WAR, WAR, AND BULLSHIT

THE ABSURD TIMES

One of our allies, helps in the bombing.

Every time I start to type this up, something happens and I decide "What the fuck do I care anyway?"  So, I put it away and come back to it another day.  I mean, I mean, this has been going on so long that there is no point in continuing, but for some reason I keep on, just to say I told you so.  There area couple of great interviews at the end of this that provide some great examples.

OK, let's start with the first thing in the news, 24/7.  How many people have been infected in the United States during the last 3 years?  Any idea?  The answer is NONE, NOT ONE FUCKING PERSON!!  Got that?  NONE!  So, what the hell do I care?

Next, how many people has ISIS killed in the United States in the last year?  Answer: NONE!  (Or "classified," but it's NONE, NOT ONE!).  So knock it off!

I really have more respect for these morons who knock on the door and ask I I'd like to be "Born Again!", just like them!  The answer is NEVER!!  And go through Puberty again!  Shit, no way!  Get the hell outta here.  Of course, by that time they run down the streets, strewing their bibles all over the pavement.  Go to hell, all of you!

AGAIN: HOW MANY PEOPLE CAUGHT EBOLA IN THE UNITED STATES THIS YEAR?  NOT ONE!

Damn, someone just offered to climb on my roof for free, showed me a license and had a contract.  I told him NO!

May all such be cursed with an eternal, ineffectual, priapism. 

Ha, I fart at thee.

The world will be inhabitable for humans by the end of this century.  Of course, most of the people making money right now by hastening its end, will be dead long before that, so what do they care?  Even if they tried now, it is too late.  Global warming will kill mankind.  RIP.  If they had started in the 80s, there may have been a chance.  Now it is too late.

I really don't care as I will be dead before these assholes are.

Well, here are the interviews.  You already know that the reason for all the wars is profit and has been, even before Nobel (who would be horrified by what is going on now).  Lots of great military contracts.

Of course we don't need more oil.  We produce enough here and even contemplated sending gas to Europe to make up for Putin's threats, so not even that is a reason, just the profit that comes from it.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2014

Jeremy Scahill on Obama’s Orwellian War in Iraq: We Created the Very Threat We Claim to be Fighting

As Vice President Joe Biden warns it will take a "hell of a long fight" for the United States to stop militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, we speak to Jeremy Scahill, author of the book, "Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield." We talk about how the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 that helped create the threat now posed by the Islamic State. We also discuss the role of Baathist forces in ISIS, Obama’s targeting of journalists, and the trial of four former Blackwater operatives involved in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Vice President Joe Biden said Thursday it will take a, quote, "hell of a long fight" for the United States and its allies to stop the advance of militants from the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. But during the same speech, Biden admitted the Islamic State poses no existential threat to the nation’s security. His comment comes as Australia becomes the latest country to join the U.S.-led fight. Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Australian planes will take part in the air campaign and that special forces would be deployed.

PRIME MINISTER TONY ABBOTT: The Americans certainly have quite a substantial special forces component on the ground already. My understanding is that there are U.K. and Canadian special forces already inside Iraq. So, we’ll be operating on a much smaller scale, but in an entirely comparable way to the United States special forces.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, Turkey’s Parliament has authorized the government to order military action against the Islamic State. The mandate also allows foreign troops to launch operations from Turkey. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, ISIS militants have seized more than 350 North Syrian villages in the past 16 days, displacing at least 300,000 people.

To talk more about the crisis in the Middle East, we’re joined by Jeremy Scahill, who first reported from inside Iraq before the 2003 U.S. invasion. He’s co-founder of theTheIntercept.org and author of the book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. The paperback version of the book has just been published.

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Jeremy.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Thanks, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: And congratulations on the book being published as a paperback. Talk about the war in Syria and Iraq now.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, you know, first of all, it’s sort of like the terrorist flavor of the month that we’re dealing with here. You know, first we had al-Qaeda as this huge global threat. Then it was ISIS. And then the Khorasan group was produced. And the thing is, almost no one in Syria had ever heard of the Khorasan group. In fact, my understanding is that it was a term that was sort of used in the U.S. intelligence community and actually isn’t the name of the people that they claim to be attacking.

