Archive for soldiers

AP: Costs of U.S. wars linger for over 100 years

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Grampy McWalnuts was always wrong. Talk about a legacy for your children and grandchildren.

OLYMPIA, Wash. — If history is any judge, the U.S. government will be paying for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars for the next century as service members and their families grapple with the sacrifices of combat.

An Associated Press analysis of federal payment records found that the government is still making monthly payments to relatives of Civil War veterans – 148 years after the conflict ended.

At the 10 year anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, more than $40 billion a year are going to compensate veterans and survivors from the Spanish-American War from 1898, World War I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the two Iraq campaigns and the Afghanistan conflict. And those costs are rising rapidly.

U.S. Sen. Patty Murray said such expenses should remind the nation about war’s long-lasting financial toll.

“When we decide to go to war, we have to consciously be also thinking about the cost,” said Murray, D-Wash., adding that her WWII-veteran father’s disability benefits helped feed their family.

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How the NRA Helps Arm Child Soldiers and Enables Deadly Local Wars

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nra

Your Daily Dose of BuzzFlash at Truthout, via my pal Mark Karlin:

Yes the gun lobby has enabled the arming of child soldiers — even younger than 10-years-old –and the deadly raging of local militia wars around the world.  No, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is not selling small arms to militias; it is not recruiting child soldiers and giving them guns to fight for “rebel” forces around that commit atrocities; it does not directly sell firearms and weapons to rebel nations that commit massacres of its own people.

But the National Riffle Association has for years held up the United States endorsement of the international Arms Trade Treaty, which would provide a legal framework for limiting the profiteering of weapons that create killing fields, particularly in poorer nations.  [...]

Around the globe, over a billion children live in countries impacted by armed conflict that is fueled by small arms and conventional weapons. These children are at grave risk of being abducted and trafficked, used as soldiers and sex slaves, forced from their homes, attacked at school. [...]

Amazingly, the Obama White House has not yet taken a position on the next round of treaty negotiations that begin on March 18th.  If you counter that the treaty is not yet written so why should the president take a position at this time, then know this: “a round of treaty talks last July ended when the United States stepped away from the negotiating process,” according to Amnesty International.  The political factor behind the US walking away was, at a political level, the NRA. [...]

But the NRA… is claiming … that the Arms Trade Treaty would lead to door-to-door confiscation of guns in the United States. [...]

[T]he NRA has successfully kept the floodgates open for arms being supplied to outlaw governments, militias, mass rapists, and the coerced and vast child soldier market. [...]

One doesn’t need to dig deep to know that Wayne La Pierre, chief honcho and for the NRA, is the oracle of mendacity, the chief flamer thrower of these incendiary deceptions.

Meanwhile, child soldiers are forcibly recruited and trained to become numbed robotic killers, women are raped by armed “rebels” and rogue national armies, and civilians wantonly killed – all by killers armed so that the NRA can raise funds and enhance gun manufacturing profits by promoting lies that the Arms Trade Treaty would result in gun confiscation in the US. [...]

[T]he NRA supports “the bad guys.”

Please read the entire post here.

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Video Afternoon Distraction- British Armed Forces and BBC Radio 1 say Merry Christmas Everyone

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Via.

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Video- Soldiers Ready for Crowds at GOP Convention in Tampa

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Spooky stuff, especially when you consider how much they’re spending on security for this thing.

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Video- And your server tonight is… your husband! Soldier surprises wife at restaurant

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I’m not normally a sentimental person, but crap like this gets to me.

Fast food may lead to varying kinds of surprises for diners but for one military wife, it was in fact the exceptional service.

After a Florida woman’s husband made his third-deployment to Afghanistan, wife Amy Reed, 24, made Tuesday nights Chick-fil-A night for her young family, as a way of coping with his absence.

But the tradition also became into an opportunity for the husband to surprise her with his unexpected return home this month, as a one-time Chick-fil-A server, caught on tape.

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Video- President’s Weekly Address: Giving Thanks for Those Who Serve

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Video- President Obama speaks to troops at Fort Bliss about ending Iraq War

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