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.

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…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.

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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.

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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.

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In 1944, 28 black soldiers where convicted and dishonorably discharged for the lynching death of an Italian P.O.W. in Seattle, Washington.

However, none of them were involved.

In World War II America, Italian (and German) prisoners of war had more privileges that black U.S. soldiers.  In Seattle, it meant that Italian P.O.W.’s were allowed to freely roam the streets of Seattle and charm the young ladies.  On a particular night in 1944, certain white military policemen had enough of these Italian “prisoners” cavorting with the local women and started a riot.  In the midst of this, they hung one Italian P.O.W. from a cable noose.

So, how did these black men take the fall?

This is a narrative that has been repeated time and again in our history in this country.  The Army prosecutor for this case, Leon Jaworski, was not unlike too many of the civilian prosecutors of his time.  He withheld key information that could have exonerated these 28 black men in order to get a quick conviction.

The truth lay buried for more than 60 years, until Jack and Leslie Hammon published their book, “On American Soil”, detailing the true events of that night.

A fight broke out between a black soldier and an Italian POW.  A larger melee ensued and, according to the Hammons, white soldiers took it upon themselves to lynch an Italian P.O.W. out of spite because, unlike them, the Italians were allowed to drink alcohol and date local girls.

When the dust settled on the trial, 28 black men were unjustly convicted and sentenced to a combined 200 years in prison.  After their time was served, these men were dishonorably discharged from the Army, which, as one put it, was a “death sentence” for them in terms of employment.

It was not until this past Saturday that the Army officially apologized for this travesty.  Sadly, only two men lived long enough to receive this apology for themselves.  One of these men, Samuel Snow, died just a few hours after receiving his exoneration.

The rest have long since passed on so, some of their families stood in their stead.

These soldiers have had their dishonorable discharges changed to honorable discharges and their survivors will receive their back pay but, this will by no means cover their lost honor and opportunity that six decades cost them.

When we honor soldiers for their service, we need to remind ourselves that some soldiers fought wars not only abroad, but at home, as well.  This is one of those stories.

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Almost a year ago, I posted about the increase in “moral waivers” for military recruits (see here, here and here). What was being seen was that the military was admitting folks in with very sketchy backgrounds, including known KKK members and people with known memberships to infamous street gangs.

Often, I hear people talk about how we should send prisoners over to fight in Iraq but, this is darned close and a lot of military folks are concerned about serving alongside people with such backgrounds.

Now, it appears that, because more bodies were needed for the “surge”, an even greater increase of these waivers has occurred. In fact, the Army doubled the number of these waivers and the Marines increased their waivers by some 70%.

So, how bad does it get. Just read the following:

According to the new data, the Army and Marines have allowed recruits who have been convicted of assault with a dangerous weapn, burglary, drug abuse, sexual assault; in a few instances recruits were cleared to join after convinctions on terrorism or bomb-threat related charges.

“I understand that there can be valid reasons for personnel waivers and recognize the importance of providing opportunities to individuals who have served their sentences and rehabilitated themselves,” Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), the Oversight Committee’s chairman, wrote in a letter (.pdf) to an undersecretary of defense. “At the same time, concerns have been raised that the significant increase in the recruitment of persons with criminal records is a result of the strain put on the military by the Iraq war and may be undermining military readiness.”

The military only provided data on felony waivers from 2006 and 2007, saying information from prior years or about personnel waivers granted for misdemeanor convictions had been lost due to poor record keeping, according to Waxman’s letter. The committee chairman requested more internal documents about the protocol for granting waivers, whether the increase had to do with meeting tougher recruitment goals and any studies of the effectiveness of recruited felons the military might have produced.

Something tells me that these “lost records” might have some very disturbing truths to them. When the military is starting to do this to meet recruiting goals, doesn’t anyone else see that something is not working?

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I honestly believe that the tactics once used solely to suppress dissent from people of color are now being utilized on the public at large. As black people, we know of the long history of COINTELPRO and its devastating effects on our forward progress as a people but, I believe that, in addition to it being a program, it was also a grand experiment. America didn’t squeal too loudly when it happened to people who didn’t matter much so, perhaps, it might not squeal much if enacted on America as a whole.

In post-9/11 America, we continue to silently accept the erosion of our rights and “experiments” like these continue to go on using people who still don’t matter much as the test subjects.

I say all that to say this — once again, another program has been uncovered that shows us just how badly we can expect our rights to be trampled. During the last Congress, the Posse Comitatus act of 1878 was abolished. You don’t know what it is, you say? Don’t be ashamed — until last year, I didn’t know either. The act basically said that the U.S. military could not be used against U.S. citizens. Now, some in power recognized that U.S. citizens may not easily accept having the last of their rights stripped from them, should martial law be declared so, they had a brilliant idea — they would train members of the clergy to suppress opposition. These groups, known as “Clergy Response Teams”, are U.S. Government-trained ministers who are deployed into areas under martial law to help quiet things down.

Now, just as I hypothesized, people of color were used as the guinea pigs of this experiment. A “Clergy Response Team” was used in New Orleans right after Hurricane Katrina.

Sounds Orwellian, you say? Just check out this excerpt from the piece on them:

Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. “In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they’re helping to diffuse that situation,” assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.

Yes, you read right — Homeland Security and the clergy working hand-in-hand to “diffuse” these situations.

But, this part is even more chilling:

For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, “because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.”

A few weeks back, I wrote about how mega-preacher Creflo Dollar had written a letter to his followers admonishing them to be unquestioningly loyal to the guidance of George Bush. Please trust, such calls did not begin or end with Creflo Dollar so, we have to believe that this message was played out in congregations across this country. Now, this program seem to be its next, logical evolutionary step.

Below is the link to the video of KSLA’s story on this program.

See video here

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