Yearly Archives: 2011

Nearly two decades before the Linfield College students were even born, the Vietnam War had ended, closing a wrenching chapter of American history as distant from their reality as the draft.

Twenty years ago this country’s best men and women were engaged in combat with the forces of Saddam Hussein after his August 2nd, 1990 invasion of Kuwait. In February 1991, my men and I knew we had what it would take to liberate the people of Kuwait. We had years of training and good leaders in our chain of command, as did many of the other units in the U.S. Army. We were confident in our combat capabilities, yet we had great concern about the prospect of having to face the chemical weaponry that we knew Iraq possessed. For weeks before the ground phase of Operation Desert Storm began, the prevailing winds had been blowing out of Iraq. We prayed that on G-day the winds would turn in our favor and blow back in the direction of Saddam’s forces. This we hoped would minimize the chances that the Iraqi Army would use their massive chemical stockpiles against us.

YAKIMA, Wash. -- From behind a visitor's window in the Yakima County jail, decorated Iraq War veteran Dustin Stump vividly recalls the firefights, explosions and killings in and around Baghdad.

Veterans!  Here’s your Top 10 News stories of the day compiled from the latest sources We encourage you to browse our list so that you...

(SALEM, OR) - The Navy and Marine Corps are faced with the choice of ‘doing the right thing’ by supporting legislation to provide medical care and compensation to those injured from exposure to environmental hazards while on active duty or facing the backlash of a public outcry for not doing so, including lawsuits from dependents and civilian workers that could run into the billions of dollars.

THE PRESIDENT: Good afternoon, everybody. Secretary Clinton and I just concluded a meeting that focused on the ongoing situation in Libya. Over the last few days, my national security team has been working around the clock to monitor the situation there and to coordinate with our international partners about a way forward.

The U.S. Army illegally ordered a team of soldiers specializing in "psychological operations" to manipulate visiting American senators into providing more troops and funding for the war, Rolling Stone has learned – and when an officer tried to stop the operation, he was railroaded by military investigators.

WASHINGTON – On Feb. 23, the men and women of the Department of Veterans Affairs will mark the 20th anniversary of the start of ground combat in the 1990-1991 Gulf War. Fighting ended 100 hours later after a U.S.-led coalition drove Iraqi forces from the small nation of Kuwait.

Few Americans remember Operation Cast Lead. Jews in America were told Israel had to finish off Hamas in order to protect itself. We can't get into exactly how fanciful and utterly false everything American Jews are told or even the childishly ignorant statements President Obama and Secretary Clinton make on a regular basis. They make me cringe. They should make all of us here in America ashamed, Jews and non-Jews alike.

So let's erase all the YouTubes and Facebooks and the shooting and blood and gouged corpses from Benghazi, and pretend it didn't happen. Let's pretend that the refusal to give visas to foreign correspondents has actually prevented us from hearing the truth. Gaddafi's claim that the protesters in Libya – the millions of demonstrators – "want to turn Libya into an Islamic state" is exactly the same nonsense that Mubarak peddled before the end in Egypt, the very same nonsense that Obama and La Clinton have suggested. Indeed, there were times last night when Gaddafi – in his vengefulness, his contempt for Arabs, for his own people – began to sound very like the speeches of Benjamin Netanyahu. Was there some contact between these two rogues, one wondered, that we didn't know about?

With a name like “Veterans For Peace,” it’s a fair question to ask if we should make statements supporting union members battling government offensives in Wisconsin and elsewhere. The VFP national leadership and, we believe, the overwhelming majority of our members think the answer is yes. We know too well that militarism and empire are central causes of the economic tragedies that have robbed millions of Americans of their livelihoods, health and homes. Those tragedies are now being played out at statehouses across the country.

Supreme US war criminals, former presidents of corrupt and occupied criminal government apparatus announce opening of Arizona Civility Center. Mr. George Bush Sr and Mr. William Jefferson Clinton parlay great crimes into great fortunes by heading new Civility Center in Arizona. Two supreme global war criminals who represented governed and manufactured America into the greatest militaristic threat to global peace, death, destruction, and humanities total annihilation. “Behind every great fortune lies a great crime!" The quote is a paraphrase from a line in Honoré de Balzac’s tragicomic.The cue-tipped odd-couple continues to parrot a 21st Century tragicomic subjective discourse to generate great wealth stream fortunes simultaneously perpetrating great crimes. By officiating U.S. politic parodies, perpetuating false social civil moral law narratives, and deflecting from the bowels of lower Manhattan's great crime organization.

On February 23, 2011, Joe Sobran, a prominent American journalist, syndicated columnist, and writer, would have turned 65. He did not live to see this day. He died on September 30, 2010. Below is my eulogy that originally appeared on the site of FGF last November.

