Veterans

Top Veterans Groups to White House: Chained CPI Will Mean "Real Sacrifice" for Veterans

Daniel Marans — Fri, 12 Aug 2011 17:05:02 -0400

Eight leading veterans’ groups sent letters to President Obama, and members of the House and Senate this week, urging them not to adopt the chained Consumer Price Index (CPI) for determining cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs) for Social Security and VA benefits. The letter relied on information from a new analysis by the Strengthen Social Security Campaign showing that the chained CPI will have an especially large effect on veterans and their families.

The letters from the American GI Forum, AMVETS, Blinded Veterans Association, National Military Family Association, Paralyzed Veterans of America, VetsFirst, a program of United Spinal Association, Vietnam Veterans of America, and VoteVets.org identified significant cuts that would occur to 9 million veterans receiving Social Security retirement benefits, 3.2 million receiving VA Disability Compensation Benefits, and 310,000 receiving VA Pension Benefits if the chained CPI was used to calculate the annual COLA.

The letters from veterans groups said: “Many veterans who rely on these programs live on fixed incomes and very tight budgets. For them, every dollar of hard-earned benefits counts in meeting basic expenses, attaining quality of life, and building a better future for themselves and those who depend on them. For many of them, reducing the annual COLA would mean real sacrifice. We ask that you not do that for those who have already sacrificed so much for this great country.”

The chained CPI, a change in the way inflation is measured, which would reduce Social Security and VA benefits, by cutting the annual COLA, as well as increase taxes, by slowing the rate at which tax brackets rise, has been on the table in deficit reduction talks for months.

(For more on the chained CPI click here.)

The Strengthen Social Security Campaign’s new analysis of the chained CPI COLA cut shows that it will hit veterans and their families especially hard. Here are some key facts from the report:

• Social Security is the largest program serving veterans and their families. Over 9 million veterans receive Social Security benefits—four out of ten veterans. By contrast, in 2010, 4.1 million veterans received VA benefits.

• The chained CPI will be a double benefit cut for veterans who receive both Social Security and VA benefits. Over 9 million veterans receive Social Security benefits—four out of ten veterans. The exact number of veteran Social Security beneficiaries that also receive VA benefits is unknown, but 771,000 of the veterans receiving Social Security benefits, are receiving disability benefits, which means they undoubtedly receive VA disability compensation (it is harder to qualify for Social Security disability).

• VA benefits are already modest. There are two principal VA benefits programs that go to veterans: disability compensation and pension benefits. The former are for veterans with service-connected disabilities, and the latter are for non-service-connected disabled veterans or elderly veterans with income below the poverty level. In 2011, veterans with service-connected disabilities received $32,076 in annual VA disability compensation benefits, and poor veterans received $11,830 in annual pension benefits in 2011. (See graphs for how the chained CPI would reduce each of those benefits respectively.)

Richard Allen Smith, Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org, a progressive veterans’ political action group that signed the letter opposing the chained CPI, said the group signed the letter because of the importance of Social Security and VA benefits to veterans.

“Veterans depend on Social Security and Medicare at much higher rates. As the nation’s leading progressive veterans’ advocacy group we thought it was important to make sure that the benefits that our constituency—veterans—depend on, were not threatened,” Smith said.

Smith, a former Army Staff Sergeant, who served in the 82nd Airborne unit in Afghanistan, added that protecting these programs is even more important because, economic security is in greater jeopardy for veterans in general, and post-9/11 veterans in particular. The unemployment rate for veterans who served in Iraq, Afghanistan or both was 14.3 percent as of March 2011 (the latest date available), compared with the current national unemployment rate of 9.1 percent. Smith believes that the rates of unemployment are probably even higher among post-9/11 veterans, because many who cannot find a job they use the 21st Century GI Bill to go to college and thus are not counted as unemployed.

The chained CPI’s status as a benefit cut could pose a challenge for Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), who is both chair of the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, and co-chair of the Super Committee. As of this blogpost’s submission, Senator Murray’s office had not responded to request for comment.

Regardless of what the Super Committee decides, however, Smith said that VoteVets.org, which has a Political Action Committee (PAC) will make the chained CPI COLA cut an issue in ads it plans to run in the 2012 election cycle.

My Family's Fallen - and Yours - Deserve More Than Platitudes For Memorial Day

Richard Eskow — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:10:13 -0400

On Monday we'll hear a lot of Memorial Day speeches about honoring our fallen soldiers and their disabled comrades. On Tuesday some of the politicians giving those speeches will try to cut benefits for them and their families.

