Richard Landeck, 56, of Wheaton, IL recently sent off a letter to President Bush, signing it as the “proud father of a fallen soldier.” Landeck’s son, Captain Kevin Landeck, died this past February in Iraq.
You can read the full painful text of the letter at A Father Addresses George Bush.
Then ask yourself what you will do to end the war today.
Someone has a very active imagination. If only this video was real:
This is an amazingly serious charge. It seems credible given that it's corroborated by several soldiers.
The Army is ordering injured troops to go to Iraq: As the military scrambles to pour more soldiers into Iraq, a unit of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Benning, Ga., is deploying troops with serious injuries and other medical problems, including GIs who doctors have said are medically unfit for battle. Some are too injured to wear their body armor, according to medical records.
On Feb. 15, Master Sgt. Jenkins and 74 other soldiers with medical conditions from the 3rd Division's 3rd Brigade were summoned to a meeting with the division surgeon and brigade surgeon. These are the men responsible for handling each soldier's “physical profile,” an Army document that lists for commanders an injured soldier's physical limitations because of medical problems — from being unable to fire a weapon to the inability to move and dive in three-to-five-second increments to avoid enemy fire. Jenkins and other soldiers claim that the division and brigade surgeons summarily downgraded soldiers' profiles, without even a medical exam, in order to deploy them to Iraq. It is a claim division officials deny.
Read the whole thing. I suppose it might not be true — but we'll never know for sure unless Congress (or SecDef Gates) investigates. And if true, it's just further black irony on the “support the troops” mantra.
Joshua Key is said to be a US Army deserter who fled to Canada (which, incidentally, has an extradition treaty with the US for deserters and draft dodgers now). He's published a book, The Deserter's Tale, which purports to be an account of atrocities he witnessed while serving in Iraq. An excerpt — very ugly if true — is online at Why I fled George Bush's war.
As a deserter, Key has an obvious interest in justifying himself. So I think these very serious allegations require corroboration before we can safely rely on them. But serious charges of random violence and apparent gang rape demand at least some investigation. Especially as the book is going to have Canadian, Australian, French, German, Dutch, Indian, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish and Japanese editions.
Unfortunately, that sort of investigation is not at all easy. And the US Army presumably has no great interest in risking corroboration. I fear we may never know for sure.
Steve Vlakeck would like to know How many U.S. citizens are being detained by the U.S. military in Iraq?.
It's a good question. Actually, Steve has a whole raft of them up at Niemanwatchdog.org.
If a week is a long time in politics, then two weeks must be forever in PR.
New Evidence Clouds U.S. Case against Iran: Two weeks ago, the Bush administration organized an intelligence briefing for journalists in Iraq to demonstrate that Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi insurgents. According to the anonymous briefers, the weapons — particularly explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s — were manufactured in Iran and provided to insurgents by the Quds Force — a fact that meant direction for the operation was “coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”
Well. A raid in southern Iraq on Saturday seems to have complicated the case.
It seems the Iraqis were making the stuff that the US had been saying could only have come from IraqIran. And from the markings on the boxes, it seems most of the key parts came straight from non-Iranian factories.
I hope the Times and Post put this on their front pages with the same prominence they gave the scare stories two weeks ago.
Jotwell Blenderlaw