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What's Wrong With The USA? Oct 2011

From page 6 of the October 2011 issue of the Veterans Post News

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AL Amyloidosis 07/28/08

Bataan Death March Revisited 05/09/07

DAV and Their Kangaroo Court System 04/03/07

File VA Claims Applications On-Line 07/16/08

Handbook for Benefits of Wounded Vets 01/07/08

Handbook for Separation or Retirement from Service 10/30/08

How To Lower Gas Prices 05/02/07

Hypocrite Bathroom Seducer Sen Larry Craig Also Shafts Veterans 09/03/07

Little Rock, AR - Wrongdoing 10/27/08

Moral Justification of the State to its War Veterans by Frank B. Quesada

Report: 8,763 Vets Died Waiting for Benefits 07/16/08

The Pentagon Breaks the Islam Taboo from page 4 January 2006

The Pig Book 2008- Citizens Against Government Waste May 2008

US Atty Biskupic & VA Defied US Law to Convict Wisconsin Veteran 06/24/07

Veterans Affairs Committee Tries To Stack The Deck Against Veterans!

Bataan Death March Revisited

A Visit To Recaptured Camp O'Donnell Where Martyrs Of The Famous “March Of Death” From Fallen Bataan Now Sleep.

By Clark Lee – INS Staff Correspondent

Camp O'Donnell Prison Camp, Tarlac Province, Luzon – (INS) –

      Here are the graves where they sleep – these martyrs in American uniforms who were victims of the cruelest mass atrocities in our country's history.

      Here are the crosses, the broken, charred, weather-beaten, rotted patches of pitiful wood – unmarked and unnumbered – that are scattered helter-skelter over the grass-covered mounds where at last, free of misery beyond human endurance, each man shares his final resting place with his comrades.

San Fernando with only scraps of food and those who fell by the wayside were bayoneted or shot.  The sick, starved, thirsty, wounded men were forced to march northward to this camp.  In O'Donnell, the real torment began.

     Today the only buildings standing are those formerly occupied by the Japanese commandant and prison guards.  

      Most of the Filipinos were released, by September, 1942.  Later, in a gesture of friendship, the Japanese puppet Republic of the Philippines was inaugurated.

      The other buildings on the treeless slope were burned down, most of them apparently some time ago, but one was still smoldering when we arrived.  All that remains is ashes and triple strands of barbed wire that surrounded each small weather-beaten gray-black shack where the prisoners were crowded together and slept on the floor.

     The camp area was surrounded by double fences of barbed wire while around the Japanese quarters were circular dugouts with fire-ports pointing in all directions and barbed wire with tin cans tied to the strands to give warning if the prisoners attempted to attack.

      From the Filipinos who were released, we already have the story of a deliberate program of starving prisoners to death.  Crosses marking the graves show that some, already terribly weakened in the battle of Bataan, gave up the fight early while others, already human skeletons with each bone showing through near transparent skin, clung grimly to life for over two years  The prisoners had no medicine.  Emaciated and suffering from malnutrition, they fell, easy victims to disease.

      Much of their working time must have been taken up with digging graves, fifteen feet long, sixteen feet wide and only eighteen inches deep in which five bodies were laid crosswise.

      Too weakened to do any unnecessary digging – or perhaps feeling that even in death each man's body should not touch his neighbor – the prisoners left foot-long piles of earth projecting toward the center of the grave from the head and from the foot of each scooped out hole that now shelters an American or Filipino.

     The Japanese obviously attempted to conceal evidence of their crimes.  In addition to burning buildings which had housed the prisoners, and thus destroying any torture instruments that may have existed, they set fire to grass in the Filipino graveyard and most of the crosses were burned destroying records.  They apparently hoped the American graveyard which is across a dirt road from the main camp would go unnoticed and accordingly allowed grass, weeds and tall reeds to grow to heights up to ten feet.

     We sighted the American burial ground only when the wind blew back the reeds giving us a glimpse of a white monument.  A path leads there from the ashes of the huts.

     The site is so overgrown that it is impossible even to tell the size of the cemetery but is appears to be about 100 by 150 yards with the grass covered grave mounds separated from each other by about a foot.  It is a mass of tangled graves completely untended and some graves are still unfilled.

      The monument is a seven foot cross made of white cement and on the base of it in barely readable letters is inscribed:  “In Memory of the American dead - O'Donnell War Personnel Enclosure."

     The wooden crosses are made of laths, two feet long by one foot wide and fastened together with two rusted nails.  The crosses had apparently been ripped from the graves which they marked and thrown deliberately into the underbrush.  A few of them had identification tags attached to the nails and were lying nearby.