In the words of Ben Franklin, "Well done is better than well said." The nine million veterans who currently receive Social Security benefits would probably agree.

Cutting benefits is no way to honor the fallen or those who came home with their bodies permanently damaged. It would be an act of profound ingratitude to doom them or their families to a life of increased deprivation. Yet that's exactly what these politicians are trying to do.

This morning I read a report called "Social Security: Serving Those Who Serve Our Nation," and my thoughts kept returning to two military heroes. The first was my maternal grandfather, Col. John L. Temple, who was permanently scarred by mustard gas on the battlefields of World War I. The second was my uncle, Lieutenant John Andree Temple, an Army Air Corps pilot who died at the age of 24 in World War II.

My grandfather was born in 1875 and was in his fifties when my mother was born. As a battlefield officer he was much older than most of the soldiers under his command. His already-aging body suffered terrible burns from the gas (photographs on the Internet show just how horrifying those burns could be). He eventually recovered and lived a long life, but spent the rest of his years in pain. Until his death he remained a handsome and compelling figure with a command presence -- so much so that it took a while before people noticed the redness and irritation of his skin, or the way his eyes tended water and became infected.

Col. Temple was luckier than many of the soldiers wounded by this early chemical weapon. He was able to continue his military career, and then to work throughout the Southwest as a railroad detective for the Southern and Pacific. There he began purchasing Native American artifacts for a few pennies or dollars each, carefully noting each item's details and providing details about its creator. "The last of the Chemehuevi weavers," one entry sadly notes.

My grandfather was John L. Temple the Third, or Fourth, or maybe the Fifth - he didn't care much about such things - and he broke generations of tradition by refusing to pass his name on to his son. (My French grandmother probably didn't care about that tradition one way or the other.) It was a typically American act of rebelliousness, or maybe it was just old-fashioned frontier contrariness since he only changed the baby's middle name. Col. Temple was faithful to duty, honor, and tradition in many ways, but he was born in a covered wagon headed West and nobody was going to tell him what to do.

His son, nicknamed Jack, died in World War II. He died after taking a new bomber out for its first flight in the South Pacific. Apparently his plane's engines were sold to the military even though manufacturer Curtiss-Wright knew they were defective. (Curtiss-Wright's senior executives were fired and a general went to prison as a result of Sen. Harry Truman's investigation. Arthur Miller's play All My Sons is based on this incident. )

Jack was a brilliant photographer whose works were exhibited in the 1939 Worlds Fair. His diaries and letters reveal an imaginative, unorthodox personality with a sensibility that might have felt at home in the Beat movement of the '50s or the counterculture of the '60s. He wrote that he wanted to reject the enslaving social norms of career and family so he could wander the planet without obligations.

These are the ambitions of an idealistic and rebellious young man, of course, and they might have changed. But the fact that Jack never married or had children also means that his death didn't leave anybody penniless and in need. For many families of the fallen, Social Security is their only protection from a life of poverty.

Which gets us to that report, which was released on Thursday by Senators Mark Begich of Alaska and Jon Tester of Montana. "Some politicians think the way to balance the budget is to cut veterans' benefits, or services like Social Security and Medicare," said Sen. Tester. "They're wrong." Added Sen. Begich: "Current talk about cutting social security benefits and destabilizing the economic security of our veterans undermines the sacrifices they have made for our nation. It's a disservice our veterans don't deserve."

Some of the report's findings are genuinely surprising. Nine million veterans currently receive Social Security benefits, and 35 percent of the people who receive Social Security benefits are veterans and their families. Most of the children who have lost a parent in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars receive Social Security and, sadly, there are more than 4,000 of them.

Take some time this Memorial Day and read the report. You'll meet the family of Army Chief Warrant Officer Christopher C. Johnson. You'll also meet disabled hero Sherman C. Gillums, Jr., 87-year-old former Tuskegee Airman Dabney Montgomery and his wife Amelia, and 90-year-old ex-seaman Will Parry. All of them rely on Social Security.

For the survivors, life goes on. My father served in World War II without injury. My paternal uncle, Jerry Eskow, was wounded in hand-to-hand combat, but fully recovered and became a director and teacher who guided many young actors. His death last year has left a void in our lives. Col. John L. Temple lived into his late nineties and saw astronauts walk on the moon. We shared hotel rooms on a cross-country trip when I was 14 and he was 90. "I don't like color television, boy," he told me on that trip. "It's not as realistic as black and white."