And what the entire policy boils down to is that the Obama administration has, in a very Orwellian way, changed the definition of commonly understood terms—primarily, the term "imminent." They were saying that the Khorasan group represented an imminent threat to the United States. But we know from a leaked white paper, that was put out in advance of John Brennan’s confirmation to be theCIA director, that the Justice Department actually has officially changed the definition of the word "imminent" so that it does not need to involve an immediate threat against the United States, that it could be a perception that maybe one day these individuals could possibly attempt to plot—not even carry out—a terrorist attack against the United States. That flimsy justification has been used now to expand this war from Iraq to Syria, potentially beyond.

You know, the Obama administration, in engaging in this policy, is continuing a Bush administration outcome of the decision to invade Iraq. And that is, they’re empowering the very threat that they claim to be fighting. Who is ISIS? What is this group made up of? Is it just people that are radical Islamists that want to behead American journalists? No. One of the top—and this almost is never mentioned in corporate media coverage of this—one of the top military commanders of ISIS is a man named Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri al-Takriti. Who is Izzat Ibrahim? Izzat Ibrahim is the leading Baathist, who was on the deck of cards, that the United States has not captured. He was one of Saddam Hussein’s top military commanders. He was not just some ragamuffin Baathist. He actually was a hardcore general in the Iraqi military during the Iran-Iraq War, and he was a secular Baathist.

Why is he fighting with ISIS? Well, when Bush decided to invade Iraq, and then he put Paul Bremer, who was a radical neocon ideologue who had cut his teeth working for Henry Kissinger—when Paul Bremer was put in charge of the occupation of Iraq, one of the first things he did was to fire 250,000 Iraqi soldiers simply because they were members of the Baath Party. As one senior U.S. official at the time said, it was the day we made a quarter of a million enemies in Iraq. All of these Baathists have been jerked around by the United States, and the Sunnis in western Iraq, jerked around by the United States for a very long time. There was the period of the so-called surge, where the U.S. actually paid Sunnis not to kill the United States, you know, U.S. soldiers. And so, but then the U.S. turned around and put in power a Shiite-led government under Nouri al-Maliki that effectively operated a network of death squads that systematically attacked Sunnis.

So the point I’m making here is, yes, there’s an element of ISIS—I don’t know how dominant it is within the group—that is, you know, trying to establish the caliphate. And they are beheading people. And they are imposing a very strict interpretation of sharia law. But there are also—and I would suspect that they’re best military figures—there is also a large contingent of people that are fighting the same battle that they were fighting when the United States originally invaded. The fact is, there was no al-Qaeda presence in Iraq before George W. Bush took—made the decision to invade it, except in the Kurdish region in the north of Iraq, which was not under Saddam Hussein’s control. In fact, it was under the control of U.S.-backed entities. And that was Ansar al-Islam. Saddam Hussein’s forces were fighting that group.

So, what am I saying here? What I’m saying is that the United States, through its policies, created the very threat that it claims to be fighting now, and in continuing this policy, what President Obama is doing is embracing the very lies that made the Cheney-Bush Iraq War possible. And in the process, he’s creating yet another generation of people in the Islamic world who are going to grow up in a society where they believe that their religion is being targeted, where they believe that the United States is a gratuitous enemy. And so, this is sort of an epic formula for blowback.

AMY GOODMAN: According to Yahoo News, the Obama administration has acknowledged a policy announced last year calling for "near certainty" for no civilian casualties in drone strikes will not apply to the current bombing. The admission came in response to queries about a strike that killed up to a dozen civilians in the Syrian village of Kafr Deryan last week.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, this is a kind of kabuki drone theater here, because the reality is that even in their drone strikes, that are supposedly done with precision and every precaution is taken not to kill civilians, the reality is that they’ve created a mathematical process for churning out the number of civilians killed in drone strikes that will always result in zero, because if they kill a so-called "jackpot," the target that they’re aiming for, and they kill other unknown individuals, the system that the Obama administration, the U.S. military and CIA have developed is that anyone who is an EKIA, enemy killed in action, is someone who we don’t have proof that they’re innocent. In other words, it’s sort of a reversal of the idea that you’re innocent until proven guilty. If you are near someone that the U.S. was intending to kill, the presumption is that you are an EKIA, you’re an enemy killed in action—unless someone can prove that you weren’t. And, I mean, most of these drone strikes, we don’t know anything about. So, in a way, the fact that they’re saying this has actually very little meaning, except that they’re going to have even less regard for civilian lives than they already do through their kabuki theater with their existing drone program.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you about the former defense secretary, Leon Panetta, the book that’s coming out, Worthy Fights. He writes, "In the fall of 2011, it was clear to me—and many others—that withdrawing all our forces would endanger the fragile stability then barely holding Iraq together. ... To this day, I believe that a small U.S. troop presence in Iraq could have effectively advised the Iraqi military on how to deal with al-Qaeda’s resurgence and the sectarian violence that has engulfed the country."

