The Political Voices of Women

Bloggers Remembering Memorial Day — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at The Care2 Election Blog)

I found this video at According To Nikki – Thank You To Our Brave Soldiers

The Evergreen Freedom Foundation would like to commemorate those who valiantly serve and have served our country.

More bloggers remembering Memorial Day…


From Sue at Nailing Jello to the Wall – Memorial Day: Did you know it did not originate with the Indy 500?

It’s another Memorial Day weekend — the pools are opening for the summer season, grills are on sale at Lowe’s, and we all get a day off from work today.

Yes, it’s yet another opportunity for Americans to take something solemn and serious, and turn it into a mindless party.

Indeed, try to wrap your head around this: with our economy in a shambles in large part because we are fighting 2 impossible wars, and with thousands of our soldiers dead because of those wars, our government has sent us an “economic stimulus” check — which merchants nationwide are encouraging us to spend this weekend on things we really don’t need.

So not only will we ignore the meaning of this national holiday, we’ll do so in comfort and frivolity — with a party!

If you’ve read this blog much at all, you know I’m an anti-war, peace lovin’ librul. But I do respect and honor those who have had to stand and fight. So please join me today, and stop for just a moment to remember those who have gone before us. There is a nice history of Memorial Day over at Wikipedia. Please don’t let the crass commercialism that is our national mood take over this day, which has truly honorable and solemn origins — read full post

Returning Meaning to Memorial Day…

Memorial Day is Monday. Some believe it shouldn’t be. While millions prepare to go to the beach or take a family picnic or just spend a day at the mall, veterans groups and others fret that the meaning of Memorial Day is lost amid the hubbub of a long weekend and the unofficial marker of summer. “Memorial Day is to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice,” says Joe Davis, a spokesman for the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “Its meaning goes way beyond the three-day weekend.” He and others fear that Memorial Day has become nothing but a vacation weekend. But it didn’t use to be. – read full post

From Parent Dish – Remembering on Memorial Day

This Memorial Day, like nearly every since I’ve known him, my husband will buy a large bunch of flowers. He’ll round up our entire, sleepy-eyed family, load us all in the van for a short drive across town to the park with four bridges and three volleyball courts.

In addition to the bridges and fun, there are several monuments at the park. One is a wall that bears the names of every soldier in the state who died or vanished in Vietnam.

There is a larger-than-life statue of a soldier cradling a fallen comrade, looking off into the distance, far beyond the plastic slides and picnic grounds. The sculptor did an amazing job, the soldier’s gaze is one of determination, sadness, anger, pain and love all at the same time. It is haunting. Children can’t take it for long and quickly run to the nearby swing set, adults force themselves to linger.

Then there is the new statute, a bronze sculpture of a flak helmet resting on the butt of a machine gun propped between a pair of combat boots, the memorial for area sons and daughters lost in Iraq. The landscaping here is brand new. Ground cover will cloaks the dirt, but nothing can smooth out, still sharp pain.

From Anderson Cooper 360 — Observing Memorial Day in the middle of a Baghdad ER…

CNN’s Jill Dougherty spoke with Major Stephen Roberts, officer at the medical unit at Camp Liberty, Iraq (near Baghdad). Jill met him while filming a story on the soldiers who shaved their heads to raise money for children with cancer back home. She shares her latest conversation with Major Roberts about Memorial Day here…

The NonSilent Majority – A Veteran’s Day Tribute

From Blog Hillary – Statement From Hillary Clinton on Memorial Day

Obama Statement on Memorial Day

From CNN Political Ticker — John McCain spent Memorial Day focusing on his own military history, the war in Iraq and the debate over veterans’ benefits.

Supporting Our Troops – The GI Bill — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at The Care2 Election Blog)

I found this video from VoteVets.org at Amy’s blog Political Artwork.

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Here is a guest post by Pamela Lyn at Pam’s Coffee Conversation.

(If you would like to be a guest blogger on this site, please join our community)

It’s not quite a draft or conscription but the Pentagon’s “stop-loss” policy comes awfully close.

