IVAW Coffee shop opens at Fort Hood this Fall

Under The Hood:

"Under The Hood is a cafe and coffee shop planned to open in September 2008. In the spirit of the Oleo Strut coffee shop from the late '60s, Under The Hood will be a place for soldiers to meet and unwind. Under The Hood is a much needed venue in Ft. Hood of Killeen, Texas. Under The Hood is in the planning phase now and is looking for donations!"

"During Vietnam, the GI antiwar movement got off the ground when civilians started establishing a string of coffeehouses around military installations. Since moving to Fort Hood, and especially since establishing a Fort Hood Chapter of IVAW, I've heard of many "movements" to open a coffeehouse, but for the first time (in a long time) I'm genuinely excited because it's really happening. Your donations are greatly appreciated and will go a long way toward giving us what we need in order to take care of our brothers and sisters as well as organize a viable movement to help end these destructive, pointless wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you very much. "
-- Ronn Cantu President of Iraq Veterans Against the War Chapter 38 at Fort Hood

In Honor of Hiroshima Day

Postcard: TrueMajorityACTION.org

The link gives you an opportunity to pass on this video in an e postcard.

More predictions about an Iran attack

Truthdig - Reports - A War of Self-Destruction
Check out the Nader quote in the link above about government bail outs. You will find it towards the end of this article where the focus changes to our present economic woes . The predictions about Iran are quoted below:

"An attack on Iran, which Israeli and Bush administration officials appear set to carry out if Iranian uranium enrichment is not halted, would ignite a regional war in the Middle East and lead to economic collapse and political upheaval in the United States.

“In short and simple terms, we would be plunged into a depression that would make the Great Depression of the 1930s in which I spent my childhood look like boom times,” said William R. Polk, former professor of history at the University of Chicago and a member of the Policy Planning Council under President Kennedy. “Industries would fail, banks would collapse, government revenues would dry up, universities would have to close, health care, even as limited as it now is for roughly 75 million Americans, would virtually cease. In short, something like [what] the South suffered at the end of the Civil War would plague the country.”

The passage of vast amounts of oil and liquefied gas through the Persian Gulf would be disrupted. Iranian attacks, carried out with rocket- and bomb-equipped speedboats and submarines, would be deadly and effective. A classified Pentagon war game in 2002 simulated these swarming attacks by Iranian speedboats packed with explosives in the gulf; the Navy lost 16 major warships, according to a report in The New York Times. Iranian oil, which makes up 8 percent of the world’s energy supply, would instantly be taken off the market. And oil would jump to over $500 a barrel and perhaps, as the conflict dragged on, to over $750 a barrel. Our petroleum-based economy would come to a halt.

Israel would be hit by Iranian Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. Hezbollah, with its new store of Iranian-supplied rockets that allegedly can reach any part of Israel, including Israel’s nuclear plant at Dimona, would enter the conflict. Israel would lash back. Terrorist attacks on U.S. targets would become frequent. U.S. casualties in Iraq would mount as the Iranians rained missiles down on U.S. bases and installations, including our imperial city, the Green Zone. Chaos and mayhem would grip the Middle East. The world financial markets would go haywire."

Vets to Receive Disability for ALS

Vets to Receive Disability for ALS

The Department of Veterans Affairs plans to provide full disability payments for Lou Gehrig's disease, tacitly acknowledging for the first time a generalized link between the fatal neurological disorder and military service.

Veterans and patient advocates have advocated the change for years, citing studies showing that former soldiers are more likely than the general population to contract the disease, formally known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or ALS.

The VA already extends full compensation to ALS-stricken veterans of the first Persian Gulf war, who, according to a study earlier this decade, are twice as likely as other service members to contract the disease.

Learn more about the full range of your military benefits.

US Contractors Winning Their Hearts and Minds

Video of This Makes Me Sick (Contractors Shooting At Iraqi Civilians) - Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting

Send Jane to Baghdad!

Dear John: The only way to win in Iraq is to leave:

"if I go over to Baghdad instead, I will have the entire Combined Press Information Center in the Green Zone all to myself. Plus if I went over to Iraq right now, I could send some more accurate dispatches back to poor sweet be-nighted John McCain, who needs all the help he can get.

Dear John, I would write, you ve got it all wrong. That s happening over here in Iraq right now isn t just an old-school type of war that American troops can win or lose. We already won that kind of war here, back in 2003. But in case you haven t noticed, things have changed a lot in Iraq since 2003 and we can no longer call it a war any more because there are just too many other factors involved"

Another perspective on the Cost of War

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Pentagon as Global Gas-Guzzler: "Sixteen gallons of oil. That's how much the average American soldier in Iraq and Afghanistan consumes on a daily basis -- either directly, through the use of Humvees, tanks, trucks, and helicopters, or indirectly, by calling in air strikes. Multiply this figure by 162,000 soldiers in Iraq, 24,000 in Afghanistan, and 30,000 in the surrounding region (including sailors aboard U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf) and you arrive at approximately 3.5 million gallons of oil: the daily petroleum tab for U.S. combat operations in the Middle East war zone.

Multiply that daily tab by 365 and you get 1.3 billion gallons: the estimated annual oil expenditure for U.S. combat operations in Southwest Asia. That's greater than the total annual oil usage of Bangladesh, population 150 million -- and yet it's a gross underestimate of the Pentagon's wartime consumption.

Such numbers cannot do full justice to the extraordinary gas-guzzling expense of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. After all, for every soldier stationed 'in theater,' there are two more in transit, in training, or otherwise in line for eventual deployment to the war zone -- soldiers who also consume enormous amounts of oil, even if less than their compatriots overseas. Moreover, to sustain an 'expeditionary' army located halfway around the world, the Department of Defense must move millions of tons of arms, ammunition, food, fuel, and equipment every year by plane or ship, consuming additional tanker-loads of petroleum. Add this to the tally and the Pentagon's war-related oil budget jumps appreciably, though exactly how much we have no real way of knowing.

And foreign wars, sad to say, account for but a small fraction of the Pentagon's total petroleum consumption. Possessing the world's largest fleet of modern aircraft, helicopters, ships, tanks, armored vehicles, and support systems -- virtually all powered by oil -- the Department of Defense (DoD) is, in fact, the world's leading consumer of petroleum. It can be difficult to obtain precise details on the DoD's daily oil hit, but an April 2007 report by a defense contractor, LMI Government Consulting, suggests that the Pentagon might consume as much as 340,000 barrels (14 million gallons) every day. This is greater than the total national consumption of Sweden or Switzerland."