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Saturday, November 07, 2009 23:16 GMT

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U.S.: "War Comes Home" with Ft. Hood Shootings
By Dahr Jamail
PHOENIX, Arizona - While investigators probe for a motive behind the mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas Thursday, in which an army psychiatrist is suspected of killing 13 people, military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident "brings the war home".
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BOOKS-US: Soldiers Who Just Say No
By Jon Letman
KAUAI, Hawaii - Six months into Barack Obama's presidency, the U.S. public's display of antiwar sentiment has faded to barely a whisper.
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Q&A: Military Losing GI Hearts and Minds
William Fisher interviews MARJORIE COHN and KATHLEEN GILBERD of the National Lawyers Guild
NEW YORK - The continuing occupation or Iraq and the growing war in Afghanistan are leaving permanent physical and emotional scars on a whole generation of U.S. soldiers. Not since Vietnam have so many GIs objected to a war, and never have military families spoken out so strongly for withdrawal.
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U.S.: "There's No Way I'm Going to Deploy to Afghanistan"
By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas - "It’s a matter of what I’m willing to live with," Specialist Victor Agosto of the U.S. Army, who is refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan, explained to IPS. "I’m not willing to participate in this occupation, knowing it is completely wrong."
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U.S.-IRAQ: Massacre Puts War Trauma Under the Spotlight
By Aaron Glantz
SAN FRANCISCO - A U.S. soldier shot five of his colleagues dead at a base in Baghdad, Iraq Monday. The Pentagon says at least two other people were hurt in the shootings and the gunman is in custody.
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BOOKS-US: Wounded Veterans Treated as an Afterthought
By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas - "But the [George W.] Bush administration was never seriously interested in helping veterans. The sorry state of care for Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans is not an accident. It's on purpose."
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POLITICS-US: Vets Health System in Need of Triage
Analysis by Aaron Glantz*
SAN FRANCISCO - Eighteen U.S. veterans kill themselves every day. More veterans are committing suicide than are dying in combat overseas. One in every three homeless men in the United States has put on a uniform and served his country. On any given night, the U.S. government estimates 200,000 veterans sleep on the street.
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Q&A: "How Does Killing Impact Individual Soldiers?"
Enrique Gili interviews CATHERINE RYAN
SAN DIEGO, California - In their latest documentary "Soldiers of Conscience", husband and wife filmmakers Catherine Ryan and Gary Weimberg probe the nature of war and the human condition, asking the question: when is killing in combat permissible?
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Q&A: "Mistakes Will Continue to Happen When There Isn’t Transparency"
Stephen de Tarczynski interviews MAHVISH RUKHSANA KHAN, U.S lawyer
MELBOURNE - Not many people want to spend time at Guantánamo Bay. But while studying law at the University of Miami in 2005, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan became outraged to learn of the lack of rights afforded detainees in the "war on terror" and was keen to get involved.
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ARTS-US: Iraq War Vets Transforming Trauma
By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas - By using the written word and art, veterans of the U.S. occupation of Iraq are transforming their trauma into a message of both healing and resistance to the failed U.S. adventure.
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BOOKS-IRAQ: "We Blew Her to Pieces"
By Dahr Jamail
MARFA, Texas - Aside from the Iraqi people, nobody knows what the U.S. military is doing in Iraq better than the soldiers themselves. A new book gives readers vivid and detailed accounts of the devastation the U.S. occupation has brought to Iraq, in the soldiers' own words.
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POLITICS-US: Vets Mull Wins and Losses in Benefits Fight
By Aaron Glantz*
SAN FRANCISCO - You could hear the joy in Patrick Campbell's voice as he reflected on U.S. President George W. Bush's signing Monday of a new GI Bill of Rights for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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POLITICS-US: Winter Soldiers Hit the Streets
By Dahr Jamail
SEATTLE - In a clear change of strategy to energise public anti-war sentiment, Iraq veterans led a determined demonstration of hundreds through the streets of downtown Seattle last Saturday, following regional Winter Soldier hearings at the Seattle Town Hall.
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Could there be a more desolate, chilly expression? The Winter Soldier was about the boiling, unwintery Vietnam war. A three-day gathering organised in 1971 in Detroit by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War was used to publicise war crimes by the U.S. forces. It generated a documentary by the same name.

With Iraq, this expression was reborn. The Winter Soldier embodies the fight of Iraq and Afghanistan veterans against the war, and their efforts to provide testimony on what really happened during the invasions and after. Hundreds of veterans and soldiers of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars met last March for Winter Soldier hearings modeled after the 1971 conferences. While this story was totally ignored by the mainstream press, IPS was one of the very few media outlets to cover it.