black…MYstory

A little over 2 years ago, I first read about the death of Pfc. Lavena Johnson.  Since that time, I have posted several times about her case and how there are too many questions about how she died and the condition in which she was found to dismiss her death as simply a suicide.  Given what her parents say (one of whom is a medical doctor), the condition of her body gave them reason to believe that their daughter was raped and murdered.

It’s no secret that there is a huge issue of sexual assault as it pertains to female soldiers.  However, until very recently, something had not been disclosed — military policy itself has been putting female soldiers at risk.

A while back, I posted about the military allowing moral waivers to get more bodies to Iraq.  In a nutshell, it allowed people with dubious, criminal backgrounds to be enlisted into the armed services.  At the time, I was just looking at the fact that, because of these moral waivers, the military had an emerging gang problem, as you had recruits from groups like the Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, Gangster Disciples,neo-nazis and the Klan knowingly being admitted to the ranks.

But, it also appears that there were other criminal types being allowed to serve - people with “felony convictions for crimes like rape and sexual assault”.  That’s right — the U.S. military is allowing convicted rapists to serve alongside female soldiers and to be deployed into civilian populations in Iraq.

I am not saying that this is why or how Lavena Johnson died but, this is a point to consider.  The military already has a pretty shabby record of protecting female troops from sexual assaults by soldiers with no known criminal records.  However, by adding known rapists to the ranks, this is a recipe for disaster.

Popularity: 59% [?]

…but you gotta get the hell out of Iraq!

With a new president comes new changes.  One of those might have become manifest in the form of a new security agreement approved by Iraq’s Cabinet.  The deal, still pending a vote by Iraq’s parliament, calls for all U.S. troops to pull out of Iraq’s cities and towns by the end of June 2009 and all troops to be out of the country by the end of 2011.

However, the most interesting piece of this proposal to me is the provision that all troops leave regardless of conditions on the ground.  If you remember, President Bush has long pushed the notion that we’ll leave based on conditions on the ground.  Well, the Iraqi Cabinet is saying that whatever those conditions are, they’ll handle them — a move that is just fine with me.

Again, this agreement still needs the approval of the Iraqi Parliament and there are some who don’t want an agreement that keeps the U.S. in Iraq for the next three years.  So, there are still significant hurdles to this deal.  But, hopefully, there’s some light at the end of the tunnel for the men and women sacrificing so much of themselves in Iraq.

Popularity: 16% [?]

If money is any indication of our troops’ approval of our current military policy, then Americans might want to pay attention to whom our troops are donating in the presidential race.

In analyzing to whom troops in the battlefield are making their donations, the Center for Responsive Politics got quite a surprise.  Among these troops, they are donating to Barack Obama’s campaign at six times the rate they are giving to John McCain’s campaign.  To further illustrate that the troops are clear in their desires, they are even donating to Ron Paul’s campaign at four times the rate for donations to McCain and Paul suspended his campaign some months back.

Additionally, Obama lead McCain in military donations, overall, with some 57% of presidential donations going to his campaign.

The message:  support our troops and vote for Obama.

Popularity: 15% [?]

In February 2007, I first posted an article about the death of LaVena Johnson.  She had been dead for over a year and a half and I don’t remember reading any newspapers or seeing any television news reporters speaking about the highly suspicious circumstances of her demise.  In fact, had I not stumbled upon an article on AlterNet, I don’t know if I’d have ever coming across her story.

Since that time, with the exceptions of blogs and the media in LaVena Johnson’s hometown, there has not been much coverage of her story.

For those that are not up to speed on this story, LaVena Johnson was found dead of a gunshot wound in her tent, near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005.  The Army ruled her death a suicide, claiming that the Pfc. Johnson shot herself with her own M-16.  From the beginning, her father, Dr. John Johnson, saw huge inconcistencies in the Army’s official story, including the fact that there was a blood trail leading to her tent, she had loose teeth and a broken nose, she had burns on her body (it was later revealed that it appeared that someone had poured a chemical, likely lye, into her vaginal area) but, her body was fully clothed when she was found.  Additionally, residue tests point to the likelihood that she didn’t even handle the weapon that she was supposed to have used to shoot herself.