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, this is a clown show with these guys. I mean, the fact is that Leon Panetta was the director of the Central Intelligence Agency and had enormous influence at that point. The fact that the Obama administration adopted what was effectively the U.S. policy in Iraq when Bush left office says a tremendous amount about how little the Obama administration understood the disaster in Iraq. Had the United States kept in this sort of strike force, which would have been CIAparamilitaries, special operations forces, it would have exacerbated the problem. The problem here isn’t whether or not the U.S. forces would have been there to stabilize Iraq. The issue is how much worse are we going to make Iraq with these policies. And I think it’s almost impossible to imagine that this could have been handled in a worse way. Having more troops there, I mean, that’s—all of these guys, when they write their memoirs, have this brilliant 20-20 vision looking backwards, that they were the one that knew, they would have done this differently. The U.S., basically, since 9/11—and you could make an argument that this has been U.S. policy for many, many decades—you know, U.S. policy has been its own worst enemy, in one sense: We’ve created the very threats we claim to be fighting.

But on the other hand, if you actually look at who benefits from this war, beyond entities like ISIS, because they do benefit from this—every time we kill civilians in drone strikes, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula becomes stronger, in the sense that they have a greater propaganda movement that they can roll out—the war industry. You know, Lockheed Martin is making a killing off of the killing, every Tomahawk cruise missile that’s launched. You know, the next generation of drone aircraft is going to be coming out. They’re working on jet-propelled drones that are going to be able to stay in the air for a very long time. The war industry is in its twilight right now, under Mr. Transformative Presidency Barack Obama. His administration has been an incredibly great friend to the war industry. And outside of some small groups of loony bins that are in Syria and Iraq, the war industry is the greatest beneficiary of this policy.

AMY GOODMAN: ISIS killing the journalists and the beheadings?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Yeah, I mean, this is—first of all, you know, this has haunted me—I mean, obviously, as a journalist who’s worked in those areas, and I have a lot of friends now who are in those countries, you know, I was horrified at it. In watching the videos, though—and, you know, they were so—in both the case of James Foley and Steven Sotloff, they’re so calm in the statements that they are giving, and it’s impossible to imagine that they know that they’re going to be killed in those moments. And, you know, my suspicion—and I’ve done some reporting on this—is that they had been put in that position repeatedly and told, you know, "You have to say this statement." And in other words, they were subjected to mock executions over and over and over again. And if you notice in the videos, you don’t actually see their heads being cut off. I think it’s possible that that was like read number 31 for James Foley of this statement, and they took the best cut of that, and he may have been killed in other context, and then they placed it there.

They have them in the orange jumpsuits. We know that they had been waterboarded. Where does this come from? This is inspired by what we did to Muslim prisoners around the world, when we put them in gulags in Poland, in Thailand and elsewhere in these so-called black sites, when we took them to Guantánamo and—or we threatened that we were going to kill their families, or we put them in small boxes where they couldn’t lay down and couldn’t stand up. And we brought in psychiatrists to, in a very sick, macabre way, investigate and exploit the fears of the Muslim prisoners that we took under the auspices of fighting terrorism, and we would stick people in boxes, and if they had a fear of spiders, we would put a caterpillar in the box and tell them it was a tarantula, to try to terrify them. You know, JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, ran a torture factory in Iraq at a camp called Camp Nama, which is Nasty A-S-S Military Area, where they were just torturing, torturing, torturing people, trying to find the next target to hit. You know, this is—these militants are adopting the very tactics that the United States used—and continues to use—against Muslims that it captures.

And, you know, there has never been a more intense, intensely dangerous time for journalists. On the one hand, you have episodes like this, where journalists are being beheaded. In Mexico, journalists are being gunned down by narco-cartels or pro-government forces for telling the truth and reporting. Freelancers, and mostly Arab or Muslim journalists, are on the front lines being killed in record numbers, in Somalia, as well. And then here at home, in the United States, there’s a war against journalists and a war against whistleblowers. The U.S. government is intent on tracking who is giving information to journalists that is not officially cleared by the White House. And the message that they’re sending is: "We only want the official statements to be out, or our official leaks."

