The Florida Masochist

Soldiers' Angels needs help

Holly Aho has a letter posted from Soldiers Angels founder Patti Bader. Go over and read it and if you have any spare cash, please donate it. Remember you'll be helping our brave fighting men and women. God bless them all.

No respect for the law

And he is a judge in Spain. This story hasn't gotten much talk in the blogosphere with the exception of Indepundit and Outside the Beltway.

MADRID, Spain - A judge has issued an international arrest warrant for three U.S. soldiers whose tank fired on a Baghdad hotel during the Iraq war, killing a Spanish journalist and a Ukrainian cameraman, a court official said Wednesday.

Judge Santiago Pedraz issued the warrant for Sgt. Shawn Gibson, Capt. Philip Wolford and Lt. Col. Philip de Camp, all from the U.S. 3rd Infantry, which is based in Fort Stewart, Ga.

Jose Couso, who worked for the Spanish television network Telecinco, died April 8, 2003, after a U.S. army tank crew fired a shell on Hotel Palestine in Baghdad where many journalists were staying to cover the war.

Reuters cameraman Taras Protsyuk, a Ukrainian, also was killed.

Pedraz had sent two requests to the United States — in April 2004 and June 2005 — to have statements taken from the suspects or to obtain permission for a Spanish delegation to quiz them. Both went unanswered.

He said he issued the arrest order because of a lack of judicial cooperation from the United States regarding the case.

The warrant "is the only effective measure to ensure the presence of the suspects in the case being handled by Spanish justice, given the lack of judicial cooperation by U.S. authorities," the judge said in the warrant.

The Pentagon had no immediate information and said it was looking into it.

U.S. officials have insisted that the soldiers believed they were being shot at when they opened fire.

Following the Palestine incident, then-Secretary of State Colin Powell said a review of the incident found that the use of force was justified.

In late 2003, the National Court, acting on a request from Couso's family, agreed to consider filing criminal charges against three members of the tank crew.

Fort Stewart spokeswoman Jennifer Scales said the three no longer are assigned to Fort Stewart or the 3rd Infantry Division.

De Camp, who is now an adjunct mathematics professor at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said three investigations into the incident — two military investigations and one by the Committee to Protect Journalists — had exonerated all three men.

"We had no clue there were journalists over at that hotel," he said. "We would not have shot at them."

I had originally planned to give Judge Pedraz today's knucklehead award except that a better candidate came forward. He is a runner-up knucklehead.

Just proof the US doesn't have a monopoly on out of control judges. What is it about the black robes that gives people like Santiago Pedraz a power trip like in this case. Three investigations cleared these soldiers. Plus living and working in a combat zone is dangerous. These journalists know that.

Most of all Judge Pedraz has no jurisdiction in the matter. He has to know that yet he moved forward with these warrants. A judge who has no respect for the law has no business being on the bench. These warrants are proof of just that with Judge Pedraz.

This gives new meaning

to the expression pissing away taxpayer money. The House wants to appropriate 2 million dollars to study flushless urinals. The company is in Michigan, so I guess its a congressman or congresswoman from that state pushing this idea. This would save Navy ships the cost of storing water but as James Joyner points out why is the taxpayer funding the study instead of the contractor?

Open Post- Indepundit

The House wants to divert $2 million in the Navy's FY06 operations accounts to boost a rapidly growing Michigan environmental technology firm that markets itself as the "world leader for waterfree urinals." In an unpublicized portion of the House version of the FY06 Defense appropriations bill, lawmakers added a conservation initiative that would pay for a Navy study exploring the use of "no flush" urinals. Advocates say the product could save thousands of gallons of water onboard ships and at military installations where water is scant. The initiative, which could help Falcon Waterfree Technologies expand its budding military contracting business, was added by appropriators even as they cut $2.9 billion from operations and maintenance accounts across the military services in an attempt to focus more spending on the global war on terrorism.

No way to welcome a soldier home

Read this column written by Ann Menendez in today's Miami Herald. No matter what your stance on the war, our fighting men and women deserve our support. Ms. Vitale served her country for two years and today she is suffering financial hardship for it.

The whole story angers me, I just wish I could help. What Ms. Menendez concludes with is absolutely true. This is no way to welcome a soldier home.

Open Post- Outside the Beltway and Indepundit

Poise, the kind acquired in 19 years of military service, is not something a soldier can easily abandon. So it was that Tuesday, before Doreen Vitale slid into a booth at the Gourmet Diner to begin her story, she first asked the server, very politely, to please wipe down the seat.

