Bush claims to care about the military. At the same time, he is sending sick and injured troops back to Iraq, including soldiers with festering head wounds, stress injuries, neck injuries, broken toes and feet:
Late on March 23, Gunn told his mother, Pat, that his commanders were putting pressure on him to return to Iraq, but there was no way he was getting on that plane. A few hours later, he was airborne. This week, Gunn's distraught mother, who is herself a navy veteran, received a first official response to her demands to know why a soldier, who was being treated by military doctors for combat stress, was sent back to the war.Bush's pretty speeches about supporting the armed forces are just so many words to him.The note, which acknowledged Gunn suffered post-traumatic stress, said: "After discussion of his case it was determined ... this may be in his best interest mentally to overcome his fear by facing it. Therefore, he has been cleared for redeployment."
Gunn is not the only broken soldier being sent to battle. The Guardian has uncovered more than a dozen instances in which ill or injured soldiers were sent to war by a US military whose resources have been stretched near to breaking point by the simultaneous fronts in Afghanistan and Iraq. In its investigation, the Guardian learned of soldiers who were deployed with almost wilful disregard to their medical histories, and with the most cursory physical examinations. Soldiers went to war with chronic illnesses such as coronary disease, mental illness, arthritis, diabetes and the nervous condition, Tourette's syndrome, or after undergoing recent surgery.
Yesterday Charles Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector in Iraq (he replaced David Kay 6 weeks ago), spun the facts on the ground in Iraq to make Saddam Hussein's weapons programs look more threatening than they really were. Oddly, the public version of his testimony was contradicted by the classified version. Luckily, Sen. Carl Levin was on the case:
WASHINGTON – Following Mr. Charles Duelfer’s testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., the senior Democrat of the committee, said the following:I am deeply troubled by the contents of the declassified testimony of Mr. Charles Duelfer, the Director of Central Intelligence’s Special Advisor for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, that has been released by the CIA this afternoon.
The public statement, in a number of instances, contains material that, when compared to the contents of the underlying classified status report from Mr. Duelfer that was submitted to the Armed Services Committee for the hearing this morning, includes material that suggests that Iraq had an active weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program while leaving out information that would lead one to doubt that it did.
I am therefore calling for the CIA to declassify, to the extent possible, the whole report so the public can reach their own conclusions.
Mr. Duelfer’s public statement is written to express the author’s “suspicions” as to Iraq’s activities relating to possible weapons of mass destruction programs or activities while leaving out information in the classified report which points away from his suspicions.
Mr. Duelfer’s statement raises the same issues of selective use of information in public statements of the CIA that have been such a problem for the credibility of the Intelligence Community’s pre-war estimates related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.
Rand Beers
"Beers put in 30-plus years working for the federal government in a series of national-security jobs. Unlike Clarke, he is a registered Democrat. But his reputation among career civil servants was sufficiently apolitical that he, like Clarke, received appointments from Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush." [Josh Marshall, The Hill 3/25/04]
Beers is now John Kerry's top national security advisor, but he used to be the NSC's senior director for counter-terrorism for the Bush administration.
He resigned just before the Iraq war, though he nominally denies it was in protest over the invasion of Iraq.
The administration had misplaced priorities.
"The administration wasn't matching its deeds to its words in the war on terrorism. They're making us less secure, not more secure," said Beers, who until now has remained largely silent about leaving his National Security Council job as special assistant to the president for combating terrorism. "As an insider, I saw the things that weren't being done. And the longer I sat and watched, the more concerned I became, until I got up and walked out." [Washington Post 6/16/03]The Iraq war cost us in the war on terrorism.
Beers criticized the administration's focus on Iraq, which he said came at the expense of domestic security, damaged America's international alliances and could help breed a new generation of terrorists.
"I continue to be puzzled by it," said Beers, who did not oppose the war but felt the U.S. should have built a broader coalition. "Why was it such a policy priority?" He said the evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction – the official rationale for war – "was pretty qualified, if you listened carefully."
He said many of his colleagues considered Iraq an "ill-conceived and poorly executed strategy."[CBS News 6/16/03]
Former White House counter-terrorism coordinator Rand Beers, who resigned in March just before the Iraq war began, said that U.S. troops, CIA paramilitary officers and intelligence collection devices were withdrawn from Afghanistan and refurbished for use in the war against Iraq.
