[Onthebarricades] US: Iraq war protests and veteran issues, Sept-Oct 07

[Andy]

*  Protesters greet Iraq general Petraeus, disrupt speech

*  Protester attacked at Petraeus hearing

*  Thousands demand end to Iraq war in Washington march

*  Stanford University in uproar about Rumsfeld award

*  Traumatised veteran murdered by American police

*  War veterans: heroes die, guilt lives on

 

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10354096.htm

 

Noisy protesters, doubting Democrats greet Petraeus

10 Sep 2007 20:45:26 GMT

Source: Reuters

By Susan Cornwell 

WASHINGTON, Sept 10 (Reuters) - Anti-war protesters in pink shouted at him to tell the truth. Democrats were doubters even before he spoke. His microphone failed to work for several tense minutes. And a full-page newspaper ad portrayed him as "General Betray Us." 

Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, is accustomed to taking flak and he got plenty of the political kind when he appeared before Congress on Monday. 

Testifying in uniform with a chest full of ribbons and sitting on a raised platform in the cavernous hearing room under two chandeliers, Petraeus told lawmakers: "There are no easy answers or quick solutions." 

The West Point graduate who holds a doctorate from Princeton University, recommended a drawdown of the extra forces President George W. Bush sent to Iraq earlier this year. 

Even before Petraeus got to make his case, the leaders of two powerful committees went on the attack, suggesting that he and his co-witness the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, were either mouthpieces for Bush or "beating a dead horse," in in the words of Rep. Ike Skelton, the Missouri Democrat who heads the Armed Services Committee. 

"This is not a knock on you, General Petraeus, or on you, Ambassador Crocker," said Rep. Tom Lantos, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. 

"But the fact remains, gentlemen, that the administration has sent you here today to convince the members of these two committees that victory is at hand," said the California Democrat. "With all due respect to you, I must say ... I don't buy it." 

While the 54-year-old Petraeus waited to make himself heard, several demonstrators filled the void and were instantly ordered removed. One was Cindy Sheehan, a well-known figure in the anti-war movement whose son was killed in Iraq. 

The microphone mess began when Petraeus leaned forward to open his testimony. His lips moved but his words were lost. An exasperated Skelton asked repeatedly for it to be fixed and then ordered a five-minute recess to rectify it. 

"General Petraeus, the American people don't believe you any more!" shouted a protester from the Code Pink anti-war group. As police officers dragged her out, she howled, "No! No! No! I have a right to be heard!" 

Some lawmakers arrived at the hearing with copies of a full-page ad by the Moveon.org liberal activist organization that asked "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" It accused him of "cooking the books for the White House." 

But Petraeus found some defenders. Rep. Duncan Hunter of California waved the ad in the air, telling lawmakers he was "irritated" by it and other criticism by Democrats. 

"I think its an outrage that we spent the last week bashing the credibility of a general officer whose trademark is integrity," said Hunter. 

The White House also came to Petraeus' defense over the ad. 

"It is a boorish, childish, unworthy attack," said White House spokesman Tony Snow. 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070910/pl_afp/usiraqpolitics

 

Fur flies as Petraeus and pink protestors enliven Congress 

by Jitendra Joshi Mon Sep 10, 6:19 PM ET 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The screams of pink-clad female protestors could be heard but General David Petraeus could not. The US commander in Iraq had a dud microphone. 

 

What was billed as the most electrifying day of testimony in Congress for many years lurched into farce Monday as Petraeus struggled to be heard and members of the anti-war group Code Pink were dragged kicking from the room.

"I'll bet (Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-) Maliki's sitting there watching this and thinking, 'at least my mike works'," one congressional staffer was heard to grumble.

The audio failure seemed all too apposite for anti-war campaigners who accuse President George W. Bush of turning a deaf ear to the groundswell of US opinion that wants the Iraq adventure to come to an end.

At least seven hecklers, including prominent anti-war campaigner, Cindy Sheehan were hustled out of the committee room and arrested by police, with one Code Pink woman screaming "I have a right to speak out! This is not Russia!"

The technological gremlins eventually fixed and order restored, the US military's top counterinsurgency expert got down to business explaining why Congress should give him more time to pacify the bloodstained nation.

But his message was already at risk of being drowned out as opposing camps square off over what is probably the most emotive debate to engulf the United States since the Vietnam War.

Before she was evicted, Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin said that Petraeus was "nothing but a messenger for the White House," echoing the left-wing group MoveOn.org's denunciation of "General Betray US."

"We've had the wool pulled over our eyes right from the start of this war. We're sick of the lies and want our troops home," she said, proudly leading Code Pink's self-confessed contingent of "rabble rousers" into battle.

But the cerebral Petraeus, who has a doctorate in international relations from Princeton University, remained unflappable as he laid out the "devastating consequences" that would erupt from an abrupt US exit from Iraq.

Like the meticulous soldier he is, Petraeus entered the room a full hour before the hearing was due to start for a quick survey of the impending field of combat.

"I'm here on recon," he told startled photographers who rushed to grab a shot during his brief look-see.

The excitement surrounding the rare joint session of the House of Representatives Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees threatened to drown out the dispassionate tones of Baghdad envoy Ryan Crocker.

When it was the US ambassador's turn to speak after Petraeus, fidgeting set in and Blackberries came out among the 200-plus people present for the hearing in the Cannon House Building's richly decorated Caucus Room.

It was the most hotly anticipated appearance in Congress by a US commander since General William Westmoreland addressed a joint session of the House and Senate in 1967 to argue that his strategy in Vietnam was "producing results."

Other parallels in history were invoked in defense of US strategy today in the infant democracy of Iraq.

Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the enemies of Iraq's government were "enemies of democracies everywhere," with whom it was impossible to compromise.

British prime minister Neville Chamberlain had tried to appease Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, but "only ensured that an immensely larger threat was unleashed," she said. 

Geoff Millard, a 26-year-old former sergeant with the army's 42nd Infantry Division who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, insisted that Vietnam and not World War II was the relevant analogy as he spoke out against the war. 

"Westmoreland came to Congress and said 'we need more troops and more time.' Well, we don't have more troops or more time for Iraq," he said. 

"Petraeus isn't here to represent the soldiers. He's here to represent the Bush administration agenda. They talk about progress in Iraq. Well here's the progress: we're pissing people off and creating more terrorists."

CodePink Disrupts Petraeus Hearing

Submitted by Lydia Vickers on September 12, 2007 - 2:08am.

http://www.tnjp.org/images/Petraeus-disruption.jpgReport on Monday CodePink
disruption of the Petraeus hearing in the House. Led by Tallahassee's own
Lydia Vickers (that's her standing on the chair shouting down the 'good'
general...

What a fabulous start in D.C. CODEPINK (Desiree, Barbara, Lelsie A., Medea
B., Mona, Arizona Liz, and myself), IVAW, Col. Wright, David Swanson and
others waited almost four hours this morning to go into the Petreaus Report
hearing. CODEPINK co-founder Gael Murphy was refused entrance and tried in
vane to get in the room. One of the Capitol officers had his panties in a
wad and decided only 7 of us could go in. Even Medea couldn't change his
sorry mind. Cindy Sheehan and her sister DeDe arrived about 30 minutes
before the hearing started and were refused entrance. The up-tight cop
actually gave us little blue pieces of paper with numbers on them 1-7. CPer
Debby gave up her number so Col. Wright could get in. In the mean time, The
Honorable Rev. Yearwood had been in line with us for about 2 hours. Just as
we started to go in he was pulled from the line for "cutting in" - it's
sooooooooooo high school.

Full report below the fold....
NOTE: Cindy, DeDe and Rev. Yearwood were arrested, in the hall, for
absolutely nothing more than raising their voices. Unfortunately Rev.
Yearwood had pissed off the "hallway cop" who was bothering us earlier and,
after a little posturing he was thrown to the floor, 8 cops jumped on him
and he is in the hospital getting x-rayed for a broken ankle.

Back to the hearing, when we got into the hearing we were warned immediately
to sit still, no standing, no signs, no banners blah, blah, blah. Deseriee
decided she wasn't going to sit down.

The "hallway" cop was hovering, asking her to sit down. She refused, he
grabbed her and she started yelling "WAR CRIMINAL, WAR CRIMINAL, WAR
CRIMINAL" at the top of her lungs as he drug her from the room. First one
arrested! Not long after that, when Petraeus was just absolutely lying,
Leslie A. stood up and said "that's not true. That's a lie. I've been to
Iran. The people are lovely". She was escorted out (they didn't arrest
her???).

Let me note here that we had planned to upset the meeting, one at a time, so
we were each waiting for our cue.

About this time Ray McGovern yells "SWEAR HIM IN". The chair asked him to
leave, he refused for a time but was escorted out. We continued to listen to
the "report" just shaking our heads at the lies. I heard Gen. P. mention
Iran 4-5 times and was starting to get a little sick of him.

Medea, behind me start yelling "General Petraeus, the American people don't
believe you any more....." and was taken away. Today is Medea's birthday and
she will surely spend the night in jail. Then, Mona started yelling "???? (I
couldn't hear what she said because the whole place started standing up to
see what was going on.)

Keep in mind that by this time we had been warned by the chair to be quiet.
Duncan Hunter was besides himself with wanting to get us kicked out. He
didn't realize his mike was on and was saying something like "we need to get
them out of here - that group in the back - CODEPINK - they are going to
keep interrupting the meeting....." someone came and shut off his mike.

So, Mona is yelling and I had my cue. I stood on my chair and started
yelling "General Petreaus, you're just like Colin Powell, you're ruining our
military, you're going to bankrupt our country, you've betrayed military
families, you'll go down in history, just like Colin Powell". At this point
the police are grabbing Mona and she decides to resist. She said "don't
touch me, NO, NO, No, let go of me, I'm 70 years old.....No, No.....". I
jumped off of my chair and said "leave her alone" and saw an opportunity to
walk out. An officer got behind me. Mona is still hysterical as I'm being
escorted from the hearing. Within minutes, and after a stern warning and
threat of prosecution, Arizona Liz stood up to say her piece (again, I
couldn't hear her 'cuz I was out the door by this time).

When we got in the hallway the officer behind me realized he needed to help
the other cops with Mona. He told four officers in the hall to "hold her
(me) and turned around to go help with Mona. I don't think the hallway cops
heard him. As I walked toward them it was obvious that only one of them was
coming to me. I saw my opportunity and started to walk, really, really fast.
I passed the cops, said hi to Tiffany Burns (dear friend, Cindy Sheehan's
personal assistant - who got arrested shortly thereafter) and kept on
walking. I passed a group of cameras in the hall, turned the corner and
pressed the elevator button. About this time an officer was coming up the
stairs, not knowing what was going on, and said "use the stairs, it's
faster!!!!!".

You never saw a pink cape fly down the hall and stairways so fast. I kept
myself from running and within minutes was out the door, headed home.

The coolest part is that all of this made it onto the C-Span. It's great
because they had a 45 second delay (just for this kind of stuff) and it made
it anyway. Cactus Pat just called to say Wolf Blitzer started The Situation
Room (at 5:00 PM) with a clip and I am attaching the MSNBC video link for
your enjoyment.