Jack Temple lives on in the personalities of his siblings and their descendants, in the dedication to social justice he instilled in his little sister, and in his striking photographs.

Even the Chemehuevi tribe, whose lost art of weaving my grandfather once mourned, is clinging to existence.The "Ute-Southern Ute Ethnologue" of 2009 describes the tribe, who once lived near the Oasis of Mara in what is now Joshua Tree National Park, as "near extinction." Less than five people still speak their language, but one of them is in his fifties and is making recordings to preserve its sound. for future generations. The Navajo Native American Veterans Association includes a link to the Chemehuevi tribal government on its website, which suggests that members of the tribe are among our nation's veterans.

You won't read the stories of Colonel John L. Temple or Lieutenant Jack Temple in this new report, and nobody will mention their names from a podium. But you don't need to hear their names. There are many families, many sacrifices, many stories. This Memorial Day we should remember and honor them all.

Then we should do the right thing for them, and for all the other soldiers and families just like them, by ensuring that they receive the security they were promised back in 1935. That promise was made to the American people before a generation of soldiers like Jack Temple and the Eskow brothers went away to war, some never to return.
____________________________

Please note: This post was written with assistance from Social Security Works and Strengthen Social Security, the authors of "Social Security: Serving Those Who Serve Our Nation."

The report was cosponsored by the American GI Forum, Gold Star Wives of America, Inc. (my grandmother, a Gold Star mother, proudly displayed her star in the window on Memorial Day); Blinded Veterans Association (mustard gas can cause blindness); the National Association of American Veterans; the National Military Family Association; Paralyzed Veterans of America; the Union Veterans Council, AFL-CIO; VetsFirst, a program of United Spinal Association; Vietnam Veterans of America; and VoteVets.org.

How to Kill An Army: A Scenario

Sara Robinson — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 01:04:03 -0400

John McCain, who from the early 1980s worked hard to establish himself the one of the Senate's shining champions of Vietnam veterans' issues, completed his betrayal of the Iraq-era troops today. Brandon Friedman of vetvoice.com has the details:

Yesterday VoteVets.org delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to the office of Senator John McCain. Through that petition, we asked him to support Senator Jim Webb's new GI Bill. And less than 24 hours later, we have an answer:

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill...."

The reason for McCain's refusal to support the bill is about the most disturbing rationale one could imagine....Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.

Friedman observes that McCain's no-college-for-grunts position essentially says to the troops: "Thanks for your service and your three combat tours in five years. Now get back to work."

Jim Webb has been trying to update the GI Bill to restore its original intention -- which was to reward returning vets for their service by giving them a full education, lifetime health care, and the foundations on which to build a comfortable and successful civilian life. But, says Friedman, the Cons have apparently abandoned that noble goal. And in doing so, they're unveiling an entirely different vision of our troops' future relationship to the rest of America.

McCain makes it clear that he wants to make the GI Bill so weak and useless that troops will have no choice but to stay in the military for life. Friedman argues persuasively that this is not only a breach of a sacred trust Americans have upheld with their troops for over 60 years; it's also a slap in the face to military recruiters, who ask families to give up their children to the war machine -- and now have nothing compelling to offer them in return. And in the long run, it ensures that the military will become the career of last resort for those who have no other options.

Reading this, it strikes me that, as usual, the conservatives aren't being nearly careful enough about what they wish for. In fact, it's not hard at all to imagine a scenario in which this new relationship to our military—which forsakes the last vestiges of America's traditional civilian militias and creates a new class of involuntarily indentured permanent soldiers—creates far-flung changes that may undermine the stability of our democracy.

How We Got Here
The GI Bill is recent -- but the deal it represents is as old as history. It's one of the great recurring patterns: in most times and places, the best way for a young man full of brains and ambition but short on money and connections to move up in the world was to join the military and distinguish himself. (The other typical mobility paths were to become a teacher, scholar, or priest.) It was a huge risk: the odds of becoming a combat hero and rising to the officers' ranks were slim compared to those of coming home crippled—or not coming home at all. But the potential upside was equally enormous. If you wanted to get off the farm, marry well, and launch yourself into the ownership class, becoming a war hero has usually been your best way out.

With the GI Bill, America democratized this ancient deal. It guaranteed that same shot at a solid middle-class life to everyone who signed up and did their tour, regardless of what their service entailed (and, in doing so, also somewhat reduced the incentive for ambitious soldiers to secure their civilian futures by instigating unnecessary battles. Combat hero or clerk typist, you were part of the effort, and you'd still get yours.). In a country that had usually resisted the very idea of raising a standing army, the GI Bill fostered the new post-war military industrial complex by normalizing military service. It was the deal that allowed families to send their sons (and later, their daughters) off in the belief that the military would open the doors to a better life. It was also the sugar that—for a while, anyway—took some of the bitterness off of universal conscription.