      These crosses appeared to have been broken off as if torn from the earth. There were other crosses too, fifty newer ones lying awaiting victims near the monument which the Japanese built in memory of the helpless men they deliberately killed.

      A large white monument arising from a twenty foot base with a low stone wall around it, attracted us to the Filipino burial ground a quarter of a mile across the fields from the main camp.  Here some effort had been made to keep track of the total victims of Japan's “Greater East Asia” program.  The graves were in sections numbered in Roman characters.  There were thirty sections, each four rows deep and up to fifteen plots wide.  The whole covering more than a quarter of a mile in depth.

    “The officers' section” with individual graves is in front of the monument on which is written in Filipino:  “In deep remembrance of the Filipinos who died in this place.  The whole hearted thoughts of their friends and comrades are with them.”

    Beyond the monument are row after row of common unmarked graves covered with burnt grass and each holding bodies of five Filipinos.

    Several large graves were unfilled and besides one there were the wooden handles of two stretchers which were charred but not destroyed by fire.

    It was easy to picture the living ghosts of men staggering out of the barracks with the bodies of their comrades who escaped from this tortured hell in death during the night and stumbling down the long, now, charred duck-board path, past the well kept Jap latrines, through the ten foot high wooden Jap “tori” gate, up past the monument and on across the field to the latest grave where the uncoffined remains were laid and dirt shoveled in the still faces.

    In the ashes of a burned building we found three old style fire rusted helmets of the type Americans wore on Bataan.  We found one battered American canteen cup, and one piece of leather from a shoe.

     Those and the graves and the ashes and the monument which the imperial Jap army built and the one constructed by the Filipino soldiers were all that were left to tell of the terror and the torture and the torment...

    Those things and one other.  On one cross in the Filipino cemetery – a cross larger than most – was carved:  “Men have died so that their country may live and only those who are willing to die...”

    The sentence stops there where death stayed the hand of the man who was willing to die so his country might live.

 *********************************

I was a Filipino soldier.

A soldier of MacArthur.

My denim pants were short cut

My helmet made from a coconut

And the Japs killed us each day.

D'you think it was that easy

To be a soldier of MacArthur?

The coffee was weak and cold

The rice was moldy and old

and all for five pesos a day.

      Annonymous.....

 Clark Lee was an AP reporter who was on Bataan, before being evacuated to Australia.  Lee was one of the few reporters who visited the front lines.  Lee wrote a book titled, "They Call It the Pacific." 

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The Pentagon Breaks the Islam Taboo

By Paul Sperry, Front Page Magazine, December 14, 2005

Washington's policy-makers have been careful in the war on terror to distinguish between Islam and the terrorists. The distinction has rankled conservatives who see scarce difference.

A little-noticed speech by President Bush in October gave them some hope. In a major rhetorical shift, he described the enemy as "Islamic radicals" and not just "terrorists," although he still denies that radicalism has anything to do with their religion.

Now for the first time, a key Pentagon intelligence agency involved in homeland security is delving into Islam's holy texts to answer whether Islam is being radicalized by the terrorists or is already radical. Military brass want a better understanding of what's motivating the insurgents in Iraq and the terrorists around the globe, including those inside America who may be preparing to strike domestic military bases. The enemy appears indefatigable, even more active now than before 9/11.

Are the terrorists really driven by self-serving politics and personal demons? Or are they driven by religion? And if it's religion, are they following a manual of war contained in their scripture?

Answers are hard to come by. Four years into the war on terror, U.S. intelligence officials tell me there are no baseline studies of the Muslim prophet Muhammad or his ideological or military doctrine found at either the CIA or Defense Intelligence Agency, or even the war colleges.

But that is slowly starting to change as the Pentagon develops a new strategy to deal with the threat from Islamic terrorists through its little-known intelligence agency called the Counterintelligence Field Activity or CIFA, which staffs hundreds of investigators and analysts to help coordinate Pentagon security efforts at home and abroad. CIFA also supports Northern Command in Colorado, which was established after 9/11 to help military forces react to terrorist threats in the continental United
States.

Dealing with the threat on a tactical and operational level through counterstrikes and capture has proven only marginally successful. Now military leaders want to combat it from a strategic standpoint, using informational warfare, among other things. A critical part of that strategy involves studying Islam, including the Quran and the hadiths, or traditions of Muhammad.

"Today we are confronted with a stateless threat that does not have at the strategic level targetable entities: no capitals, no economic base, no military formations or installations," states a new Pentagon briefing paper I've obtained. "Yet political Islam wages an ideological battle against the non-Islamic world at the tactical, operational and strategic level. The West's response is focused at the tactical and operation level, leaving the strategic level -- Islam -- unaddressed."