It was not the number of people killed that shocked the world; the fire bombing of Dresden, Germany killed more 600,000 civilians. Not that, it was the fact the US wiped out or vaporized much of each city with only one bomb each.

Veterans!  Here’s your Top 10 News stories of the day compiled from the latest sources We encourage you to browse our list so that you...

BIRMINGHAM, AL (WBRC) - Birmingham police and volunteers are still looking for Michael Campbell, a local disabled veteran of the Vietnam War. Campbell, who is 65, wheelchair-bound and reliant on an oxygen tank, was last seen Saturday in the 5700 block of First Avenue North in Woodlawn.

Tall, lanky, easy of manner and articulate, Obama exuded hope and confidence across the globe as he entered the White House. The world was yearning for a paradigm shift and he held out the promise of change from the former President Bush's disastrous policies of aggression and unilateralism.

Building on the momentum of the Egyptian revolution and the growing push for freedom and democracy by citizens throughout the region, a coalition of organizations and individuals from around the world are preparing for a march to Gaza on 26 February 2011. The coalition will gather in the Egyptian port city of Al Arish and form a caravan to make the 32 km journey to the Rafah Border Crossing, disembarking to march the final kilometer to the border of the Gaza Strip. The objective of the march is to enter the strip with the full cooperation of Egyptian military officials and peacefully demand the permanent end of the Egyptian blockade of goods, services and building materials to the territory.

Earlier this week, Michael Lind wrote an article for Salon about the misplaced energy in demeaning alarmists like Glenn Beck.1 Having friends and family who often revere the inflammatory rhetoric of Beck, Palin, Limbaugh, and others as a light in the darkness, the temptation to dwell on and ridicule these figures, ones that have even caused divisions between conservative commentators, is strong. Lind’s point is crucial though: the question is not primarily whether or not Beck’s theories are sane. Actually, the less sane they seem, the more likely it is that these theories are moves of desperation and the more important it is that we should stay focused on the actual issue.

Last Friday’s American veto of the United Nations Security Council resolution that would have called Israeli settlement activity on the West Bank illegal was not only shameful, it was possibly the low point of the already foundering Obama presidency. To be sure, United States UN Ambassador Susan Rice accompanied the veto with a stirring rendition of “I’ll cry tomorrow” as she described how the Obama White House really is opposed to the settlements.

Irritable Bowel Syndrome is a rateable condition by the VA that falls under gulf war illness. The gulf war veterans also have a researcher at VA Minneapolis, Dr Ron Bach studying Hypercoagulation in Gulf War Illness. So the following news article on medical research today on Blood clots and Inflammatory Bowel diseases/disorders needs to be circulated to the Gulf War Veterans and to the health care providers and researchers that are concerned about our gulf war veterans 1990-91. The take home highlights of the article are in Bold and underlined to draw your attention to what is the most important items in the research.

Over the last ten years, the Internet transformed recruiting and recruitment advertising. Besides networking and personal connections, the Internet is now the leading source of job search and employment placement. However, we are currently undergoing a shift no less radical: the democratization of the Internet through ubiquitous search capability and social sharing. Because of this shift, recruiting and recruitment advertising has been undergoing a severe upheaval and transformation.

Today, Dictator Muamar Gadhafi gave a vicious defiant yelling speech calling protestors "drug addicts" and saying foreigners are influencing them with money. This sounded a bit like former Dictator Hosni Mubaraek who last week gave a similar speech just before he was unceremoniously booted out from his glass palace.

As per Paul Craig Robert, hypocrisy in America is now so commonplace it is no longer noticed. While it enjoys torturing other peoples for American sins, it objects to human rights abuses of countries it despises such as Burma, Pakistan, Iran, Syria. In USA if a person tortures a dog he is sent to jail, but a government functionary indulging in torture against fellow beings is ignored.

On November, 8, 2009, the Employment Standards Administration (ESA) was abolished and the four major program components of ESA-Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, Office of Labor Management Standards, Office of Workers' Compensation Programs and the Wage and Hour Division-became stand-alone programs reporting directly to the Secretary of Labor. The Office of the Assistant Secretary and the Office of Management, Administration and Planning (OMAP) were eliminated with administrative functions in OMAP transferred to the four programs or departmental administrative programs.

Covered contracts entered into by any department or agency for the procurement of personal property and non-personal services (including construction) for the United States, shall contain a provision requiring that the party contracting with the United States shall take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment qualified special disabled veterans, veterans of the Vietnam era and any other veterans who served on active duty during a war or in a campaign or expedition for which a campaign badge has been authorized. The provisions of this section shall apply to any subcontract entered into by a prime contractor in carrying out any contract for the procurement of personal property and non-personal services (including construction) for the United States.