Generous GI benefits became even more important in the aftermath of Vietnam, as the country abandoned the draft in favor of an all-volunteer army. The country's war hawks approved of this move: The Vietnam-era draft had touched every family in America, regardless of class; and it was the middle and upper-middle classes' unwillingness to consent to that sacrifice that had so forcefully politicized the war. A military comprising troops who'd voluntarily agreed to be there would not only be easier to discipline and manage; they'd be much easier to deploy without creating major political upheavals.

The brass also knew from the start that going all-volunteer would increase the class divisions in the military. The bulk of those new recruits—both non-coms and officers—would be kids from working-class families looking for a shot at college. As the conservatives cut back on government-backed college grants and loans, the GI Bill and ROTC would step up to become the country's new college-aid programs. Given that this realignment happened alongside the re-tooling of a new high-tech military that required an extremely skilled and disciplined corps to function, this new model wouldn't work—couldn't work—unless the benefits and working conditions were good enough to attract a huge flow of smart, stable, high-quality volunteers.

Predictably, the number of volunteers has fallen off markedly in the Bush era, as the war has dramatically raised the risks associated with service, and the promised benefits have vanished. Working-class kids may not have many prospects left; but they can do the math, and they're staying away in droves. To keep the warm bodies coming, the military has begun to compromise on quality. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the number of new recruits coming in on conduct waivers is up. So is the number of convicted felons, gang members, avowed racists, and people with substance abuse problems. The military is increasingly turning a blind eye to solider misconduct, because it can't afford to lose the boots—so racist activity, rape, and other criminal acts are going largely unpunished.

Maybe McCain figures that this new crop of kids isn't all that interested in college anyway. Maybe he's decided that down here, with the bottom of the barrel coming into sight, we're getting the kids for whom the military isn't a ticket to college, or a way out of anything. It's just a better alternative than a lifetime of unemployment—or worse, cycling in and out of jail. And maybe he's being a realist about that. It's certainly where we seem to be headed.

But we don't have to go there. And if we think this all the way through, we'll do whatever it takes not to go there. Because if McCain is serious about stripping away the barest promise of benefits and turning America's high-tech army into a dumping ground for the country's undereducated, pre-criminal, behaviorally unstable, and economically desperate—then there's another possible future looming, and it's the stuff of our worst nightmares.

What Lies Ahead
What follows is a scenario—a little concatenation of what-if stories about what could happen if America breaks its historical pact of guaranteeing education, health care, and a middle-class future to its service men and women. It's not a prediction. It's just a look at some of the ways McCain's new view of what we owe our troops could play out if we don't change course.

Inside the military: As kids with any kind of prospects at all flee from recruiters who have nothing left to offer them, the sliding standards of the past few years become a fast tumble to the bottom. Soon, America's military is nothing more than the employer of last resort. It's society's dumping ground for people with inadequate education, drug problems, criminal records, and unaddressed behavior issues—people who can't even hold down McJobs, and for whom going to war and getting shot at is a marginally better choice to going to jail and getting knifed.

What happens from here is a scene from The Dirty Dozen—or the last years of Vietnam —writ large. Faced with battalions of armed misfits—including a large number of sociopaths for whom punishment is meaningless—officers can't hold down the fort. The result is anarchy, followed by the rise of internal drug-running gangs, racist militias, God squads of fundamentalist holy warriors, and other assorted warlords. (Some of these have close ties to existing civilian organizations such as prison gangs, white supremacist militias, and far-right dominionist groups—as if any of these groups need to have their own government-trained army units.) Unit cohesion fails as these groups go freelance and compete for control of military resources. Fragging becomes common; and good officers become much harder to find. (Anybody with a college education will find something better and safer to do.) The goal of teaching them useful civilian life-skills is quickly abandoned.

In the name of American foreign policy, these troops are exported to other countries, where they set up operations abroad -- thus bringing America's worst authoritarians to the the world's least stable corners, and giving them a prime government-subsidized opportunity to go global.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch: Of course, the intended goal of this system is to keep recruits inside it until they're too old to do much damage. Once they do get out, though, the results look like another movie —and this time, it's The Godfather.

