October, 04 2010, 02:20pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Maggie Martin, IVAW Media Coordinator
912.596.8484
maggiemartin1@gmail.com
Ethan McCord
316.285.6849; navyallday@yahoo.com
Zack Choat
678.986.0617; zach.choate@hotmail.com
Â
Afghanistan & Iraq Vets Call for an End to Deployment of Traumatized Troops
Veterans launch historic campaign on 9 year anniversary of Afghanistan War
WASHINGTON
October 7th marks the 9-year anniversary of the Afghanistan War, the longest ongoing war in U.S. history. Pressure from fighting two wars has put enormous strain on U.S. troops, with multiple deployments leading to an explosion of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). PTSD makes service members six times more likely to commit suicide. Instead of being treated, troops are often redeployed to combat while still suffering from PTSD, Traumatic Brain Injury, and Military Sexual Trauma. Officials recognize that suicides and violent crimes are on the rise, with four decorated combat vets killing themselves at Ft. Hood in one week. "The emergency issue for me right now is the suicide issue," said Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest-ranking person in the U.S. armed forces.
WHAT: Afghanistan & Iraq veterans will meet at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and embark on a six-mile march to Capitol Hill to announce the launch of Iraq Veterans Against the War's first veteran-led campaign - Operation Recovery: Stop the Deployment of Traumatized Troops. Service members will testify about their experiences being redeployed while traumatized. A letter will be read publicly and delivered to government and military officials requesting an end to the deployment of traumatized troops. Veterans will voice opposition to the ongoing occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
WHO: Iraq Veterans Against the War (Afghanistan & Iraq vets), Ethan McCord of Wikileaks "Collateral Murder" video, Civilian Soldier Alliance, Military Families Speak Out
WHEN/WHERE: Thursday, October 7th, 2010
10:15 Meet at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC 20307
10:45 March begins
1:30 Press conference at Delaware Ave. NE and C St. NE 20510
WHY: Multiple deployments cause PTSD and increased incidents of suicides and violent crimes among service members, exemplified by the recent Ft. Hood suicides and twelve soldiers in Afghanistan who formed a "kill team" targeting civilians and collecting body parts as trophies. The occupations carry high human costs at home and abroad, while draining vast resources from American taxpayers during a recession. Furthermore, the strategy and objectives of the Afghanistan War remain questionable. Opposition to the occupations is growing within the military.
"I was denied treatment for the mental and physical wounds I sustained in battle, like so many others," says Ethan McCord, a veteran whose unit was captured in the "Collateral Murder" video distributed by Wikileaks. "IVAW's campaign is critical for soldiers because we are asserting our right to heal. Now, the government has a choice - will it recognize our right to heal, or deny it?"
VISUALS: Veterans marching, uniforms, banners, signs, press conference, Walter Reed
Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) was founded by Iraq war veterans in July 2004 at the annual convention of Veterans for Peace (VFP) in Boston to give a voice to the large number of active duty service people and veterans who are against this war, but are under various pressures to remain silent. From its inception, IVAW has called for: Immediate withdrawal of all occupying forces in Iraq; Reparations for the human and structural damages Iraq has suffered, and stopping the corporate pillaging of Iraq so that their people can control their own lives and future; and Full benefits, adequate healthcare (including mental health), and other supports for returning servicemen and women. As of 5/2021, the IVAW website is offline.
LATEST NEWS
World Bank, IMF Must Prioritize Wealth Tax and Canceling Debt to Tackle Global Inequality
While global institutions claim to want to tackle inequality, said one campaigner, "ordinary people struggle more and more every day to make up for cuts to the public funding of healthcare, education, and transportation."
Apr 15, 2024
With world leaders convening in Washington, D.C. this week for the annual Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, global anti-poverty campaigners said Monday that delegates from the world's largest economies must prioritize taxing the superrich and taking other steps to alleviate rampant inequality in the Global South.
Oxfam International revealed that based on the World Bank's analysis of worldwide inequality and poverty, 64 out of 106 low- and middle-income countries that receive grants and loans from the bank and the IMF have high or increasing rates of income inequality.
Sixty percent of countries that are eligible for grants or low-interest loans from the International Development Association (IDA) have ratings above 0.4 on the Gini coefficient scale—a warning level developed by the United Nations. The scale rates more equal countries closer to 0 and countries with high income and wealth disparities closer to 1, with rating above 0.4 signifying high levels of income inequality.
