Butterfly Cauldron
Thursday, September 14, 2006
So much drama over a pentacle?
At last, common sense prevails. If a soldier can put the symbol of their faith -- including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Sikhism and 20-plus other religions -- on their headstone, then Wiccans should get fair play too.
ENO, Nev. (AP) — The widow of a soldier killed in Afghanistan won state approval Wednesday to place a Wiccan religious symbol on his memorial plaque, something the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs had refused.
“I’m honored and ecstatic. I’ve been waiting a year for this,” Roberta Stewart said from her home in Fernley, about 30 miles east of Reno.
Sgt. Patrick Stewart, 34, was killed in Afghanistan last September when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his helicopter. Four others also died. Stewart was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
He was a follower of the Wiccan religion, which the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs does not recognize and therefore prohibits on veterans’ headstones in national cemeteries.
But state officials said they had received a legal opinion from the Nevada attorney general’s office that concluded federal officials have no authority over state veterans’ cemeteries. They now plan to have a contractor construct a plaque with the Wiccan pentacle — a circle around a five-pointed star — to be added to the Veterans’ Memorial Wall in Fernley.
“The VA still has not determined yet if a Wiccan symbol can go on the headstone,” said Tim Tetz, executive director of the Nevada Office of Veterans Services. “But we have determined we control the state cemetery and that we therefore have the ability to recognize him for his service to his country.”
Wiccans worship the earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves good witches, pagans or neo-pagans.
The Veterans Affairs’ National Cemetery Administration allows only approved emblems of religious beliefs on government headstones. Over the years, it has approved more than 30, including symbols for the Tenrikyo Church, United Moravian Church and Sikhs. There is also an emblem for atheists.
This always seemed to be a no-brainer to me. If you allow one faith, you have to allow all faiths. Period. (Although -- what symbol would be used for athiests? I'm curious, really, that's not a snarky question.)
Labels: death, non-christian, pagan, religion, war
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Well, technically it's not a draft...
But I'm willing to bet that's what's next.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Marine Corps said Tuesday it has been authorized to recall thousands of Marines to active duty, primarily because of a shortage of volunteers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror. The call-ups will begin in the next several months.
The Army has ordered back about 14,000 soldiers since the start of the war in Iraq, but this is the first time the Marines have resorted to an involuntary recall.
So, after you've served your time and fullfilled your obligations, you can still be recalled. I know this is a facet of military life, but damn. Technically, this isnt' a draft, but really...isn't it? It's just drafting from a smaller, more select pool. Your draftees have better training than average, but they're not coming voluntarily. Which, I think, is part of the point of a draft.
The Bushies have bungled things so badly, no one wants to enlist anymore. You'd think, if we had thinking people in government, this might give them pause. Why would no one want to enlist? But, no. No, there's no reconsideration of strategy or troop deployment, no reconsideration of if we should be in Iraq in the first place. No no. We're not leaving Iraq while Bush is still in office!
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Marine Corps said Tuesday it has been authorized to recall thousands of Marines to active duty, primarily because of a shortage of volunteers for duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Up to 2,500 Marines will be brought back at any one time, but there is no cap on the total number of Marines who may be forced back into service in the coming years as the military battles the war on terror. The call-ups will begin in the next several months.
The Army has ordered back about 14,000 soldiers since the start of the war in Iraq, but this is the first time the Marines have resorted to an involuntary recall.
So, after you've served your time and fullfilled your obligations, you can still be recalled. I know this is a facet of military life, but damn. Technically, this isnt' a draft, but really...isn't it? It's just drafting from a smaller, more select pool. Your draftees have better training than average, but they're not coming voluntarily. Which, I think, is part of the point of a draft.
The Bushies have bungled things so badly, no one wants to enlist anymore. You'd think, if we had thinking people in government, this might give them pause. Why would no one want to enlist? But, no. No, there's no reconsideration of strategy or troop deployment, no reconsideration of if we should be in Iraq in the first place. No no. We're not leaving Iraq while Bush is still in office!
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Try to do the right thing and people call you a traitor
It's apparently military day at the Cauldron. Another example of the fine mess Bush's Monkies are making. The soldier who blew the whistle on the torture at Abu Ghraib is outted by a top official, while he's still in fighting in Iraq. He has to be spirited out of the country, to prevent other soldiers from turning on him. When he gets home, even some of his own family consider him a traitor and he's forced to flee, once again, leaving his hometown for, probably, good.
Because when our soldiers are moral, it's time to kill them?
NEW YORK (AP) — The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.
Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.
“I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways,” the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Darby said that if presented with the same circumstances at Abu Ghraib today, he would do the same thing. “It was a hard decision to make when I made it, but it had to be done,” he said.