Since these veterans have no connection to the larger culture—and no way of getting the education that will outfit them for anything else besides war—they have every incentive to organize themselves into civilian subsidiaries of the military gangs that sustained them. They get jobs as mercenaries, working abroad for private armies and cartels. Or they come home, and set up local outposts of this emerging global Mafia. Soon, city and state governments are dealing with a far bigger gang problem than they've ever seen before, and are completely unprepared to confront. Turf battles—or holy wars—erupt between the race- and religion-based gangs. In some towns, the gangs muscle out small businesses, start up extortion rackets, run their own candidates, and seize control of local politics. They also infiltrate whatever legitimate institutions will have them—just as the Mafia took over unions and the construction trades on the East Coast so long ago. Modern prison gangs are small mom-and-pop operations compared to the vast global criminal network that could arise in time.

This sounds far-fetched, but it's the historical way of armies gone bad. When you have combat-hardened warriors who have no place in the civilian world—and governments that feel no further responsibility to the troops that risked their lives to defend them—they will make a place for themselves. And that place will usually be well beyond the reach of government.

The Citizens Respond: There are several ways Americans might respond to the broken-down military that results from the boneheaded decision to abandon the covenant represented by the GI Bill. Let's look at the best case, the worst case, and the most likely case.

The best case is that Americans quickly realize that the military culture is fusing with the prison-based gang culture, and that the combined forces are threatening the foundations of the country. Driving this case is the fact is that we don't generally fund government programs that only benefit people without political power. (That's why it's so important that even the rich get Social Security, and why the upper classes need to keep their kids in public schools.) As long as the most politically influential people see that these things benefit them, they'll support them. As soon as these programs look like they're just for the lower classes, the political will to sustain them vanishes.

Turning the military into a dumping ground for the unwanted underclass (not to mention a vast channel through which taxpayer dollars are funneled to organized crime) devalues it socially and politically. Nice people won't send their kids there, any more than they'd voluntarily send them to prison for three or four years. Nobody with any brains will want to become an officer, either. And when the blowback from this long-term neglect begins washing up on the tree-lined streets of America's suburbs, there could be strong political pressure to defund the military, reform it, or abolish a standing army entirely.

The worst case is that we don't act in time, and the gangs simply take over. The government is overwhelmed, or corrupted. Democracy fails, along with domestic order. Security is in the hands of local strongmen. If that's the way it goes, the story begins to look like something out of Mad Max, and it will take nothing short of a violent patriot uprising to eliminate the gangs and take back the country. (And the bad news is: They have all the weapons, and know how to use them.)

This scenario is scary. And it should be. Worst-case scenarios aren't fun for me to write, not least because they can so easily become grim and over-the-top. What I find most frightening about this one is that you don't have to be a futurist to see its plausibility; you just have to have read some history. Broken-down armies that come home and take it out on the home folks are as common as dirt. They're stock characters in the stories where revolutions begin, and empires end. But we need to be aware that this could very easily happen to us—and blowing off our commitment to the troops the first tangible step down that road.

The most likely case is that we come to our senses in time, and realize that the GI Bill is not entitlement, not a privilege, and not a handout. It's what we owe our troops for their service. It's fulfilling our basic obligation to return them safely and sanely to civilian life, and to give them a fair stake in the country's free and democratic future. And, as long as we choose to maintain a standing army and act as an empire, it's an essential investment in our own domestic peace, security, and political stability that we cannot afford to scrimp on. If we think the price is too high, then we should reconsider whether we want to be an empire. But as long as we commission soldiers, defaulting on this debt is not an option.

No one who is willing to tear up that ancient contract between a nation and its veterans, and thus consign our nation's defense to people so dangerously incompetent that Wal-Mart won't even hire them, should ever be this country's commander-in-chief. And McCain, of all people, should understand that better than anyone. It's a shame that, after all these years building his career on the backs of veterans, he still doesn't understand what's at stake.

Judge Allows Suit Charging VA Denies Some Vets Health Care

Terrance Heath — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:08:43 -0500

The suit claims that the federal government illegally denies care and benefits to some soldiers, and is contributing to an epidemic of suicides among troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

VA Still Dragging on Veterans' Claims

Bill Scher — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 11:26:26 -0500

Number Of Uninsured Veterans Nears 2 Million

Chris Collins — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 10:18:47 -0400

Listen to the Troops

Bill Scher — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 10:37:08 -0400

Phony Patriotism

Chris Collins — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 12:25:32 -0400

Injured Iraq War Veterans Sue VA Over Delays In Care

Robert Borosage — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:54:00 -0400

The Schizophrenia Of War

Terrance Heath — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 09:02:00 -0400

Dahr Jamail is an independent journalist who has covered the Middle East for the last four years, eight months of which were spent in occupied Iraq. Jamail is currently writing for Inter Press Service, Al-Jazeera English, and is a regular contributor to Tomdispatch.com, where this piece originally appeared.

"In violence we forget who we are" —Mary McCarthy, novelist and critic

1. Statistically Speaking

Having spent a fair amount of time in occupied Iraq, I now find living in the United States nothing short of a schizophrenic experience. Life in Iraq was traumatizing. It was impossible to be there and not be affected by apocalyptic levels of violence and suffering, unimaginable in this country.

But here's the weird thing: One long, comfortable plane ride later and you're in Disneyland, or so it feels on returning to the United States. Sometimes it seems as if I'm in a bubble here that's only moments away from popping. I find myself perpetually amazed at the heights of consumerism and the vigorous pursuit of creature comforts that are the essence of everyday life in this country—and once defined my own life as well.

Here, for most Americans, you can choose to ignore what our government is doing in Iraq. It's as simple as choosing to go to a website other than this one.

The longer the occupation of Iraq continues, the more conscious I grow of the disparity, the utter disjuncture, between our two worlds.

In January 2004, I traveled through villages and cities south of Baghdad investigating the Bechtel Corporation's performance in fulfilling contractual obligations to restore the water supply in the region. In one village outside of Najaf, I looked on in disbelief as women and children collected water from the bottom of a dirt hole. I was told that, during the daily two-hour period when the power supply was on, a broken pipe at the bottom of the hole brought in "water." This was, in fact, the primary water source for the whole village. Eight village children, I learned, had died trying to cross a nearby highway to obtain potable water from a local factory.

In Iraq things have grown exponentially worse since then. Recently, the World Health Organization announced that 70% of Iraqis do not have access to clean water and 80% "lack effective sanitation."

In the United States I step away from my desk, walk into the kitchen, turn on the tap and watch as clear, cool water fills my glass. I drink it without once thinking about whether it contains a waterborne disease or will cause kidney stones, diarrhea, cholera or nausea. But there's no way I can stop myself from thinking about what was—and probably still is—in that literal water hole near Najaf.

I open my pantry and then my refrigerator to make my lunch. I have enough food to last a family several days, and then I remember that there is a 21% rate of chronic malnutrition among children in Iraq, and that, according to UNICEF, about one in 10 Iraqi children under five years of age is underweight.

I have a checking account with money in it; 54% of Iraqis now live on less than $1 a day.

I can travel safely on my bicycle whenever I choose—to the grocery store or a nearby city center. Many Iraqis can travel nowhere without fear of harm. Iraq now ranks as the planet's second most unstable country, according to the 2007 Failed States Index.

These are now my two worlds, my two simultaneous realities. They inhabit the same space inside my head in desperately uncomfortable fashion. Sometimes, I almost settle back into this bubble world of ours, but then another email arrives—either directly from friends and contacts in Iraq or forwarded by friends who have spent time in Iraq—and I remember that I'm an incurably schizophrenic journalist living on some kind of borrowed time in both America and Iraq all at once.

2. Emailing

Here is a fairly typical example of the sorts of anguished letters that suddenly appear in my in-box. (With the exception of the odd comma, I've left the examples that follow just as they arrived. They reflect the stressful conditions under which they were written.) This one was sent to my friend Gerri Haynes from an Iraqi friend of hers:

Dear Gerri:

No words can describe the real terror of what's happening and being committed against the population in Baghdad and other cities: the poor people with no money to leave the country, the disabled old men and women, the wives and children of tens of thousands of detainees who can't leave when their dad is getting tortured in the Democratic Prisons, senior years students who have been caught in a situation that forces them to take their finals to finish their degrees, parents of missing young men who got out and never came back, waiting patiently for someone to knock the door and say, "I am back." There are thousands and thousands of sad stories that need to be told but nobody is there to listen.