Kate Donald, head of Oxfam International's Washington, D.C. office, noted that the news comes less than a year after more than 200 worldwide economists successfully pressured the World Bank to set a new goal of reducing the number of countries with high inequality rates.
The agreement was "a landmark move," said Donald. "But if the bank is serious about tackling inequality, the first test will be making it a headline priority for its lending to the world's poorest countries, being discussed now at the Spring Meetings."
According to Oxfam's analysis, half of IDA-eligible countries are overindebted and need roughly 45% of their debt to the banks canceled in order to address surging inequality in their own communities.
The global financial institutions must prove at the Spring Meetings that "tackling inequality is a priority," said Donald.
"Ordinary people struggle more and more every day to make up for cuts to the public funding of healthcare, education, and transportation," she said. "This high stakes hypocrisy has to end."
At Inter Press Service, Jaime Atienza, equitable financing director at the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, pointed to the example of Zambia, one of 37 countries identified by Oxfam as facing rising levels of inequality.
While still struggling, Atienza wrote, through the G20 Common Framework on Debt, Zambia "secured serious debt relief and restructuring with both government and private creditors, which will help enable vital and urgent investments in health, education, and social protection."
"For too long, Zambia's plans for ending AIDS as a public health threat by 2030, and for realizing crucial development needs, have been held back by constraints in investment caused by the debt crisis," wrote Atienza. "The debt relief and restructuring that has been agreed at last gives the country a fighting chance. All those who have facilitated this agreement have saved and transformed lives."
In dozens of countries in the Global South, said Oxfam, "ballooning debt and interest repayments are diverting scarce resources from crucial areas like public education and healthcare and social safety nets."
Both Atienza and Oxfam said delegates from G20 countries, the world's largest economies, must center at the Spring Meetings Brazil's call for a global plan to require wealthy people to pay their fair share in taxes.
"Higher taxes on the income and wealth of richest could raise trillions of dollars to plug IDA funding shortfalls and to fill the huge development and climate funding gaps in low- and middle-income countries," said Oxfam, which noted that the net wealth of billionaires must by taxed more than 8% annually to help reduce inequality in the worst-affected countries.
Wealthy governments must also increase their donations to the IDA, said Donald, which have flatlined in recent years despite growing needs in African countries and throughout the Global South.
"We don't buy the excuse that 'we can't afford it,'" she said. "The money is there; it's just not flowing to where it's needed. We urgently need donor governments to step up their contributions to IDA, and for the G20 to move forward with a global deal to tax the super-rich."
"It's all part of ensuring that rich countries and rich people pay their fair share," she added, "towards tackling inequality and climate breakdown."
Keep ReadingShow Less
20 Years Later, Abu Ghraib Torture Victims Get Their Day in Court
"Meanwhile, the U.S. government STILL hasn't provided compensation or other redress to people tortured by U.S. troops in Iraq," said one observer. "These three men are the lucky few."
Apr 15, 2024
Two decades after they were tortured by U.S. military contractors at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, three Iraqi victims are finally getting their day in court Monday as a federal court in Virginia takes up a case they brought during the George W. Bush administration.
The case being heard in the U.S. District Court in Alexandria, Al Shimari v. CACI, was first filed in 2008 under the Alien Tort Statute—which allows non-U.S. citizens to sue for human rights abuses committed abroad—by the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) on behalf of three Iraqis. The men suffered torture directed and perpetrated by employees of CACI, a Virginia-based professional services and information technology firm hired in 2003 by the Bush administration as translators and interrogators in Iraq during the illegal U.S.-led invasion and occupation.
"This lawsuit is a critical step towards justice for these three men who will finally have their day in court."
Plaintiffs Suhail Al Shimari, Asa'ad Zuba'e, and Salah Al-Ejaili accuse CACI of conspiring to commit war crimes including torture at Abu Ghraib, where the men suffered broken bones, electric shocks, sexual abuse, extreme temperatures, and death threats at the hands of their U.S. interrogators.
"This lawsuit is a critical step towards justice for these three men who will finally have their day in court. But they are the lucky few," Sarah Sanbar, an Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, wrote on Monday. "For the hundreds of other survivors still suffering from past abuses, their chances of justice remain slim."
"The U.S. government should do the right thing: Take responsibility for their abuses, offer an apology, and open an avenue to redress that has been denied them for too many years," Sanbar added.
