By JEFF DONN and KIMBERLY HEFLING, Associated Press writers
TEMECULA, Calif. - He was one of America’s first defenders on Sept. 11, 2001, a Marine who pulled burned bodies from the ruins of the Pentagon. He saw more horrors in Kuwait and Iraq.
Today, he can’t keep a job, pay his bills, or chase thoughts of suicide from his tortured brain. In a few weeks, he may lose his house, too.
Gamal Awad, the American son of a Sudanese immigrant, exemplifies an emerging group of war veterans: the economic casualties.
Once upon a time there were conspirators that were confined to the hysterical ramblings of the nut-jobs and whackos; they were shackled by pitiless sensibility and shame before a nation of citizens who were “looking for the union labels”. Secret missions and test case administrations were set up in quiet little countries that no-one paid attention to and no-one ever saw. The savage capitalism shell-game of Privatization and Free Trade, trickled-down like black Bechtel rain in Chile, Bolivia, Mexico, and other Latin American under-televised economic laboratories where the CIA and MI6 ruled with a free hand, by any means necessary. Through drug trafficking and assassinations, terrorist bombings and out-right slander, the CIA has destroyed democracies and created dictators for over 40 years, just to work-out the kinks of a economic plan destined to be brought back home to our shores.
Designed in America; fashioned by third world labor; now ready for domestic consumption.
And still no impeachment because “the war now belongs to the Republicans in the Senate“! Impeachement is “off the table” so she and fellow Democrats can use the dead bodies of our soldiers as stepping stones in 2008! The Articles of Impeachment weren’t written into the Constitution to protect the Speaker of the House or to be bandied about and only used when it is politically expediant! Pelosi MUST be IMPEACHED herself! Watch how she squirms and wriggles around as Wolf Blitzer asks one tough question after another!
In an interview on MSNBC Ex White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer slips and nearly let’s the cat out of the bag when being asked why the new ads for Freedom Watch, a pro-war PR not-for-profit, equates Iraq and 9/11. When asked why the ads show Iraq vets claiming we have to stay in Iraq to fight the people that brought down the towers, he responds with “...and they(the vets) know that al Qaeda is in Iraq and even though al Qaeda had nothing ….er… Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11“. You can find this exchange at 3:50 on the countdown ticker.
After he corrects the slip, and during mid sentence, Ari gets this little out-of-place smile on his face as if to almost laugh about nearly letting the cat out of the bag.
Policy is set from the top down, it always has been. What the subordinates see as the standard operating procedure, they emulate as best they can.
The New York Times just published an article about widespread graft and corruption in the ranks of the US Army contracting offices from Iraq and Kuwait. Several officers have been indicted leading to a few arrests and at least two suicides.
The article revolves around Major Cockerham, a 41 year old from Castor, La., who grew up extremely poor and worked his way up through the ranks of the military to make something of himself. Major Cockerham found himself in a situation where godless amounts of cash was being shuttled back and forth and contracts were being handed out like candy on Halloween.
Sunday morning coffee and the New York Times sometimes produce undesirable results.
An article from the New York Times by Charles Duhigg titled “More Profit, less Nursing At Many Homes” got me thinking about Naomi Klein’s new book “Shock Doctrine” and how our corporate model is now mainly based on the theory of Milton Friedman that in crisis there is opportunity.
WeAreChange produced this remarkable video splicing together video from one of their confrontations with Alan Greenspan, with CSPAN coverage of Rep. Bernie Sanders’ brilliant exposition of Greenspan and his complete disregard for the American working and middle classes.
For those of you with dial-up, I strongly suggest you take the time to download it.
President Bush just declared the he would veto the Children’s Health Insurance Program expansion passed by with bi-partisan support. On his weekly radio address he claimed that the Democrats are pushing this bill to make a political point and all it will do is hurt the children. That’s because this bill, which increases funding for the CHIP program by 35 billion over the next 5 years, is the funding base of the program nationwide. If it isn’t passed before the end of the month, the program will die in 15 states and thousands of under-privileged children will be without health care.
…and it is an insult to liberal democrats. By Scott Creighton
89.6 million People went without health insurance for all or part of the last two years. That is over 1/3rd of the entire population. Then you factor in that we have nearly 3 million in jails or prison and that they are not included in these numbers, because they have access to health care.
The numbers are dismal and reflect a crisis in America that goes beyond health care. From the Reuters News Service article on MSNBC; “The report found that more than 79 percent of those without insurance were in families in which at least one person had a job, 70.6 percent were themselves employed full-time, and 8.7 percent were employed part-time.”
The simple fact is that Americans can no longer afford health care. And that is by design.