I called my cousin in the al-Adhamiya neighborhood of Baghdad to check if they are still alive. She is in her sixties and her husband is about seventy. She burst into tears, begging me to pray to God to take their lives away soon so they don't have to go through all this agony. She told me that, with no electricity, it is impossible to go to sleep when it is 40 degrees Celsius unless they get really tired after midnight. Her husband leaves the doors open because they are afraid that the American and Iraqi troops will bomb the doors if they don't respond from first door knock during searching raids. Leaving the doors open is another terror story after the attack of the troops' vicious dogs on a ten-month old baby, tearing him apart and eating him in the same neighborhood just a few days ago. The troops let the dogs attack civilians. The dogs bite them and terrify the kids with their angry red eyes in the middle of the night. So, as you can see my dear Gerri, we don't have only one Abu Ghraib with torturing dogs, we have thousands of Abu Ghraibs all over Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

I was speechless. I couldn't say anything to comfort her. I felt ashamed to be alive and well. I thought I should be with them, supporting them and give them some strength even if it costs me my life. I begged her to leave Baghdad. She told me that she can't because of her pregnant daughter and her grandkids. They are all with them in the house without their dad. I am hearing the same story and worse every single day. We keep asking ourselves what did we do to the Americans to deserve all this cruelness, killing and brutishness? How can the troops do this to poor, hopeless civilians? And why?

Can anybody answer my cousin why she and her poor family are going through this?? Can you Gerri? Because I sure can't.

In recent weeks I had been attempting to get in touch with one of my friends, a journalist in Baghdad. I'll call him Aziz for his safety. Beginning to worry when I didn't receive his usual prompt response, I sent him a second email and this is what finally came back:

Dear old friend Dahr,

I am so sorry for my late reply. It is because my area of Baghdad was closed for six days and also because I lost my cousin. He was killed by a militia. They tortured and mutilated his body. I will try to send you his picture later.

Just remember me, friend, because I feel so tired these days and I live with this mess now.

With all my respect,

Aziz

Conveying my sadness, I asked him if there was anything I could possibly do to ease his suffering. As a reporter in that besieged country, he is constantly exhausted and overworked. I hesitantly suggested that perhaps he should take a little time to rest. He promptly replied:

Dahr, my old friend,

I really appreciate your condolence message. Your words affected me very much and I feel that all my friends are around me in this hard time. I live with this mess and I do need some rest time as you advise before getting back to work again. BUT, really, I have to continue working because there are just very few journalists in Iraq now, and especially in my area. I have to cover more and more everyday.

Anyway friend, everything will be ok for me. And I wish we can make some change in our world towards peace.

With my respect to you friend,

Aziz

I have also been corresponding with "H," who lives in the volatile Diyala province and has been a dear friend since my first trip to Iraq. He would visit me in Baghdad, bringing with him delicious home-cooked meals from his wife, insisting always that I be the one to eat the first morsel.

A deeply religious man, his unfailing greeting, accompanied by a big hug, would always be: "You are my brother."

He was concerned about the perception that there were vast differences between Islam and Christianity. "Islam and Christianity are not so different," he would say, "In fact they have many more similarities than differences." He would often discuss this with U.S. soldiers in his city.

Yet he was no admirer of imperialism. Last summer in Syria, he and I visited the sprawling Roman ruins of Palmyra. One evening, as we stood together overlooking the vast landscape of crumbling columns and sun-bleached walls in the setting sun, he turned to me and said,

Mr. Dahr, please do not be offended by what I want to say, but it makes me happy to see these ruins and remember that empires always fall because empires are never good for most people.

After several weeks when I received no reply to repeated emails, I wrote to "M," a mutual friend, and received the following response:

Habibi [My dear friend],

It has been very long since I have written to you. I'm sorry. I was terribly busy. I have some very bad news. [H] was kidnapped by the members of al-Qaeda in Diyala 25 days ago and there is no news about him up to this moment. It's a horrible situation. One cannot feel safe in this country.

When I pressed him for more information, he wrote me the details:

[H] was kidnapped as he was trying to get home. He was coming to Baquba to visit his parents, as he does every day. His oldest daughter who was with him told him that a car carrying several men was following them from the beginning of the street leading to his parents' home. So, when he stopped to get his car in the garage, they got out of their car covering their faces and asked him to come with them for questioning. People in Diyala definitely know that such a thing means either killing or arresting for few days. You may ask why I'm sure it is al-Qaeda. That is because no other group, including the U.S. military, dominates the whole city like they do.

We are the people of the city and we know the truth. They overwhelmingly dominate the streets and are even stronger than the government. So, there is no doubt about whether this was al-Qaeda or another group. You may ask how people stay away from these very bad people. People never go in places like the central market of Baquba. For this reason, all, and I mean all, the shops are closed; some people have left Diyala, some have been killed, while most are kept in their homes.

