Army Recruitment Picketed in Liverpool

Tuesday, 20 March 2007

To discuss ring Tony - Friday - Saturday - Sunday 0{44} 1493 662835
Dear Editor, RE:
Army Secretary resigns, soldiers gagged
Washington tries to quash scandal over neglect of wounded troops
By Bill Van Auken
3 March 2007
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
{In an increasingly desperate bid to quell a raging scandal over the gross neglect of severely wounded troops, US Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey resigned Friday, just one day after he himself had fired the commanding officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.} {See attached}

The abuse of American troops pales compared to the abuse suffered by UK troops and decorated war hero British veterans. The latter, still dying for their country. It is a scandal tuning into a catastrophe of monumental proportion. The story need telling. We provide the prima fascia evidence that can be authenticated. Most MPs and some peers have been sent the e-mail below, The rest will soon follow. Never in the history of man have so few caused such devastation to so many without punishment. Should the Secretary of State for Defence and Department of Works and Pensions and others resign. Only you can decide. We are sure your investigative reporters can make a story. All copyright is lifted. We have received over 500 responses from MPs and Peers. Any failing to respond positively will be named and shamed on the www.
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Communiqué to all Peers and Parliamentarians at Westminster.
Dear Member of the House of Commons and Un-elected House of Lords.

Our ‘Members’ live In your Constituency {now and at the next election.}

We have a crisis of unprecedented proportion in England and Wales. It is happening in your constituency. Ministers are not listening. Few veterans or service personnel will see you in your surgery. Our young men and women leaving HM Forces after returning the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan are excluded from social housing. We have 58,000 homeless veterans nationwide. Over 1,000 sleep rough on the streets of London. {Centre Point} Another 6,000 are sofa surfing in the Capital of the fifth richest country in the world.
We have 100,000 elderly veterans evicted from their homes under the 1988 Housing Act Shorthold Self-assured Tenancy Agreements with over 6,000 dead prematurely from the stress. There is no defence in law against the Tory introduced 1988 Housing Act. Murderers, suicide bombers and bogus asylum seekers have the right in law to a defence attorney. It gives landlords absolute power to evict on demand in two months as long as they follow the correct protocol. It repeals gains by the brave wives of men serving on the ‘Front’ in the Glasgow’s Great Rent Strike 1915/16 when a mirror image of today’s treatment was implemented.
A judge must order in the bailiffs for those failing to find suitable affordable accommodation. If elderly veterans, terrorised and frightened hand over the keys they are deemed to have made intentionally themselves homeless. Councils can wash their hands and not provide emergency accommodation. If they hang on, as they must, for a court order and bailiffs they receive a bill for the landlords court fees and legal costs. {Hundreds of pounds} The shame and humiliation of forcible eviction for a 70, 80 or 90 year old onto the streets in too awful for words. Politicians weep crocodile tears for the few landlords with tenants from hell. We have yet to hear of a landlord dying from stress or shame faced with problem tenants; there are laws to deal with such people without punishing elderly veterans.