In today’s LA Times, Staff Writer Julian E Barnes reported:

The number of soldiers forced to remain in the Army involuntarily under the military’s controversial “stop-loss” program has risen sharply since the Pentagon extended combat tours last year, officials said Thursday. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates was briefed about the program by Army officials who said that thousands of new stop-loss orders were issued to keep soldiers from leaving the service after Gates ordered combat tours extended from 12 to 15 months last spring.

The Army has resorted to involuntary extensions of soldiers’ enlistment terms to prevent them from leaving immediately before a combat tour or in the middle of a deployment.

Army officials have argued that the policy is necessary to ensure that they are not forced to send inadequately trained soldiers and unprepared units into war.

However, many soldiers subjected to the stop-loss policy consider it a backdoor draft. Critics argue that once soldiers have completed the enlistment period they agreed to, they should be allowed to return home. The involuntary retention program is so unpopular that it helped inspire a recent movie called “Stop-Loss.”

The number of soldiers held in the Army under the stop-loss program reached a high in March 2005 of 15,758. That number steadily declined through May 2007, when it hit 8,540. But since then, the number of soldiers subjected to stop-loss orders began to increase again, reaching 12,235 in March 2008.

So essentially this past March, over 12,000 US military servicemen and women, many of whom had already served multiple tours of duty, were forced to remain in the Army after the completion of their current tour. Yet, the phrase “all-volunteer” military is still used whenever there are discussions about funding the wars or withdrawing the troops.

I can’t recall hearing one question about the stop-loss practice during any of the 2008 presidential primary debates. (Please correct me if I’m wrong because I certainly may have missed it.)

Is everyone OK with this?

In March Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) marched on the Senate offices to deliver stop loss orders requiring congress to continue working until the war is ended and the troops are returned home.

Pentagon and Media Conspire To Deceive the American People – by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at The Care2 Election Blog)

Remember this? Pentagon Propaganda and Media Compliance

If so, it’s probably not because you saw it covered on any of the National News programs. This is a story of both our government and our media purposefully deceiving the American people. So…Why aren’t heads rolling? Let’s take a closer look at this issue.  This is from a post at Salon.com

It has now been more than ten days since the New York Times exposed the Pentagon’s domestic propaganda program involving retired generals and, still, not a single major news network has even mentioned the story to their viewers, let alone responded to the numerous questions surrounding their own behavior. This steadfast blackout occurs despite the fact that the Pentagon propaganda program almost certainly violates numerous federal laws; both Democratic presidential candidates sternly denounced the Pentagon’s conduct; and Congressional inquiries are already underway, all of which forced the Pentagon to announce that it suspended its program.

Still, there has not been a peep from the major news networks at the center of the storm, the integrity of whose reporting on the Iraq war is directly implicated by this story. Even establishment media defender Howard Kurtz called their ongoing failure to cover this story “pathetic.”

My take: PATHETIC is right! This whole thing is beyond pathetic, it is a total deception of the American people. Let me see if I can draw a comparison to this. Maybe this is comparable? I remember back when we were all totally duped about Bill Clinton’s sex life, it was a tragic deception to the American people. Well…not really, but you might have thought it was based on the reaction it received. The media raked the man over the coals and congress impeached him, all for cheating on his wife and lying about it. In retrospect, I can really see how Clinton’s lies were directly responsible for two wars, thousands of deaths, and the destruction of our economy. Oh, wait a minute…Clinton wasn’t responsible for those things. But he still lied and deceived the American people. So, on a comparison scale of 1 thru 10 – The Clinton sex scandal is at best a 1 (but had a media reaction of over a 10). On the other hand, this Bush/Pentagon propaganda scandal is off the chart in comparison, but we’ll call it a 10 (with a reaction to it a -1). What is that about?

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An Epidemic of Suicide Among Veterans — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at The Care2 Election Blog)

So, if we oppose the war, then we are somehow not supporting the troops. But other than with words…How is our government actually supporting the troops?


From Furious Season…


I am often confused by the inanity of some governmental bureaucrats and attempts by the head of the VA’s mental health system to cover up the true number of suicides and suicide attempts among veterans leave me shaking my head. Ira Katz, the man in charge, knew full well that there are about 1,000 suicide attempts among vets each month, but told CBS News last fall–which has done a great job of covering this issue–that there were only 790 suicide attempts among vets for an entire year.I don’t even understand how lying about such an obvious problem would benefit the agency. Lying about it certainly misinforms the public and Congress about a serious problem in our culture that demands attention.