Peace, Lydia in DC

Corporate media report at www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20689394/ or click here for
direct link
<http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?f=00&g=aa75bdcd-b793-4f3c-a6b9-3361c274
487c&p=Source_MSNBC&t=m5&rf=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20689476/&fg=> to
MSNBC video...

If anyone has a better copy of the video, contact us
<http://www.tnjp.org/contact> .

Full info at www.betrayusreport.com ...

http://www.tnjp.org/CodePink-Disrupts-Patraeus-Hearing

 

Rev. Yearwood Attacked and Beaten in Halls of Congress by Police

WASHINGTON - September 10 - Rev. Lennox Yearwood, Jr., president of the Hip
Hop Caucus, was attacked by six capitol police today, when he was stopped
from entering the Cannon Caucus Room on Capitol Hill, where General Petreaus
gave testimony today to a joint hearing for the House Arms Services
Committee and Foreign Relations Committee on the war in Iraq.

After waiting in line throughout the morning for the hearing that was
scheduled to start at 12:30pm, Rev. Yearwood was stopped from entering the
room, while others behind him were allowed to enter. He told the officers
blocking his ability to enter the room, that he was waiting in line with
everyone else and had the right to enter as well. When they threatened him
with arrest he responded with "I will not be arrested today." According to
witnesses, six capitol police, without warning, "football tackled" him. He
was carried off in a wheel chair by DC Fire and Emergency to George
Washington Hospital.

Rev. Yearwood said as he was being released from the hospital to be taken to
central booking, "The officers decided I was not going to get in Gen.
Petreaus' hearing when they saw my button, which says 'I LOVE THE PEOPLE OF
IRAQ.'"

Capitol Police are not saying what the charges are, but an inside source has
said that the charge is assaulting a police officer. Rev. Yearwood is
scheduled to be transferred to Central Processing to be arraigned tomorrow
morning.

http://spidel.net/blog/2007/09/10/rev-yearwood-attacked-and-beat-in-halls-of-congress-by-police

 

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070915/ts_alt_afp/usiraqdemo

 

 

Protestors in Washington demand end to Iraq war 

Sat Sep 15, 6:34 PM ET 

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Thousands of angry protestors including the families of dead US soldiers marched in Washington Saturday demanding an end to the war in Iraq, the return of US troops, and the impeachment of President George W. Bush. 

A crowd of protesters some 4,000 to 6,000 strong gathered outside the White House before marching under a clear sky to the US Capitol building. Many waved placards that read "Support our troops, stop the war," and "Impeach Bush."

Several dozen demonstrators stretched out on their backs in front of Congress, which was not in session, in what they termed a "die-in," drawing attention to the rising death toll in insurgency-stricken Iraq.

US television networks broadcast pictures of scuffles between protestors and police and reported that several people were arrested, but police could not confirm to AFP how many arrests were made.

Phil Aliff, 21, marched wearing his camouflage uniform jacket as part of a group called Iraq Veterans Against the War. He first arrived in Iraq in July 2006.

"I stayed there for a year, in Abu Ghraib and outside Fallujah. When we arrived, we were told we were here to bring stabilization to the country," said Aliff.

"But we were not rebuilding anything. The Iraqis had only two hours of electricity. And I saw the atrocities committed by the Americans there."

Aliff spoke days after the top US general in Iraq, David Petraeus, testified before Congress, giving an optimistic report on conditions in Iraq and the effectiveness of the US president's "surge" strategy of adding more US troops to the fight.

"General Petraeus's report is incredibly far from the reality on the ground," said Aliff.

Another marcher, Diane Santoriello, held a photograph of her 25-year-old son Neil, lost in Iraq on August 13, 2004. "I am here to get Congress to defund the war," she said.

"The vast majority of Iraqi people want the US and other foreign forces out of the country," said Brian Becker with the ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War End Racism) coalition, the group organizing the march.

"The vast majority of the people in the US want the war ended and the troops brought home now," he added.

Speakers also included activist Cindy Sheehan, who lost her US soldier son, Casey, in Iraq and became a figurehead for the anti-war movement.

The highest percentage ever of Americans -- 62 percent -- now believe the war was a mistake, while 59 percent believe it is not worth American lives, according to a poll published last week.

Americans trust US military commanders over President George W. Bush or the Democratic-controlled US Congress to successfully end the Iraq war, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll published Monday.

When asked to choose who could best end the war, 68 percent said they most trusted the military commanders, 21 percent said Congress, and just five percent said the Bush administration.


http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article2987807.ece

 

Stanford campus in uproar over fellowship for Rumsfeld

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles

Academics and students at California's prestigious Stanford University have
launched a vigorous protest against the appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as a
visiting fellow to a right-wing campus think-tank, saying the former defence
secretary and architect of the Iraq war offends their ideals of truth and
tolerance.

Mr Rumsfeld's appointment as a one-year visiting fellow to the Hoover
Institution was announced two weeks ago. Since then, more than 2,300 people
on campus have signed a petition calling for the appointment to be revoked -
among them an eminent professor of psychology who specialises in the
wellsprings of bestial human behaviour.

The professor, Philip Zimbardo, lambasts Mr Rumsfeld in his most recent
book, arguing that the defence secretary established the conditions that
allowed low-ranking US military personnel to abuse Iraqi prisoners at Abu
Ghraib. Explaining his support for the petition, Professor Zimbardo told The
New York Times: "It is unacceptable to have someone who represents the
values that Rumsfeld has portrayed, in an academic setting."

