Stan Goff: 'Hold on to your humanity: An open letter to GIs in Iraq'

By Stan Goff (US Army Retired

11/15/13: Dear American serviceperson in Iraq, Afghanistan and other points of our imperial reach

I am a retired veteran of the army, and my own son is among you, a paratrooper like I was. The changes that are happening to every one of you--some more extreme than others--are changes I know very well. So I'm going to say some things to you straight up in the language to which you are accustomed.

In 1970, I was assigned to the 173rd Airborne Brigade, then based in northern Binh Dinh Province in what was then the Republic of Vietnam. When I went there, I had my head full of shit: shit from the news media, shit from movies, shit about what it supposedly mean to be a man, and shit from a lot of my know-nothing neighbors who would tell you plenty about Vietnam even though they'd never been there, or to war at all.

The essence of all this shit was that we had to "stay the course in Vietnam," and that we were on some mission to save good Vietnamese from bad Vietnamese, and to keep the bad Vietnamese from hitting beachheads outside of Oakland. We stayed the course until 58,000 Americans were dead and lots more maimed for life, and 3,000,000 Southeast Asians were dead. Ex-military people and even many on active duty played a big part in finally bringing that crime to a halt.

When I started hearing about weapons of mass destruction that threatened the United States from Iraq, a shattered country that had endured almost a decade of trench war followed by an invasion and twelve years of sanctions, my first question was how in the hell can anyone believe that this suffering country presents a threat to the United States? But then I remembered how many people had believed Vietnam threatened the United States. Including me.

When that bullshit story about weapons came apart like a two-dollar shirt, the politicians who cooked up this war told everyone, including you, that you would be greeted like great liberators. They told us that we were in Vietnam to make sure everyone there could vote.

Entire Article HERE

Gulf War Syndrome, PTSD and Military Suicides: U.S. Government's Message to America’s Vets: "Drop Dead"

From 1991 to 2003, hundreds of thousands of our bravest men and women sought help from the Veterans Administration, from the Defense Department, from the White House, all to no avail. The official word was that Gulf War Syndrome did not exist. So they suffered in silence. Tens of thousands died from these conditions. Many lost their homes because of the high costs to pay for medical care themselves. Independent investigations, including those conducted by many of the Gulf War veterans themselves, showed multiple causes behind Gulf War Syndrome, including experimental vaccines, exposure to depleted uranium (DU), and toxicity from biological and chemical weapons, oil fires and other environmental contaminants.

Entire Article HERE