Through no fault of their own most elderly veterans renting are in receipt of housing benefit. A central government grant to subsidise a derogatory pension that SS officers and former German Service Personnel hold in contempt. Once evicted from their homes of 18 or 20 years most are rejected by landlords in the private sector as unsuitable tenants. No landlord wishes to deal with the Rent Service or council housing benefit departments. They would rather rent to migrant workers with higher returns. With a chronic housing shortage, council waiting lists at an all time high (Great Yarmouth alone 6,000) elderly veterans face a bleak future and treatment not fit for a dog.
The joy of a few lucky {elderly} veterans finding other private rented accommodation is short lived. They can only have security of tenure for 6 months under the 1988 Housing Act. As new applicants for housing benefit, there are strict draconian rules and regulations imposed by government, implemented by the Rent Service and executed by councils. Using flawed and out-of-date market research {Gathered in 2004} the Rent Service assesses the property and decide the amount of housing benefit.
This is so far below the current rents charged by landlords it leaves a shortfall of scores and sometimes hundreds of pounds every month. Elderly veterans are starving, using their heating allowances and dying of hypothermia in an effort to keep a roof over their heads. This is not Zimbabwe who forced 1-million from their shacks with bulldozers. This is 21st century England and Wales run by Scots using the iron fist of the law implemented by judges and government agencies whilst living in luxury off the backs of the poor to punish veterans for living too long. For those falling behind in their rent or councils paying a fraction or the rent due will be evicted again. Although there are strict rules on housing benefits, there is no restriction on rents charged by landlords. It is unregulated. Government must repeal the 1988 Housing Act, outlaw the Shorthold Self-assured Tenancy Agreements and introduce rent controls. The Shorthold Agreement is one of three main reasons for homeless today {SHELTER} and responsible for thousands of dead veterans. If you want confirmation check with Great Yarmouth MP Anthony Wright. He was warned in 2001 of an impending disaster unfolding before our eyes. He wrote to the minister to have his pleas firmly rejected. Landlords rights must take precedence over a few old men and women.
As an MP, do you support our campaign? If so, tell us by e-mail response or Royal Mail. If not we will inform the people you want veterans dead. We will name and shame you just before the next election. No response is ‘a we want veterans, dead and homeless response’. Just before the next election we will post your name on numerous military websites, in UK and foreign media outlets with the ‘Rat of the Year’ award.
We have lobbied the MoD to save RAF Coltishall as a halfway staging post for men and women leaving the Forces after returning from the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan. It would give them time to adjust, find suitable affordable accommodation and employment. It was going well until John Reid, former Defence Secretary poked his nose in. He wants RAF Coltishall for prisoners of bogus asylum seekers. We have written to Reid asking if the lunatics are in charge of the asylum. The 400 houses, facilities for families and singles must not be used by Reid, a man who fouled up every post he has held. Repeal the 1988 Housing Act Shorthold Self-assured Tenancy Agreements, reintroduce some rent controls, ensure the Rent Service and Veterans Agency are fit for purpose. As a nation at war we must look after our veterans and the elderly. If we don’t we might have no defence force left. It is little good treating the symptoms of homelessness we must treat the causes.
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Finally thank you Mr Jeff Laing we will enter you for the MP of the Year Award. If you are not an MP we think you should be.