U.S. military investigators found that employees of CACI and Titan Corporation (now L3 Technologies) tortured Iraqi prisoners and encouraged U.S. troops to do likewise. Dozens of Abu Ghraib detainees died in U.S. custody, some of them as a result of being tortured to death. Abu Ghraib prisoners endured torture ranging from rape and being attacked with dogs to being forced to eat pork and renounce Islam.
A May 2004 report by Maj. Gen. Anthony Taguba concluded that the majority of Abu Ghraib prisoners—the Red Cross said 70-90%— were innocent. In addition to thousands of men and boys, some women and girls were also jailed there as bargaining chips meant to induce wanted insurgents to surrender. Some of them said they were raped or sexually abused by their American captors; lesser-known Abu Ghraib photos show women being forced to expose their private parts. Some female detainees were reportedly murdered by their own relatives in so-called "honor killings" after their release.
Eleven low-ranking U.S. soldiers were convicted and jailed for their roles in the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, the prison's commanding officer, was demoted. No other high-ranking military officer faced accountability for the abuse. Senior Bush administration officials—who had authorized many of the "enhanced interrogation techniques" used at prisons including Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay—lied about their knowledge of the torture. None of them were ever held accountable.
Bush's successor, former President Barack Obama, promised to investigate—and if warranted, to prosecute—the Bush-era officials responsible for the torture that had become synonymous with the War on Terror. Instead, the Obama administration protected them from prosecution.
In 2013, L3 Technologies agreed to pay $5.28 million to 71 former Abu Ghraib detainees who were subjected to sexual assault and humiliation, rape threats, electrical shocks, mock executions, brutal beatings, and other abuse.
The following year, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling prohibiting Abu Ghraib torture victims from suing U.S. companies implicated in their abuse. But the court later reversed itself, finding the case had sufficient ties to the United States to be heard in an American court. The suit was later dismissed under the political question doctrine, which prevents courts from ruling on issues determined to be essentially political.
However, in 2016, a 4th Circuit panel ruled that "the political question doctrine does not shield from judicial review intentional acts by a government contractor that were unlawful at the time they were committed," allowing the Iraqis' case to proceed.
"This is a historic trial that we hope will deliver some measure of justice and healing for what President Bush rightly deemed disgraceful conduct that dishonored the United States and its values," CCR senior attorney Katherine Gallagher toldThe Guardian on Monday.
"In many ways, this case may be seen as setting a precedent for holding contractors accountable for human rights violations should they happen in other contexts, too," she added.
CACI—which denies any wrongdoing—has tried to get the case dismissed 20 times. The company still lands millions of dollars worth of U.S. government contracts. In February, Fortuneincluded the firm on its "World's Most Admired Companies" list for the seventh straight year.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mehdi Hasan Launches Media Platform With Naomi Klein, Greta Thunberg, and More
The journalist says Zeteo will feature "hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis" in op-eds, podcasts, and streaming shows.
Apr 15, 2024
After a few weeks of "soft launch" mode, journalist Mehdi Hasan on Monday officially debuted his new media platform, Zeteo, and declared that "this is not a one-man band."
The former MSNBC and Peacock host—whose show was canceled in November and wrapped up in January, after his incisive criticism of Israel's assault on the Gaza Strip—revealed nine of the contributors he has lined up so far, calling them "some of the biggest, boldest, and best names from media, activism, entertainment, and beyond."
They are Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman, comedian and podcaster W. Kamau Bell, Palestinian Canadian lawyer Diana Buttu, former CNBC and CNN correspondent John Harwood, foreign policy analyst Rula Jebreal, author Naomi Klein, novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen, actor and activist Cynthia Nixon, and Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg.
"The tough interviews and knowledgeable analysis are all coming back, along with a global cast of contributors," Klein said on social media Monday. "I was honored when Mehdi asked me to be one of them, along with Rula Jebreal and Greta Thunberg and many others yet announced."
"Mehdi and I will be having a regular conversation called 'Unshocked,'" noted Klein, who authored The Shock Doctrine.
Hasan—who has also produced content for Al Jazeera, The Guardian, and The Intercept—has saidZeteo will feature "hard-hitting interviews and unsparing analysis" in a variety of forms, from op-eds and podcasts to streaming shows, beginning with "Mehdi Unfiltered."
"To keep Zeteo's journalism independent and free of advertiser and corporate influence," Hasan explained ahead of the formal launch, "and to allow us to continue investing in the future, we have to rely on our individual paid subscribers."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular