Across America, Deadly Echoes of Foreign Battles

New Your Times: Jan. 13th. - Town by town across the country, headlines have been telling worrying stories. Lakewood, Wash.: “Family Blames Iraq After Son Kills Wife.” Pierre, S.D.: “Soldier Charged With Murder Testifies About Postwar Stress.” Colorado Springs: “Iraq War Vets Suspected in Two Slayings, Crime Ring.” Individually, these are stories of local crimes, gut-wrenching postscripts to the war for the military men, their victims and their communities. Taken together, they paint the patchwork picture of a quiet phenomenon, tracing a cross-country trail of death and heartbreak.

The New York Times found 121 cases in which veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan committed a killing in this country, or were charged with one, after their return from war. In many of those cases, combat trauma and the stress of deployment — along with alcohol abuse, family discord and other attendant problems — appear to have set the stage for a tragedy that was part destruction, part self-destruction.

Three-quarters of these veterans were still in the military at the time of the killing. More than half the killings involved guns, and the rest were stabbings, beatings, strangulations and bathtub drownings. Twenty-five offenders faced murder, manslaughter or homicide charges for fatal car crashes resulting from drunken, reckless or suicidal driving. About a third of the victims were spouses, girlfriends, children or other relatives, among them 2-year-old Krisiauna Calaira Lewis, whose 20-year-old father slammed her against a wall when he was recuperating in Texas from a bombing near Falluja that blew off his foot and shook up his brain.

A quarter of the victims were fellow service members, including Specialist Richard Davis of the Army, who was stabbed repeatedly and then set ablaze, his body hidden in the woods by fellow soldiers a day after they all returned from Iraq.
By Deborah Sontag & Lizette Alvarez

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Comment from Mozlink: It is tragic to read of these events and I am left thinking again of what going to war has done to these young men, most of whom as teenagers just a few years ago, had their own expansive dreams for their lives. Then they encountered war, killing, death, body bags, hatred, prejudice, racism, torture, Abu Grave and disorder. And everything changed and would never be the same again. How easy it is to hide such a stark reality behind the ideals of patriotism, nationalism, the war on terror, support our troops, the military etc.
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No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
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NE Congo - Missionary Warns of a New War in the Country

GOMA, September 7, 2007 (CISA) - A Catholic missionary in North Kivu where fierce fighting has been raging between the regular army and rebels led by Laurent Nkunda has given a dramatic account of the violence. Latest reports say aid workers in eastern Congo are struggling to cope with a surge of people fleeing the recent fighting. More than 10,000 people have fled their homes in the past week. “The streets are filled with people carrying mattresses on their heads, the only thing they manage to take with them as they run from violence,” the missionary, who asked not to be named, told FIDES news agency. “These people come from an area about 25-30 km west of Goma. They say that yesterday morning (September 4) at about 6 am they were woken by mortar shelling and decided to abandon their village en masse before the fighting reached their homes.

“The fortunate ones go to family or friends in Goma, the main town in North Kivu. Those who have no one to go to are settling in makeshift shelters close to the town. “I wonder who is funding the violence. Who has the money to pay people to take up weapons again? Recently Congolese authorities said they had dismantled a network of provocateur agents, rebels preparing to take action in Bukavu, Uvira and other parts of Kivu, to spread the conflict. There is fear of a third Congolese war, after those of 1996-97 and 1998-2003. “Sadly, when the militia in this area were disarmed nothing was done to reintegrate them into society. They were given an incentive of 100 dollars to hand over the arms, but many of them failed to find work. Unemployed and with no prospects, they are easy prey.

“There exist then the conditions for another war: all that is needed is someone with a box of matches. The members of the provocateur agents are paid 250 dollars a month, a fortune in this part of the world. Not even a university professor earns as much! Who is paying?” “There are precise strategies behind these events. Nothing is left to chance. I saw, for example, that the media in the West gave ample coverage to the killing of the mountain gorillas in Virunga Park. This was not useless cruelty to nature; instead it was to prevent tourists coming here to see what is happening.”

Laurent Nkunda commands rebel brigades of the unified Congolese army established after the peace agreement of 2003. He is wanted for war crimes. Nkunda's troops have repeatedly thwarted efforts on the part of the central government to restore peace in the eastern regions of D.R. Congo. Because of the fighting, tens of thousands of Congolese have fled to Uganda.
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Disclaimer
No responsibility or liability shall attach itself to either myself or to the blogspot ‘Mozlink’ for any or all of the articles/images placed here. The placing of an article does not necessarily imply that I agree or accept the contents of the article as being necessarily factual in theology, dogma or otherwise.
Mozlink