I was struck by something Tom Hanks said in his recent interview in TIME Magazine:

How can Americans ask our young men and women to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to their ordered Coca-Cola lives Stateside?  “It’s even worse for our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hanks says. “At least the Pacific-war soldiers coming back from World War II decompressed on ships for weeks. And then once the troops arrived portside, it was often a long train ride home to Peoria. Today these guys in Afghanistan fight in bloody hell and are flown back in 18 hours. How can they cope with that? How can they suddenly go from Tora Bora to Peyton Place?” Even the legendary Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II, suffered posttraumatic stress disorder after his return from the European theater. During one meltdown, a deranged Murphy held his wife hostage at gunpoint.

Recently, an angry Ft. Stewart soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, wrote a rap song about his rage at having been ’stop lossed’, forced again and again to re-enlist into dangerous war zones even though his contracted time in service had expired.  In the song, he describes revenge and vengeful acts on his Commanding Officers for betraying him and forcing him back into combat.

How is the Army handling it?  They want to ship him from the United States of America, where he is currently in military jail in Georgia, to KUWAIT!!! For a military trial.  He wouldn’t be able to put together a strong defense, because most of his civilian attorneys and civilian witnesses couldn’t fly to Kuwait to testify.  Its like he’s being toyed with, after he was toyed with for years of stop loss.

There is no mercy in the military.

So we need to find it in the civilian world.

It turns out that writing about your rage, or your sorrow, or fear, or brokenness actually helps you PROCESS the unthinkable things you might have seen or done in wartime. Author Maxine Hong Kingston has a writers group for US soldiers that has been helpful in their re-entry into their home environments. An anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace was published with these writings.

There is a courtroom in Pennsylvania that takes into account the extenuating circumstances of a soldier’s service, offering a Veteran’s Affairs mentor and programs to help.

Drugs and addiction account for a significant percentage of veterans’ crimes: nearly half of vets in federal prison, for example, are locked up on drug charges. Fully 61% of veteran prisoners are dependent on or abuse alcohol or drugs. Meanwhile, cases of post-traumatic stress disorder — many left untreated — only compound the problem.

The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization’s tagline is ‘For America’s Newest Generation of Veterans and the People Who Support Them’. They offer a hand to help veterans re-acclimate to their families and their jobs and their lives.

We need to UN-BOOT CAMP our brave men and women in the Military, especially if the Military will not do so.

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These girls are awesome!

Liberty Mutual’s Responsibility Project inspired this video, a true story about a 2008 competitive softball game between Western Oregon College and Central Washington University.

Imagine our foreign policy if these girls were in charge? We’d go back to the old fashioned American value of offering a helping hand…

Imagine our inner city poverty programs if these girls were in charge?

Imagine our elderly living lonely, forgotten lives, unable to pay for medications if these girls were in charge?

These girls represent the best of humanity. And the easy-going kindness that builds foundations of trust and hope for the future.

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Here’s something that needed to be done:

Responding to recent events on Earth, God, the omniscient creator-deity worshipped by billions of followers of various faiths for more than 6,000 years, angrily clarified His longtime stance against humans killing each other Monday.

“Look, I don’t know, maybe I haven’t made myself completely clear, so for the record, here it is again,” said the Lord, His divine face betraying visible emotion during a press conference near the site of the fallen Twin Towers. “Somehow, people keep coming up with the idea that I want them to kill their neighbor. Well, I don’t. And to be honest, I’m really getting sick and tired of it. Get it straight. Not only do I not want anybody to kill anyone, but I specifically commanded you not to, in really simple terms that anybody ought to be able to understand.”

“I don’t care how holy somebody claims to be,” God said. “If a person tells you it’s My will that they kill someone, they’re wrong. Got it? I don’t care what religion you are, or who you think your enemy is, here it is one more time: No killing, in My name or anyone else’s, ever again.”

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After the implosion of the American economy and the continuing multi-billion dollar economic rape by banking institutions, lobbyists and politicians in their pockets, its time to install FDR’s Economic Bill of Rights.

Here’s an excerpt from his January 11, 1944 message to Congress on the State of the Union:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens.

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Thanks to John Haile…

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Jon Soltz Co-Founder of VoteVets.org, (served as a Captain in Operation Iraqi Freedom) has posted this quote from FOX News:

Question: So is sending this signal that we’re not going to use these kind of techniques anymore, what kind of impact does this have on people who do us harm in the field that you operate in?

Gen. Petraeus: Well, actually what I would ask is, “Does that not take away from our enemies a tool which again have beaten us around the head and shoulders in the court of public opinion?” When we have taken steps that have violated the Geneva Conventions we rightly have been criticized, so as we move forward I think it’s important to again live our values, to live the agreements that we have made in the international justice arena and to practice those.

The BEST soldier is an HONEST soldier.

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“We could have gotten information in other ways that are consistent with our values.”

We are a beacon to the world WHEN we hold to our ideals…

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Top soldiers age, losing their speed and brain power.  Leave it to our military to mess with Mother Nature, trying to alter soldiers into SUPER SOLDIERS…  And the antidote to aging? Perhaps a combo of red wine and naked mole rats. LOLZ.

WIRED Magazine reports:

the military has tried before to build stronger, longer-lasting soldiers. But, as they point out in their latest request for research proposals, spinach and sit-ups will only get you so far: “At present, individuals attempt to counter their mitochondrial decline with frequent exercise and antioxidants, both of which are crude methods with limited effectiveness.” Now, the army wants to get right to the source, and keep aging soldiers fit for duty with “a more precise methodology to stimulate mitochondrial energy production.” Military researchers liken the process to “replacing zinc carbon batteries with silver oxide batteries – more energy production capacity will enable the warfighter to sustain demanding cognitive or physical activities longer.”

That supercharging could be closer than we think, if the military can combine the potential of resveratrol with the power of the mole rat. In February, biochemists at the University of Texas Science Center expanded the mitochondrial theory, based on a study of the unbreakable proteins in mole rats, who outlive lab mice by around 20 years. Their work suggests that efficient mitochondria and resilient proteins may work in tandem to promote longevity. Scientists are now trying to determine the “protein protectant” that keeps the rats so darn frisky.

How about Global Peace?  Then we wouldn’t have to jerry-rig our soldiers’ health…

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In a measured break with a half-century of U.S. policy toward communist Cuba, the Obama administration lifted restrictions Monday on Cuban-Americans who want to travel and send money to their island homeland.

In a further gesture of openness, U.S. telecommunications firms were freed to seek business there, too. But the broader U.S. trade embargo remained in place.

The White House portrayed its changes, which fulfilled one of President Barack Obama’s campaign promises, as a path to promoting personal freedom in one of the few remaining communist nations. They also marked another major step away from the foreign policy priorities of the Bush administration.

Don’t worry.  This guy and Congress will eventually make the embargo lift and get their cigars, or at least Cuban leaves!

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