I've been consumed with work related events this week, thus the lack of daily posts.
Today I am sending various pieces on the ongoing nightmare in Iraq, which seems to get worse daily, while the obviously oblivious Bush rides his bike, clears brush, struts around in cowboy wear, and continues to thumb his nose at a grief stricken mother camped outside his ranch, in 97 degree heat, while more of our dear soldiers are losing their lives in a fabricated and useless war. The last posting covers a piece by the Washington Post which reveals the various blogs set up by soldiers serving in Iraq. LS
Sent by Ken from the NYT on Wednesday
"NO END IN SIGHT IN IRAQ"
August 10, 2005
No End in Sight in Iraq
By BOB HERBERT
http://tinyurl.com/bel7t
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Excerpt:
Writing about Vietnam in the foreword to David Halberstam's book "The Best and the Brightest," Senator John McCain said:
"It was a shameful thing to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through god-awful afflictions and heartache, to endure the dehumanizing experiences that are unavoidable in combat, for a cause that the country wouldn't support over time and that our leaders so wrongly believed could be achieved at a smaller cost than our enemy was prepared to make us pay."
NO END IN SITE IN IRAQ
WOUNDED MAN REFUSES TO SEE BUSH AND CO.
This beautifully written feature piece from yesterday's Washington Post culminates in the snub story, which I have bolded. We're lucky this young man wasn't killed, because whatever he does with his life will be a contribution. -K
Talking Wounded
Terry Rodgers Came Back From Iraq a Changed Man, and Not Just Because of the Bomb
By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 10, 2005; C01
http://tinyurl.com/ay5w2
Excerpt:
One day a nurse came in to ask Rodgers if he wanted to meet President Bush, who was visiting the hospital. Rodgers declined.
"I don't want anything to do with him," he explains. "My belief is that his ego is getting people killed and mutilated for no reason -- just his ego and his reputation. If we really wanted to, we could pull out of Iraq. Maybe not completely but enough that we wouldn't be losing people -- at least not at this rate. So I think he himself is responsible for quite a few American deaths."
Bill Swisher, a spokesman for Walter Reed, says it's "fairly common" for patients to decline to see visitors. "We've had visitors from Sheryl Crow to Hulk Hogan," he says, but he has no idea how many have refused to see Bush, who has visited the hospital eight times.
Rodgers says he also declined to meet Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Condoleezza Rice. This wounded soldier has lost faith in his leaders, and he no longer believes their repeated assurances of victory.
"It's gonna go on as long as we're there," he says. "There's always gonna be insurgents trying to blow us up. There's just too many of 'em that are willing to do it. You're never gonna catch all of 'em. And it seems like they have unlimited amounts of ammunition. So I don't think it's ever gonna end."
"TALKING WOUNDED"
SOLDIERS IN IRAQ SET UP BLOGS TO TELL ABOUT THEIR EXPERIENCES THERE.
From The Washington Post
By Jonathan Finer
Friday, August 12
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washingtonpost.com
The New Ernie Pyles: Sgtlizzie and 67cshdocs
On Internet Blogs, Soldiers in Iraq Offer Up Inside Story on the War
By Jonathan Finer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 12, 2005; A01
BAGHDAD -- There were no reporters riding shotgun on the highway north of Baghdad when a roadside bomb sent Sgt. Elizabeth Le Bel's Humvee lurching into a concrete barrier. The Army released a three-sentence statement about the incident in which her driver, a fellow soldier, was killed. Most news stories that day noted it briefly.
But a vivid account of the attack appeared on the Internet within hours of the Dec. 4 crash. Unable to sleep after arriving at the hospital, Le Bel hobbled to a computer and typed 1,000 words of what she called "my little war story" into her Web log, or blog, titled "Life in this Girl's Army," at http://www.sgtlizzie.blogspot.com .
"LIFE IN THIS GIRL'S ARMY
"I started to scream bloody murder, and one of the other females on the convoy came over, grabbed my hand and started to calm me down. She held onto me, allowing me to place my leg on her shoulder as it was hanging free," Le Bel wrote. "I thought that my face had been blown off, so I made the remark that I wouldn't be pretty again LOL. Of course the medics all rushed with reassurance which was quite amusing as I know what I look like now and I don't even want to think about what I looked like then."
Since the 1850s, when a London Times reporter was sent to chronicle the Crimean War, journalists have generally provided the most immediate first-hand depictions of major conflicts. But in Iraq, service members themselves are delivering real-time dispatches -- in their own words -- often to an audience of thousands through postings to their blogs.