Darby also said he later learned that Rumsfeld was not the first to identify him, and he did not see “anything intentional or malicious” on the Pentagon chief’s part.
____
Darby said he discovered the abuse photos inadvertently in January 2004 while flipping through other pictures on a CD that Graner had given him. “To this day I’m not sure why he gave me that CD,” he said. “He probably just forgot which pictures were on it, or he might have assumed I wouldn’t care.”
At first amused by some of the photos, Darby finally decided “it just didn’t sit right with me,” and sent the CD to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Although he did so anonymously, CID agents quickly pinpointed him as the source.
Darby said he was still being interviewed when Graner and two others were brought in, and the agents had to smuggle him out wrapped in rugs and blankets to conceal his identity.
Stunned when Graner and the others returned for a month’s duty at the prison, he slept with a loaded pistol. “They’d be walking around with their weapons all day long, knowing somebody had turned them in and trying to find out who. That was one of the most nervous periods of my life,” Darby said.
His worst moment, he said, came on May 7, 2004, during lunch with 10 fellow MPs in a mess hall filled with 400 troops.
“It was like something out of a movie,” he recalled. Rumsfeld appeared on television, dropped Darby’s name, “and the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I got up and got the hell out of there.”
Only later did he learn he had been named in a New Yorker magazine article a few days earlier, he told AP in the telephone interview.
In response to queries from AP, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said he recalled no effort to protect Darby’s identity. It was known “very early and quickly became common knowledge,” and people were “talking about his courage in coming forward,” he said.
Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where “a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I’m a traitor.”
He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother’s funeral.
“I’m not welcome there. People there don’t look at the fact that I knew right from wrong,” he said. “They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American.”
And people say liberals hate our soldiers. I'm sure a great many of those people chasing this man out of town were good Compassion(less) Conservatives. Because an Iraqi life is worth so very much more than an American life, and well, we're over there to kill them, right? *sigh*
Because when our soldiers are moral, it's time to kill them?
NEW YORK (AP) — The soldier who triggered the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal by sending incriminating photos to military investigators says he feared deadly retaliation by other GIs and was shocked when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld mentioned his name at a Senate hearing.
Within days, Joe Darby was spirited out of Iraq at his own request. But his family was besieged by news media, and close relatives called him a traitor. Ultimately he was forced to move away from his hometown in western Maryland.
“I had the choice between what I knew was morally right and my loyalty to other soldiers. I couldn’t have it both ways,” the 27-year-old military policeman said in the just-released September issue of Gentleman’s Quarterly.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Darby said that if presented with the same circumstances at Abu Ghraib today, he would do the same thing. “It was a hard decision to make when I made it, but it had to be done,” he said.
Darby also said he later learned that Rumsfeld was not the first to identify him, and he did not see “anything intentional or malicious” on the Pentagon chief’s part.
____
Darby said he discovered the abuse photos inadvertently in January 2004 while flipping through other pictures on a CD that Graner had given him. “To this day I’m not sure why he gave me that CD,” he said. “He probably just forgot which pictures were on it, or he might have assumed I wouldn’t care.”
At first amused by some of the photos, Darby finally decided “it just didn’t sit right with me,” and sent the CD to the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. Although he did so anonymously, CID agents quickly pinpointed him as the source.
Darby said he was still being interviewed when Graner and two others were brought in, and the agents had to smuggle him out wrapped in rugs and blankets to conceal his identity.
Stunned when Graner and the others returned for a month’s duty at the prison, he slept with a loaded pistol. “They’d be walking around with their weapons all day long, knowing somebody had turned them in and trying to find out who. That was one of the most nervous periods of my life,” Darby said.
His worst moment, he said, came on May 7, 2004, during lunch with 10 fellow MPs in a mess hall filled with 400 troops.
“It was like something out of a movie,” he recalled. Rumsfeld appeared on television, dropped Darby’s name, “and the guys at the table just stopped eating and looked at me. I got up and got the hell out of there.”
Only later did he learn he had been named in a New Yorker magazine article a few days earlier, he told AP in the telephone interview.
In response to queries from AP, Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said he recalled no effort to protect Darby’s identity. It was known “very early and quickly became common knowledge,” and people were “talking about his courage in coming forward,” he said.
Darby is scheduled to leave the Army and the Reserves, after eight years of duty, on Aug. 31. He no longer lives in his hometown of Cumberland, Md., where “a lot of people up there view me as a traitor. Even some of my family members think I’m a traitor.”
He said he has returned home only twice, for a wedding and his mother’s funeral.
“I’m not welcome there. People there don’t look at the fact that I knew right from wrong,” he said. “They look at the fact that I put an Iraqi before an American.”