When the Khorasan group popped out of nowhere, and we were told, like, this is the greatest threat—in fact, on NBC News, there was a fantastic—Brian Williams, when he was announcing, you know, the new, latest, greatest threat—trademark—he had a graphic next to him that just said "the new enemy." And it’s like we could just take a picture of that, and every year or—apparently now it’s going to be every two or three months—we can just have Brian Williams there with "the new threat." It could become an annual holiday in this country where we just celebrate whatever new war is going to give Lockheed Martin and Boeing and all these companies tremendous profits.

You know, the age that we’re living in now, where there’s this war on journalists abroad by every possible force, and then this war at home, where journalists are being surveilled—their sources are being threatened with prosecution under the Espionage Act—the Obama administration is in league with some of the most ruthless violators of human rights in the world in a campaign against the press.

AMY GOODMAN: President Obama, the current president—possible presidential contenders, for example, are Hillary Clinton. You wrote Dirty Wars while she was secretary of state. What about her position on this?

JEREMY SCAHILL: I mean, Hillary Clinton is—I actually think, is more hawkish than Barack Obama, and Barack Obama has emerged as a pretty significant hawk in terms of his policies. He can talk all he wants about, you know, how he wants to change and reset relationships around the world; this has been a total militarized presidency. Hillary Clinton, when she was secretary of state, acted as though she was also sort of secretary of defense. And her State Department was deeply involved with plotting covert action around the world, using the State Department as cover for CIAoperations. And, you know, the Clintons, Bill and Hillary Clinton, are two of the most fierce projectors of the politics of the American empire, and they also have very close relationships with some of the most nefarious characters from the Bush family. So, you know, those two families together, the Bushes and the Clintons, it’s almost like a monarchy in this country. I mean, Jeb Bush very well may run. I mean, it’s unclear what—you know, George W. Bush said the other day that he’s putting pressure on his brother to try to run for president. But, you know, Hillary Clinton is a fierce neoliberal who believes in backing up the so-called "hidden hand of the free market" with merciless, iron-fisted military policies.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask you very quickly about Blackwater and the trial that’s been going on. Jurors have been deliberating in the murder and manslaughter trial of the four former Blackwater operatives allegedly involved in the 2007 massacre at Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. The suspects are charged with the deaths of 14 of the 17 Iraqi civilians who died when their Blackwater unit indiscriminately opened fire.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, this was the worst massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of mercenaries, private contractors, that we know of in Iraq. And, you know, I don’t know how the verdict is going to turn out, but what I do know is that the person who should be on trial is Erik Prince, who was the founder and ran Blackwater when it was essentially Murder Incorporated in Iraq, where there was an environment at that company where they were encouraged to view every Iraqi as the enemy. And they committed many massacres beyond what we know at Nisoor Square. This is a microcosm of what happens all the time. It’s always the people down the chain that face the consequences. I believe that these men should be prosecuted, should be convicted, for what they did, and they should be in prison. But the leadership of Blackwater should also be there. And until we, as a society, stop cutting off who’s held accountable at the lowest ranks, nothing is ever going to fundamentally change.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, thanks so much for being with us. His new book,Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, well, the New York Times best-seller, is now out in paperback.

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Iraq Veterans Against the War: Decade-Old Group Grapples with New War, PTSD Epidemic, VA Failures

Ten years ago, six members of the U.S. military came together to break their silence over what they had witnessed during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. They banded together and formed the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, or IVAW. Over time, they gathered like-minded veterans across the United States to form a contemporary GI resistance movement. Celebrated its tenth anniversary, IVAWmembers say it is a bittersweet moment as the United States has resumed bombing in Iraq. Today, IVAW chapters are in 48 states and numerous bases overseas. The group has called for reparations for the people of Iraq and Afghanistan — for both human and infrastructural damages caused by the U.S.-led invasion. They have also called for adequate healthcare to be provided at VA facilities, including mental healthcare, for all returning veterans. We host a roundtable with three IVAW members: co-founder Kelly Dougherty, who was deployed to Kuwait and Iraq from 2003-2004; Brock McIntosh, who served in Afghanistan and applied for conscientious objector status; and Scott Olsen, a former marine who served two tours in Iraq and was critically wounded after being shot in the head by a police projectile at an Occupy Oakland protest.