If someone wants to go the market, this means a bad adventure. He may be at last found in the morgue. Al-Qaeda fought every group that are called resistance who work against coalition [U.S.] forces or the government (policemen or Iraqi National Guards). Nowadays, there is fighting between al-Qaeda and other [Iraqi resistance] groups like Qataib who are known here as the honest resistance in the streets. By the way, I forgot, when al-Qaeda kidnaps someone, they also take his car in order that the car shall be used by them. So, they took his car, along with him. In case he is released, he comes without his car. I will tell you more later on.

I soon slipped into the frantic routine all too familiar by now to countless Iraqis—scanning the horrible reports of daily violence in Iraq looking for the faintest clue to the whereabouts of my missing friend

3. Murderously Speaking

In McClatchy News' July 5th roundup of daily violence for Diyala, I read:

A source in the morgue of Baquba general hospital said that the morgue received today a head of a civilian that was thrown near the iron bridge in Baquba Al Jadida neighborhood today morning.

A medical source in Al Miqdadiyah town northeast [of] Baquba city said that 2 bodies of civilians were moved to the hospital of Miqdadiyah. The source said that the first body was of a man who was killed in an IED explosion near his house in Al Mu'alimeen neighborhood in downtown Baquba city while the second body was of a man who was shot dead near his house in Al Ballor neighborhood in downtown Baquba city.

The data for Baghdad that day read:

24 anonymous bodies were found in Baghdad today. 16 bodies were found in Karkh, the western side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (7 bodies in Amil, 3 bodies in Doura, 2 bodies in Ghazaliyah, 1 body in Jihad, 1 body in Amiriyah, 1 body in Khadhraa and 1 body in Mahmoudiyah). 8 bodies were found in Rusafa, the eastern side of Baghdad in the following neighborhoods (6 bodies in Sadr city, 1 body in Husseiniyah and 1 body in Sleikh.)

What could I possibly hope to find in nameless reports like these, especially when I know that most of the Iraqi dead never make it anywhere near these reports. That is the way it has been throughout the occupation.

On July 8th, M sent me this email:

Habibi,

Up to this moment, I heard that one of my neighbors saw [H's] photo in the morgue but I couldn't make sure yet. Traditionally, when a body is dropped in a street and found by police, they take it to the morgue. The first thing done is to take a photo for the dead person in the computer to let the families know them. This procedure is followed because the number of bodies is tremendously big. For this people cannot see every body to check for their sons or relatives. For this, people see the photos before going to the refrigerator. I will go to the morgue tomorrow.

The next day he wrote yet again:

Habibi,

Today I went to the morgue. I saw horrible things there. I didn't see [H's] photo among them. Some figures cannot be easily recognized because of the blood or the face is terribly deformed. I saw also only heads; those who were slayed, it's unbelievable. Tomorrow, we will have another visit to make sure again. In your country, when somebody wants to go to the morgue, he may naturally see two or, say, three or four bodies. For us, I saw hundreds today. Every month, the municipality buries those who are not recognized by their families because of the capacity of the morgue. Imagine!

In one of H's last emails to me sent soon after his return home from Syria earlier this summer, he described driving out of Baquba one afternoon. Ominously, he wrote:

We left Baquba, which was sinking in a sea of utter chaos, worries and instability. People there in that small town were scared of being kidnapped, killed, murdered or expelled. The entire security situation over there was deteriorating; getting to the worse.

Now, that passage might be read as his epitaph.

4. Subjectively Speaking

The morning I receive the latest news from M, I crawl back into bed and lie staring at the ceiling, wondering what will become of H's wife and young children, if he is truly dead. Barring a miracle, I assume that will turn out to be the case.

Later, I go for a walk. It's California sunny and the air is pleasantly cool on my skin. I'm aware—as I often am—that I never even consider looking over my shoulder here. I'm also aware that those I pass on my walk don't know that they aren't even considering looking over their shoulders.

The American Heritage Dictionary's second definition of schizophrenia is:

A situation or condition that results from the coexistence of disparate or antagonistic qualities, identities, or activities: the national schizophrenia that results from carrying out an unpopular war [italics theirs].

That's what I'm experiencing—a national schizophrenia that results from our government carrying out an unpopular war. It's what I continue to experience with never lessening sharpness two years after my last trip to Iraq. The hardest thing, in the California sun with that cool breeze on my face, is to know that two realities in two grimly linked countries coexist, and most people in my own country are barely conscious of this.

In Iraq, of course, there is nothing disparate, no disjuncture, only a constant, relentless grinding and suffering, a pervasive condition of tragic hopelessness and despair with no end in sight.