From Preemptive Karma…


It’s nearly incomprehensible. 300,000 veterans of the Iraq/Afghanistan war are suffering from severe depression or post traumatic stress disorder and 126 of them give up on life altogether every week. Another 320,000 of our young men and women are suffering from brain injuries they have received in the line of duty. We’re not even talking about the millions of dead and displaced Iraqi civilians. This human toll puts the financial toll of the war to shame.


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More Political Voices of Women…

We now have over 400 women political bloggers on our list, here are the A’s…

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Here is a guest post by Cynthia Samuels at Don’t Gel Too Soon.

Remember Private Benjamin? Goldie Hawn goes from princess to private and grows up. That 1980 film was a combination of feminism, coming-of-age and just plain funny. But that’s not how the U.S. military treats its women. Maybe not then, but certainly not now. In fact, we’re allowing our soldier sisters to suffer at unthinkable rates. It’s beyond shameful. Representative Jane Harman details the horror (no, I am not exaggerating – this is every woman’s version of a horror movie) in this LA Times op ed republished on Alternet. This is from Harman’s piece:

The scope of the problem was brought into acute focus for me during a visit to the West Los Angeles VA Healthcare Center, where I met with female veterans and their doctors. My jaw dropped when the doctors told me that 41% of female veterans seen at the clinic say they were victims of sexual assault while in the military, and 29% report being raped during their military service. They spoke of their continued terror, feelings of helplessness and the downward spirals many of their lives have since taken.

Numbers reported by the Department of Defense show a sickening pattern. In 2006, 2,947 sexual assaults were reported — 73% more than in 2004. The DOD’s newest report, released this month, indicates that 2,688 reports were made in 2007, but a recent shift from calendar-year reporting to fiscal-year reporting makes comparisons with data from previous years much more difficult.

What level of misogyny, anger, or malignant neglect allows this to be the way we treat 20% of our military? It’s an insult to their service and to every American woman and yet another shameful chapter in our relationship with those who would protect us. Does it seem to anyone else that Abu Ghraib and our other abuses of Iraqi prisoners and the abuse of women in our own military both demonstrate a terrible loss of humanity among at least some of our soliders?

I remember reading a book called ABSOLUTELY AMERICAN, about the meritocracy that is West Point. There was a time, recently, when the Army, at least, had moved very far from its less attractive traits and was struggling, by training leaders well, to guarantee that abuses did not happen in the future. I wish I knew what has happened; whether they never got below the surface, whether it’s the fact that so many of our soldiers are National Guard and just not as well-trained, or simply that there’s a surfeit of anger in our military (and out here, too.)

Beyond the acts themselves, there’s not even much punishment. Here’s more of Harman’s piece:

At the heart of this crisis is an apparent inability or unwillingness to prosecute rapists in the ranks. According to DOD statistics, only 181 out of 2,212 subjects investigated for sexual assault in 2007, including 1,259 reports of rape, were referred to courts-martial, the equivalent of a criminal prosecution in the military. Another 218 were handled via nonpunitive administrative action or discharge, and 201 subjects were disciplined through “nonjudicial punishment,” which means they may have been confined to quarters, assigned extra duty or received a similar slap on the wrist. In nearly half of the cases investigated, the chain of command took no action; more than a third of the time, that was because of “insufficient evidence.”

Anyone who pays any attention to this issue, or even who’s ever watched LAW AND ORDER knows that rape is a crime of dominance and hate, not a sexual crime. That means that every one of those rapes is an act of rage against a woman — and a fellow soldier. And that in all the years that women have been part of active military duty, we haven’t dealt with that rage. And that if it’s that prevalent in the military, it’s probably still floating around out here in the rest of the world at a hefty rate too. And apparently, however far we’ve come as women in and out of the military, just below the surface is something big, angry and very scary indeed.

