Thursday, Nov 27th
Last update10:07:22 AM GMT
Military Glance
By Ray McGovern 27 Year CIA Intel Analyst
First, thank you for honoring the oath we commissioned officers take to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic. As you are doubtless aware, that oath has no expiration date; it remains on active duty, so to speak. You have let it be known that, even though you are now retired, you do not intend to speak, on or off the record, about the looming war with Iran.
WASHINGTON — Two nightmares haunt Robin Milonas.
While serving in Afghanistan in 2004 as an Army Reserve civil affairs officer, the former lieutenant colonel got lost in a minefield while leading a small convoy delivering school supplies to civilians. Even more troubling is the memory of a man who arrived at the main gate of Bagram Air Base carrying a young boy whose leg had been blown off by a land mine.
"I was an outgoing, energetic, determined good soldier who wanted to make the Army a career," said Milonas, of Puyallup, Wash., who just turned 50. "Now I am broken."
Milonas is one of roughly 180,000 women who've been deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. While they don't officially serve in combat, they have experienced life in a war zone where there are no front lines.
And as they return home, they're increasingly turning to an already overtaxed Department of Veterans Affairs for help. Last year, the VA treated more than 255,000 female veterans. The number is expected to double within five years.
Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.
TVNL Comment: Al-Qaeda? Sure...it's not like they were working with any CIA people or anything! Al-Qaeda is the biggest smoke screen in history.
Because of flawed electrical work by contractors, the bulletin stated, soldiers at American bases in Iraq had received severe electrical shocks, and some had even been electrocuted.
Since that warning, at least two more American soldiers have been electrocuted in similar circumstances. In all, at least a dozen American military personnel have been electrocuted in Iraq, according to the Pentagon and Congressional investigators.
Cheated. Baited and switched. That's how veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan say they feel about military recruiters who sold them on how the GI Bill would benefit them.
"They kind of sell you a dream," she said after the rally. "You think you're going to get all of this stuff, and in reality, you don't get that. I just kind of believed what my recruiter told me, which is not the truth."
TVNL Comment; There is no bigger sucker than someone who joins the military these days. They are lied to about everything from the purpose of their mission to the terms of their benefits. One look at the number of homeless veterans in this country should have been enough to make these people understand that there is something wrong. But like most Americans, they don't believe that America can do any wrong, no matter how much evidence exists. (As is the case with American complicity in the events of 9/11.)
State Department investigators found that a subsidiary of a major defense contractor provided portions of the computer source code of Air Force One to a company in Russia in 1998, according to a little-noticed consent agreement reached earlier this month.
"The recent disclosures underscore the Bush administration's extraordinarily sweeping conception of executive power," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU's National Security Project. "The administration's lawyers believe the president should be permitted to violate statutory law, to violate international treaties, and even to violate the Fourth Amendment inside the U.S. They believe that the president should be above the law."
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