 http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/forceshousing/DmF1cPBKlPF9AvZbzABCfm8

The above petition was created by Jeff Laing and reads:
'We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to change
Current housing legislation to stop the discrimination against
Service personnel when they retire from the armed.
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21 February 2007 10:34
Dear General Sir Richard Dannatt
The Murder of Royal Marine Gary Wright and Others by the British Government.
We are no longer prepared to accept our young men and women dying for lack of equipment or our veterans abused and dying on the streets of this country. You spoke out before but I can assure you that you and senior officers are only partially aware of the full horror of what is happening. Snatch Land Rovers are used by our commanders on the ground because that is all they have available. Copies of this e-mail has gone to scores of MPs today. We have sent copies to our commander on the ground in the United States of America and the media both here and in the US of A.
This disgraceful. We have been in touch with the PM, Des Brown and Major P Flynn (PARA) of the MoD since last year demanding the withdrawal of snatch and Recce Land Rovers. We will indict Blair, Brown, Procurement Minister Lord Drayson and others in the International Criminal Court at The Hague for crimes against humanity in that they knew or should have known these men were going to a certain death. Yet no one informed us of the delay. It was left to our commander on the ground in the United States of America to fax us this information today 21st February 2007. The MoD needs to keep us informed. There is no statue of limitation for crimes against humanity.
We were promised in writing the vehicles fit for purpose would be delivered to commanders on the ground by Christmas 2006 or at the latest January 2007. Blair has lied again but we will wait for him and Brown to leave office before indicting them for murder. They will not then be protected by their office. Under the Freedom of Information Act, please update us. The Chairman SSARMCA. Britain, a COUNTRY DYING OF SHAME:
____________________________________________________________________
To the Chairman SSARMCA. England.
Wednesday, 21 February 2007, 02:49 GMT Armoured vehicle delays condemned.
From  edgware.expat@comcast.net of the United States of America.
Government attempts to update the UK's fleet of armoured vehicles have been "a sorry story of indecision, changing requirements and delay", MPs have said. The Commons defence select committee said a need for "medium-weight armoured vehicles capable of deploying quickly" had been identified nine years ago. However, this remained "nothing more tangible than a concept", with millions of pounds being wasted, it added.
The government said "rapid progress" was now being made. 'Unachievable' the requirement for a new fleet of medium-weight vehicles was identified in the 1998 Strategic Defence Review. The Future Rapid Effect System (Fres) programme was supposed to deliver 3,000 battlefield vehicles capable of being rapidly deployed to trouble spots around the globe.
The committee warned that it might simply be "unachievable", while the Ministry of Defence had to buy "stop-gap" vehicles for troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to make do with a mix of old vehicles and stop-gap purchases" James Arbuthnot, MP. Experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan had shown the vulnerability of existing vehicles to attack by roadside bombs and rocket-propelled grenades. In addition, the need for better armament meant the planned weight of the vehicles raised from 17 tonnes to between 20 and 27 tonnes - raising questions over whether they will be too heavy for RAF aircraft to transport, the committee said. It warned that the Fres programme could be caught up in a "vicious circle of delays" as the requirement was continually revised. The report said: "This is a sorry story of indecision, constantly changing requirements and delay. “We are concerned that the Fres requirement may simply be unachievable without a major technical breakthrough."
The report disclosed that initially the MoD spent a total of £188m on two collaborative projects with the US and Germany, both of which had been abandoned at the concept stage.
The MoD has acknowledged that the original in-service date of 2009 has slipped to "the early part of the next decade". However, Atkins Defence, a "systems house" brought in to help manage the project, has warned that it is unlikely to be ready before 2017. 'Not decided'
The committee's chairman, Conservative MP James Arbuthnot, said: "It has been agreed for almost 10 years that the Army needs a new generation of armoured fighting vehicles, capable of being deployed overseas. “However, the MoD has still not decided what it wants, let alone placed contracts for delivery of the vehicles.
"Meanwhile, our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to make do with a mix of old vehicles and stop-gap purchases." The committee would "expect to see some decisions taken", he added.
Defence Procurement Minister Lord Drayson acknowledged Fres had taken several years to reach its present stage and that the requirements had changed in the light of the experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan. "We are now making rapid progress on the Fres programme - candidate vehicles will undertake proving trials run by the Army this summer and the winning vehicles will be selected in November 2007," he said. "It is essential to carry out this detailed assessment and drive out risk before the major investment decision is taken."
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E-mail this to a friend or a newspaper or media outlet--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Related to this story: cc. Washington Post. & New York Times
More armoured vehicles for troops (24 Jul 06 | UK) Bombs spark Iraq Land Rover probe (27 Jun 06 | Politics) Q&A: Army Land Rover row (27 Jun 06 | UK)
RELATED INTERNET LINKS
Defence committee
MoD.________________________________________________________


copy letter.
To: Soldier, Sailor, Airmen, Royal Marine Commando Association England.
Thank you for your article. Everything sent to this mailbox is read by
either me or my associate, Joseph Plambeck. If a further reply is
appropriate, you will be hearing from us shortly.
Requests for corrections should be submitted to  nytnews@nytimes.com. If you
are dissatisfied with the response, please let us know. When referring to a specific article, please include its date, section and headline. If you do not wish to have your message published or relayed to other editors and reporters, please make that clear.