And people say liberals hate our soldiers. I'm sure a great many of those people chasing this man out of town were good Compassion(less) Conservatives. Because an Iraqi life is worth so very much more than an American life, and well, we're over there to kill them, right? *sigh*
This is what Bush's war is doing to our soldiers
Of course, it's doing much, much worse to the Iraqis who cannot escape. At least our soldiers get to come home. Our government is using weapons coated with depleted uranium. The government, of course, says such weapons are perfectly safe. Or, you know, as safe as a weapon can be. And yet, we get stories like this. (Sorry, this is gonna be a long post. But I think the story is worth hearing in its fullness.)
Are depleted uranium weapons, America’s newest armaments, sickening U.S. troops?
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills — morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.
Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.
Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.
There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes, but cannot convince anyone caring for him, that the military’s new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.
In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist. He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact a high price.
“I’m just a zombie walking around,” he says.
Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon’s arsenal of it — thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.
A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.
Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in 2003 because of herniated spinal discs. Then began a strange series of symptoms he’d never experienced in his previously healthy life.
At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another and another. In the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.
“We all had migraines. We all felt sick,” Reed says. “The doctors said, ’It’s all in your head.’ “
Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.
But the medic knew something the others didn’t.
Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, and unexploded ordnance. They’d brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.
“We got on the Internet,” Reed said, “and we started researching depleted uranium.”
Then they hired a lawyer.
———
Reed, Gerard Matthew, Raymond Ramos, Hector Vega, Augustin Matos, Anthony Yonnone, Jerry Ojeda and Anthony Phillip all have depleted uranium in their urine, according to tests available only overseas.
In December 2003, their samples were sent to Germany, where they were analyzed by a Frankfurt professor who developed a depleted uranium test with Randall Parrish, a professor of isotope geology at the University of Leicester in Britain.
The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks.
The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe, and not that worrisome.
Four of the highest-registering samples from Frankfurt were sent to the VA. The results came back negative, Reed said. “Their test just isn’t as sophisticated,” he said.
The VA’s testing methodology is safe and accurate, the agency says. More than 2,100 soldiers from the current war have asked to be tested; only 8 had DU in their urine, the VA said.
The term depleted uranium is linguistically radioactive. Simply uttering the words can prompt a reaction akin to preaching atheism at a tent revival. Heads shake, eyes roll, opinions are yelled from all sides.
“The Department of Defense takes the position that you can eat it for breakfast and it poses no threat at all,” said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center, which helps veterans with various problems, including navigating the labyrinth of VA health care. “Then you have far-left groups that ... declare it a crime against humanity.”
An estimated 286 tons of DU munitions were fired by the U.S. in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. An estimated 130 tons were shot toppling Saddam Hussein.
At the other end are a collection of conspiracy-theorists and Internet proselytizers who say using such weapons constitutes genocide.
There are several studies on how DU affects animals, though their results are not, of course, directly applicable to humans. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations, and pass from mother to offspring, resulting in birth defects.
Iraqi doctors reported significant increases in birth defects and childhood cancers after the 1991 invasion.
Depleted uranium can contaminate soil and water, and coat buildings with radioactive dust.
In 2005, the U.N. Environmental Program identified 311 polluted sites in Iraq. Cleaning them will take at least $40 million and several years, the agency said.
———
Fifteen years after it was first used in battle, there is only one U.S. government study monitoring veterans exposed to depleted uranium.
Number of soldiers in the survey: 32. Number of soldiers in both Iraq wars: more than 900,000.
The study group’s size is controversial — far too small, say some experts — and so are the findings of the voluntary, Baltimore-based study.
It will take years to determine to what extent depleted uranium affected soldiers from this war. After Vietnam, veterans, in numbers that grew with the passage of time, complained of joint aches, night sweats, bloody feces, migraine headaches, unexplained rashes and violent behavior; some developed cancers.
It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange — a corrosive defoliant used to melt the jungles of Vietnam and flush out the enemy — was linked to those sufferings.
———
Herbert Reed is an imposing man, broad shouldered and tall. He strides into the VA Medical Center in the Bronx with the presence of a cop or a soldier. Since the Vietnam War, he has been both.
His hair is perfect, his shirt spotless, his jeans sharply creased. But there is something wrong, an imperfection made more noticeable by a bearing so disciplined. It is a limp — more like a hitch in his get-along.
It is the only sign, albeit a tiny one, that he is extremely sick.
Sleep offers no release. He dreams of gunfire and bombs and soldiers who scream for help. He never gets there in time.
At 54, he is a veteran of two wars and a 20-year veteran of the New York Police Department.
He was in perfect health, he says, before being deployed to Iraq.
According to military guidelines, he should have heard the words depleted uranium long before he ended up at Walter Reed. He should have been trained about its dangers, and how to avoid prolonged exposure to its toxicity and radioactivity.