The petition, drafted by a history professor, Pamela Lee, reads: "We view
the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of
truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and
international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others
to which Stanford is inalienably committed."

The university has defended its choice, saying Rumsfeld's experience at the
very pinnacle of government makes him a desirable presence on campus
regardless of people's opinions of him. Assuming the appointment goes ahead,
he is expected to visit Stanford no more than five times over the year-long
lifetime of the fellowship. He may give lectures but he won't do any
classroom teaching.

The furore is part of an old pattern at Stanford. The Hoover Institution is
a well known haven for right-wing ideologues and former Republican
politicians, among them Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and
George Shultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state. That, in turn, pits the
Institution against the more liberal leanings of Stanford. Condoleezza Rice,
the present Secretary of State, was provost of Stanford before being called
to Washington by President Bush and endured bitter criticisms from campus
liberals during her stormy six-year tenure. She has indicated her intention
to return to Stanford when the second Bush term ends in 2009, but some
faculty members have said she will not be welcomed back.

In the late 1980s, a campus protest successfully sabotaged a plan to house
Ronald Reagan's presidential library on the Stanford campus. More recently,
campus protesters forced President Bush to cancel plans for a dinner with Mr
Shultz at the university.

Professor Zimbardo, most famous for conducting the so-called Stanford prison
experiment in the 1970s, in which students asked to play the role of prison
guards quickly became sadistic and students asked to play their prisoners
became passive and depressed, has been particularly outspoken about Mr
Rumsfeld's role in prison abuse scandals.

Mr Rumsfeld, he writes in his latest book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding
How Good People Become Evil, created the conditions for troops to commit war
crimes and torture by sidelining and disparaging the Geneva Conventions.

Published: 22 September 2007



http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/05/james_dean/index_np.html

[I call this murder for several reasons - one that the police escalated conflict which may have been avoided otherwise; two that they failed to handle negotiations effectively; third that they used human rights abuses against him, such as cutting off supplies; and fourth that they flushed him out at a time when his reaction was predictably likely to be violent]

The killing of Jamie Dean

Police in rural Maryland staged a military stakeout and shot a troubled Army vet. As his family plans to sue, they are asking how a soldier being treated for PTSD could be shipped to Iraq.

By Julia Dahl

Photo: Muriel Dean

Jamie Dean, Dec. 17, 2006.

Sept. 5, 2007 | Jamie Dean had been holed up in his childhood home for six hours when the tear gas canisters came crashing through the windows. It was a little after 4 a.m., the day after Christmas 2006, and Sgt. James Emerick Dean, 29, formerly of the 25th Infantry Division, knew he was surrounded. The white farmhouse was tucked beside a grove of trees in Leonardtown, a rural hamlet in southern Maryland, where Dean's family once raised tobacco. Now, from behind the blinds, Dean could see cops with flashlights creeping around his backyard. He could see police cars on the dirt road outside the house. He could hear the sirens and the shouting and the buzz of the police radios. 

It had been a month since Dean had gotten word he'd have to go back to war. He had already served a year in Afghanistan. He'd done and seen things over there he couldn't talk about, and now they were sending him to Iraq. Like tens of thousands of soldiers fighting the post-9/11 wars, Dean was being treated by the Department of Veterans Affairs for post-traumatic stress disorder -- but the Army didn't know that because the Army and the V.A. don't typically share medical records. 

Before joining the Army, Dean was a merry prankster with a contagious smile. But the terror he felt clearing caves in Afghanistan followed him home to Maryland, and despite having a loving family, a new wife and a good job, when Dean got called back up, he began to crack. On Christmas night, he snapped. The outcome would be tragic. The Maryland State Police would be cited for flawed and overly aggressive military tactics. And the whole sorry state of America's need for fighters in Iraq would be exposed. 

Christmas Day began with a fight between Dean and his wife, Muriel Dean. It was about his drinking again. Ever since he had received the notice he was being shipped to Iraq, it had gotten heavier and heavier. Late in the afternoon, Jamie fled for Toots, the bar in Hollywood, Md., where he and Muriel had met a year before. The outgoing Muriel, who worked in the personnel department of a computer company, adored her husband. But she was frustrated and angry. She called Jamie at the bar and he came storming home. 



"If you wanna be at the bar, be at the bar," she told him. "But if you're gonna get drunk tonight, don't come home." Jamie threw a box of wine onto the kitchen floor and started beating the cupboards with his fists. Glasses shattered and shards fell to the floor. Muriel was scared; she'd never seen him like this before. She went into the bedroom and started putting clothes into a bag to leave for the night. If you leave, Jamie told her, "I'm going to burn the fucking house down." He went out back and got a gas can and lighter. When he came back, Muriel managed to get the gas away from him. "Why would you wanna burn something down we've worked so hard for?" she asked. "You don't know how much I love you," Jamie said, standing in the doorway. "The next time you see me I'll be in a body bag." 

Dean fled the house and drove his Chevy Silverado eight miles to his family farm. His father, Joey, lived there alone -- he and Jamie's mother, Elaine, had separated while Dean was in Afghanistan -- but his father wasn't home. Dean started drinking again. He took a shotgun from one of the gun cabinets in the back of the house, and called his mom's house. His sister Kelly, an Air Force medic who has served in Germany and Iraq, answered the phone. To her, Dean didn't sound like himself. He was agitated and then his voice got scarily calm. "I just want to go home," Dean told her over the phone. "Everything will be easier then." 

He shot off the gun and then there was silence. Kelly screamed but he didn't answer. Later she would say she thought Dean was dead. "I freaked," she says. "I couldn't get him back on the phone. I couldn't hear any movement on the other end. So I did what any person would do and I called 911." 

