Sir! No Sir! Exposing and Debunking Military Lies from Vietnam to Iraq

Addicted To War (Chapter 4)

To read the whole of this book, click here

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Military Injustice - Support Robin Long! Iraq War resister faces court martial

This was originally published by Courage to Resist, jn response to Robin Long's deportation from Canada and return to the clutches of military injustice

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On July 15, 2008 U.S. Army PFC Robin Long became the first war resister since the Vietnam War forced to leave Canada and to be turned over to the U.S. military. Robin is currently being held in the El Paso County Jail, in Colorado, awaiting his Courts Martial. He will be present for his Courts Martial at Fort Carson, Co. He will likely be charged for AWOL, desertion, and possibly speech-related violations of military discipline; he is facing a General Courts Martial, the maximum penalty of such a trial is 20 years confinement. Support Robin Long and all troops with the courage to resist!

• 1. Donate to Robin’s legal expenses
• 2. Send Robin letters of support
• 3. Send Robin commissary money
• 4. Send Robin a book
• 5. Sign the public statement of support – coming soon

1. Donate to Robin legal’s expenses
Online: http://couragetoresist.org/robinlong
By mail: Make checks out to “Courage to Resist / IHC” and note “Robin Long” in the memo field. Mail to:

Courage to Resist
484 Lake Park Ave #41
Oakland CA 94610

Courage to Resist is committed to covering Robin’s legal and related defense expenses. Thank you for helping make that possible.
Also: You are also welcome to contribute directly to Robin’s legal expenses via his civilian lawyer James Branum. Visit girightslawyer.com, select PayPal, and in the comments field note “Robin Long”. Note that this type of donation is not tax-deductible.
2. Send letters of support to Robin

Robin Long, CJC
2739 East Las Vegas
Colorado Springs CO 80906

Robin’s pre-trial confinement has been outsourced by Fort Carson military authorities to the local county jail.
Robin is allowed to receive hand-written or typed letters. To help ensure that he receives them, do not include drawings, stickers, copied photos or print articles. Robin cannot receive packages of any type (with the book exception as described below).
3. Send Robin a money order for commissary items
Anything Robin gets (toothbrush, shirts, paper, stamps, snacks, supplements, etc.) must be ordered through the commissary. Each inmate has an account to which friends may make deposits. To do so, a money order in US funds must be sent made out to "Robin Long, EPSO", along with the sender's name. Mail to the address above.
4. Send Robin a book
Robin is allowed to receive books which are ordered online and sent directly to him at the county jail from Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. These two companies know the procedure to follow for delivering books for inmates.

Sanctuary (Canada) - Canada Deports US Soldier

This article was originally distributed by The Associated Press, July 15, 2008

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Vancouver, British Columbia - A U.S. Army deserter who fled to Canada three years ago was deported Tuesday to America, marking the first time a resister to the U.S war effort in Iraq has been removed by Canadian authorities.
Paula Shore, spokeswoman for the Canada Border Services Agency, confirmed that Robin Long, 25, was deported, but she could not discuss specifics of the case, including Long's destination.
Long fled to Canada in 2005 to avoid serving in Iraq. He sought refuge in Canada on the grounds that the U.S. Army wanted him to participate in what he called an ''illegal war of aggression in Iraq.''
Justice Anne Mactavish of the Federal Court of Canada ruled Monday that Long couldn't provide clear evidence he would suffer irreparable harm if he was returned to the United States.
In her ruling, Mactavish said that although the percentage of American military deserters prosecuted for desertion has increased since 2002, the vast majority have not been prosecuted or faced jail time.
Last week, the Federal Court blocked the deportation of National Guard Sgt. Corey Glass, 25, while it decides whether to hear his case. Glass refused redeployment to Iraq.
Long and Glass were among some 200 American deserters believed to have come to Canada trying to avoid service in Iraq. So far, Canadian immigration officials and the courts have rejected efforts to grant them refugee status.
During the Vietnam War, up to 90,000 Americans successfully won refuge in Canada, most of them to avoid the military draft. The majority went home after the United States granted amnesty in the late 1970s.