Beers - who now works for the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. - added that war with Iraq added to U.S. difficulties in committing the security force or aid needed to stabilize Afghanistan.
"We missed some opportunities," Beers said. [Knight Ridder 11/30/03]
"From February 2002 to March 2003 Dr. [Flynt] Leverett was Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council."
Not only has the war in Iraq not advanced the fight against terrorism, it has helped al-Qaeda regroup and recover. Flynt Leverett, a former director at the National Security Council in the Bush White House told NBC, "There were decisions made to take key assets, human assets, technical assets, out of theater in Afghanistan in order to position them for the campaign to unseat Saddam."He added, "We see today that al-Qaida has been able to reconstitute leadership cells in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region and it would seem in Eastern Iran."MSNBC 7/03
Richard Clarke's criticism of the Bush administration's approach to the fight against terrorism cuts to the heart of the President's shameless re-election strategy. That's why they have tried so hard to undermine his credibility, employing the "politics of personal destruction" with unprecedented viciousness. Yet Clarke has withstood the assault, due to the truth of his accusations.
It is shockingly easy to find corroboration for Clarke's charges against the administration. Yesterday's Washington Post had an excellent article drawing support for Clarke's allegations from Bob Woodward's largely sympathetic portrayal of the administration's reaction to September 11th. The New York Times also commented on Woodward's well-noted corroboration of much of Clarke's case:
In Bob Woodward's Bush at War, the president himself acknowledged that Osama bin Laden had not been a central focus in the eight months before the attacks."I was not on point," Mr. Bush was quoted in the book as saying. "I have no hesitancy about going after him. But I didn't feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling."
In mid-March the Washington Post reported on the birth of a new phenomenon: military families opposing an active war. War under false pretenses will do that:
When the invasion of Iraq began, Dvorin -- a 61-year-old Air Force veteran and a retired cop -- thought the commander in chief deserved his support. "I believed we were destroying part of the axis of evil," he says. "I truly believed that Saddam Hussein was a madman and that he possessed weapons of mass destruction and wouldn't hesitate to use them."By the time Army 2nd Lt. Seth Dvorin was sent to Iraq last September, however, his father was having doubts. And now that Seth had been killed, at 24, by an "improvised explosive device" south of Baghdad, doubt had turned to anger.
"Where are all the weapons of Mass Destruction?" Richard Dvorin demanded in his letter. "Where are the stockpiles of Chemical and Biological weapons?" His son's life, he wrote, "has been snuffed out in a meaningless war."
Yesterday, the Post had another story about the pressures extended military deployments and the military's "stop-loss" policies are imposing on military families:
This change is reflected in a recent poll conducted by The Washington Post, the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University, and in dozens of supplemental interviews. The poll, the first nongovernmental survey of military spouses conducted since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, included more than 1,000 spouses living on or near the 10 heaviest-deploying Army bases.Combined with the survey of troop morale, this is not a good sign of things to come.While most of them said they have coped well, three-quarters said they believe the Army is likely to encounter personnel problems as soldiers and their families tire of the pace and leave for civilian lives.
While the administration claims to be on the side of our men in uniform a new Army survey of troop morale in Iraq revealed that they simply have not done enough. More then half the troops classified their moral as low. This combined with a lack of post war planning from the Bush administration has damaged the psychological health of our soldiers. The military’s plans did not include enough psychiatrists and mental health specialists to help our soldiers deal with the trauma of war and suicides have been abnormally high. Our troops deserve better!
This follows an October survey by Stars and Stripes Magazine that showed low troop morale because of "insufficient training" and because "their mission lacks clear definition" and "the war in Iraq [w]as of little or no value."
A massive Army survey of troop morale in Iraq reveals some very bad news. More than half of the troops surveyed reported their morale was low. The low morale, combined with a lack of planning, have really damaged the psychological health of our soldiers. Suicides are abnormally high, and the military plan didn't include enough Army psychiatrists or mental health specialists.
This follows an October survey by Stars and Stripes Magazine that showed low troop morale because of "insufficient training" and because "their mission lacks clear definition" and "the war in Iraq [w]as of little or no value."