Image Credit: Jonathan McIntosh

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Ten years ago, six members of the U.S. military came together to break their silence over what they had witnessed during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. They banded together and formed the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War. Over time, they gathered like-minded veterans across the United States to form a contemporary GI resistance movement. Each of the members has a personal story about why they joined the military, what they witnessed when deployed, and how they came to oppose the U.S.-led invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is Jose Vasquez, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

JOSE VASQUEZ: I grew up in a pretty tough situation in California. As a high school student, I felt like I didn’t have a lot of options. The only person that was really actively reaching out to me was the Army recruiters. I had some experience with the military, because my dad was drafted for Vietnam, and my uncle served in the Gulf War. So, for me, it seemed like this is something that the men in the family did.

I was against the Iraq War from the beginning. I think in 2004 that was really a turning point for me, when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke. One of my close friends, who I served in the Reserve with, was deploying to Abu Ghraib, and so it really made it personal for me. It kind of brought the war home. For a while I thought I was the only soldier that was opposed to the war, but I started doing research online, and I stumbled across Iraq Veterans Against the War. It was the only place where I heard the voices of soldiers and veterans who were speaking out against it.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Jose Vasquez, executive director of Iraq Veterans Against the War, or IVAW. The group just celebrated its 10th anniversary. They say it’s a bittersweet moment, as a decade later the United States is back in Iraq. Today,IVAW members are in 48 states and numerous bases overseas. The group has called for reparations for the people of Iraq, for both human and infrastructural damages caused by the U.S.-led invasion. They’ve also called for adequate healthcare, including mental healthcare, for all returning servicemen and women.

Well, for more, we’re joined by three of the members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. Kelly Dougherty is the group’s co-founder. She deployed to Kuwait and Iraq from 2003 to ’04. Brock McIntosh is an IVAW member who served in Afghanistan from November 2008 to August 2009. He applied for conscientious objector status and was discharged in May 2014. And Scott Olsen joins us, former marine who served two tours in the Iraq War and was critically wounded—not in Iraq, but after being shot in the head by a police projectile at Occupy Oakland, where he was protesting. He was hospitalized in critical condition with a fractured skull, a broken neck vertebrae and brain swelling. He, too, is a member of IVAW.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! I should say "all back to Democracy Now!" since at one point or other we have had each of you on. Kelly, you’re gathered here in New York for this 10th anniversary?

KELLY DOUGHERTY: Yes, last night we had a 10th anniversary gala fundraiser, and it was a time for us to reflect on the work of the past 10 years. And as you said, it’s bittersweet, because we’ve been building this community to counter war, to counter militarism, and yet now here we are again bombing Iraq. So, you know, we’re celebrating our victories and also recognizing the losses, both with war and militarism and then losses within our community, of our friend Jacob George, recently passed away.

AMY GOODMAN: And I want to talk about Jacob in a moment, but, Brock McIntosh, what are your thoughts on the current bombing of Iraq and Syria?

BROCK McINTOSH: Well, you know, I think the media has often portrayed ISIS as being some organization that just suddenly emerged over the last year or so, but this is the same exact organization that many of my allies in IVAW were fighting when they were in Iraq. And, you know, nearly 10 years of going to war with ISIS, with several hundred thousand American soldiers on the ground, wasn’t able to eliminateISIS. So, it’s strange to think that some limited airstrikes over the next few years will be able to destroy ISIS. And reports from the FBI have shown that recruitment forISIS has actually grown since we’ve started bombing them.

AMY GOODMAN: Scott Olsen, how did you come to fight in Iraq?

SCOTT OLSEN: Well, I joined the Marine Corps right after I joined—graduated high school. You know, our country was at war. I felt like it was the right thing to do, to step up and to defend our freedoms and democracy, right?

AMY GOODMAN: Where did you grow up?

SCOTT OLSEN: In Wisconsin. And right after I joined, I went to Iraq within about a year, after I joined the Marine Corps. And that was in 2006. And I was in al-Anbar province, where it’s a majority Sunni population, which is where the Islamic State is making huge recruitment gains, and it’s the population that they are recruiting.

AMY GOODMAN: And your thoughts right now on this renewed war in Iraq?

SCOTT OLSEN: I mean, yeah, it’s a renewed war, but it’s really the same war. Just because we left, just because our military left, does not mean the war was over. You know, it’s the same conflicts and the same tensions that we played a big part in stoking. And, you know, these are the consequences of war. You know, 10 years later, it’s the same thing.

AMY GOODMAN: The most senior U.S. military officer has said U.S. ground troops may be needed in Iraq as part of the Obama administration’s offensive against the Islamic State. General Martin Dempsey, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee last month.