Reed and the seven others from his unit hate what has happened to them, and they speak of it at public seminars and in politicians’ offices. It is something no VA doctor can explain. They feel like spent rounds, kicked to the side of battle.
They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time because of a multitude of miseries that has no name.
Are depleted uranium weapons, America’s newest armaments, sickening U.S. troops?
By DEBORAH HASTINGS
AP National Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — It takes at least 10 minutes and a large glass of orange juice to wash down all the pills — morphine, methadone, a muscle relaxant, an antidepressant, a stool softener. Viagra for sexual dysfunction. Valium for his nerves.
Four hours later, Herbert Reed will swallow another 15 mg of morphine to cut the pain clenching every part of his body. He will do it twice more before the day is done.
Since he left a bombed-out train depot in Iraq, his gums bleed. There is more blood in his urine, and still more in his stool. Bright light hurts his eyes. A tumor has been removed from his thyroid. Rashes erupt everywhere, itching so badly they seem to live inside his skin. Migraines cleave his skull. His joints ache, grating like door hinges in need of oil.
There is something massively wrong with Herbert Reed, though no one is sure what it is. He believes, but cannot convince anyone caring for him, that the military’s new favorite weapon has made him terrifyingly sick.
In the sprawling bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, he has many caretakers. An internist, a neurologist, a pain-management specialist, a psychologist, an orthopedic surgeon and a dermatologist. He cannot function without his stupefying arsenal of medications, but they exact a high price.
“I’m just a zombie walking around,” he says.
Reed believes depleted uranium has contaminated him. He now walks point in a vitriolic war over the Pentagon’s arsenal of it — thousands of shells and hundreds of tanks coated with the metal that is radioactive, chemically toxic, and nearly twice as dense as lead.
A shell coated with depleted uranium pierces a tank like a hot knife through butter. As tank armor, it repels artillery assaults. It also leaves behind a fine radioactive dust with a half-life of 4.5 billion years.
Depleted uranium is the garbage left from producing enriched uranium for nuclear weapons and energy plants. It is 60 percent as radioactive as natural uranium. The U.S. has an estimated 1.5 billion pounds of it, sitting in hazardous storage sites across the country. Meaning it is plentiful and cheap as well as highly effective.
Reed says he unknowingly breathed DU dust while living with his unit in Samawah, Iraq. He was med-evaced out in 2003 because of herniated spinal discs. Then began a strange series of symptoms he’d never experienced in his previously healthy life.
At Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., he ran into a buddy from his unit. And another and another. In the tedium of hospital life between doctor visits and the dispensing of meds, they began to talk.
“We all had migraines. We all felt sick,” Reed says. “The doctors said, ’It’s all in your head.’ “
Then the medic from their unit showed up. He too, was suffering. That made eight sick soldiers from the 442nd Military Police, an Army National Guard unit of mostly cops and correctional officers from the New York area.
But the medic knew something the others didn’t.
Dutch marines had taken over the abandoned train depot dubbed Camp Smitty, which was surrounded by tank skeletons, and unexploded ordnance. They’d brought radiation-detection devices. The readings were so hot, the Dutch set up camp in the middle of the desert rather than live in the station ruins.
“We got on the Internet,” Reed said, “and we started researching depleted uranium.”
Then they hired a lawyer.
———
Reed, Gerard Matthew, Raymond Ramos, Hector Vega, Augustin Matos, Anthony Yonnone, Jerry Ojeda and Anthony Phillip all have depleted uranium in their urine, according to tests available only overseas.
In December 2003, their samples were sent to Germany, where they were analyzed by a Frankfurt professor who developed a depleted uranium test with Randall Parrish, a professor of isotope geology at the University of Leicester in Britain.
The veterans, using their positive results as evidence, have sued the U.S. Army, claiming officials knew the hazards of depleted uranium, but concealed the risks.
The Department of Defense says depleted uranium is powerful and safe, and not that worrisome.
Four of the highest-registering samples from Frankfurt were sent to the VA. The results came back negative, Reed said. “Their test just isn’t as sophisticated,” he said.
The VA’s testing methodology is safe and accurate, the agency says. More than 2,100 soldiers from the current war have asked to be tested; only 8 had DU in their urine, the VA said.
The term depleted uranium is linguistically radioactive. Simply uttering the words can prompt a reaction akin to preaching atheism at a tent revival. Heads shake, eyes roll, opinions are yelled from all sides.
“The Department of Defense takes the position that you can eat it for breakfast and it poses no threat at all,” said Steve Robinson of the National Gulf War Resource Center, which helps veterans with various problems, including navigating the labyrinth of VA health care. “Then you have far-left groups that ... declare it a crime against humanity.”