So, like the story of Pat Tillman, we had another story of a soldier dying, likely at the hands of another soldier (or soldiers) and the official story tries to point away from the evidence.

Sadly, it seems that, at least until now, the Army has kept a tight lid on the story and the mainstream media has largely ignored it.

I am not the only person lamenting this fact.  Linda Lowen, of the About.com Guide to Women’s Issues, blogs about the travesty that is this lack of coverage.

As I have noted, she discusses how it is basically the bloggers keeping this story alive and how the group colorofchange.org that is pushing, along with the family of Pfc. Johnson, to have Congress investigate her death.

It is a shame that, for all the talk of love and concern that we have for our troops, we continue to allow this young woman to have her memory desecrated because the truth is not politically favorable.

Popularity: 21% [?]

After reading and hearing more about the mysterious death of Pfc. LaVena Johnson, my mind was spinning at the thoughts of the type of brutality she must have suffered at the hands of her attacker(s).  More disturbing was the fact that it could have been a fellow soldier or soldiers that did this to her.

What the LaVena Johnson case seems to shed light on is an ugly truth about the military — sexual assaults of female military personnel are wildly prevalent.

Recently, doctors for a Veterans Affairs hospital in the Los Angeles area testified in front of Congress that some 41% of female veterans seen there said they had been victims of sexual assault while in the military.

A recent study by the Government Accountability Office may put that number even higher, across the board.

“At the 14 installations where GAO administered its survey, 103 service members indicated that they had been sexually assaulted within the preceding 12 months. Of these, 52 service members indicated that they did not report the sexual assault.”

In looking at the numbers, Rep. Jane Harman, D-California, stated it most profoundly:

“Women serving in the U.S. military today are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire in Iraq.”

Women soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen are expected to risk life and limb in service to their country.  However, these threats should not be coming from fellow military personnel.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Last year, I shared a couple of articles regarding the highly-suspicious death of Pfc. LaVena Johnson (see here and here).  Pfc. Johnson’s died on July 19, 2005 near Balad, Iraq, just a few days shy of her 20th birthday.  The Army ruled her death a suicide but, there were just too many inconsistencies for the official line to hold true.  From what LaVena’s father, Dr. John Johnson, saw, he had strong evidence to believe that his daughter was raped and murdered.  Last year, Dr. Johnson discussed how his daughter’s body showed signs of a struggle, including loose teeth and what appeared to be indications that someone had tried to set her body on fire.  Additionally, in the report on her death, it noted a blood trail outside of the tent where her body was found (though the Army claims she shot herself in the head) and residue tests indicating that she may not have even handled the weapon that killed her.

After diligently fighting for the truth and enlisting the help of certain concerned politicians and activists, the Johnson Family now has even more cause to believe that their daughter was indeed murdered.

After some questions about Pfc. Johnson’s death were raised by Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay at a hearing regarding Pat Tillman and Jessica Lynch, Army investigators were embarrassed into relinquishing a CD-rom of the photos they took during their investigation.  From what Dr. Johnson says, he daughter’s death appears more disturbing than originally believed.

According to Dr. Johnson, documents and photos show that LaVena’s body had signs of bruising, a broken nose, burned hands and someone had poured lye into her vagina (presumably to destroy evidence of rape).

Furthermore, the medical examiners noted a bullet lodged in the front of her head, above her left eye.  They cited this as an “exit wound”, calling into question how she could have shot herself in that way with a rifle.

The story goes on to raise more question:

Photos taken of PFC Johnson where her body was found and at autopsy were examined by the American. Although the body was fully clothed and on its back at the scene, nude images taken at autopsy show burns to the right side of the body and lividity (the pooling of blood inside the body after death) on her left side.

The victim’s nose appeared to be broken and pushed inward to the left side. There was an imprint that appeared to be a bullet lodged in the front of her head above her left eye, on the side of what was described by medical examiners as an exit wound.

A copy of a sketch in an official investigative document her father received from the Army, titled “Rough Sketch Depicting Crime Scene,” raises questions about how Johnson could have shot herself with her own rifle, when, as outlined in the sketch, a cot is located neatly between the body and her weapon.