GEN. MARTIN DEMPSEY: As I said in my statement, however, this—my view at this point is that this coalition is the appropriate way forward. I believe that will prove true. But if it fails to be true and if there are threats to the United States, then I of course would go back to the president and make a recommendation that may include the use of U.S. military ground forces.

AMY GOODMAN: Kelly Dougherty, your response to that?

KELLY DOUGHERTY: Well, I find it just a little ironic that it seemed, over the course of the Bush administration, the country really turned against the occupation of Iraq and wanted the troops to come home, and then last year, when we saw a proposal to bomb Syria, there was great opposition, but now, with all the fear mongering that’s been going on, it seems like just kind of overnight now a majority of people support bombing Iraq, bombing Syria, and even the idea of sending more troops back into Iraq, which just seems like a recipe for just continued long-term destruction and catastrophe, both for the U.S. soldiers involved and then for the people of Iraq who have been living generationally in war and conflict. I mean, so many of these fighters in ISIS now are people who were kids when I was in Iraq, you know, living in a constant state of disorder, violence and conflict and occupation.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. Our guests are Kelly Dougherty, co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, or IVAW, deployed to Kuwait and Iraq in 2003 and '04; Brock McIntosh, served in Afghanistan; Scott Olsen, twice in Iraq. They're all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, celebrating their 10th anniversary, as the U.S. goes back to war in Iraq. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Jacob George singing "Soldier’s Heart." This isDemocracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman. Jacob George is an Afghanistan war veteran and peace activist who took his own life earlier this month. He co-founded the Afghan Veterans Against the War Committee, part of Iraq Veterans Against the War. In 2012 at the NATO summit in Chicago, he was among the veterans who hurled their military medals toward the summit gates in an act of protest against the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

JACOB GEORGE: My name is Jacob George. I’m from the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas. I’m a three-tour veteran of the Afghan War, paratrooper and sergeant. And I have one word for this Global War on Terrorism decoration, and that is "shame."

AMY GOODMAN: Jacob George killed himself September 17th, one week after President Obama unveiled a new U.S. military mission against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. He was 32 years old. Our guests are all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War—Scott Olsen, Kelly Dougherty and Brock McIntosh. You knew him well. You knew Jacob George very well.

BROCK McINTOSH: Yeah, we were good friends. We met a few months after I got back from Afghanistan. We co-founded the Afghanistan Veterans Against the War Committee with other veterans. And then, a year after that, we went to Afghanistan again, but as civilians.

AMY GOODMAN: To do what?

BROCK McINTOSH: Well, we met with a group called the Afghan Peace Volunteers, which has been doing wonderful organizing against the occupation of Afghanistan and organizing for an end to war in general in their country. And we also went to several schools, orphanages and an internally displaced persons camp. And Jacob has sung about those experiences in his recent album.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about what happened to Jacob?

BROCK McINTOSH: Sure. Jacob deployed to Afghanistan three times. His first deployment was in 2001, which was about 13 years ago. And—

AMY GOODMAN: Why did he go? Where did he come from?

BROCK McINTOSH: Where did he come from?

AMY GOODMAN: Where did he grow up? Do you know?

BROCK McINTOSH: Oh, yeah, he grew up in Arkansas in the Ouachita Mountains. He was a very, very proud hillbilly. And returning to Afghanistan was a powerful experience for him, because he got to meet Afghans who were also from the mountains of Afghanistan. They called themselves "mountain boys," and he called himself a hillbilly. And, you know, he and the Afghans he met talk about the unfortunate reality of sending farmers to kill farmers while people are starving. And there are several people starving in Afghanistan because of war for 30 years and drought.

AMY GOODMAN: And then, can you talk about Jacob’s struggles when he came back to this country?

BROCK McINTOSH: Sure. You know, he saw a lot of killing in Afghanistan, and he also talked about seeing fear in the eyes of Afghans. And the idea that he could put fear in someone kind of haunted him. And he had lots of nightmares when he returned, and felt kind of isolated and didn’t really tell his story. But over the last few years, he’s had the opportunity to tell his story and to build long-lasting relationships, not only with other veterans who are like-minded, but also with Afghans.

AMY GOODMAN: Jacob had this philosophy of what he called "warriorhood."

BROCK McINTOSH: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Can you explain what that is?

