Women Soldiers in Harm's Way

The Village Green's post on women soldiers in today's war coincided in a timely way with a recent Newsweek cover story on the injured in harm's way at Walter Reed. The person chosen for the cover portrait is a wounded woman, with two legs gone. She is shown on a chair, sitting on her bandaged stumps. Until this war, the government had resisted sending women up to the front lines and imminent danger, even though the Civil Rights Ats of the 1960s have accomplished much in giving equal rights to women including the right to serve the nation on equal terms.

But there has always existed a fear that the public would not condone the idea of women returning home in caskets or physically damaged. A nation raised to believe that women belong on pedestals would not like to see its mothers and sisters returning from war as damaged goods. But in Bush's war it's been proven that the great American public has not risen up in protest. Women are returning to parents, husbands, children, and friends with horrifying and multiple injuries, physical and psychological, and apparently nobody cares very much that they were sent into harm's way in the first place. Another prized American value gone down the drain? It also goes without saying that our nation does not prize its male soldiers much either, based on the short shrift they are receiving from our government and the Veterans Administration. Strange, don't you think?

Hillary Must Listen to the Blogosphere Voices of Readon

Hi Hillary. Are you out there listening to the voices of reason on the blogosphere that ask you to express sincere regret at having voted for the Iraq War resolution in 2003? This would be a good time now we hear how Iraq wounded are being so badly treated at Walter Reed Military Hospital.

Excerpt that follows from Amy Goodman's latest column presses the point that other distinguished members of Congress in 2003 knew then what Hillary professes not to have known. Goodman has impeccable feminist credentials going back decades. However, these don't precipitate her into giving Hilary a blank check endorsement. Voters today want straight-talking candidates who own up to their mistakes and live up to the responsibility of working on the voters' behalf.

"Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., fought the resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. He said the president wants "to have the power to launch this nation into war without provocation and without clear evidence of an imminent attack on the United States, and we're going to be foolish enough to give it to him." Byrd seems to have known then what Clinton says she knows now. He called the resolution "dangerous" and a "blank check," and now, with more than 3,145 U.S. soldiers killed, and with Iraq War costs through 2008 projected at more than $1 trillion, it appears he was right.

"Reps. Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey also seemed to know then what Clinton says she knows now. They were lauded by the 50 activists who, on Jan. 30, 2007, occupied Clinton's Senate office, weaving a web with pink yarn "to symbolize the senator's web of deception and the innocent people - Americans and Iraqis - caught in it." Protesters have promised to "bird-dog" Clinton at all of her public appearances. These actions recall the student sit-in at Clinton's New York office on Oct. 10, 2002, while Clinton stood on the Senate floor and made her case for war.

Sen. Clinton has drawn the line in the sand over Iraq. She will not admit that her vote to authorize Bush to use military force in a unilateral, unprovoked war based on lies was a mistake. She is open to a military strike on Iran. Her latest message to voters: "There are others to choose from." Anti-war voters already know that, and are lining up behind candidates Barack Obama, John Edwards, Dennis Kucinich and, perhaps before long, Ralph Nader.

Amy Goodman is a nationally syndicated columnist who appears in The Union.