Sanctuary (Canada) - USA: JAMES COREY GLASS HAS RIGHT NOT TO SERVE IN IRAQ

The following statement was distributed by Amnesty International, June 6, 2008

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Amnesty International believes James Corey Glass to have a genuine conscientious objection to serving as a combatant in the US forces in Iraq, and would consider him to be a prisoner of conscience if imprisoned on his return to the USA. He is facing deportation from Canada on 12 June.
James Glass joined the army in 2002, enlisting in the National Guard where he was assigned to non-combatant duties in the USA. His unit was later ordered to deploy to Iraq, where he served five months of active service in 2005.
According to his statement, he had concerns about the legality of the war before his deployment to Iraq. While serving there, he developed further serious objections to the war, including what he saw as the abusive treatment of civilians by the US military and failure within the system to address such abuses. He stated that, whilst in Iraq, he reported his concerns to his superiors and asked to be relieved of duty. His request was denied but he was granted a two-week leave. He refused to return to his unit and went absent without leave (AWOL) in February 2006.
Since being in Canada, James Glass has become a member of the "War Resisters Campaign" and has spoken out publicly about his objection to the Iraq war.
US law recognizes the right to conscientious objection only on grounds of opposition to war in any form. James Glass was therefore unable to seek a claim for discharge from the army on grounds of his objection to the Iraq War. Other similar cases where US soldiers have sought to register their conscientious objection and apply for non-combatant status have been turned down.
If returned to the USA he faces a possible court-martial, where he could be imprisoned for between one and five years.
Background Information
Some US military personnel who have refused to deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan due to their conscientious objection to US policy and practice in the "war on terror" have been imprisoned solely for their beliefs. Amnesty International has considered some to be prisoners of conscience who should be released immediately and unconditionally.
Some of these conscientious objectors have been court-martialled and sentenced despite pending applications for conscientious objector status, others were imprisoned after their applications were turned down on the basis that they were objecting to particular wars rather than to war in general.
Amnesty International has declared a number of conscientious objectors in the USA to be prisoners of conscience. They included Camilo Mejia, who was sentenced to one year's imprisonment for his objections to the war in Iraq, and Abdullah Webster, who refused to participate in the same war due to his religious beliefs. Another, Kevin Benderman, was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment after he refused to re-deploy to Iraq because of the scenes of devastation he witnessed there. Agustn Aguayo was sentenced to eight months' imprisonment for his refusal to participate in the war in Iraq. All four have since been released.
Amnesty International is of the view that the right to refuse to perform military service for reasons of conscience is inherent in the notion of freedom of thought, conscience and religion as recognised in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).
Amnesty International considers a conscientious objector to be any person who, for reasons of conscience or profound conviction, refuses either to perform any form of service in the armed forces or applies for non-combatant status. This can include refusal to participate in a war because one disagrees with its aims or the manner in which it was being waged, even if one does not oppose taking part in all wars.
Wherever such a person is detained or imprisoned solely for these believe, Amnesty International considers that person to be a prisoner of conscience. AI also considers conscientious objectors to be prisoners of conscience if they are imprisoned as a consequence of leaving the armed forces without authorization for reasons of conscience, if because of those reasons; they have taken reasonable steps to secure release from military obligations.