Police dispatched a car to the house to check on Dean's welfare. When he refused to come out, more police cars rolled up, and officers with guns and flashlights surrounded the property. 

At 10 p.m., an officer from the St. Mary's sheriff's department got on the phone with Dean, who was drunk and clearly depressed. He was slurring his words. The officer prattled on, filling the long silences between Dean's mostly monosyllabic answers by trying to assure Dean they didn't want to arrest him, they just needed him to come outside and tell them everything was all right. Dean alternated between despondency and bravado. One minute he whispered that no one understood or respected what he did in the war, and the next, he said that if the police didn't back off it was "gonna get ugly. 

Over police radios, information began trickling in: He has guns in the house. (Like most area families, the Deans were hunters.) He has had a fight with his wife. He's a veteran and he's headed back to war. 

Around 11 p.m., Dean's family came rushing to the house, but police wouldn't let them up the driveway. "We'll call you if we need you," one officer told Dean's uncle Rob Purdy curtly. 

By midnight, two different sheriff's departments had deployed emergency response teams to the scene, surrounding the farmhouse with police vehicles and more armed men. At just after 4 a.m., those SWAT-like teams began firing tear gas into the house. The canisters smashed through the windows and penetrated the walls. Police fired between 40 and 60 rounds into the house, 10 times the amount needed to incapacitate a person. Dean came out the back door, raised his shotgun and fired. For 15 minutes, he paced around, walking in and out of the house, until he finally retreated inside. 

Late the next morning, the Maryland State Police rolled up with an armored vehicle. Five minutes later, one of the Charles County snipers accidentally discharged his weapon. Two minutes after he heard the sniper fire, Dean fired his gun from the back of the house, though the shot did not seem to be aimed at anyone. For the next 30 minutes, negotiators attempted to get Dean back on the phone. When they finally did, he told them, once again, to get out of his family's yard or he'd shoot. Officers stepped back toward one of the two "Peace Keeper" armored vehicles that was parked just outside the house. Dean fired again, this time at the ground. 

At 12:45 p.m., officers cut power to the house. Dean was surrounded. There was an armored vehicle in the back of the house and one just a few feet from the front door. Both were firing tear gas at him. Finally, Dean stepped out of the front door. As he raised his gun and pointed it at the armored vehicle, a sniper located 70 yards away shot him. The bullet entered his side and pierced his ribcage, heart, liver and stomach. Blood spread over his white T-shirt. One expert shot and Dean was dead. 

The Maryland state's attorney's office launched an investigation into Dean's death and ruled it a justifiable homicide. But it harshly criticized the actions leading up to it: "The tactics used by the Maryland State Police were overwhelmingly aggressive, and not warranted under the circumstances," stated its report. "As certainly as [Dean's] death is in part a consequence of his own actions, it is also in large part due to the unfortunate choice of tactics employed by the commanders of the State Police [emergency response team] unit." 

One criminal justice expert who reviewed Dean's case, Eastern Kentucky University professor Peter Kraska, said Dean's death epitomized the increasing militarization of law enforcement. He said the aggressive tactics used by the Maryland State Police to "pacify" Dean could only end one way: his being "neutralized" by a sniper's bullet. 

The state's attorney's ruling is cold comfort to the Deans. Dean's parents and Muriel have hired a lawyer and plan to sue the agencies involved in the standoff. But the case is moving slowly and has thus far served mostly to erect a wall of silence between the law enforcement officers and the family. St. Mary's County Sheriff Tim Cameron said he thought the Deans deserved some explanations, and that he looked forward to sitting down with them, but now that lawyers are involved, he has to hold his tongue. The Maryland State Police declined requests to comment on the case. 

Today, Muriel Dean, 38, hardly sleeps at night. She is distraught by the legal case and the fact that Jamie was recalled by the military. How could the Army have not known that he suffered from severe psychological stress after returning from Afghanistan? Sitting in her neat little house in Hollywood, Md., Muriel rubs her fingers over her forehead constantly, as if she has a terrible headache and is trying to massage it away. The carpet in her living room is well vacuumed and there is a pretty wallpaper border in her dining room, but the house has a ghost. Whole walls are adorned with photographs of Jamie. The unity candle they lighted at their wedding sits between two champagne glasses on a shelf above the couch, and there are two La-Z-Boy chairs upholstered in "real tree" camouflage facing the big-screen TV Jamie loved to watch. 

Muriel, who was eight years older than Jamie when he died, has a daughter, 17, and a son, 13, from a previous marriage. Although she had known Jamie only a year before he was killed, she and Jamie had a lot in common, having both grown up in the rural St. Mary's County. 

Until the mid-1990s, many residents of St. Mary's made their living working either the land or the water. Dean worked both. Mostly, he helped out on the farm, where every year until 1993, the family harvested 30 acres' worth of tobacco, plus truckloads of corn and other vegetables. The work was hard but Dean enjoyed it. "He loved to get on that tractor and just plow," says his mother, Elaine. "He said he loved the smell of the fresh dirt turning over. He was just in his own little world, nobody bothering him." 

Elaine's father, Jamie's grandfather, began crabbing in the late 1970s. He pulled several hundred crab pots a season from the Chesapeake Bay and called his one-man outfit Captain Bob's Seafood. On the weekends, Dean went crawling with him. Dean, his mother says, would rather fish or hunt than just about anything else. And though he was an average student, he was popular, especially with the girls. He had a wide smile and older women giggled to his mother about his "bedroom eyes" and his "cute butt." He played on the high school football team and by senior year was working part time on a construction crew. 

