Thomas Paine's version of "you didn't build that":
"Separate an individual from society,and give him an island or a continent to possess,and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end,in all cases,that where the former do not exist the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore,of personal property,beyond what a man's own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice,of gratitude,and of civilization,a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came"
Submitted by Leah
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In the Vietnam era, stories like this and television reporting on the war contributed to the end of the Vietnam War in a time frame of much less than 17 years.
As deployment of the last 17 years only came to a sub set of young people, and TV and news rarely covered the searing violence of war, eschewing such content for minor content (Kardashians, Tweets, outrageous behavior), the daily violence and futility went “off stage”.
One is invited to read the daily post, “United States Wars, News and Casualties” and then watch the daily news on the U.S. TV Media.
The absence of U.S. War News is atrocious.
We need this daily report of our wars in our face………..Daily.
The McGlynn
Damn
The WarCriminals,Bush,Cheney,Rice,Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Powell and Blair from England.
How many Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion 15 years ago? Some credible estimates put the number at more than one million. You can read that sentence again.
The invasion of Iraq is often spoken of in our country as a “blunder,” or even a “colossal mistake.” It was a crime.
Those who perpetrated it are still at large. Some of them have even been rehabilitated thanks to the horrors of a mostly amnesiac citizenry.
We condemned children to death, some after many days of writhing in pain on bloodstained mats, without pain relievers. Some died quickly, wasted by missing arms and legs, crushed heads. As the fluids ran out of their bodies, they appeared like withered, spoiled fruits. They could have lived, certainly should have lived – and laughed and danced, and run and played- but instead they were brutally murdered. Yes, murdered!
The war ended for those children, but it has never ended for survivors who carry memories of them. Likewise, the effects of the U.S. bombings continue, immeasurably and indefensibly.
Humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock fears a ‘huge loss of life’ as fighting continues
A displaced Yemeni girl drinks water in a camp set up for people who have fled from Hodeidah. Photograph: Saleh Al-Obeidi/AFP/Getty Images
A famine inflicting “huge loss of life” could strike at any time in Yemen, as food prices soar and the battle rages over the country’s main port, the UN humanitarian chief, Mark Lowcock, has warned.
Lowcock said that by the time an imminent famine is confirmed, it would be too late to stop it. Accelerating economic collapse has caused prices of staples to increase by 30% at a time many millions of Yemenis were already finding it hard to feed their families.
Meanwhile, fighting over the port of Hodeidah has limited its capacity, shut down its grain mills and closed the main road inland towards the capital, Sana’a, threatening a lifeline that has allowed aid agencies to reach 8 million people and stave off famine so far this year.
“One of the things about what happens in famines is there’s a sudden collapse of which you get no notice,” Lowcock, the UN under-secretary for humanitarian affairs, told the Guardian on the eve of a UN general assembly meeting on Monday to discuss the Yemeni crisis. “When the collapse happens, it’s too late to do anything. There’s a huge loss of life very, very quickly. So that’s the issue we’re flagging.”
Maria Kelly and her son John at Paul Kelly’s individual grave over Memorial Day weekend.Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
He was known as the Senator, an officer who shook hands with everyone he met, asked thoughtful questions, listened intently to others, regardless of rank. He was a helicopter pilot who flew UH-60 Black Hawks, but he wasn’t manning the stick on Jan. 20, 2007, the day his life ended near Baquba, Iraq. He was a passenger, returning to Baghdad after checking on a National Guard combat unit. He was due home to Stafford, Va., in March and had scheduled several vacations — one to visit his elderly parents in Beavercreek, Ohio, another to Germany to celebrate his 10th wedding anniversary. He planned to return to Virginia, continue working for the Guard and, together with his wife, Maria, raise his two young sons to manhood.
Instead, Col. Paul Kelly was laid to rest in two separate plots in Section 60 at Arlington National Cemetery — one that is his alone; the other, a shared grave of commingled body parts belonging to the dozen soldiers who were on the Black Hawk when insurgents shot it out of the sky. Kelly has been gone now for more than 11 years, but his family and friends say his spirit, essence and warmth remain with them on Earth. It’s in small signs that they feel his love and know, with unwavering faith, that they will see him again……………….On Memorial Day weekend this year, Maria and John went to visit Kelly’s graves. Leaving Arlington, they got stuck in traffic behind a car with a license plate bearing the head of an eagle. It was a Virginia Operation Enduring Freedom plate; fewer than 1,200 of Virginia’s 8.6 million issued plates are that style. “You see?” Maria said. “We were with Paul today, and now there’s an eagle.”
While Maria finds comfort and joy in Kelly’s spiritual manifestations, the tangible evidence of his life — and loss — continues to cause immense sorrow. She hasn’t unpacked most of his personal effects from Iraq, the last items her husband ever touched. She knows the box contains photos and tokens she has never seen, but she can’t bring herself to look. The fact that these items survived a combat deployment and Kelly did not is too much to bear. “I’m not ready,” she said. “I’m sorry. I know everybody says, ‘You really should take all the pictures out, because you really can’t move on.’ Well, I’m sorry, I cannot do that. He is still my husband.”
Frank and Sharon Toner at home. Frank honors his son by riding his motorcycle as a Patriot Guard Rider.Philip Montgomery for The New York Times.
