A Salute to All Our Veterans

A new day has dawned, we have a new President-elect coming into office on January 20, and a couple of too-long ongoing wars in far places to bring to as honorable an end as possible, as soon as possible. With a hearty shout-out to all our veterans, especially those with whom we served all those many decades ago. Here’s hoping the new day will bring about the ‘right thing’, despite the distractions of economic meltdown. Real help for the tens of thousands of returning veterans from our current wars who have suffered grievous injuries. Schooling and re-training for all. Treatment for PTSD, even for the oldest veterans among us, war does terrible things to people’s minds.

So, in honor of our nation’s brave veterans, what follows is an edited repost of my experience the first time I visited ‘The Wall’ – the Vietnam War Memorial. It was May of 1985, we had been called to D.C. to testify at a hearing. We brought the kids, 15 and 16 at the time, since they had few memories of when we’d lived close enough to Washington to be there for the 4th of July, to visit the Smithsonian museums regularly, to picnic and fly kites on glorious spring days on the Mall.

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Remembering the Fallen 2008

It’s Memorial Day and we are not in Oklahoma or Kentucky to manicure gravesites or to solemnly place flags and poppies to honor our fathers for their service, or to recall our lifetimes of love and caring. We instead spent the weekend joyfully hosting the New Princess of the Universe (our newest granddaughter) and her beautiful, hopeful young parents.

The Oklahoma gravesite was manicured and decorated by family anyway, the Kentucky one – now so full of family that there’s no one left to tend it – was no doubt trimmed and swept as part of the spring duties of the groundskeeper, just brass plates in the ground beneath that weathered white marble angel in the sorrowful pose. Funny how life – and generations – go on as the past slips ever farther into the mists of time.

Since Memorial Day of last year, 624 soldiers, sailors, Marines, reservists and guardsmen have been killed in our “occupation” of Iraq. Diarist clammyc has details on each one, including age, date of death, branch of service and home town.

Today, when you’re watching the parade or grilling some dogs or enjoying the sunshine in a park or in the woods, remember these fallen and the fallen of all our endless wars – right or wrong – who answered the call and gave their lives. Maybe say a little prayer in hope that someday soon the world and all the generations alive in it may discover peace.

America’s Heroes Treated Like Dogs

Warning: this will make you sick

The web page for Forever Friends Pet Cremation Services explains…

Pet cremation is a clean, sanitary way of saving your pet’s remains. Pet cremation is environmentally sound, providing an alternative to placement in municipal landfill sites, or for those who do not have adquate space for burying their pets.

The problem of taking up space in municipal landfill sites must have been a big consideration when an officer accompanying the body of a comrade to his final disposition discovered that the military had contracted with Forever Friends to handle the bodies of US servicemembers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq.

On Friday [May 9] the Pentagon banned the arrangement, which had been in place since 2001. According to a story in the Washington Post, Some War Dead Were Cremated at Facility Handling Pets, Pentagon officials say they don’t think human and animal remains were ever comingled at the facility. That will probably soothe the outrage of families who might suspect from this news that they’ve got some dog’s ashes in that urn or plot instead of their loved one.
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Holocaust Memorial Day

Israel Remembers

“We will never forget, we will never hide, and we will never stop asking ourselves every morning what we must do to prevent what happened to ever repeat itself.”

So said Israeli President Shimon Peres at the main ceremony marking Holocaust Memorial Day at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned his audience that anti-semitism is on the rise across the world today, and that insidious forms of Holocaust denial were asserting themselves even in nations that have every reason to remember with circumspection what occurred in Europe 63 years ago.

Iran’s quixotic dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claims the Holocaust is a “myth,” and hosted a revisionist Holocaust conference in 2006. Given that Israel and Iran are currently at a heightened state of tensions – complete with bravado from Hillary Clinton about “nuclear umbrellas” and US defense of Israel (which has plenty of its own nuclear weapons) – it’s worthwhile for those who weren’t born when this horror occurred to take a long, hard look at reality.

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4,000 And Counting…

The Associated Press reported on Easter Sunday that the American Death Toll in Iraq Reaches 4,000 after a roadside bomb killed four soldiers in Baghdad.

At least 61 other people died across Iraq on Sunday, but the U.S. is not keeping any official records of how many Iraqis pay the ultimate price for the ‘freedom’ we have brought them. …and bought them, at a price so far to American taxpayers of ~$600 billion.

Meanwhile, back in Manhattan, J.P. Morgan upped its bid for the bankrupt Bear-Stearns investment bank to $10 a share, 5 times the negotiated price agreed upon last weekend just in time for the Tokyo stock market opening on St. Patrick’s Day. The unprecedented bailout of an investment bank that is not a member of the Federal Reserve system was seen as necessary to prevent a worldwide financial market meltdown. The Fed is guaranteeing Bear-Stearns’ worthless investments up to $30 billion (of American taxpayers’ money).

Speaking of American taxpayers’ money, the Bush administration assures us that the $200 – $600 in tax rebates set aside earlier this year in hopes of stimulating the economy (perhaps we’ll all go out and purchase shares of J.P. Morgan?) will be mailed in May. Perhaps this will come just in time for millions of soon-to-be homeless Americans to buy a nice three-room tent to live in during the warm summer months. If they’re very careful with their budget, some of those families might save enough to buy kerosene space heaters for their tents before winter!

Happy 5th Anniversary, BushCo

What did they do to us, again? I forget…

 Two “Unknown” Iraqi Casualties

American Dead: 3,990

American Casualties: 40,229

Iraqi Dead: Unknown

Iraqi Casualties: Unknown

Cost to the US: $504,000,000,000.00 

Grief in the Wake of Victory

The Health Insurance Scam Breaks

Yahoo News issued a release on Thursday evening (December 20) from the California Nurses Association touting the victory of their joint demonstration with the National Nurses Organizing Committee and the Armenian community at the CIGNA insurance offices in Glendale, California, CIGNA Capitulates to Patient Revolt…

In a stunning turn around, insurance giant CIGNA has capitulated to community demands, and protests that the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee helped to generate, and agreed to a critically needed liver transplant for Nataline Sarkisyan, a 17-year-old girl in the intensive care unit at UCLA Medical Center, says CNA.

Meanwhile, activists from all over the country were spurred into inundating CIGNA’s phone lines throughout the day after learning of the situation and protest on websites like Daily Kos, My Space and others.

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Veteran’s Day 2007: A Remembrance

It was May of 1985, we had been called to D.C. to testify at a hearing before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission on a matter related to our past life. We brought the kids, 15 and 16 at the time, since they had few memories of when we’d lived close enough to Washington to be there for the 4th of July, to visit the Smithsonian museums regularly, to picnic and fly kites on glorious spring days on the Mall.

Because it had been more than a decade since we’d visited, we of course had to make the pilgrimage to The Wall – the Vietnam Veteran’s Memorial finally installed below a berm years after that ill-advised war was over. The overall impression of the polished black granite wall etched with the names of the dead is somber, almost buried, unspeakably sad. My Vietnam-era veteran husband and I were in tears before we even got close enough to read any names.

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