Updates
& Important News
Draft
News & Updates
Leaving
on a Jet Plane
A perfect storm of recent historical events would make a draft
more divisive and disastrous than ever before in the nation's history
By Anna Quindlen
Newsweek - Sept. 6 issue
"Some
Bodies That Matter: The Impending Draft as a Moral Crisis for
White People"
Tamara K. Nopper - August 19, 2004
But
which draft are people talking about? There has been a draft going
on in this country for a while, one that has been successful in
maintaining military enlistment despite the progressive critique
of war and militarization. This is the "poverty draft,"
the draft that posits the military as one of the few options for
people to get their basis needs met or lures people with the promise
of $50,000 in college money or job training.
Will a
Draft Be on the Government's Agenda in 2004?
Rick Jahnkow
From Draft NOtices, November - December, 2003
Recruiting
News & Updates
Army
to Call Up Recruits Earlier
By ERIC SCHMITT and THOM SHANKER
July 22, 2004 in The New York Times
In
what critics say is another sign of increasing stress on the military,
the Army has been forced to bring more new recruits immediately
into the ranks to meet recruiting goals for 2004, instead of allowing
them to defer entry until the next accounting year, which starts
in October.
Military
Service News & Updates
11
years later, Army recalls Md. reservist
By Tom Bowman, Baltimore Sun | August 29, 2004
In
1993, with the Cold War over and no formidable enemy in sight, the
Army decided to reduce its ranks drastically. So Sergeant First
Class Rolando Rivera, a soldier for 15 years who was serving a pleasant
tour in Germany, was told the service no longer needed his computer
skills. Then this past May, the 44-year-old Rivera received a letter
from the Army telling him he would be serving in uniform once again,
this time in desolate and dangerous Afghanistan.
Money
pinch outlasts deployment for GIs: For many, loss in wages comes
with emotional challenges
Thursday, August 19, 2004
BY LISA KLIONSKY, News Staff Reporter
For
those who serve in the reserves or the National Guard, being called
up to active duty doesn't just mean leaving behind their families,
jobs and everyday life. Often there's a loss of part of their paychecks
- as local soldiers who've been deployed to Iraq or other places
recently have discovered. For many, military pay is considerably
less than their civilian wages. The financial loss is on top of
the
emotional and day-to-day logistical challenges such deployments
pose for many families.
Mexico
Fiercely Opposes the Iraq War, But Mexicans Are Dying There Every
Week
August 17, 2004
By JOHN ROSS
When
Lance Corporal Juan Lopez Rangel was killed in a firefight near
the rebel city of Fallujah in Al Anbar province just west of Baghdad
on June 21st, his grieving parents, who now live in a small Georgia
town, were determined to bury the proud marine in his hometown of
San Luis de la Paz, Guanajuato Mexico, a dusty
crossroads in the shadow of the desolate Sierra Gorda where the
only action after dark are the all-night funeral parlors and from
which Juan Lopez and his family escaped when he was 15 for a new
life on the Other
Side.
57-year-old
veteran called for duty
August 14, 2004
Brittney Booth, The Monitor, 2004
He’s
57 years old, afflicted with skin cancer, partially deaf and suffers
from high blood pressure. But the U.S. Army still wants Master Sgt.
Luis Jaime Treviño. On July 14, the Vietnam and Desert Storm
veteran received his third order to report to active duty —
mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom. "I was very shocked,"
Treviño said, a member of the Army’s Individual Ready
Reserve. IRRs are not part of a reserve unit, do not get paid and
do not attend monthly reserve training. However, because of critical
skills they possess, they can be recalled to duty if needed.
Sales
of Investments to G.I.'s Under Scrutiny in Washington
By DIANA B. HENRIQUES
July 22, 2004, New York Times
Securities
regulators and lawmakers are looking into the sale of investments
to military personnel that may be ill suited to the financial needs
of the service members who buy them. Two prominent lawmakers have
called on the Pentagon and Congress to investigate the sale of mutual
funds and life insurance on military installations, citing concerns
that young recruits and other personnel are being treated as a captive
market.
Atrocities
in Iraq: 'I killed innocent people for our government'
By Paul Rockwell -- Special to The Sacramento Bee
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, May 16, 2004
For
nearly 12 years, Staff Sgt. Jimmy Massey was a hard-core, some say
gung-ho, Marine. For three years he trained fellow Marines in one
of the most grueling indoctrination rituals in military life - Marine
boot camp. The Iraq war changed Massey. The brutality, the sheer
carnage of the U.S. invasion, touched his conscience and transformed
him forever. He was honorably discharged with full severance last
Dec. 31 and is now back in his hometown, Waynsville, N.C.
Outisde
on the Inside (4/04)
Frida Berrigan
Last
March, as U.S. troops were preparing to launch the invasion of Iraq,
a much quieter war was taking place inside the Pentagon. Karen Kwiatkowski,
a lifelong conservative and career military official, was knocking
heads with what she called “the neoconservative coup, the
hijacking of the Pentagon.” Kwiatkowski recently wrote of
the war and occupation in Iraq and what she calls the Bush Doctrine
Experiment: “Costs have been high, payoffs unclear and there
is no exit strategy in sight.”
Vets
News & Updates
Veterans
of Iraq War Join Forces to Protest US Invasion
by Marcella Bombardieri
Published on Thursday, September 2, 2004 by the Boston Globe
A
year and a half ago, Robert Sarra was a Marine sergeant in Iraq,
where, he says, he once fired his M-16 at a black-cloaked old woman
who failed to stop when she was told. Instead of a suicide bomb,
the bundle she carried to her death held only bread, tea, and a
white flag.
The unseen
cost of war: American minds
Soldiers can sustain psychological wounds for a lifetime
August 27, 2004 - By M.L. LYKE
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
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