BROCK McINTOSH: Sure. So, a soldier is a career professional, and they go to work, and then they come home, and they are able to compartmentalize the job of going to war and coming home. And a warrior is someone who is—being a warrior is a way of life, and they are driven by empathy. They see injustice, and they want to do something about it, and they fight. But they also—the empathy isn’t limited to—isn’t limited. They have empathy for the people that they’re fighting, as well. And that’s part of what makes them good in battle, but that’s also part of why they bring so much pain home, because they feel that pain, and they begin to understand the enemy in a different way.

AMY GOODMAN: Was he able to seek help from the VA, from the Veterans Administration, for post-traumatic stress disorder?

BROCK McINTOSH: I know that he had been seeing a counselor at the VA for some time, but he was having a lot of difficulty, because this counselor would push back and sort of question him about whether or not he was right about his interpretations of war. He didn’t believe that he had PTSD; he believed that he had moral injury, that it wasn’t a disorder to feel the way that he felt about war and that he was justified in being able to recognize that it wasn’t moral and to be able to tell people about that story.

AMY GOODMAN: When we went out to Chicago to cover the NATO protest in 2012, that’s when we covered so many of you who were throwing your medals back at the gate at the NATO summit. Jacob did that. We just played a clip of what he said as he hurled his medals. How important was that protest to him?

BROCK McINTOSH: I mean, he talked about how throwing that medal was like throwing his pain away. It was a symbolic moment. He believed a lot in rituals. And for him, that was sort of a ritual and a way of shedding, shedding that aspect of his identity.

AMY GOODMAN: Scott, I remember seeing you there with a helmet on. You wore a helmet for a long time after Occupy Oakland, after your head was hit by a police projectile. Can you talk about the VA and your experiences with it?

SCOTT OLSEN: Sure. I first tried applying for health coverage from the VA, you know, within months after I got out. And—

AMY GOODMAN: After two tours in Iraq.

SCOTT OLSEN: After two tours in Iraq. And I’ve now been out for almost five years, and I’ve yet to see a doctor from the VA.

AMY GOODMAN: How can that be?

SCOTT OLSEN: That’s because I have what they call an "other-than-honorable discharge," and that makes me ineligible to receive care from the VA. And there are thousands of veterans with an other-than-honorable discharge. And—

AMY GOODMAN: And how did that come about, the other-than-honorable discharge?

SCOTT OLSEN: I was accused of using drugs in the military. And I didn’t. And the process to award an other-than-honorable discharge is that there’s no, like, rights, in terms of the defendant.

AMY GOODMAN: So you couldn’t appeal what they decided.

SCOTT OLSEN: Right, it was just three officers appointed by the battalion commander who made this decision. And there was no oversight and no way around it, really.

AMY GOODMAN: And once that decision is handed down, you cannot go through the VA system?

SCOTT OLSEN: Well, after you get out—and I’m working on a process to get that, to get my discharge upgraded and for them to recognize the character of my service.

AMY GOODMAN: So, explain what happened to you, not in Iraq, but at Occupy Oakland, and then the kind of healthcare you got after that, if you couldn’t go to the VA?

SCOTT OLSEN: Well, I ended up going to a private hospital.

AMY GOODMAN: The date that you were hit?

SCOTT OLSEN: October 25th, 2011, is when I was shot by the police.

AMY GOODMAN: And you were there protesting because?

SCOTT OLSEN: Mostly because I thought it was wrong that the police evicted Occupy Oakland from this public space in front of City Hall in Oakland. And I thought it was important to support Occupy Oakland as veterans and to say veterans support these rights that we thought we were fighting for.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, explain what happened that night—not that you can really remember very much of what happened.

SCOTT OLSEN: Well, the incident commander from the police gave the order to disperse the crowd.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you wearing your fatigues?

SCOTT OLSEN: I was wearing my cammy jacket, and I was standing next to another veteran in full uniform. And the officer gave the order to deploy gas. And about 16 seconds after he gave that order, I was shot in the head by a beanbag round. It was their policy to protect tear gas canisters using beanbag rounds, so anybody who they thought was going to pick up and throw back a tear gas canister, they would shoot beanbags at them.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, what happened to you laying on the ground? As you speak, we’re also showing video of you at the time.

SCOTT OLSEN: Another officer threw a flash-bang grenade at myself and the people who were trying to rescue me and evacuate me. And this officer was terminated last year, and he was recently rehired with back pay.

AMY GOODMAN: And so, you’re being carried by people. They don’t even know who you are. I remember seeing the video and them shouting, "What’s your name? What’s your name?"

SCOTT OLSEN: Right, and I could not answer. And I didn’t know I couldn’t answer. I did not realize the extent of my injuries in those seconds. And when I couldn’t answer them, that helped me accept that I was not doing well and I needed their help.