In early 2001, Dean's younger sister, Kelly, joined the Air Force. "Jamie said, 'You can have the military,'" says Elaine. "He didn't want anything to do with it." But a broken engagement that spring left Dean unmoored. He started partying every night, coming home near sunrise, hanging out with people who did drugs. His mom worried, but before she even got a chance to sit him down, he sat her down. 

"Mom, I joined the Army," she remembers him saying in July 2001. "I leave in two weeks." Elaine was floored. She didn't want him to go, but Jamie had made up his mind. "I've been partying too much," he said. "You worked too hard to raise me right. Now I need to get away from here." 

In April 2004, Dean's unit shipped out for a 12-month tour in Afghanistan. Dean, who'd risen to the level of sergeant, led a team of scouts, clearing caves and houses in remote villages. But service overseas wasn't what Dean had expected. He told his Uncle Rob that sometimes the Army wouldn't provide shelter for his team, and they'd have to force villagers to let them sleep in their homes. He also said he routinely got in trouble with his commanders because instead of sending the younger guys into dangerous situations, he'd choose to just go in himself. "It was typical of Jamie to want to take responsibility," says Rob Purdy, a veteran of the Gulf War. 

When Dean returned, he moved into the family farmhouse with his dad. He was distant, says Purdy, and he didn't want to do the things they'd always loved, like hunt and fish. Meeting and marrying Muriel seemed to be a godsend. Dean could be compassionate and loving and was learning to be a good stepfather, Muriel says. Her daughter, Tanya, had quickly grown fond of him. 

There were problems, however. Most nights, Muriel says, Jamie would come home from his job servicing electrical units for a local air-conditioning repair shop and drink the equivalent of a six-pack of beer. "I'd ask him, 'Why do you need to drink all the time?'" Muriel says. "And he'd say, 'To forget.' I'd ask him, 'Forget what?' But he wouldn't talk about what he did over there. All he said was: 'It takes the pain away.'" 

Dean's drinking wasn't the only thing that worried Muriel. He didn't sleep much, and when he did, he had vivid nightmares, and sometimes she'd wake up soaked in his sweat. He had wild mood swings; some days he'd sing "Twinkle, twinkle little star" to her over the telephone at work, and some days he'd tell her that if she ever cheated, he'd kill her. She was never sure what would set him off. 

Jamie didn't say much about the war to Muriel or to his mother -- just that they didn't understand, or that they didn't want to know. Jamie did admit he had seen his friends die violently. He also told vague stories about kids with bombs strapped to them who would approach the soldiers. Muriel and Elaine don't know for sure if Jamie ever shot children, but they suspect he may have. "When Jamie did something wrong as a kid," Elaine says, "his conscience would eat him up." And whatever he'd done or seen in Afghanistan seemed to be eating him alive. 

For weeks in late 2005, Muriel encouraged Jamie to seek help at the V.A. clinic in nearby Charlotte Hall, Md. Finally he relented. At his first appointment, he screened positive for depression, alcohol abuse and PTSD. According to his V.A. medical records, Dean was having "recurrent intrusive thoughts," as well as pervasive feelings of numbness, anger, anxiety and detachment from others. He told a doctor, "I'm tired of feeling bad." 

About six weeks after his first visit, doctors at the V.A. clinic started Dean on medication: fluoxetine (generic Prozac) and trazodone for the depression. But Dean's local V.A. clinic didn't offer counseling; if he wanted talk therapy (an essential part of treatment for PTSD), he'd have to visit the V.A. hospital in Washington, D.C., a 90-minute drive from St. Mary's. Muriel says he tried once, but got lost and so frustrated he turned around and never went back. 

Vincent Tomasino, a V.A. psychiatrist who saw Dean a few times in Charlotte Hall, remembers him as charismatic. Tomasino says that traveling into an urban area like Washington can be a frightening experience for a combat vet, especially one suffering from PTSD. "You look around and you feel like you wanna carry a 9 millimeter," he says. 

In February 2006, Tomasino upped Dean's antidepressant dose, and added Abilify, an antipsychotic medication sometimes used to treat schizophrenia. To that, he added amantadine, which counters some of the potential side effects of Abilify. In May, the doses went up again, and though the V.A. called and sent letters informing him of counseling options, Jamie never made it to a session. What's more, he was not disciplined about taking the medication, which made him feel foggy and strange. 

In August, Muriel began to worry that Jamie might have to go back to war. He'd been honorably discharged after completing nearly four years of service, but she'd been watching the news, seeing stories about how the Army needed bodies, and was extending tours and calling up Individual Ready Reserve soldiers like Jamie. Jamie worried, too. That month, he and Muriel mailed forms to the V.A. to have Jamie ruled disabled because of his ongoing mental health problems. An official disability label, they hoped, would keep Jamie from getting redeployed. But the process was slow and in the middle of September, the V.A. sent the couple a letter saying they had a backlog of claims and a ruling on Jamie might be delayed. 

Nonetheless, making the effort seemed to calm Jamie a bit, and Muriel says that by the fall of 2006, he was getting better. The couple had moved into a new house, which Jamie called his "happy little home." He cooked -- spicy foods like chili were his favorite -- and helped out with the grocery shopping. Muriel wasn't able to have any more children, but the couple started talking about a surrogate. They made an appointment to see a specialist in Baltimore in January. 

Then, on Nov. 28, 2006, five days after Thanksgiving, Jamie got the letter they'd both feared. "Pursuant to Presidential Executive Order of 14 September 2001, you are relieved from your present reserve component status and are ordered to report to active duty." 

