Newsletter Nov. 2009

Veterans Day Parade Excludes Veterans for Peace

Wednesday, November 4,2009
By Bill Christofferson

Members of Veterans for Peace (VFP) have again been barred from participation in Milwaukee’s Veterans Day parade.

Although the parade’s Web site says the event is “Honoring all Americans who have served,” it has refused to allow Veterans for Peace members—many of whom are combat veterans with Purple Hearts—from taking part in the observance on Saturday, Nov. 7.

The parade committee said Veterans for Peace is “a politically motivated group,” and therefore not welcome to be in the parade. FULL ARTICLE

Ehren Watada: Free at Last

by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith The Nation - October 26, 2009

On June 7, 2006, 28-year-old Army lieutenant Ehren Watada released a video press statement announcing that he was refusing to deploy to Iraq because the Iraq War was illegal and his “participation would make me party to war crimes.” After three years of trying to convict him by court martial, the Army has finally given up and allowed Lt. Watada to resign. Despite his direct refusal of an order to deploy, Watada did not spend a single day in jail.

US pays $400 per gallon for gas in Afghanistan

By John Byrne, RawStory.com http://rawstory.com/2009/10/us-pays-400-per-gallon-for-gas-in-afghanistan/ Friday, October 16th, 2009 -- 8:08 am Last year, the price of gasoline in the United States topped the $4 per gallon mark. This year in Afghanistan, the price has topped $400. The stunning revelation emerged Thursday in a report from the Pentagon to House officials.

The information conveyed offers new insight into a recent report by the Congressional Research Service, which found that the US spends $1 million per year for each servicemember on the ground in Afghanistan. FULL STORY

Why so much? The cost includes shipping, which sometimes includes the pricetag of a helicopter flight. Sending fuel by helicopter is woefully inefficient, because it uses up almost as much fuel as it carries. Speaking to the Capitol Hill newspaper The Hill, House Appropriations chairman John Murtha (D-PA) said the figure was “worrisome” and “we started looking into it.” Afghanistan is also landlocked, meaning that fuel must be transported in ways that stretch the limits of economic reason. Because the country has no seaports, fuel is shipped to Karachi, in Pakistan, then carried across land by commercial trucks through Afghanistan.

For remote bases, gasoline is sometimes transported by air. “One of the most expensive ways to supply fuel is by transporting it in bladders carried by helicopter; the amount that can be flown at one time can barely satisfy the need for fuel,” the Hill notes. The paper adds that the $400 pricetag is referred to in Pentagon argot as the “fully burdened cost of fuel.” The government’s Defense Energy Support Center provides fuel to the military at $2.78 per gallon, the conveyance of which then grows exponentially more expensive as it travels through dangerous combat zones. Gen. James Conway, who runs the Marine Corps, told a Navy forum that perilous routes increase gasoline that originally cost $1.04 gallon up to $400. “These are fairly major problems for us,” Conway was quoted as saying.