Why the Winter Soldiers are Needed Again - It was and is the war

I am constantly amazed at how rank and file chicken hawks continue to beliueve that the War in Iraq is protecting us from terrorism, and seem to be driven insane when they are shown irrefutable proof that the bill of goods they were sold was a forgery. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been trolling through the outer reaches of the virtual universe looking for everything written about the upcoming Winter Soldier hearings, and while the left has its fair share of thoughtless fools, who revel in insulting rank and file soldiers with no understanding that there is a world of difference between the brass and lifers on the one hand and those enlisted men and women who now find themselves in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This stupidity however, pales in comparison the unadulterated brutality of the Orwellian alternate universe Chicken Hawks fly around in. I realize it is a lot easier to read the cliff notes to James Joyce's Ulysses than it is to struggle through the original, but you are not going to be able to do anything more than scrape through a multiple choice quiz about the book and will certainly learn nothing. The same is true with the upcoming Winter Soldier Hearings and the Iraq Veterans Against the War, which are denounced by people based on what they have been told by Scott Swett, John O'Neil and their fellow swift-boaters. Not one of them have bothered to read the transcripts of the Winter Soldier Hearings, but they state with absolute certainty and conviction that the supposed eyewitnesses could only describe war crimes that they were told about third hand and never witnessed.
One of the most unpleasant of these accusers is a lady who proudly class herself Chicken hawk Express. In one of her latest attacks on the credibility of the witnesses at the events in DC this week, she makes the following blanket statement "all in all it looks like it will be the same old thing - claims of "I was told", "I didn’t actually witness but heard about it", ad-nausea." She ends her attack with the threat that the participants had better be sure of their facts because she and her colleagues would be fact checking everything with Lexis-Nexus. While I have access to Lexis-Nexus, it unfortunately does not go back as far as 1971 so one can not use it to check how many times “I was told” and “I didn’t actually witness but heard about it” appear in the transcript. However, I do have access to the Sir! No Sir! Archive dataabase (http://www.sirnosir.com/library/articles/search.html) and was able to do a phase search for both. The phrase "I didn’t actually witness but heard about it" does not appear once in the transcripts. As for the phrase “I was told”, it appears 19 times.
One witness uses it in the context of shoddy medical treament he received after being wounded over the Easter Weekend in 1969 :

“My Easter of '69 wasn't exactly what I'd call a treat. I was wounded. They decided that I wasn't wounded bad enough to be dusted off, so I waited a period of approximately nine hours while I was laying in a pig sty to be dusted off. When I was dusted off, I was taken to the hospital. I will say the treatment I got was fast, but efficient, it wasn't. I was taken into the operating room and worked on. They completely neglected the wounds on my arms and, of course, I had to say, "I don't think you're finished yet." So they sewed up the wounds on my arms. I was then released to get to a ward. I was put in a ward where there was no medic, no supervisor. I was told by the man laying next to me that I was hemorrhaging. Well, since there was no one in the ward that meant I had to get up and walk back to the operating room and open the door and say, "Doctor, I'm not done." Then they put me back on the table and said, "Oh, I guess you're not!" And they finished it up. “ (http://sirnosir.com/archives_and_resources/library/war_crimes/winter_soldier/1st_infantry_1.html)