The headstone marking the grave of Lt. j.g. Francis Toner IV is a second edition. The change was not a correction to the record. It was something else: a rewording required after the Navy upgraded his valor medal — to Silver Star from Bronze Star — to honor more fully the split-second decision Toner made to sacrifice his own life and allow a friend and fellow officer to live. Toner, 26, was fatally shot in March 2009, a victim of an attack by an Afghan National Army soldier that killed a peer, Lt. Florence B. Choe, and wounded Cmdr. Kim M. LeBel. The officers were members of military training teams assigned to Camp Mike Spann, a NATO compound within Camp Shaheen, an Afghan military base in northern Afghanistan near Mazar-i-Sharif.
The retelling of his death contains many of the sorrows of the American side of the Afghan war — the courage and commitment of an idealistic young officer carried away by the dark currents and disappointments that followed Pentagon overreach. Toner died by fratricide, killed by one of the Afghan soldiers he was sent to help. It was an insider attack that would foretell many more, and a source of enduring anger and grief for his father and stepmother, who honor him dutifully in Rhode Island, where they live, and in Arlington, where he is buried……………Toner was initially awarded a Bronze Star with a V device. This was not enough for his surviving friends or for Brooke, who thought he deserved more recognition. In late September 2011, two and a half years after he was interred, the Navy issued him the higher award. Not long after, his headstone was updated to reflect the Silver Star.
Friends and family visiting William Stacey’s grave on Memorial Day, including Kimmy Kirkwood (right), his former girlfriend, and Anna Stacey (third from left), his sister.Philip Montgomery for The New York Times
Sgt. William Stacey died on Jan. 31, 2012, while serving with the Marine Corps in the Now Zad district of Helmand Province. It was his third time in Afghanistan, and his fifth deployment. “You never go to the same place twice,” he said before he left, an adage used by Marines on patrol to avoid freshly laid booby traps. He was 23 when he knelt on the roadside bomb that killed him.
Stacey left behind pieces of his body armor that were sent home twisted and mangled by the blast; his sister, whose first funeral would be for her older brother; his mother and father; his girlfriend, who was supposed to become his wife; the friends and Marines who loved him; and a constellation of artifacts that remain to chart his memory.
The Toy
Kimmy Kirkwood, once Stacey’s girlfriend and nearly fiancée, put three yellow rubber ducks on top of his headstone, No. 60 9960 in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, this Memorial Day. His mother gave him the combat ducks in military uniforms for Christmas in 2006, just weeks before Stacey shipped off to boot camp in early January. His sister, Anna, then 10, received matching soccer ducks.
LONDON (Reuters) – The deputy head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warned U.S. and Israeli leaders on Monday to expect a “devastating” response from Tehran, accusing them of involvement in an attack on a military parade in the city of Ahvaz.
“You have seen our revenge before … You will see that our response will be crushing and devastating and you will regret what you have done,” Hossein Salami said in a speech before the funeral of the victims broadcast live on the state television.
Thousands of people packed the streets of the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz to mourn the victims of Saturday’s assault that killed 25 people, including 12 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
Many chanted “death to Israel and America”.
The coffins, wrapped in the flag of the Islamic Republic, were carried by the mourners. Many held pictures of a four year old boy killed in the attack, one of the worst against the most powerful military force of the Islamic Republic.
Four assailants fired on a viewing stand in Ahvaz where Iranian officials had gathered to watch an annual event marking the start of the Islamic Republic’s 1980-88 war with Iraq.
Soldiers crawled on the street to avoid bullets. Women and children fled for their lives.
BEIRUT (Reuters) – The main jihadist group in northwest Syria will announce its position on a Turkish-Russian deal over Idlib in the next few days, it said on Monday, with its acceptance or rejection vital to the success of efforts to contain the war.
Tahrir al-Sham’s stance will be critical to last week’s deal which has, for now, averted a full-scale Syrian government offensive in Idlib, which along with adjacent areas of the northwest is the rebels’ last major foothold.
The agreement requires “radical” insurgents including Tahrir al-Sham to withdraw from a demilitarized zone along the frontlines by October 15.
“An official statement will be issued soon,” after the group held internal consultation on the deal, said Emad al-Din, media officer for Tahrir al-Sham. He clarified that “soon” meant within a few days.
Tahrir al-Sham was formed in early 2017 as an alliance of jihadist factions including the former al Qaeda affiliate the Nusra Front and it has a large armed presence throughout Idlib, including along the Turkish border.
(Reuters) – A deadly assault on an Iranian Revolutionary Guards parade dealt a stunning blow to Iran’s security establishment, which has often said it can repel any threat no matter how big, even from the United States and its chief Middle East ally Israel.
Saturday’s shooting attack, among the worst ever on the Guards, illustrated that Iran’s elite force, which answers directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, can be vulnerable to guerrilla-style operations.
Iran had enjoyed relative stability compared to Arab neighbors who have grappled with political and economic upheaval touched off by popular uprisings in 2011.
The Guards have vowed to retaliate for the attack.
WHO WAS RESPONSIBLE?
Iran blamed the United States and its Gulf Arab neighbors for the bloodshed. But it has presented no evidence.
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Freedom’s Sentinel.
Command Sgt. Maj. Timothy A. Bolyard, 42, from Thornton, West Virginia, died Sept. 3, 2018, of wounds sustained from small arms fire in Logar Province, Afghanistan. The incident is under investigation.
Bolyard was assigned to 3rd Squadron, 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade, Fort Benning, Georgia.
All VA Medical Centers provide PTSD care, as well as many VA clinics.Some VA’s have programs specializing in PTSD treatment. Use the VA PTSD Program Locator to find a PTSD program.
If you are a war Veteran, find a Vet Center to help with the transition from military to civilian life.
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