Peace & Nonviolence

• To shine a spotlight on the struggles of these veterans and their families, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans Against the War (IAVA) has launched an incredibly important and innovative online resource, The Wait We Carry.
• "I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This": A Soldier's Last Words

Paul Rieckhoff, Huffington Post

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06/24/2013 | Jonathan Goodman served in the Marines and twice was deployed to Iraq. In 2005, he earned a Purple Heart Medal for wounds sustained in a suicide-bomb blast. Returning to the U.S., he has struggled with traumatic brain injury, chronic migraines, anxiety, and pain in his ankles, arms, and back. On July 1, 2012, he filed a disability claim with the Department of Veteran Affairs.

And Jonathan has been waiting ever since - almost a full year - for a decision on his claim. While he gets medical treatment from the local VA hospital, he has said that the backlog delay has put a huge financial strain on him and his wife. Both he and his wife are putting in longer hours and taking extra work shifts. This didn't have to happen.

Full story…

Related:

"I Am Sorry That It Has Come to This": A Soldier's Last Words, Gawker

• Daniel Somers was a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Daniel suffered greatly from PTSD and had been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury and several other war-related conditions. On June 10, 2013, Daniel wrote the following letter to his family before taking his life. Daniel was 30 years old. His wife and family have given permission to publish it.
• We Are All Victims of War: Veteran Liberation Theology

• For decades beginning during the Cold War, US policy in the Islamic world has been aimed at suppressing secular reformist and leftist movements. Beginning with the CIA-engineered coup against a secular democratic reform government in Iran in 1953 (it was about oil), Washington has propped up dictators, coaching these regimes in the black arts of torture and mayhem against secular liberals and the left. 
• 8 New Items including:
  • We Are All Victims of War: Veteran Liberation Theology
  • Unwilling to Listen, Unable to Hear
  • The Corporate Media As Accomplice to the Iraq War
  • J’accuse: The War Criminal Rudolf Hoess Speaks
  • U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners
  • Film shows challenges of female veterans
  • Ex-CNN Reporter: I Received Orders to Manipulate News to Demonize Syria and Iran
  • Dwarfed by the Magnitude of the Problems

David Culver, Ed., Evergreene Digest

Drew Shenemen

We Are All Victims of War: Veteran Liberation Theology, Evan Knappenberger, Tikkun

The oppression of American veterans began specifically as an ideological enterprise and has been exceptionally successful in its main objectives: to marginalize veterans and to appropriate any political efficacy they might retain after the trauma of war.

Unwilling to Listen, Unable to Hear, Lynn Feinerman, Tikkun Daily

• The U.S. government and military complex is unwilling to listen, to listen deeply, to the cries of those whom it has slaughtered, wounded, detained, tormented and ruined
• Thoughts on the Boston Marathon Bombing 
• Boston and Beyond
• Pressure-Cooker and Cluster Bombs

The Corporate Media As Accomplice to the Iraq War, Matthew Rothschild,  The Progressive

It shouldn’t be too much to expect Rumsfeld, Bush, and Cheney to be tried for their crimes. The fact that it is says a lot about how lawless our nation has become, with the corporate media acting as an accomplice.

J’accuse: The War Criminal Rudolf Hoess Speaks, Gary G. Kohls, Duty to Warn / Evergreene Digest

• “Do not think you are better than me because you burn up enemies with long-range missiles without ever seeing what you have done.”
• To History’s Militarists, Including the CIA’s “Drone Warriors”

U.S. drones targeting rescuers and mourners, Glenn Greenwald, Salon 

• A new amply documented report demonstrates the use of American tactics that are almost certainly war crimes.
• Whatever else is true, it seems highly likely that Barack Obama is the first Nobel Peace laureate who, after receiving his award, presided over the deliberate targeting of rescuers and funeral mourners of his victims.
• Two Obamas, Two Classes Of Children

Film shows challenges of female veterans, Tom Wilemon, The Tennessean

• Sue Downes, who served as a driver and gunner in Afghanistan, had both legs amputated below the knee after her Humvee hit landmines in 2005.
• Stand with anti-war veteran Mike Prysner against right-wing attacks!

Ex-CNN Reporter: I Received Orders to Manipulate News to Demonize Syria and Iran, H. Said, SANA

• She revealed that the scenario used before launching the war on Iraq is being prepared to be repeated where Iran and Syria are now being subject to constant 'demonization'.
• Apparently, MSNBC and Faux got the same orders.
• The Koch brothers’ media investment

Dwarfed by the Magnitude of the Problems, Mark Thompson, Nation

The report contains reams of data and will be a gold mine for professionals looking for data about who went off to war, post-9/11, and how they fared.