While the transcripts of the hearings are unpleasant reading, the witnesses are very clear that while they and their fellow GIs committed brutal and unspeakable acts, they were extremely careful not to blame enlisted men or junior officers. The Winter Soldiers, like many in the GI movement laid the blame squarely on the corporate elites who profited from the war, successive administrations and their political allies who were determined not to be the first Americans to lose a war and the brass, who in an effort to ensure victory unleashed the full force of American might upon the population of South Vietnam.
The fact they held the brass and the corporate and political elites responsible for what was occurring in Vietnam was made crystal clear, by William Crandall, who in his opening statement remarked “We intend to tell who it was that gave us those orders; that created that policy; that set that standard of war bordering on full and final genocide. We intend to demonstrate that My Lai was no unusual occurrence, other than, perhaps, the number of victims killed all in one place, all at one time, all by one platoon of us. We intend to show that the policies of Americal Division which inevitably resulted in My Lai were the policies of other Army and Marine Divisions as well. We intend to show that war crimes in Vietnam did not start in March 1968, or in the village of Son My or with one Lt. William Calley. We intend to indict those really responsible for My Lai, for Vietnam, for attempted genocide.”
In an effort to win the war, grunts and junior officers were ordered to “uproot … hundreds of thousands of peasants from their villages and … [move] … them into government refugee camps. The villages were then razed and the destroyed areas proclaimed free-fire zones. Vietnamese found in these zones were automatically considered Viet Cong and … subject to American fire without warning.” (Christian Appy, Working Class War 226-227) Reading through the transcripts of the hearings, most of the atrocities described occurred in these free fire zones.
The indiscriminate killing of Vietnamese, vividly described by the Winter Soldiers, within these free fire zones was driven by the equating iof “victory … [with] … a high body count. … The pressure on unit commanders to produce enemy corpses was intense, and they in turn communicated it to their troops.” (Ibid 227) As Philip Caputo observed, in his memoir a Rumor of War, “if it’s dead and Vietnamese, its VC” which resulted in “even the narrowly defined goal of killing communists proved, in practice, merely an effort to produce Vietnamese corpses.” (ibid 227).
While no detailed study of the political affiliations of the Winter Soldier Witnesses exist, Dr. Hamid Molwana and Paul Geffert detailed “profile study of members of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War”, published in 1971 as the appendix to The New Soldier allows one to draw some conclusions. The majority had enlisted, were politically conservative and had either felt the “US was justified in being there” (28.5%), or had “[n]o strong feeling about our intervention or non-intervention” (47.5%) in Vietnam. When asked what had radicalized them, Molwana and Geffert found the majority of the membership of VVAW (62%), and by implication the Winter Soldiers, had been radicalized by their experiences in Vietnam , not as been claimed over the last 30 years by either the undue influence of civilian activists in the United States or the various Communist Parties in power at the time. A similar drift is occurring among servicemen deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, and it is this drift, not the machinations of washed up old communists and former VVAW members, that is the impetus for the Winter Soldier Hearings.
For the second time in 40 years, American Servicemen and veterans have felt it necessary to publicly challenge the synthesis of military action with the goals and needs of corporate imperialism. Unfortunately, for the last 30 years these servicemen have been successfully misrepresented [swiftboated] as accusing their fellow GIs of unspeakable acts, it is up to us, to support, stand with and amplify their challenge.

From Sit Rep (IVAW Newsletter)

There Is No Forgiveness In My Book For Someone Who Orders Americans Into Battle To Die, And Profits Hand Over Fist, And Lies Through Their Teeth To Keep It Going

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February 2008 By Steve Mortillo [Iraq Veterans Against The War], Sit-Rep
Just the fact that this war has cost more than any war in American history; we are in debt billions of dollars for a war that this country never believed in, a war that was sold to this country in lies and deceit.
I refuse to let those with whom I served be disgraced like that.
There is no forgiveness in my book for someone who orders Americans into battle to die, and profits hand over fist, and lies through their teeth to keep it going.

From Sit Rep (IVAW Newsletter)

“I Can Really Understand Where They're Coming From And Why They Would Build A Resistance Against This Occupation. If I Had Enemy Troops In My Home, I Would Be Poisoning Them, Not Feeding Them”

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February 2008 By Jason Washburn [Iraq Veterans Against The War], Sit-Rep
After three tours in Iraq, I've seen the whole spectrum.
They really did welcome us when we first showed up. They were grateful, they were glad that we got rid of Saddam Hussein.
Nobody there liked him, not even his own soldiers.
Everywhere we went they came out with their hands up, busloads of them just coming out and surrendering; and the ones that didn't do that, ditched their uniforms, ditched their weapons, and went back to their daily life.
They wanted Saddam out as much as anybody.
They thought we were going to help them rebuild, which is what we promised to do; but instead, all we did was continuously destroy.
The longer we're there, the more we destroy; and little by little people became less and less grateful and more and more angry.
I can really understand where they're coming from and why they would build a resistance against this occupation; y'know I don't think I've talked to a single Iraqi that hasn't had someone in their family killed.
I think it actually deteriorated a lot slower than it would in' the United States; if some other nation had invaded our country and the same thing was going on, I think it would deteriorate a lot quicker than it did there.
From what I've seen, a lot of the Iraqi people are very open, generous, and hospitable. Especially when we first got there, they were willing to have us in their homes, they would invite us in for food and drink; and even by my third tour they were sometimes still doing that.
I can't even imagine it.
If I had enemy troops in my home, I would be poisoning them, not feeding them.