Sincerely,
Byron Calame
Public Editor - New York Times.
_______________________________________________________________________________
The following MPs deleted without reading. They will be named and shamed on the www just before the next election
 BENNETTG@parliament.uk
 McIsaacS@parliament.uk
 DaviesQ@parliament.uk
 moffata@parliament.uk
 JOHNSOND@parliament.uk
 PRISKM@parliament.uk
 BARONJ@parliament.uk
 FOSTERD@parliament.uk
 Crawshay-WilliamsM@parliament.uk
 HOODJ@parliament.uk
 RichardsonJV@parliament.uk
 JAMESS@parliament.uk
 TOMLINSONE@parliament.uk
GOLDING, Lady Llinos {too much of a lady to be bothered with dying men and women}
If they can not afford bread let them eat cake.  GOLDINGLL@parliament.uk
 WrightD@parliament.uk
 SandersA@parliament.uk
11 Thoughts of the Day. {Thoughts The Thought Police Have Banned}
Is the chronic homelessness caused by the millions of foreign workers and bogus asylum seekers pouring into this very small island?
It is the cause of overcrowding of our roads, on our trains and straining our National Health Service to breaking point?
Is it putting our veterans young and old onto the streets?
Is it preventing newly trained doctors, nurses and other professionals from finding employment as we steal those resources from third world countries?
Should Britain bring back our troops from war, close the borders and use them as border police?
Massive Canada with only 29-million population is a close shop.
Massive with only 21-million population has closed it borders to all but highly trained professionals.
How do you put two pints into a one pint pot?
Tiny Britain has population of 68-millions registered population and another 4 millions unaccounted for in the figures.
As a temporary measure to ease homelessness, should foreign workers be embedded in all MPs, Civil Servants, government agents homes as evacuees were imposed on country folk during the last war? In lucrative employment they could afford it. The late John Prescott when DP had 35 bedrooms in his home.
And if they are overcrowded it might bring sense to those supporting open borders and migrant workers.

Thank you very much Sue Townsend. If we can assist Oliver at the next
election we will. He and Liam with Tony Wright and Paul Holmes are entered
into our special awards section. A polite response is appreciated and
welcome.

The response from Cooper, Kelly, un-elected Bomber Jacket Jeffery Rooker,
Des Brown, Reid and others is appalling. When they leave the protection of
office as NGO Members of the International Criminal Court Coalition will
indict them in the ICC at the Hague for crimes against humanity in that they knew or should have known their actions would kill hundreds.

You should cross checked with your local courts, CAB, Age Concern, Shelter and others how many elderly {not just veterans} have been evicted under the 1988 Housing Act in your constituency since 1997. How many could not find suitable rented homes fitting the Rent Service Criteria? You will be shocked. Very SHOCKED. It is missed because there is no joined up thinking.
Good Luck!
Chairman. SSARMCA. This is a computer generated communiqué and requires no signature.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Sue Townsend"
To:
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2007 8:40 AM
Subject: From Oliver Letwin, MP
Thank you for your email of 25 February.
I am acutely conscious of the equipment problems which are facing our troops
in Iraq and Afghanistan - and my colleague, Liam Fox, has been raising this
topic with great vigour in his capacity as Shadow Secretary of State for
Defence.
I am also dealing with a number of cases of particularly constituents who
are veterans and who have particular problems. I am always more than
willing to try help any veteran who has such difficulties and who is a
constituent of mine.
Yours sincerely,
Oliver Letwin
Rt Hon Oliver Letwin, MP
Member of Parliament for West Dorset
Tel/Fax: 01308 456891

