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

[Chris Kaihatsu]

Yeah!


Chris



----- Original Message -----
From: "Garth Liebhaber" <garthliebhaber at care2.com>
To: <dwlb at uchicago.edu>; <imc-chicago-working at lists.indymedia.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 8:53 AM
Subject: Re: [CIMC-work] RE: HOT topic -- U.S. shortchanging its soldiers


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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