A bipartisan group of 20 members of Congress and a group of former national security officials supported the plaintiffs.

Acting Solicitor General Paul Clement of the Justice Department said further review of the case by the Supreme Court was unwarranted.

"Subjecting Iraq to suit under (the 1996 law) served the United States' foreign policy interests by threatening large damage awards for the wrongs of the Hussein regime, in the immediate aftermath of the removal of that regime by military force, such judgments would hinder crucial foreign policy objectives," he said.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeal without comment or recorded dissent."

Oh, but what about the Donald Rumsfeld's projection:

"I don't believe that the United States has the responsibility for reconstruction, in a sense...(Reconstruction) funds can come from those various sources I mentioned: frozen assets,oil revenues and a variety of other things, including Oil for Food, which has a very substantial number of billions of dollars in it. (Source:Senate Appropriations Hearing, 3/27/03)"

and Paul Wolfowitz:

"We're dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon." (Source: House Committee on Appropriations Hearing on a Supplemetal War Regulation, 3/27/03)"

Yep, the military recruiting commercials will need updating. 'Be all that you can be' will need this added: 'unless it doesn't suit our national interests. Plus 'An army of one' should be re-written to 'you're out there on your own buddy.'

Unfortunately for our armed forces, you go to war with the Secretary of Defense you have, not the one you wish you had.

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