From GI Special 6C1: GI Getsa 6 Months for Refusing to Deploy to Iraq

This was originally published in Tom Barton's GI Special, March 1, 2008

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"2nd Cav Rear Detachment Commander Lt. Col. Thomas Rickard Told Stewart That: ‘Twenty Years Ago In Panama We Would Have Stripped A Soldier Naked, Beat Him Up, Thrown Him In A Van And Dumped Him For Not Deploying’”

From: Garett Reppenhagen [Iraq Veterans Against The War]
To: GI Special
Sent: February 29, 2008
Subject: Serving their country.

As I speak to more and more soldiers that decided they would rather go to prison rather than war it is obvious they are coming out of the experience with more of their conscience intact.
They explain to me how easy prison was in hind sight to their tours in Iraq and that they wished they choose to serve time behind bars rather than time behind a trigger.
It takes a lot of courage to go to war, but these men and women that go against their command, many times against the views of their friends, families and communities, are showing a new kind of courage. The courage to resist.
When these service members exit the military they will loose their benefits that was promised by their contract, I hope our society can step in and support these heroes of conscious and celebrate there efforts to redefine courage.

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February 22, 2008 Stars and Stripes
VILSECK, Germany -- A soldier who refused to deploy with his unit to Iraq because of a “deeply held personal belief” that he should not take a human life will spend the next six months in jail before being thrown out of the Army.
Spc. Benjamin Stewart, 25, of the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment, pleaded guilty Wednesday to missing movement on Jan. 7, 2008, when he was scheduled to deploy to Iraq.
Stewart had already been convicted -- and reduced in rank from sergeant to specialist -- of being absent without leave when the bulk of the regiment deployed last summer.
Stewart told the court that he refused to deploy because of what he experienced during his last deployment to Mosul, Iraq, from 2004 to 2005.
“I saw a mother and her infant child get killed in crossfire. I saw children lose their limbs in a car bomb. One boy lost an arm and another lost both legs,” he said.
After that mission, Stewart said, he decided he could not deploy again.
“I’m not a pacifist or peacenik or against the war in Iraq. From the beginning, I believe the war was justified, (but) I could not live with myself if I killed another person,” he said.
His wife, Tabitha Stewart, who testified by telephone from the U.S., said Stewart returned from Iraq angry and scared.
“He would stop the car in the middle of the freeway and yell at another driver for reasons I didn’t understand. But one day Ben woke up and started … getting back to the Ben I knew before he went to Iraq,” she said.
The prosecutor, Capt. Derrick Grace, said Stewart should be made an example of for the Vilseck community. He noted that Stewart had a chance to leave the Army after his first deployment but chose to re-enlist for four more years while he was in Iraq.
“He was fine serving in a garrison environment, but when his nation called him to deploy, he said ‘no,’“ Grace said.
The defense attorney, Capt. James Hill, argued that Stewart’s sentence should be reduced because of illegal pretrial punishment by his unit.
Witnesses testified that while in front of other soldiers, 2nd Cav Rear Detachment commander Lt. Col. Thomas Rickard told Stewart that: “Twenty years ago in Panama we would have stripped a soldier naked, beat him up, thrown him in a van and dumped him for not deploying.”
The military judge, Col. Greg Marchessault, agreed with the defense’s argument, ruling that Rickard’s comments caused Stewart to feel degraded, humiliated and made him live in fear.
He gave Stewart credit for seven days of pretrial confinement but sentenced him to be reduced to private and confined for six months, to be followed by a bad-conduct discharge.

Shutting Down The Machine - Iraq Veterans Aganist the War (Philadelphia Chapter) March from Philadelphia to Valley Forge

	Philadelphia Winter Soldier March Part 1
	Philadelphia Winter Soldier March Part 2

Here Come the Lifers and Chickenhawks defending us against the "Winter Soldiers"

This particular insightful analysis was originally posted by "GI Jane" to her blog The Foxhole.