So far the conclusions of intelligence analysts assigned to the project, who include both private contractors and career military officials, contradict the commonly held notion that Islam is a peaceful religion hijacked or distorted by terrorists. They've found that the terrorists for the most part are following a war-fighting doctrine articulated through Muhammad in the Quran, elaborated on in the hadiths, codified in Islamic or sharia law, and reinforced by recent interpretations or fatwahs.

"Islam is an ideological engine of war (Jihad)," concludes the sensitive Pentagon briefing paper. And "no one is looking for its off switch."

Why? One major reason, the briefing states, is government-wide "indecision [over] whether Islam is radical or being radicalized."

So, which is it? "Strategic themes suggest Islam is radical by nature," according to the briefing, which goes on to cite the 26 chapters of the Quran dealing with violent jihad and the examples of the Muslim prophet, who it says sponsored "terror and slaughter" against unbelievers.

"Muhammad's behaviors today would be defined as radical," the defense document says, and Muslims today are commanded by their "militant" holy book to follow his example. It adds: Western leaders can no longer afford to overlook the "cult characteristics of Islam."

It also ties Muslim charity to war. Zakat, the alms-giving pillar of Islam, is described in the briefing as "an asymmetrical war-fighting funding mechanism." Which in English translates to: combat support under the guise of tithing. Of the eight obligatory categories of disbursement of Muslim charitable donations, it notes that two are for funding jihad, or holy war. Indeed, authorities have traced millions of dollars received by major jihadi terror groups like Hamas and al-Qaida back to Saudi and other foreign Isamic charities and also U.S. Muslim charities, such as the Holy Land Foundation.

According to the Quran, jihad is not something a Muslim can opt out of. It demands able-bodied believers join the fight. Those unable -- women and the elderly -- are not exempt; they must give "asylum and aid" (Surah 8:74) to those who do fight the unbelievers in the cause of Allah.

In analyzing the threat on the domestic front, the Pentagon briefing draws perhaps its most disturbing conclusions. It argues the U.S. has not suffered from scattered insurgent attacks -- as opposed to the concentrated and catastrophic attack by al-Qaida on 9-11 -- in large part because it has a relatively small Muslim population. But that could change as the Muslim minority grows and gains more influence.

The internal document explains that Islam divides offensive jihad into a "three-phase attack strategy" for gaining control of lands for Allah. The first phase is the "Meccan," or weakened, period, whereby a small Muslim minority asserts itself through largely peaceful and political measures involving Islamic NGOs -- such as the Islamic Society of North America, which investigators say has its roots in the militant Muslim Brotherhood, and Muslim pressure groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations, whose leaders are on record expressing their desire to Islamize America.

In the second "preparation" phase, a "reasonably influential" Muslim minority starts to turn more militant. The briefing uses Britain and the Netherlands as examples.

And in the final jihad period, or "Medina Stage," a large minority uses its strength of numbers and power to rise up against the majority, as Muslim youth recently demonstrated in terrorizing France, the Pentagon paper notes.

It also notes that unlike Judaism and Christianity, Islam advocates expansion by force. The final command of jihad, as revealed to Muhammad in the Quran, is to conquer the world in the name of Islam. The defense briefing adds that Islam is also unique in classifying unbelievers as "standing enemies against whom it is legitimate to wage war."

Right now political leaders don't understand the true nature of the threat,\ it says, because the intelligence community has yet to educate them. They still think Muslim terrorists, even suicide bombers, are mindless "criminals" motivated by "hatred of our freedoms," rather than religious zealots motivated by their faith. And as a result, we have no real strategic plan for winning a war against jihadists.

Even many intelligence analysts and investigators working in the field with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces have a shallow understanding of Islam.

"I don't like to criticize our intelligence services, because we did win the Cold War," says a Northern Command intelligence official. "However, all of these organizations have made only limited progress adjusting to the current threat or the sharing of information."

Why? "All suffer heavily from political correctness," he explains.

PC still infects the Pentagon, four years after jihadists hit the nation's military headquarters.

"A lot of folks here have a very pedestrian understanding of Islam and the Islamic threat," a Pentagon intelligence analyst working on the project told me. "We're getting Islam 101, and we need Islam 404."

The hardest part of formulating a strategic response to the threat is defining Islam as a political and military enemy. Once that psychological barrier has been crossed, defense sources tell me, the development of countermeasures -- such as educating the public about the militant nature of Islam and exploiting "critical vulnerabilities" or rifts within the Muslim faith and community -- can begin.

"Most Americans don't realize we are in a war of survival -- a war that is going to continue for decades," the Northcom official warns.

It remains to be seen, however, whether our PC-addled political leaders would ever adopt such controversial measures.