"I was able to jot a few lines in every day, and it just grew from there," Le Bel, 24, of Haverhill, Mass., said in an e-mail. Her Web site has received about 45,000 hits since she started it a year ago.
At least 200 active-duty soldiers currently keep blogs. Only about a dozen blogs were in existence two years ago when the U.S. invaded Iraq, according to "The Mudville Gazette" ( http://www.mudvillegazette.com ), a clearinghouse of information on military blogging administered by an Army veteran who goes by the screen name Greyhawk. MUDVILLE GAZETTE"
Written in the casual, sometimes profane language of the barracks, the entries give readers an unfiltered perspective on combat largely unavailable elsewhere. But they are also drawing new scrutiny and regulation from commanders concerned they could compromise security
In April, Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, the top tactical commander in Iraq, published the military's first policy memorandum on Web sites maintained by soldiers, requiring that all blogs maintained by service members in Iraq be registered. The policy also barred bloggers from publishing classified information, revealing the names of service members killed or wounded before their families could be notified, and providing accounts of incidents still under investigation.
"We don't have a problem with most of what they write, but we don't want to give away the farm," said Lt. Col. Steven Boylan, a military spokesman in Baghdad, who said such guidelines are nearly identical to those required of news organizations that cover the military.
Enforcement of the policy was left to the discretion of unit commanders. In late July, Arizona National Guard Spec. Leonard Clark became the first soldier found to have violated the new policy. He was fined $1,640 and demoted to private first class for posting what the military said was classified material on his blog.
His site has since been shut down, although much of the content has been posted elsewhere on the Internet. He did not return e-mail messages seeking comment.
His postings -- which included long entries detailing attacks against American patrols and convoys -- described his company's captain as "a glory seeker" and the battalion sergeant major as "an inhuman monster." In at least one entry, Clark, who has run for political office in Arizona several times and was widely expected to run for Senate in 2006, suggested that his fellow soldiers were becoming opposed to the U.S. mission in Iraq.
"A growing number of men here are starting to wonder why we should continue to risk our lives for this whole mess when we know that the government will probably pull out of here," he wrote on April 11.
Other soldiers have said they decided to take down their Web sites after warnings from superiors. In December, after an explosion in a soldiers' mess hall near the northern city of Mosul killed 22 people, including 14 U.S. soldiers, Maj. Michael Cohen, the doctor on duty at the nearest medical facility, wrote about the carnage on his blog, http://www.67cshdocs.com : MAJ. COHEN's BLOG
"As I stepped outside, I couldn't believe what was going on. There had to be at least 30 patients on the ground waiting for medical care. We divided and conquered, going from patient to patient trying to determine who had the worst wounds and who needed to be treated first," he wrote. "We identified several patients with femur fractures as well as two humerus fractures. We also had two patients who were paralyzed from the waste [sic] down, another with some bleeding in the brain, and two more with eye injuries."
Soon after, however, he posted this message:
"Levels above me have ordered me to shut down this website. They cite that the information contained in these pages violates several Army Regulations. I have made a decision to turn off the site."
At least one former military blogger, however, is channeling the publicity his blog earned in Iraq into a new career. Colby Buzzell, a soldier who during his 12-month tour of duty started a blog called "My War" ( http://www.cbftw.blogspot.com , which stands for his initials plus an antiwar epithet), was eight months into his deployment when he read a magazine article about blogs and decided to give it a try. Within weeks, he said, his blog was receiving thousands of hits a day, and literary agents began peddling their services. MY WAR
"It all happened at an alarming rate, basically overnight, after I wrote about a firefight. I have no idea how the heck people found out about it, they just did," said Buzzell, who got out of the military six months ago.
His book about his time in Iraq comes out in October. He has also written two articles for Esquire magazine. Now 29 and living in Los Angeles, he called blogging from the war zone "therapeutic."
"You go out on a mission or patrol, come back and sit down at a computer, and it was kind of a release," he said in a telephone interview. "I wasn't writing for a book deal, I was writing for myself. It was a way to deal with the madness and made the days go by a little faster."
Soldiers' Web sites vary from multimedia presentations of digital photos and videos to simple text written in journal form. Many bloggers say they do it to keep friends and family up to date or to counter what they consider the biases of the mainstream media.
Many entries are deeply personal. Battered but still able to perform her duties, Le Bel returned to her unit a few days after the roadside bomb attack. She attended the memorial service for her driver, whom she never named, and shared her thoughts with the readers in a Dec. 7 posting:
"I am now deathly afraid of the nightmares I have already seen bits and pieces of. I can see them in my mind when I close my eyes, I see the truck slamming into the wall and it scares me all over again. Why did I walk away from a wreck that killed a comrade and friend?"
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
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