Army Secretary resigns, soldiers gagged
Washington tries to quash scandal over neglect of wounded troops
By Bill Van Auken
3 March 2007
Use this version to print | Send this link by email | Email the author
In an increasingly desperate bid to quell a raging scandal over the gross neglect of severely wounded troops, US Secretary of the Army Francis Harvey resigned Friday, just one day after he himself had fired the commanding officer at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
President Bush, meanwhile, announced that he is forming a bipartisan commission to investigate medical care provided at Walter Reed as well as to wounded soldiers and military veterans in general.
The resignation and firing came a week and a half after the Washington Post published a series of articles detailing the appalling conditions in Walter Reed’s outpatient facilities and the bureaucratic abuse that confronts the war-wounded, many of them recovering from amputations, severe head wounds or psychological disorders resulting from the carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Army issued a statement Thursday declaring that it had “lost trust and confidence” in Maj. Gen. George Weightman, who had occupied the top post at the facility for just six months. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, issued a subsequent statement Friday accusing “some in the Army” of failing to recognize “the seriousness of the situation pertaining to outpatient care at Walter Reed.”
On the same day as General Weightman’s firing, the Army Times published an article revealing that the Pentagon has imposed a gag order on the wounded at Walter Reed, ordering them not to talk to the media.
Soldiers also told the newspaper that new procedures requiring them to wake at 6 a.m. each morning and submit to room inspections were being instituted. “Some soldiers believe this is a form of punishment for the trouble soldiers caused by talking to the media,” one wounded patient told the Army Times.
The paper further reported that wounded soldiers are being moved out of Building 18, a squalid former motel across the street from the Walter Reed complex that was the focus of the Post’s series, and into a barracks inside the medical facility’s grounds. It noted that to get into the new facility “reporters must be escorted by public affairs personnel.” The article further revealed that the Pentagon has “clamped down on media coverage of any and all Defense Department medical facilities, to include suspending planned projects by CNN and Discovery Channel.”
Amid the hypocritical bipartisan expressions of outrage over the unconscionable treatment of maimed and traumatized young soldiers, this is the essence of the official response to the revelations—scapegoating, retaliation and cover-up.
There is ample reason for this vindictive response. The exposé has appeared as military officials in Iraq are reporting mounting concerns over falling morale among US occupation forces under conditions in which the vast majority of the American public has turned against the war. Moreover, a sharp increase in US casualties is anticipated as the Bush administration’s “surge” in Baghdad goes into effect, throwing an increased number of US troops into bloody urban combat.
The conditions revealed at Walter Reed not only exposed appalling incompetence and indifference; they also gave the lie to a central ideological pillar of the criminal wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Both major parties—Democrats as much as Republicans—ceaselessly justify their continued support for these wars in the name of “supporting the troops.”
Both parties treat any suggestion that funding for these wars be cut off as unthinkable. According to this twisted logic, the only way to support the soldiers and marines deployed in Iraq is to keep them in a dirty war in which more and more are being killed and maimed daily, while taking them out off harm’s way—and ending an occupation that has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis—would constitute some kind of betrayal.
What has been revealed at Walter Reed only confirms the obvious—official Washington could give a damn for the troops. They are invoked only as needed in the attempt to suppress popular opposition to the war within the US itself.
Drawn overwhelmingly from working class backgrounds, they are viewed as mere cannon fodder for American imperialism’s wars of aggression and conquest in Central Asia and the Middle East, a disposable commodity that once damaged can be thrown onto the scrap heap.
And scrap heap, as the Washington Post series demonstrated, is no rhetorical exaggeration.
Wounded stranded in squalor
“Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses,” the Post’s Dana Priest and Anne Hull wrote in the articles published last month. The outpatient facility housing hundreds of maimed soldiers just five miles from the White House is also marred by holes in the walls, floors and ceilings and mold in the patients’ rooms.
“Many soldiers with impaired memory from brain injuries sat for weeks with no appointments and no help from staff to arrange them,” the Post reported. “Many disappeared even longer. Some simply left for home.”