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IVAW losers to host “Winter Soldier II”
Filed under: Assorted idiots, Politics — sfcmac @ 3:22 pm
SFC Jonn Lilyea, U.S. Army (RET) of This ain’t Hell (http://thisainthell.us/blog/) is a good buddy, a blogger, and a fellow war veteran. He’s going to be covering something next month called “Winter Soldier II”; a circus hosted by a bunch of malcontents from the IVAW, “Iraq Veterans Against the War”.
For the uninitiated, the original “Winter Soldier” took place in 1971, with John Kerry at the forefront of the farce.
John Kerry lied before Congress in 1971 during the so-called “Winter Soldier Investigation”. He denigrated his fellow veterans with fabricated tales about atrocities he never witnessed, and hopped into the political sack with Jane Fonda, and the V.V.A.W. (Vietnam Veterans Against the War); a wonderful organization that voted on whether to commit political assassinations during a November 1971 meeting. He also traveled to Hanoi, shook hands with the VC, and offered his support. His picture still hangs in the Ho Chi Mihn museum. His “war hero” persona has some flaws. The embellished circumstances involving his Purple Hearts and his subsequent behavior are clearly indicative of lack of character, integrity, and the leadership it takes to be a respected member of our government. He shouldn’t have been a Senator, let alone Presidential candidate.
Former members of his Navy Swift Boat unit revealed some aspects of Kerry’s unethical behavior in Vietnam. Kerry “reenacted” his adventures in Vietnam with a movie camera, conned the Navy out of 4 Purple Hearts for Band-Aid “wounds” (one of which was self-inflicted), and threw someone else’s medals over the Whit House fence during an anti-war publicity stunt.
For a complete expose on the 1971 “Winter Soldier” sham check out this website: http://www.wintersoldier.com/
Phonies like Jesse MacBeth, Scott Beauchamp, and Adam Kokesh, have either fabricated stories about themselves or their fellow sevice members and don’t have the decency to be ashamed.
Now comes a motley group of ex-military misfits, hosting a Winter Soldier redux.
The IVAW (http://www.ivaw.org) attracts some pretty undesirable characters. Read the “profiles” and comments on their website. Not one of them has any outstanding achievements. They omit full disclosure of their military backgrounds, and some of them are dumb enough to think that Buck Sergeants and Privates can “retire” under normal circumstances.
One of them in particular, Jonathan P. Dewald, has a unique way of “expressing” himself. His rants are clearly indicative of an emotionally retarded individual. Throwing imbecilic tantrums against the military and his own country is his way of compensating for his intellectual impotence. For someone who served in the Army, he’s totally clueless about the reasons for the WOT.
To top it all off, he’s not even a war veteran, yet he’s been allowed into an organization with the “Iraq Veterans” designation in the title. How token.
The Islamofascist goal of a world Caliphate is lost on the X-Box generation. In the IVAW, he’s in good company.
I previously blogged about these losers here: http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2007/11/09/former-military-malcontents/
Veterans angered by disgraceful organizations like the IVAW, not only served, but actually deployed to war; an item missing from Dewald’s DD214. It’s highly probable that they padded their ranks with asshats like Dewald. Evidently, they think numbers will make up for the lack of legitimacy and integrity in their clique.
The IVAW brings shame on themselves in an attempt to drag all veterans into the gutter of their anti-military/anti-war ‘activism’. They abuse their status as “veterans” for the purpose of bad-mouthing the WOT as well as the country.
They feed the maws of radical groups like Code Pink, A.N.S.W.E.R., and MoveOn.org, and serve as a propaganda tool for Islamofascists who don’t like the fact we struck back and are erradicating them on their own turf.
There will be a lot of leftwingnut rhetoric at their little get-together next month, but they should know that most veterans will defy their bullshit.
The Left loves to tout groups like the IVAW as if they are ‘heros’ bucking the system, when in reality, there’s no honor or bravery in collaborating and joining ranks with an organization of traitorous malcontents.
I wonder if John Kerry will be on hand.