Green, accused of raping and murdering an teenage Iraqi girl, is from Midland Texas. He is a high school dropout and was recently discharged honorably due to a personality disorder.

From the Midland Reporter.

Speaking in general terms, Veterans Outreach Counseling Center team leader Kent Knight said 15 to 20 percent of Midland veterans returning from Operation Iraqi Freedom have received counseling at his agency.

Knight said 15 to 20 percent of veterans returning from the war are having problems adjusting to life after the war. “The remaining 85 percent may be having it but don’t want anyone to know about it. If they admit to their family they are having a problem, that’s pretty much the end of it,” he said.

15 to 20 percent of returnees need help?. That’s some serious wreckage. Those are the ones in serious pain too. I worked the oil fields in Midland for a year in ‘75, it wasn’t a huggy-kissy kind of place where you talk about your feelings. Maybe it’s changed, but for oil field workers, ranchers, rednecks, etc. to go to war, come back, and have 15-20% needing help (that the military isn’t providing) means something horrific is going on over there.

Things are well beyond horrific for Iraqis of course, for the remaining family of the 14 year old girl who was forced to watch family members be murdered before she was raped and slaughtered. Yet many of the current prosecutions happened because other soldiers were sickened by what they saw and went to the authorities. What happens when they come home? Nightmares for years? Alcohol and drug abuse? We’re already seeing homeless in LA who are Iraq war vets…

Rich man’s war

“Bobby had an eagle and a flag tattooed on his arm
Red white and blue to the bone when he landed in Kandahar
Left behind a pretty young wife and a baby girl
A stack of overdue bills and went off to save the world
Been a year now and he’s still there
Chasin’ ghosts in the thin dry air
Meanwhile back at home the finance company took his car
Just another poor boy off to fight a rich man’s war”

– Steve Earle

[tags]Steven Green[/tags]

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Sens. Joe Biden of Delaware, Barbara Boxer of California and Ken Salazar of Colorado plan to campaign in Connecticut for Lieberman between now and the Aug. 8 primary.

Note they are campaigning for Lieberman and against the anti-war lite challenger Ned Lamont in the Aug. 8 primary. That’s right, it’s a primary, not a general election Yet these senators are deliberately taking sides against Lamont and anti-war sentiment early on. Generally, parties don’t back candidates in a primary. Not this time…

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As Britain’s outspoken Ambassador to the Central Asian Republic of Uzbekistan, Craig Murray helped expose vicious human rights abuses by the US-funded regime of Islam Karimov. He is now a prominent critic of Western policy in the region.

He was fired for his trouble, after exposing the US/British policy of sending prisoners there to be tortured, sometimes by immersion in boiling water. After months of legal battles his book, Murder in Samarkland, has been published.

Murder in Samarkand has finally been released after ten months in legal limbo. Amazon is posting it out today. Bookshops are still a bit wary of taking it into stock as we wait to see if the FCO carries out its threat to take legal action once published.

More from Lenin’s Tomb, an advance reader of the book, who notes that parts of the documentation are only available online.

Even though many of these documents were secured for release under the Freedom of Information Act, the government argues that they remain the property of the Crown and may not be published: hence, the publisher could not include them for fear of prosecution. Still, the internet is a wonderful invention…

[tags]Craig Murray[/tags]

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Lopez Obrador, the former mayor of Mexico City, said the vote count was riddled with irregularities and called a rally of supporters for Saturday in the capital’s main square to back his cause.

He said he would take his complaints to Mexico’s highest electoral court, which means disputes over who won Sunday’s vote could drag on until early September.

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Protest U.S.-backed Israeli terror in Gaza
Justice for Palestine! Stop the racist attack!
Fri. July 7, 2-5 pm
Westwood Federal Building
11000 Wilshire Blvd. (Corner of Wilshire & Veteran)

Responding to the recent Israeli military incursion in Gaza and humanitarian crisis resulting from aid cuts to the Palestinian people, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation, A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and National Council of Arab Americans call upon all people of conscience to join a protest demanding “Justice for Palestine!” in Los Angeles this Friday afternoon.

The protest is being organized, along with similar protests throughout the country.

L.A. Forum on Palestine: Behind the Crisis
Stop Israeli Aggression! End the Occupation Now!
Fri. July 7, 7:30 pm
ANSWER LA office
1800 Argyle Ave, #400, LA

Hear an anti-imperialist analysis of the situation in Palestine and discuss the role Israel plays in forwarding U.S. domination in the region. There will be speakers, political discussion and refreshments.

Featuring
Richard Becker, ANSWER Coalition leader from S.F., Middle East expert
Muna Coobtee, Free Palestine Alliance

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Investigators say [Steven] Green and other soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division plotted to rape a young Iraqi woman they first saw at a traffic checkpoint in the village of Mahmoudiya. Green is accused of rounding up three family members in a room of the woman’s house and shooting them before raping and killing her.

In other words, it had nothing to do with fighting a war. If true, sadistic loser sociopaths - and Green was recently discharged because of an “antisocial personality disorder” - get guns, then murder and rape. Why are they even IN the Army?

Apparently, the same people who make America’s streets unsafe for Americans make Iraqi streets unsafe for Iraqis. In response to the declining caliber of new recruits, some of our best troops are refusing to reenlist. Several have written to me that “the Army has left them.”

Iraq PM demands independent Iraqi inquiry

[tags]Iraqi rape, Steven Green[/tags]

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Check out our improved “Polizeros mini-Blogroll” in the left column, now with categories. Click a folder name to get a list of blogs. Then click a blog name.

If the blog name has the orange rss symbol, then you’ll get a list of posts on that blog. Click again to read more of a post. If the blog name has a blue dot, then you’ll just go to the blog home page, with no fancy widgetry involved.

All of which goes to show why blogs should always have a rss feed. Blogger blogs do not come with a rss feed built-in (Use Feedster to generate it.) Movable Type and WordPress, being modern, do.
PS To use the widget, you don’t need to understand any of the techie stuff, just click away!

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He’s noxious, worse than a mere DINO, hideous on the war and women’s rights. But it’s still quite probable that Lieberman will win in Connecticut. Netroots may have bungee-jumped into a race they can’t win.

Lieberman, a three-term senator, held a seemingly comfortable lead over Lamont among Democrats a month ago in a Quinnipiac University poll. He was preferred by 57 percent of Democrats to 32 percent for Lamont.

A June poll by Quinnipiac University predicts Lieberman winning with 56 percent of the vote if he runs as an unaffiliated candidate.

Yes, these polls were in June, and yes the race will tighten. But that’s a big lead, and voters there (I grew up in Connecticut) genuinely like him - even liberals, even those opposed to the war.

Anti-war protest needs to go deeper than backing the multi-millionaire Lamont, who has no political experience, is self-financing his run, and at best is Anti-war Lite.

It appears as of now that Lamont will put all his eggs in the primary basket. Should he lose then he will be a good Democratic lemming and march along with the pro-war Lieberman “for the good of the party”. What hogwash!

Lemmings like this won’t end the war.[tags]Joe Lieberman, Ned Lamont[/tags]

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