The report recounted the case of one 19-year-old soldier who returned from Iraq with post traumatic stress disorder, who was found dead in his room from alcohol poisoning. Others just wandered away from the facility, and two were killed in a high-speed car crash last November after leaving the hospital.
Woefully understaffed, the hospital has assigned wounded soldiers—many of them facing their own psychological problems—to supervise other patients, some of whom are suicidal. In an attempt to maintain some semblance of military discipline, the wounded troops are compelled to fall in each day for roll call.
“Soldiers limp to an old Red Cross building in rain, ice and snow,” the Post reports. “Army regulations say they can’t use umbrellas, even here. A triple amputee has mastered the art of putting on his uniform by himself and rolling in just in time. Others are so gorked out on pills that they seem on the verge of nodding off.”
The worst of it is that the wounded soldiers are kept in this facility on average for 10 months and some for as long as two years, waiting for the military’s medical boards to render a decision as to whether they will be returned to duty or discharged. If it is the latter, this bureaucracy must further determine how much compensation the soldiers will receive—if any—for their disabilities.
As the Army Times points out, in 2001, before the Bush administration launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 10 percent of military personnel who were medically discharged received permanent disability benefits. By 2005, with the number of wounded steadily mounting, this ratio had fallen to just 3 percent. A similar decline was registered among reservists, with those receiving such benefits falling from 16 percent to 5 percent.
The paper further points out that the staff assigned to handle such claims has been drastically reduced. It cited testimony by a senior Army personnel officer, who told a House panel in 2005 that three Army evaluation boards with a total staff of just 70 had handled 15,000 cases in 2004. He pointed out that the last time the military had confronted such a caseload was in 1972 during the Vietnam War. At that time, the Army had six boards with a total of 260 employees.
The result, the Post report indicates, is the fumbling of paperwork and delays in the process that lead many to walk away from the process in despair. Large numbers of those rendered physically or psychologically disabled are denied benefits, often on the grounds that their problems stem from preexisting conditions and cannot be attributed to the effects of combat.
The most telling signal of the contempt of the White House and the Pentagon for these wounded soldiers is the decision to replace the sacked General Weightman with his superior, Lt. Gen. Kevin Kiley, who had previously commanded Walter Reed and is blamed by many for doing nothing to ameliorate the squalid conditions that were already well known when he was in charge.
Kiley, who is now surgeon general of the Army and chief of the US Army Medical Command, was the commander at Walter Reed until 2004. He still resides at the facility, inhabiting plush quarters across the street from Building 18, with a clear view of the ramshackle outpatient facility.
Public criticism of Kiley’s interim appointment was widely seen as a probable motive for Harvey’s being forced to resign as Army secretary. On the same day as the resignation, the Army hastily named another senior medical officer, Gen. Eric Shoomaker, as a permanent appointment to the senior post at Walter Reed.
Various Democratic politicians have seized upon the Walter Reed scandal for political purposes, seeing in the issue an opportunity to attack the Bush administration while posing as champions of “our troops,” and, by implication, of militarism in general.
Typical of this response was New York’s Senator Hillary Clinton, a front-runner in the emerging contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Calling for an investigation into “what Army leaders knew and when they knew it,” Clinton wrote, “Our nation has a duty to honor and support those who have served and sacrificed so much in the defense of our nation. Yet these recent news reports indicate that for nearly four years, since the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq began, not enough has been done to assist these courageous men and women in recovering from the wounds of battle.”
Clinton, of course, voted in October 2002 to authorize the war and thus bears a direct responsibility for the deaths of nearly 3,200 troops, the wounding of nearly 25,000 as well as the slaughter of an estimated 655,000 Iraqis. Moreover, as a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, she was charged with oversight of the military, something which proved of precious little use to the amputees and other wounded languishing in Walter Reed’s outpatient facility.
That the Democrats intend to do nothing to halt this carnage was spelled out once again this week, with the announcement by Democratic leaders in the House of Representatives that the party intends to push through a budget offering $98 billion to continue waging the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq—$5 billion more than was requested by the White House.
Legislation is on the books to reduce the paper work and hoops US veterans must complete when seeking a war pension.