VA POLICE SAY "ORDERED TO LIE, HARASS VETERANS" BILLION DOLLAR "LAND GRAB" ILLEGAL, REPORT STATES By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor There are over 20,000 homeless veterans...

EDITORS' NOTE :  On February 15, 2011,  Ray McGovern, U.S. Army veteran and former senior CIA analyst whose duties included preparing the President’s Daily...

Someone's been in here, Robert Dill thought as he walked through his neighbor's house on the morning of Dec. 30. That much seemed obvious even then — one day before his neighbor Jack Wheeler turned up dead at a landfill 7 miles away. Dill, 73, had gone to check the Wheeler house after noticing an upstairs window open. He remembered locking all of them when he and his wife had tidied Wheeler's aged brick duplex a few days earlier.

“Anti-Semite” slogan used by American Corporate Media to Confuse U.S. Public. Learn more

London, Feb 20(ANI): Double murder-accused US official Raymond Davis has been found in possession of top-secret CIA documents, which point to him or the feared American Task Force 373 (TF373) operating in the region, providing Al-Qaeda terrorists with "nuclear fissile material" and "biological agents," according to a report.

An alert employee at the St. Louis VA Medical Center detected stains on surgical instruments during a routine exam prior to a recent OR case.

Under President Barack Obama's new budget for fiscal year 2012, the Great American War Machine just rolls on and on. “As it is, we're pumping...money into sustaining a fighting force that's orders of magnitude larger than anything retained by any other country,” observes Ezra Klein of The Washington Post February 14th. So when Defense Secretary Robert Gates warned that major cuts in military spending would be “catastrophic,” Obama settled for chopping $78 billion in cosmetic cuts Gates recommended over the next five years, Klein wrote, adding, “I bet there are more than a few Cabinet secretaries who wish they had that kind of power over the president's recommendations.” Some observers, by the way, think the Pentagon is, in fact, already running the show. Chalmers Johnson wrote in “Blowback”(Metropolitan/Owl) that the Pentagon is “close to being beyond civilian control; that it “more or less sets its own agenda” and that it “monopolizes the formulation and conduct of American foreign policy.”

You can watch Al Jazeera on TV almost anywhere in the world - except in the United States. How is this possible in our nation where freedom of the press is a basic constitutional tenet? Just what do cable and satellite carriers fear?

The Nobel award, said Barack Obama at the time, was “an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations” and must be shared with everyone who strives for "justice and dignity". Where was the justice and dignity in the sad story of America’s UN veto?

As VT readers know, the Pentagon was hit by a Soviet-era naval cruise missile called the Granit, known by the US government as the Shipwreck, because that’s what it does: wrecks big ships such as aircraft carriers. Unlike normal cruise missiles, it is made of steel and weighs 7.7 tons. It goes 2.5 Mach and cannot be stopped by any sort of anti-aircraft weapon. It hits ships right at the waterline, which is why the 12 foot holes in the six capital (structural outer) walls of the Pentagon began right above ground level without harming a blade of grass on the lawn out front.

TRUTH JIHAD RADIO INTERVIEW  "WIKILEAKS ON STEROIDS" Foreword by Gordon Duff Senior Editor VT Audio editing by Edward Rynearson There are few more controversial figures than...

Though I have traveled the inroads of war and the back alleys of unknown battles, diligently and honorably, I am not with out flaw or fail.

Employees of Libya Inc. have been rioting in the streets of Benghazi and Tripoli in a bid for democracy, freedom, and justice. Dam these Unions!

Philadelphia, PA February 2011....... US stooge and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Obama's singular veto against the vote of 130 countries enforces the Zionst illegal expansion of settlements on stolen land in occupied Palestine. This act of unconditional defiance, by both US administrations for 63 years, screams out loudly that America is the greatest failed state in recorded history. Ivy league academic and bureaucratic stooges that cannot make change for a quarter and ignore their self dignity and humanity race to "Israel is popular stop for possible Republican presidential candidates" Posted by LA Times

The Tahrir Square "Hurriya!" tremors spreading across the Middle East may or may not be impacting today's events in the historically liberal American state of Wisconsin and other areas of America, yet most of us would agree that the Tunisian-Egyptian revolutions are being felt far and wide and appear to be dramatically gaining steam. Lebanon's Palestinian refugees camps are no exceptions.

Political donation laundering-rechanneling (PDLR) is a business in its own right, whether it is for pre-election donations or post-election maintenance contributions. In most cases, PDLR requires savvy strategists and planners, quick-witted implementers, friends and enablers in high-places, and a high degree of creativity, almost to the point of being artistic.