[CIMC-work] RE: HOT topic -- U.S. shortchanging its soldiers

[Garth Liebhaber]

Dan, All,

This would be an excellent feature, really building at the grass-roots level.
If Dan is able to get in touch with his people it would be great to focus on the formation of their group 
and to build up the feature with links to provocative/profound articles highlighting the severity of this 
situation.

What do people think?

Garth


It would be good to do a center panel on chicago area soldiers who just got 
back from iraq and afganistan, or are still there.  One person I know was the 
president of city colleges student govt last year, was in the reserves, sent to 
iraq, just got back, and now is trying to build a city college student activist 
network.  Another friend of mine got back from afganistan after a 6 month 
tour.  He just got a call from haliburton seeing if he wanted to work in iraq 
or afganistan for a year.

I'd have to ask them if they'd be willing to speak publicly about what it is 
like for gi's and what they think, but I agree that it would be a cool center 
panel.

peace,

dan lb
773-505-2579

==============================
A colleague of mine has a son in Iraq.  He pointed out to me that the Army 
has announced that BECAUSE IT CANNOT AFFORD TO OUTFIT NEW TROOPS, it is 
extending the tour-of-duty of current troops until, perhaps, October 2004! 

The serious shortage of equipment is being repoted on buzzflash.com, 
according to my friend, and includes such things as: 
 - the army BILLING soldiers for food eaten while in the hospital 
 - soldiers PRIVATELY purchasing night-vision binoculars (for their onw 
survival) 
 - soldiers wearing two armor vests (one in front and one in back) to 
    compensate for inadequate body armor. 

It seems to me that this is potentially the most damaging condemnation of 
the Bush crowd to its key supporters that I have heard of.  It needs to be 
checked-out, but it might be an important center column feature. 
===============================
Agree. The case of Sergeant Vanessa Turner especially has got a lot of 
sympathetic coverage (from Democracy NOW to CNN and elsewhere). Are 
there any of the vets groups (or other groups) doing anything (vocally) 
about this locally?  Local families banding together?  I wonder whether 
the National Gulf War Resource Center will be embracing the Gulf II 
vets?  Their website is http://www.ngwrc.org/ (they are a good source 
for info on so-called depleted uranium and Gulf War syndrome).  A link 
 from their website goes to a new American Foreign Legion campaign (talk 
about right, left) -- to a new AFL healthcare campaign "I am not a 
number, I am one of 300,000 veterans waiting to see a doctor) -- 
http://www.veterans.legion.org/ 

It sounds good--but we'd need a local story. This could tie in with 
healthcare and econ issues as well as war coverage. -- eliz 


A colleague of mine has a son in Iraq.  He pointed out to me that the Army 
has announced that BECAUSE IT CANNOT AFFORD TO OUTFIT NEW TROOPS, it is 
extending the tour-of-duty of current troops until, perhaps, October 2004! 

The serious shortage of equipment is being repoted on buzzflash.com, 
according to my friend, and includes such things as: 
 - the army BILLING soldiers for food eaten while in the hospital 
 - soldiers PRIVATELY purchasing night-vision binoculars (for their onw 
survival) 
 - soldiers wearing two armor vests (one in front and one in back) to 
    compensate for inadequate body armor. 

It seems to me that this is potentially the most damaging condemnation of 
the Bush crowd to its key supporters that I have heard of.  It needs to be 
checked-out, but it might be an important center column feature. 
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