US Death Toll In Iraq Reaches 4,000 — by Catherine Morgan (cross-posted at Care2 Election Blog)

Yesterday, on Easter Sunday, we hit a very sad milestone in the Iraq war…The US death toll reached 4,000. When I heard this sad news, it made me recall some of the comments that George Bush and Dick Cheney made last week as they observed the 5th anniversary of the War in Iraq. This is a video clip from a segment last week, on Keith Olbermann’s show. It seemed relevant to reflect on this story today, especially since many might be surprised at some of the facts noted in this clip.

Associated Press – Overall US death toll in Iraq hits 4,000

BAGHDAD – U.S. officials said Monday they will press forward in the fight against extremists in Iraq a day after the overall U.S. death toll in the five-year conflict rose to 4,000.

The White House called the grim milestone “a sober moment” and said President Bush spends time every day thinking about those who have lost their lives in battle.

“He bears the responsibility for the decisions that he made,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said. “He also bears the responsibility to continue to focus on succeeding.”

The American deaths came Sunday, the same day rockets pounded the U.S.-protected Green Zone in Baghdad and a wave of attacks left at least 61 Iraqis dead nationwide.

From Out Of Iraq…

In our 6th year of military operations in Iraq, we knew this day would come, we knew this number would come. 4000. Any death from Iraq is unacceptable, but to hear the announcement of the 4000th US death in Iraq on Easter, a day of joyous celebration, is an affront, one of those karmic ironies that should not happen.

From Pajamadeen…

With a roadside bomb detonation at about 10:00 p.m. local time in Baghdad, the Easter holiday was marred as the U.S. troop death toll in the Iraq War officially rose to 4,000. The four as-yet-unnamed soldiers were killed in a patrol vehicle during the explosion, while a Multi-National Division soldier was wounded.

This is a video I found on Dear Kitty, Some Blog…

This video from the USA is called IVAW Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan Vermont Appeal.How many more have to die in Iraq?

This is from a post at ConnieTalk.

Stephen Colbert gave a “Tip of the hat and wag of the finger” to the U.S. troops in Afghanistan, for making President George W. Bush jealous. How? Well, on March 13th, Bush visited the troops there, and actually told them: “I must say, I’m a little envious…I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines.” No joke (pun intended).

READ FULL POST AT ConnieTalk.

Here is a guest post from Cynthia at Don’t Gel Too Soon.

The amazing Queen of Spain, Erin Kotckei Vest, wrote yesterday about her son’s 5th birthday and the war in Iraq, realizing that our country has been at war for his entire life. It’s a moving and troubling meditation on the length and malignancy of this war. Take a look.

It was strange to read — someplace between echo and deja vu. My older son was born the night Cambodia fell; I went back to work at CBS News the night Saigon fell (foreign desk – overnight) and his younger brother was born 2 days after the Iran hostages were taken. We always knew how many days old he was because Walter Cronkite ended every newscast with “that’s the way it is, the xyz day American hostages have been held in Iran.”

I remember nursing Josh during the horrible last days of the Vietnam war, when they were trying to get orphans out of the country. One evening at the very beginning of the effort, 78 kids died when their plane crashed. To this day I remember sitting in a chair, feeding this weeks-old child, watching the broken bodies of some else’s children flung around the crash site, and just dissolving.

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The Iraq War: Five Years Later – by Catherine Morgan -(cross-posted at Care2 Election Blog)

Personally, I have always been against war and violence of any kind. I didn’t even let my children play with toy guns when they were young (not even water guns). Now I find myself worried that my son or daughter could actually be drafted someday. [Over a year ago I did a post addressing my concerns over a possible draft or mandatory military, it still seems very relevant today.] So yes, I am one of the people that are against this war in Iraq, and I have been since day one. And I really hate that we are now talking about the fifth anniversary of this horrific war. What I find myself wondering the most about today is, there seems to be no end in sight and five years from now we might be talking about the tenth anniversary of the Iraq war. How many people have to die? When will ‘man’ realize that war is not the answer?

People have been saying that we aren’t talking much about the Iraq war anymore, and I suspect it is because of the attention our tumbling economy is getting. I wonder? Has it occurred to anyone that $275 million a day spent in Iraq could be adding to the trouble we find our economy in? The National Priorities Project has a running tab of the cost of the Iraq war…

Let’s take a look at how this five year anniversary of the war in Iraq is being reported by the news and on the blogs.

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