An estimated 286 tons of DU munitions were fired by the U.S. in Iraq and Kuwait in 1991. An estimated 130 tons were shot toppling Saddam Hussein.
At the other end are a collection of conspiracy-theorists and Internet proselytizers who say using such weapons constitutes genocide.
There are several studies on how DU affects animals, though their results are not, of course, directly applicable to humans. Military research on mice shows that depleted uranium can enter the bloodstream and come to rest in bones, the brain, kidneys and lymph nodes. Other research in rats shows that DU can result in cancerous tumors and genetic mutations, and pass from mother to offspring, resulting in birth defects.
Iraqi doctors reported significant increases in birth defects and childhood cancers after the 1991 invasion.
Depleted uranium can contaminate soil and water, and coat buildings with radioactive dust.
In 2005, the U.N. Environmental Program identified 311 polluted sites in Iraq. Cleaning them will take at least $40 million and several years, the agency said.
———
Fifteen years after it was first used in battle, there is only one U.S. government study monitoring veterans exposed to depleted uranium.
Number of soldiers in the survey: 32. Number of soldiers in both Iraq wars: more than 900,000.
The study group’s size is controversial — far too small, say some experts — and so are the findings of the voluntary, Baltimore-based study.
It will take years to determine to what extent depleted uranium affected soldiers from this war. After Vietnam, veterans, in numbers that grew with the passage of time, complained of joint aches, night sweats, bloody feces, migraine headaches, unexplained rashes and violent behavior; some developed cancers.
It took more than 25 years for the Pentagon to acknowledge that Agent Orange — a corrosive defoliant used to melt the jungles of Vietnam and flush out the enemy — was linked to those sufferings.
———
Herbert Reed is an imposing man, broad shouldered and tall. He strides into the VA Medical Center in the Bronx with the presence of a cop or a soldier. Since the Vietnam War, he has been both.
His hair is perfect, his shirt spotless, his jeans sharply creased. But there is something wrong, an imperfection made more noticeable by a bearing so disciplined. It is a limp — more like a hitch in his get-along.
It is the only sign, albeit a tiny one, that he is extremely sick.
Sleep offers no release. He dreams of gunfire and bombs and soldiers who scream for help. He never gets there in time.
At 54, he is a veteran of two wars and a 20-year veteran of the New York Police Department.
He was in perfect health, he says, before being deployed to Iraq.
According to military guidelines, he should have heard the words depleted uranium long before he ended up at Walter Reed. He should have been trained about its dangers, and how to avoid prolonged exposure to its toxicity and radioactivity.
Reed and the seven others from his unit hate what has happened to them, and they speak of it at public seminars and in politicians’ offices. It is something no VA doctor can explain. They feel like spent rounds, kicked to the side of battle.
They feel like men who once were warriors and now are old before their time because of a multitude of miseries that has no name.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Digital boobie pictures
No, ya freaks. I'm not posting any. I did have some taken, however.
I had my first mammogram today. Whoohoo.
At 31, I'm rather young to be getting my boobs squished and radiated, but three months of breast pain and a squishy lump sent me off to have my lovelies photographed. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, but it wasn't nearly as painful as I'd been lead to believe. Now, I simply have to wait for the results. Well, the results of the mammo and the blood work I got done Wednesday. On Tuesday, my doctor found protein in my urine, which is a not good thing, particularly when you've got Lupus. So, I'm waiting to find out if my kidneys are starting to screw up. In a way, it's kinda funny. I'm not sure which test should concern me most. Lumpy breasts or screwy kidneys? Where's a girl to put her focus? Either one could kill me, but neither likely will.
Anyway, while I was in the waiting room today the hospital had CNN on. And they were doing a report on the fighting going on in Israel and Lebanon. And the receptionist, a older Pentecostal lady, starts talking about how people should know better than to mess with Israel because that will only bring Jesus back faster. And everyone else in the waiting room, except me, started nodding and agreeing and going on and on about how sacred Israel is and how this is a sign of the end of the world and....I just kept thinking, "Shouldn't mess with Israel? How about we not mess with anyone? How about no one fire weapons at anyone else because it's wrong not because "God" said not to? How about we stop holding on to superstitious beliefs and start valuing people just because they're, oh I don't know, people? How about we stop holding some people to a set of standards because they're "chosen" and other people to another set because they're "condemned"?"
I realize I live in the middle of Jesusland, but...why do people insist on relating everything to their version of Christianity? It's terribly self-centered and small-minded. I remember growing up and talking to my mother about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had lots of ideas and she never discouraged any of them. But she always said things like "Well, God could use a Christian lawyer." or "There's a need for good Christian journalists." Everything was qualified by being Christian. What, I couldn't just be a lawyer (didn't go that route, btw)? Or a reporter? Or an artist? Or a street sweeper? It wasn't good enough for me to do what I wanted with my life, I had to be following Gods' Plan (TM).