This time, he was going to Iraq; and he had to report in less than two months. Muriel and the rest of Jamie's family were devastated, but they tried to stay positive; Muriel called to find out about Jamie's disability application and was told it was still being processed. 

Dean seemed to shut down. He started drinking more. He'd come home at night and tell Muriel they needed to talk, but then he'd sit silently for half an hour, unable to get whatever he had inside him out. 

Dean's boss, Tommy Bowes, who says Dean was a model employee, saw that the couple were struggling to prepare themselves for his deployment. He offered to give Dean the month off with full pay, but Dean declined the offer. "I don't want time off," Bowes remembers him saying. "I wouldn't know what to do with myself." 

Dec. 23 was Dean's 29th birthday, and the family took him out to Olive Garden for dinner. The next night, Christmas Eve, Jamie and Muriel went to his grandpa's house, as was tradition. Jamie had promised Muriel he wouldn't drink too much, but on the way he asked her to stop for a six-pack, and once he'd finished that, he started throwing back glasses of wine. Near the end of the night, Purdy, his uncle, found Jamie outside on the deck, crying. He'd been having nightmares about dying in Iraq. "I can't concentrate on my medicine," Purdy remembers him saying. "I can't be like this over there. I gotta be ready to go. I gotta get ready to go." Purdy tried to calm him down, saying maybe he wouldn't have to go once the Army found out he was undergoing treatment for PTSD. But Jamie was despondent. "No, I'm going," said Jamie. "You know once they get me, that's it." Jamie hugged his uncle tight -- a real hug, Purdy says, not a guy hug -- and said, "I love you, man." It was the last time Purdy saw his nephew. 

Muriel doesn't remember much about the days after Jamie's death. She says she knew that once he'd holed up in the farmhouse and been surrounded, he probably wouldn't come out. "He was stubborn," she says, "and he would have rather stayed in there than come out and have people think he was crazy." 

Eight months later, the Deans continue to grieve, each aiming their anger at a slightly different target. Jamie's sister Kelly can't help blaming herself. Calling the police that night, she says, was the biggest mistake of her life. In Purdy's mind, if the Army had known about Dean's diagnosis, they might not have sent the letter. Both Purdy and Kelly have tried to get answers from the Army about why it recalled a veteran undergoing treatment for PTSD. Wasn't there a system in place that flagged veterans with disabling illnesses from being deployed? The Army's human resources office says that no such system exists; it's up to the soldier to prove his or her condition after receiving deployment orders. 

It's impossible to know whether Dean would have been spared redeployment had he gotten all his paperwork in order after he received his orders. (There was no guarantee he would be exempted. Reports have shown that soldiers with severe mental illness have been ordered to duty in the post-9/11 wars.) But then, Kelly says, after her brother received the letter, his pride took over and he didn't want to protest. "He was afraid of looking weak." 

Today, despite the state's attorney's ruling that shooting Jamie Dean was "justified," Muriel Dean and Jamie's parents still want answers. They want to know why two police vehicles designed for heavy combat were deployed to the isolated farmhouse. They want to know why police found it necessary to launch more than 50 tear gas canisters through the windows and walls of the family's house. Why the escalation? Why force a man they knew to be a veteran into a combatlike situation? Pacifying the inebriated Jamie could have been so easy. "If they'd just left him alone and let him pass out," Muriel says, "he'd be alive today." 

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070920/NEWS01/709200372/1001/NEWS01

 

War: Heroes die, guilt lives on

 

By Gregg Zoroya
USA Today

 

Army Staff Sgt. Ian Newland spotted the enemy grenade inside the Humvee. Almost simultaneously, he saw Spc. Ross McGinnis, 19 - a gunner standing in the turret of the vehicle - lower himself onto it.

"I saw him jam it with his elbow up underneath him," says Newland, who was sitting inches away. "He pressed his whole body with his back (armor) plate to smother it up against the radios."

The heat and flash of an explosion followed, and McGinnis was killed. Hours later, after surgery for shrapnel wounds, Newland realized the enormity of what happened: McGinnis had sacrificed himself to save four other soldiers in the Humvee on Dec. 4. "Why he did it? Because we were his brothers. He loved us," Newland says.

Since the Iraq war began, at least five Americans - two soldiers; two Marines, including one stationed at Kane'ohe; and a Navy SEAL - are believed to have thrown themselves on grenades to save comrades. Each time, the service member died from massive wounds.

Heroic acts mark every war; among the most remarkable involve self-sacrifice. "What a decision that is," says Frank Farley, a Temple University psychologist who studies bravery. "I can't think of anything more profound in human nature."

Survivors, while deeply grateful for their lives, find the aftermath complicated. According to interviews with a dozen surviving soldiers, sailors and Marines, there remains an overpowering sense of guilt and an unspoken feeling that they need to be worthy of the sacrifice.

"There's always talk (in the Army) about being the hero," says Newland, 27, now in Schweinfurt, Germany. He has been diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injury from the December blast and post-traumatic stress disorder.

In the military, "everyone always tells their friends, 'I'd take a bullet for you,' " Newland says. "I've read books and seen plenty of movies about it. But to actually live through a situation like that, have someone do that, is just - there's nothing else more courageous that a person can do in their entire life. ... So basically, I try not to live my life in vain for what he's done."

Such heroic acts almost always lead to a military review for the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military decoration.

The medal was awarded posthumously in the first instance of such heroism in Iraq to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham, 22, of Scio, N.Y. He covered a grenade with his helmet on April 14, 2004, and saved the lives of two Marines in western Iraq. Dunham died eight days later.

A HEAVY BURDEN

Anyone who wraps himself around an explosive charge cannot block all of its destructive power.

