War is hell. That is well known. Horrible and terrible tragedies occur during war. The specifics are not all known in advance but we know war always has tragic consequences.
This appears to be yet another from the Iraq War.
The first 10 pages of “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers” will rip your heart out. In the opening chapter of this new book, Joseph Hickman, a former U.S. Marine and Army sergeant, shares the brief and tragic life story of one Iraq War veteran. In a nutshell, a healthy young man shipped off to Iraq, was stationed at a U.S. military base where he was exposed to a constant stream of toxic smoke, returned home with horrible respiratory problems, was denied care by the VA, developed brain cancer and died.
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So what are the “burn pits”? When the U.S. military set up a base in Iraq or Afghanistan, instead of building incinerators to dispose of the thousands of pounds of waste produced each day, they burned the garbage in big holes in the ground. The garbage they constantly burned included “every type of waste imaginable” including “tires, lithium batteries, asbestos insulation, pesticide containers, Styrofoam, metals, paints, plastic, medical waste and even human corpses.”
Here’s where the story gets even more infuriating. As a result of the privatization of many aspects of military operations, the burn pits were operated by Kellogg, Brown, and Root (KBR), a former subsidiary of Halliburton, the company where Dick Cheney was CEO before ascending to the White House. During the Bush administration, Halliburton made nearly $40 billion from lucrative government contracts (despite many corruption scandals), Dick Cheney and his corporate allies got incredibly rich, and the soldiers whose lives have likely been destroyed by this reckless operation… are pretty much screwed.
http://www.salon.com/2016/02/16/burn_pits/
Click through to read the rest of the article and interview.
H.J.Res. 114 (107th): Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002Often called the Iraq War Resolution, or, the Iraq Resolution, or, the Iraq AUMF:
President George W Bush. “You’re With Me or You’re Against Me.”The resolution authorized President Bush to use the Armed Forces of the United States "as he determines to be necessary and appropriate" in order to "defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council Resolutions regarding Iraq.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_Resolution
There were serious legal questions surrounding the launching of the war against Iraq and the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war in general. On 16 September 2004, Kofi Annan, the Secretary General of the United Nations, said of the invasion, "I have indicated it was not in conformity with the UN Charter. From our point of view, from the Charter point of view, it was illegal.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraq_War
The Shock and Awe bombing of Iraq in 2003.Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law. ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression
Hillary Clinton sided with George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and most Republicans by voting for the Iraq War.
| R | John McCain |
| D | Joseph Lieberman |
| D | Zell Miller |
| R | Mitch McConnell |
| R | Trent Lott |
| R | Chuck Hagel |
| D | Hillary Clinton |
| R | Jesse Helms |
| R | Rick Santorum |
| R | Arlen Specter |
| R | Strom Thurmond |
| R | Bill Frist |
| R | Fred Thompson |
| R | Phil Gramm |
| R | Kay Hutchinson |
| R | Orrin Hatch |
| R | George Allen |
| R | John Warner |
Source for the votes: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/107-2002/s237
Peace?Not only did Hillary vote for the Iraq AUMF, she voted against the Carl Level Amendment:
Hillary voted against the alternative to SJ Res 45, namely Carl Levin's Amendment on Iraq Levin himself explained the differences in the following way: The White House compromise still specifically authorizes at this time the use of force on a unilateral, "go it alone" basis, that is - without U.N. Security Council authorization; and It authorizes the use of force beyond dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery.My resolution is consistent with how I think Americans want us to proceed. It emphasizes the importance of dealing with Iraq on a multilateral basis, and withholds judgment at this time on the question of whether the United States should "go it alone" unilaterally against Iraq, should the United Nations fail to act.
And yet Hillary sided with the administration over this. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/1/12/435624/-Estimates of the casualties from the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, and the ensuing occupation and insurgency) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of Iraq War casualties varies greatly.
Various scientific surveys of Iraqi deaths resulting from the first four years of the Iraq War estimated that between 151,000 to over one million Iraqis died as a result of conflict during this time.A later study, published in 2011, estimated that approximately 500,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict since the invasion.
U.S. armed forces:
As of May 29, 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Defense casualty website, there were 4,425 total deaths (including both killed in action and non-hostile) and 32,223 wounded in action (WIA) as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War
Why did the US invade Iraq? They had not attacked us on 9/11 but many people tried to conflate Iraq with 9/11. They posed no threat to the US.
Was it the opportunity to loot our treasury and enrich oil companies and the military industrial complex?
I understand why Bernie voted against this illegal war but why did Hillary vote for it?
x YouTube VideoThe International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which followed World War II, called the waging of aggressive war “essentially an evil thing...to initiate a war of aggression...is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”