It was obvious from early on that the official story given by the Army was thin, to say the least. Now, we see that, in addition to the story on Pat Tillman’s death, the Army has apparently again lied to cover up a suspicious death.  I certainly do no like comparing deaths but, from what I see, LaVena Johnson suffered a brutal death, very likely at the hands of another American.

Popularity: 20% [?]

One of the funniest things I saw over the past weekend was the political dance by the Iraqi Prime Minister when the White House found out that, in a recent interview, he seemed to be endorsing Barack Obama’s timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

At first, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki tried to deny that he had done so (I presume Bush and Co. made a very heated call to Iraq) but, in the end, after the audio of Maliki’s comments to the German magazine Der Spiegel was made public, the Iraqi government had to relinquish the fact that they favored Obama’s plan.

This leaves John McCain with egg on his face.  McCain has often tried to paint Obama as naive on Iraq and tried to tell the public that he has his finger on the pulse of our foreign policy.  However, despite what he wants to present, it appears that McCain really doesn’t know the political realities of Iraq as well as he claims. Or, to put it in the words of a senior McCain Advisor, “We’re f*cked”.

On Friday, the McCain campaign. tried to salvage his position by issuing the following statement, off the record:

“His domestic politics require him to be for us getting out…The military says ‘conditions based’ and Maliki said ‘conditions based’ yesterday in the joint statement with Bush. Regardless, voters care about [the] military, not about Iraqi leaders.”

Translation: The Iraqis agree with us…not that we care what they think about it, though.”

However, after al-Maliki’s meeting with Obama in Iraq, Iraqi government spokeperson Ali al-Dabbagh, stated the following:

“We cannot give any timetables or dates but the Iraqi government believes the end of 2010 is the appropriate time for the withdrawal of forces.”

For the record, according to this spokesperson, Obama and al-Maliki did not discuss Iraqi government policy, as this would have been inappropriate but, this pronouncement by an Iraqi official falls much more in line with Obama’s proposed withdrawal time frame of April 2010 than McCain’s date falling somewhere in 2013.

In the end, no matter how they try to spin this, McCain has lost some ground on the Iraq issue.  It’s clear that America wants to leave.  With Iraq saying it’s ready to stand on its own, it will be even harder to justify our occupation of that country.

Popularity: 18% [?]

A little over a year ago, President Bush stated of the Iraqi government that “If they were to say (to the U.S. to) leave, we would leave.”

In that same statement, he cited Iraq’s right as a sovereign nation to do so.

Well, now, Iraq’s not quite asking us to leave but, is definitely ready to hand us our coats and escort us to the door.

While previously hinting about this, Iraq is now, more or less, demanding that the U.S. set a timetable for withdrawal from this country.

Iraq is saying that it will not accept any security deal with the U.S. that does not involve such a timetable.

While the White House is trying to spin this to say that Iraq was not seeking to impose a strict timetable, the words of Iraq’s national security adviser, Mouwaffak al-Rubaie, seem to point in that direction:

“Our stance in the negotiations underway with the American side will be strong … We will not accept any memorandum of understanding that doesn’t have specific dates to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq”

To me, that sounds like a call for a definitive timeline.

I’ve always believed that in order to be truly free, a people must have the right of self-determination.  Perhaps, now, Iraq is looking to assert that right.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Often, when I think about the current wars we are in, I don’t think about what will be asked of me. Instead, I think about my 5-year-old son. My son was born just a few months after we invaded Iraq. I know that the wrong choice of president could mean that, one day, my son could be called up for compulsory military service as we commemorate our 18th year of war in that country. I don’t want that for my child and I don’t see John McCain as a path away from that possibility.

So, when I saw this ad from MoveOn.org, I couldn’t help but think of what’s at stake this November.

Popularity: 15% [?]

I was watching Countdown last night and there was reaction to John McCain’s comments on the Today Show where he stated that it was “not too imporant” when troops come home from Iraq, as long as they are not taking casualties. Keith Olbermann spoke with Brandon Friedman from Vote Vets to ask what McCain’s statements could mean to troops in the field.

Popularity: 19% [?]