I wonder sometimes if my parents know how much they contributed to my resenting pretty much all things "Christian". (I say that because I've finally gotten to the point in my life where I can set the true Christian teachings/beliefs apart from this pseudo-Paulism that masquarades as Christian these days.) I wonder if they know how much their insisting I go to church twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, every god-blessed week made me run, run, run far from church as soon as I got to college? I wonder if they know how uncomfortable and unhappy I was being compelled to go to church camp every summer, Youth Rallies every month, youth activities all the time? And I wonder if it would have mattered if they did. Because there's this strain of thought in fundy churches that, if you're uncomfortable, it's because the Holy Spirit is working on you to get saved. Instead of, oh, I don't know, you like to think for yourself. Or you don't like being in crowds or about lots of people or that you feel religious faith is a personal, private, not-for-public consumption affair?
When I had surgery in May, my mother asked me, before I went into the operating room, if I knew I'd go to heaven if I died on the table? Now, I believe I will. Or, well, I believe in the continuation of the soul in some form and I believe in a Goddess that loves me. So I could honestly answer yes. But if she knew why I could answer yes, she'd have been worried the whole time I was under. And I don't want her to worry, because I'm not worried. And if I'm not worried, why should she? I'd like to live in a world where conflict in another country, which is killing hundreds if not thousands, would be seen as something worthy of concern in it's own right. I'd like to live in a society where other people's pain is not important only in so much as it relates to your belief in a coming judgment. I'd like to live in a place where it wouldn't matter what a person believes, or what they don't believe, where people are valued for simple being. But I don't. I live in Jesusland, where everything centers around being "Christian" and anything or anyone that doesn't live up to that set of standards is either less-than or, usually, inconceivable.
I had my first mammogram today. Whoohoo.
At 31, I'm rather young to be getting my boobs squished and radiated, but three months of breast pain and a squishy lump sent me off to have my lovelies photographed. It wasn't a particularly pleasant experience, but it wasn't nearly as painful as I'd been lead to believe. Now, I simply have to wait for the results. Well, the results of the mammo and the blood work I got done Wednesday. On Tuesday, my doctor found protein in my urine, which is a not good thing, particularly when you've got Lupus. So, I'm waiting to find out if my kidneys are starting to screw up. In a way, it's kinda funny. I'm not sure which test should concern me most. Lumpy breasts or screwy kidneys? Where's a girl to put her focus? Either one could kill me, but neither likely will.
Anyway, while I was in the waiting room today the hospital had CNN on. And they were doing a report on the fighting going on in Israel and Lebanon. And the receptionist, a older Pentecostal lady, starts talking about how people should know better than to mess with Israel because that will only bring Jesus back faster. And everyone else in the waiting room, except me, started nodding and agreeing and going on and on about how sacred Israel is and how this is a sign of the end of the world and....I just kept thinking, "Shouldn't mess with Israel? How about we not mess with anyone? How about no one fire weapons at anyone else because it's wrong not because "God" said not to? How about we stop holding on to superstitious beliefs and start valuing people just because they're, oh I don't know, people? How about we stop holding some people to a set of standards because they're "chosen" and other people to another set because they're "condemned"?"
I realize I live in the middle of Jesusland, but...why do people insist on relating everything to their version of Christianity? It's terribly self-centered and small-minded. I remember growing up and talking to my mother about what I wanted to do when I grew up. I had lots of ideas and she never discouraged any of them. But she always said things like "Well, God could use a Christian lawyer." or "There's a need for good Christian journalists." Everything was qualified by being Christian. What, I couldn't just be a lawyer (didn't go that route, btw)? Or a reporter? Or an artist? Or a street sweeper? It wasn't good enough for me to do what I wanted with my life, I had to be following Gods' Plan (TM).
I wonder sometimes if my parents know how much they contributed to my resenting pretty much all things "Christian". (I say that because I've finally gotten to the point in my life where I can set the true Christian teachings/beliefs apart from this pseudo-Paulism that masquarades as Christian these days.) I wonder if they know how much their insisting I go to church twice on Sundays and once on Wednesdays, every god-blessed week made me run, run, run far from church as soon as I got to college? I wonder if they know how uncomfortable and unhappy I was being compelled to go to church camp every summer, Youth Rallies every month, youth activities all the time? And I wonder if it would have mattered if they did. Because there's this strain of thought in fundy churches that, if you're uncomfortable, it's because the Holy Spirit is working on you to get saved. Instead of, oh, I don't know, you like to think for yourself. Or you don't like being in crowds or about lots of people or that you feel religious faith is a personal, private, not-for-public consumption affair?