Survivors caught nearby describe intense heat, a shattering pressure wave, dazed awareness, ears ringing or even burst eardrums and a world around them that sounds for several seconds as if it's underwater. Then there's the blood, from muscles, nerves or arteries slashed by shrapnel.

That's just the physical harm.

Emotional damage surfaces later when a survivor tries to square his life with his friend's death, says Navy Lt. Cmdr. Shannon Johnson, who counsels frontline combat soldiers in Baghdad.

"The guilt that those left behind have is sometimes compounded by a sense of unworthiness," she says. "They cannot accept that their lives were worth more than the life of their loved comrade. They are left with the heavy burden of trying to measure up to the great sacrifice so that they could live on. For some, the burden is too much."

On the battlefield, the military tries to provide counseling for survivors whenever lives are lost.

At home, therapists with the Department of Veterans Affairs say survivor's guilt is among the common issues soldiers and Marines bring home from war.

"Being saved by someone from heroics could lead to a sort of (emotional crisis)," says Ira Katz, head of mental health for the VA. " 'He died for me. I really have to prove myself worthy.' And that's probably a very natural response."

Last September, Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, 25, of Garden Grove, Calif., fell on a grenade that landed on a rooftop in Ramadi, where he and two other Navy SEALs were stationed as part of a sniper team. Monsoor saved the lives of the other two.

"You think about him everyday. And everything pretty much revolves around what he did," says a 29-year-old Navy lieutenant with the SEALs, married and the father of one. He declined to be identified as a matter of department policy. "You'd like to tell yourself that you'd do what Mikey did. But until you're faced with that situation, you really don't know."

Marine Sgt. Nicholas Jones still questions his own worth after a nearly identical experience two years before in Fallujah.

Jones entered a house defended by insurgents when his best friend, Sgt. Rafael Peralta, a Kane'ohe Marine, fell in front of him with a gunshot wound to the neck. Seconds later, an enemy grenade landed near Peralta, who grabbed it and pulled it underneath his chest. The blast killed Peralta immediately. Four other Marines, including Jones, were wounded.

Peralta, 25, was born in Mexico, graduated from high school in San Diego and became a U.S. citizen in 2000, when he joined the Marines. He was a member of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, which arrived in Iraq just one month before he was killed.

"It's weird to think you get a second chance on life because of someone's unselfishness," says Jones, 24, of Ontario, Calif., who suffered shrapnel wounds in the explosion.

"It almost makes you feel less, you know? Less of a person. It's like: Why did somebody go out and do something so unselfish just so that I could have the rest of my life?"

'SELF-DESTRUCTIVE MODE'

Some survivors have nearly been destroyed in the wake of being saved.

Former Marine Cpl. Kelly Miller, of Eureka, Calif., survived because Dunham, the Medal of Honor winner, fell on that grenade in 2004. As part of Dunham's patrol that day Miller, 24, has agonized endlessly in the intervening years over blame, guilt and whether he should have died, rather than Dunham.

He became introverted and angry, says his mother, Linda Miller. "He went into the self-destructive mode," she says.

Last September after a night of drinking, he flipped his Nissan sports car. He suffered a broken arm and his girlfriend, Kellyn Griffin, was severely injured. Felony driving charges are pending.

Deborah Dunham, mother of Jason Dunham, wrote a letter on Miller's behalf to the court, explaining that "Kelly has been chasing his personal demons since Jason gave him the gift of a second chance of life."

A similar struggle consumed Staff Sgt. Jeffery Gantt.

A member of the Virginia National Guard, Gantt was driving a Humvee on Oct. 26, 2005, when the gunner of the vehicle, Sgt. James "Ski" Witkowski, apparently tried to block a grenade from falling inside the vehicle and died in the blast.

"It's almost like time stops. It's like you're outside of your body and you're looking at what's going on," says Gantt, 37, of Fredericksburg, Va.

Gantt is on medical leave from his civilian job as a corrections officer, and has been diagnosed with PTSD and a mild brain injury. Gantt fights the anger he feels for not having done enough - in his view - to keep Witkowski from sacrificing himself on the grenade.

"I remember one day I asked myself, 'Why are you so mad? Why can't you let this go?' And I could feel my chest tighten and I was so (angry)," Gantt says.

His girlfriend of six years, Sheila Ward, says that having his life spared has changed Gantt completely.

"I don't know anything about him (anymore)," she says.

JUST AN ORDINARY GUY

The families of men who gave their lives also struggle with emotional crosscurrents.

Tom McGinnis felt a surge of different emotions over losing his only son: the overpowering grief, pride over the Medal of Honor nomination and wariness about the heroism hoopla. He knew Ross could have rolled out of the gunner's turret and escaped the blast; he felt guilty for nearly wishing his son had done just that.

McGinnis also understood the potential for survivor's guilt when he buried his son at Arlington National Cemetery early this year. After the ceremony, the elder McGinnis met Newland and two other soldiers saved by his son's heroism, and he consoled them.

"I tried to emphasize to them that they can't continue living thinking they're indebted to Ross for what he did," the father says. "They can't go on for the rest of their lives thinking, 'I'm here because of Ross.' I wouldn't think Ross would want them to feel that way.

"Things just happen."

McGinnis says he does not want his son depicted as larger-than-life. The father says his son loved rebuilding car engines, worked at McDonald's and had a gift for making people laugh. But he was a disinterested student and barely graduated from high school.

"He wasn't exceptional. He was just like you and me," Tom McGinnis says.

"He just made a split-second decision (to fall on the grenade). He did what he thought was right. That doesn't make him extraordinary. He just did an extraordinary thing."

 
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