Minutes later, she couldn't stop her tears as she told how she lost her job, her gun and her badge after serving more than two years as a reservist in the war on terror. ''I was in shock. I served my country and then to suddenly be told I can't work because I was gone for two years . . . '' she said. ``It's hard to get past the hurt.''

Vitale returned from active duty in July. By now she should be back at her job as a security guard at the federal courthouse in Miami. She is not.

Vitale wasn't fired. She was just told she couldn't work until a new background check was completed.

SAVINGS DEPLETED

That was two months ago. Today she sits in her two-bedroom apartment in Pembroke Pines, her savings depleted. She just canceled her cable for a savings of $30 a month. She'd like to downsize to a one-bedroom apartment, but she can't: Landlords want to see a recent pay stub, and she doesn't have one.

Vitale worked for Akal Security, which supplies guards to the federal government. After two years serving in Fort Stewart, Ga., Vitale this summer returned to her job at the courthouse to hugs and cheers. Ten days later, a supervisor ordered her to turn in her badge and gun.

Vitale had simply become the victim of paperwork, says her employer.

''Our contract requires anyone who's been on leave for an extended period of time to have their background check renewed,'' said Daya Khalsa, senior vice president of the New Mexico-based company.

The U.S. marshals didn't return several phone calls late Tuesday. But Vitale says the marshals told her that they weren't the ones holding up the process; it was Akal. Akal insists there's nothing it can do.

''We regret whatever inconvenience she's going through but that is the rule the government sets and we are obligated to comply,'' Khalsa said, adding that he didn't know how much longer the process would take.

TRAGEDY

It's a tragedy of national proportion that we're losing our most courageous men and women to the battlefields of Iraq while at home, one of the government's biggest security contractors is paralyzed by paperwork.

Vitale wasn't off on a two-year vacation to Tahiti. She was serving her country at a military base. Vitale passed a background check when she first went to work for Akal. If a new check was needed, why wasn't that completed before Vitale returned to Miami? And if that last courtesy was too much to bear, why can't Akal at least continue to pay her salary until this mess is sorted out?

At first, Vitale trusted that everything would be OK. Shaken and humiliated, she went home . She first went to a mediator, but when that didn't work out, she finally found a lawyer and filed suit this month. Her case, if it's heard, may take her back to her old courthouse, where her colleagues wear yellow ribbons in her support. ''The law is on my side,'' she said wryly, ``but the law doesn't pay the bills.''

Akal Security, which also contracts with Homeland Security, is booming in uncertain times while Vitale continues to be diminished by forces beyond her control.

When she was called back into active duty two years ago, Vitale had to sell her townhouse in Pembroke Pines. She figured she'd buy another one when she returned. But as her deployment dragged on, the real estate market exploded. She returned to find her old home unaffordable.

Now even the rent on a two-bedroom apartment is slipping beyond her reach. And Vitale, for all her poise, is on the verge of tears.

A lot of people have profited from this war. Doreen Vitale was just doing her job, and then she lost it all. That's no way to welcome a soldier home.

Must read in the Washington Post

On the same day the Post publishes a Knucklehead of a Consumer article, another story was published. It featured our favorite milblogger Chuck and the non-profit group Soldiers' Angels. You really must go over and read it. Registration is required, but its free. I'm only going to excerpt the very end.

Now they're all sitting in a room at Mologne House, the outpatient center that's part of the Walter Reed complex. Everyone is headed home next week. Ziegenfuss is wearing walking shorts and a knit shirt. The clothing covers up many of his injuries. The skin over the wounds is purple, bright in some spots and dark in others. He, Carren, Alice and Bair sit around a table talking. They're going for pizza in a minute.

"I think he's had nine operations," says Alice.

"Does that include the ear?" he asks.

"Ten," she corrects herself.

"They took a piece of my head and put it in my ear," he says, explaining surgery to repair a perforated eardrum.

Ziegenfuss is in good spirits, if slightly apprehensive about his future. What does a captain with nine fingers do?

"Get back in line," he says, citing what he most wants to do -- return to Iraq and his command.

For Bair, the relationship is winding down. There are other soldiers she looks in on, other wounds to mend. None of it will change the world. Hand-holding and sandwiches and toothbrushes rarely do.

They just make it a little more bearable, these acts of kindness from strangers in a time of war, these things that bind us.

Thank you Kathleen Bair and Soldiers' Angels for helping care for Chuck and our other servicemen. Get well Chuck and God bless you and your family.

Hat tip- Mudville Gazette