When I had surgery in May, my mother asked me, before I went into the operating room, if I knew I'd go to heaven if I died on the table? Now, I believe I will. Or, well, I believe in the continuation of the soul in some form and I believe in a Goddess that loves me. So I could honestly answer yes. But if she knew why I could answer yes, she'd have been worried the whole time I was under. And I don't want her to worry, because I'm not worried. And if I'm not worried, why should she? I'd like to live in a world where conflict in another country, which is killing hundreds if not thousands, would be seen as something worthy of concern in it's own right. I'd like to live in a society where other people's pain is not important only in so much as it relates to your belief in a coming judgment. I'd like to live in a place where it wouldn't matter what a person believes, or what they don't believe, where people are valued for simple being. But I don't. I live in Jesusland, where everything centers around being "Christian" and anything or anyone that doesn't live up to that set of standards is either less-than or, usually, inconceivable.
Labels: fundies, medical care, war
Tuesday, May 30, 2006
You can die for your country and we'll just pretend you're a Christian, 'k?
This isn't news, of course, but the armed forces are still refusing to acknowledge Wicca as a legitimate religion. Apparently, even giving your life in the line of duty isn't enough to earn a soldier the right to have his faith acknowledged on his tombstone.
War widow holds protest service for husband, awaits plaque decision
By TOM GARDNER
Associated Press Write
FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) -- A war widow who wants the government to put a Wiccan religious symbol on her husband?s memorial plaque held an alternative service Monday as a protest, hours before an official Memorial Day ceremony nearby.
"This is discrimination against our religion," Roberta Stewart said at the gathering of about 200 at a park east of Fernley for her late husband, Sgt. Patrick Stewart. "I ask you to help us remember that all freedoms are worth fighting for."
A few hours later and a few miles away in this pastoral community east of Reno, official Memorial Day ceremonies were conducted at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery.
The space reserved for a plaque in Stewart's name on a wall at the cemetery remains blank.
The Department of Veterans Affairs so far has refused to grant the Stewart family's request to have the Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, placed on the government-issued plaque.
Stewart, 34, was killed in Afghanistan on Sept. 25 when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his helicopter. Four others also died. Stewart was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
Wiccans worship the Earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves "white"or good witches, pagans or neo-pagans.
"We are here today to honor American religious diversity of all faiths," the Rev. Selena Fox said at the alternative memorial service.
Fox, senior minister of a Wiccan group based in Wisconsin, said Stewart died defending the country that is denying him the right to express his religious freedom.
Jo Schuda, a spokeswoman for the VA, said Friday she did not know when a decision would be made on the request.
Approximately 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics
I'm struck by the image of that blank plaque. I can imagine it, surrounded by other plaques bearing crosses or Stars of David or sigils of other offically approved religions. I assume it bears Stewart's name, but perhaps not. But suppose it does. A name and nothing more, completely ignoring a lifetime of faith. You can't, of course, obliterate that faith -- regardless of how hard you try. Not marking a plaque or a grave does not mean that faith does not exist. It does not mean domination for the Approved Tirade (that being Christianity, Judiasm and Islam). It only provides an illusion.
Interestingly, to me anyway, the image of a blank plaque can be read as rather pagan. It can be seen as an image of the rune Wyrd (and yes, yes. I'm aware of the controversy surrounding the use of a blank rune in casting. I'm merely saying, lots of modern casters use it and it therefore can serve as a symbol of a pagan faith.). Wyrd is a totally blank rune, generally interpreted as signifying fate, the inevitable. Neither good nor bad, it simply is. Sacrifice is inevitable. Death is inevitable. Grief is inevitable. And, as anyone who follows an 'unapproved' path knows, fighting for recognition is inevitable. So, while Stewart's plaque (and, I'm assuming, at this point his gravestone) does not bear a particularly Wiccan symbol (although I know plenty of Wiccans who use runes), it may well already bear a pagan image.
Not that his wife should stop fighting. Frankly, she should be able to put anything on her husband's tomb she damned well pleases. We had a recent problem at our army base here where two kids were basically kicked out of Boy Scouts because they admitted they were Wiccan. There was a big to-do and eventually they were let back in. At which point, a bunch of other kids got pulled out by their parents because they didn't want their sons "preached to" by the Wiccan boys. Ironic, isn't it? Those boys had been in the club for a while, no one knew about their beliefs and wouldn't have, if the scout leader hadn't asked them what church they went to. (Funny story -- the info came out because the leader was trying to show the boys how religiously "diverse" the group was. He was saying how they had Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a Pentecostal. No, seriously. That's what passes as religious diversity down here.) So, to keep peace, the boys parents took them out of Boy Scouts and have started a chapter of Spiral Scouts on base. And they've gotten lots of interested parties. A lot of people don't realize just how many Wiccan/Pagan/Heathen soldiers there are.