AMY GOODMAN: So you ended up not at the VA?

SCOTT OLSEN: Right. I went to Highland Hospital, the public hospital in Oakland, and received care there. And I still have gotten zero care from the VA.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Scott Olsen, who sued the city. Explain what happened with your lawsuit. There was just a recent settlement.

SCOTT OLSEN: Right. We settled in this past April for a total of four-and-a-half million dollars.

AMY GOODMAN: And this was voted on by the Oakland City Council?

SCOTT OLSEN: Right, they approved it. And it was through their City Attorney’s Office that we arrived at that. And it’s very good to have that lawsuit over. It was a very stressful period. But, you know, it’s still not over. That officer is still working for the Oakland police, and Oakland police still has poor disciplinary measures and processes.

AMY GOODMAN: And how are you feeling?

SCOTT OLSEN: I’m not feeling good about Oakland police or about going back into war, but I’m feeling ready to resist that and to keep fighting for—to right these injustices.

AMY GOODMAN: This issue of post-traumatic stress disorder and the return to Iraq and Syria, there’s not a lot of discussion in the corporate media about the soldiers, because, well, there’s been this whole discussion of whether there will be boots on the ground. But the top generals are very much talking about that, not to mention those who fly what they call "sorties," you know, who bomb Iraq and Syria. Can you talk about that, soldiers who are not on the ground but who are doing this, Brock?

BROCK McINTOSH: Yeah, drone pilots and people who operate drones—drones usually involve a team that involves about four or five different people. And they are not immune to—they’re not immune to being mentally troubled by their experiences in war. And, you know, just to go back to what Scott was talking about, there are studies that show that soldiers who come home with PTSD are often more likely to commit crimes, and that means they’re more likely to be dishonorably discharged. And in some ways, these are the people who need help the most from the VA.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you know what Jacob George’s reaction was to the U.S. military going back into Iraq and now bombing Syria?

BROCK McINTOSH: Well, I last talked to him in June, and at that time ISIS was starting to take over Iraqi towns, and he was very troubled by the prospect of going to war. He was also equally troubled when Bowe Bergdahl, the POW from Afghanistan, came home and not only didn’t receive a welcome, but he received the opposite of a welcome—he received nothing but hatred.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to end by asking about the use of depleted uranium in Iraq. Last week, the Center for Constitutional Rights submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of Defense and the State Department on behalf of itself and Iraq Veterans Against the War. It seeks the firing coordinates of weapons used in Iraq that contained depleted uranium. If a person inhales, ingests or is exposed to the radiation of depleted uranium, radioactive material can be absorbed into the lungs, bone, kidney, skeletal tissue, reproductive system, brain and other organs. Kelly Dougherty, you’re one of the heads of IVAW.

KELLY DOUGHERTY: Yeah. So we’ve been working with the Center for Constitutional Rights and also with partners in Iraq, such as the Organization for Women’s Freedom in Iraq, around issues of depleted uranium use. They’re seeing in Iraq huge skyrocketing numbers of birth defects and health problems in areas where depleted uranium rounds were used. And then there’s also the issue of returning veterans’ health impacts and similar things. So, we want to see where those weapons were used, so we can start to build a case to support reparations for the Iraqis, as well as guaranteeing that our U.S. servicemembers who are coming back with depleted uranium exposure get the proper recognition and treatment.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, has Iraq Veterans Against the War come out with a statement on the U.S. bombing of Iraq and Syria right now?

KELLY DOUGHERTY: We are working on a statement right now, and that should be out. And, you know, we have seen the human casualties of war. And these are inevitable consequences, is that more and more people are going to be—have their lives destroyed, and more people are going to be radicalized to join radical organizations like ISIS, with our continued militarism in the region.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you all for being with us. Kelly Dougherty, co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War; Brock McIntosh, served in Afghanistan; and Scott Olsen, two tours of duty in Iraq, but was injured here at home, when he was protesting at Occupy Oakland, by the police—all members of Iraq Veterans Against the War. This is Democracy Now! When we come back, Jeremy scale on Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield. Stay with us.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: "Yellow Ribbon," by Emily Yates, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War. She says she wrote the song after speaking with fellow veterans about the yellow ribbon magnets people put on their cars. Yates was deployed twice to Iraq, where she served in the 3rd Infantry Division as an Army public affairs specialist from 2002 to 2008. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.

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