Which is why I think it's inevitable that we're gonna get recognition. It's like water, slowly reshaping the world. I hope Stewart wins and gets her pentagram. And I hope it becomes easier, for the next soldier, to have the government he/she died for recognize their belief system.
War widow holds protest service for husband, awaits plaque decision
By TOM GARDNER
Associated Press Write
FERNLEY, Nev. (AP) -- A war widow who wants the government to put a Wiccan religious symbol on her husband?s memorial plaque held an alternative service Monday as a protest, hours before an official Memorial Day ceremony nearby.
"This is discrimination against our religion," Roberta Stewart said at the gathering of about 200 at a park east of Fernley for her late husband, Sgt. Patrick Stewart. "I ask you to help us remember that all freedoms are worth fighting for."
A few hours later and a few miles away in this pastoral community east of Reno, official Memorial Day ceremonies were conducted at the Northern Nevada Veterans Memorial Cemetery.
The space reserved for a plaque in Stewart's name on a wall at the cemetery remains blank.
The Department of Veterans Affairs so far has refused to grant the Stewart family's request to have the Wiccan pentacle, a five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, placed on the government-issued plaque.
Stewart, 34, was killed in Afghanistan on Sept. 25 when a rocket-propelled grenade struck his helicopter. Four others also died. Stewart was posthumously awarded the Bronze Star and the Purple Heart.
Wiccans worship the Earth and believe they must give to the community. Some consider themselves "white"or good witches, pagans or neo-pagans.
"We are here today to honor American religious diversity of all faiths," the Rev. Selena Fox said at the alternative memorial service.
Fox, senior minister of a Wiccan group based in Wisconsin, said Stewart died defending the country that is denying him the right to express his religious freedom.
Jo Schuda, a spokeswoman for the VA, said Friday she did not know when a decision would be made on the request.
Approximately 1,800 active-duty service members identify themselves as Wiccans, according to 2005 Defense Department statistics
I'm struck by the image of that blank plaque. I can imagine it, surrounded by other plaques bearing crosses or Stars of David or sigils of other offically approved religions. I assume it bears Stewart's name, but perhaps not. But suppose it does. A name and nothing more, completely ignoring a lifetime of faith. You can't, of course, obliterate that faith -- regardless of how hard you try. Not marking a plaque or a grave does not mean that faith does not exist. It does not mean domination for the Approved Tirade (that being Christianity, Judiasm and Islam). It only provides an illusion.
Interestingly, to me anyway, the image of a blank plaque can be read as rather pagan. It can be seen as an image of the rune Wyrd (and yes, yes. I'm aware of the controversy surrounding the use of a blank rune in casting. I'm merely saying, lots of modern casters use it and it therefore can serve as a symbol of a pagan faith.). Wyrd is a totally blank rune, generally interpreted as signifying fate, the inevitable. Neither good nor bad, it simply is. Sacrifice is inevitable. Death is inevitable. Grief is inevitable. And, as anyone who follows an 'unapproved' path knows, fighting for recognition is inevitable. So, while Stewart's plaque (and, I'm assuming, at this point his gravestone) does not bear a particularly Wiccan symbol (although I know plenty of Wiccans who use runes), it may well already bear a pagan image.
Not that his wife should stop fighting. Frankly, she should be able to put anything on her husband's tomb she damned well pleases. We had a recent problem at our army base here where two kids were basically kicked out of Boy Scouts because they admitted they were Wiccan. There was a big to-do and eventually they were let back in. At which point, a bunch of other kids got pulled out by their parents because they didn't want their sons "preached to" by the Wiccan boys. Ironic, isn't it? Those boys had been in the club for a while, no one knew about their beliefs and wouldn't have, if the scout leader hadn't asked them what church they went to. (Funny story -- the info came out because the leader was trying to show the boys how religiously "diverse" the group was. He was saying how they had Baptists, Methodists, Catholics and a Pentecostal. No, seriously. That's what passes as religious diversity down here.) So, to keep peace, the boys parents took them out of Boy Scouts and have started a chapter of Spiral Scouts on base. And they've gotten lots of interested parties. A lot of people don't realize just how many Wiccan/Pagan/Heathen soldiers there are.
Which is why I think it's inevitable that we're gonna get recognition. It's like water, slowly reshaping the world. I hope Stewart wins and gets her pentagram. And I hope it becomes easier, for the next soldier, to have the government he/she died for recognize their belief system.
Labels: death, non-christian, pagan, religion, war
