Again, who's the government here? Us, or them?!

Walter Reed Hospital in Washington D.C. is filled to maximum capacity with serously injured soldiers flown home from Afghanistan and Iraq. The situation has gotten so bad that the Army hospital has needed to take advantage of its agreement with nearby hotels to house less seriously injured and ill patients on out-patient basis and their loved ones. This is according to the conservative newspaper, Washington Times, which also quotes a Wlater Reed official (Jim Stueve) as saying that the hospital's "staff of 3, 900 has put in a substantial amount of overtime" to care for and tend to the wounded and ill soldiers.

"We have flights coming in almost every night from Landstuhl, so you don't book that sucker up solid so when you have your No. 1 priority come in, you say, 'You can't stay here,' " Mr. Stueve said.

One thing I appreciate about The Guardian is that this newspaper and online news source doesn't tend to sugar coat information the way the corporate mainstream media here at home does. So, this paper reported on August 4, 2003 the death toll of American troops that our own media and the ever-deceptive Pentagon refuse to tell the American people. Headlined The unreported cost of war: at least 827 American wounded, the paper's Washington consultant - Julian Borger reported, "US military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe because of an extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media."

Julian Borger adds that since Bush declared the end of war as of May 1st, while the Pentagon has reported that 52 U.S. soldiers were killed by hostile fire, the actual number of deaths has been 112. Of course, the Guardian report also figures other causes of death, as mentioned above. However, the Pentagon's figures appear a lot less gloomy, leading the American people to believe that only 52 of our soldiers have died. Thank goodness that the Guardian is preparing to launch a weekly American version of their paper to help better inform the American people with real journalism, instead of the sketchy and questionable junk mingled with fluff and lacking proper synopsis, as is what our corporate media passes off as authentic news.

Retired U.S. Army Col. David Hackworth doesn't mince words when he publicly calls Donald Rumsfeld (the draft-dodging, corporate executive and chickenhawk head of the Department of Defense) and Asshole. I can respect a retired military man and war veteran for openly criticizing Rumsfeld. For that and more, the Ret. Col. Hackworth has earned the honorary award as GNN's August 3, 2003 Guerrilla of the Week.

Hackworth's not the only one to do it, either. A lot of war vets have come out and criticized Rummy and the other chickenhawk corporate asses in the Bush Administration. When you think that a bunch of guys that conveniently sidestepped going to war reach executive offices in an election filled with obvious signs of attacks on our democracy (election fraud), then turn around and stubbornly insist on sending our troops to wars that conveniently enrich their corporate pals in and surrounding the oil industry, as well as, fattening up profits for the Carlyle Investment Group (where pappa Bush is a hotshot investor and where the bin Laden were, until after their membership and presence in the U.S. on Sept. 10th and 11th were exposed), then it's obvious that the men and women that know what war is really like have every right to sound off at these tough-talking wimps. One Vietnam veteran (who was drafted by the U.S. government, including then-U.S. Senator George H. W. Bush) has crafted some interesting flash movies with music to express his views on these chickenhawks. Here's some samplings:

Rummy the Pentagoon

Chickenhawks Hall of Shame Gives you the names and other info of chickenhawks that cried for war, but were too cowardly to go while other Americans went.

One Army is the latest and also a must see.

Thousands of dollars awarded to anyone with knowledge of where G. W. Bush was in 1972. For details, go to awolbush.com.

Military Families Speak out site speaks for itself.

Vietnam Veterans Against the War is informative and offers some excellent resources on the site, including the links page.

Veterans For Peace is another worthy site to visit while getting the perspective of war vets that haven't been carefully screened by the mainstream media.

Our soldiers need to come home alive and with their health and sanity intact. The Bush Administration and most Congressmen that pushed for war have ignored the wise advice given by war veterans that know what war is like, and also know what it takes to effectively handle combate situations and relative war matters should our troops need to go to battle. Most of the men in Congress and in this Administration don't know what war is like and what it takes to do what our troops were sent to do, because they cowered away, as Fortunate Sons are known to do.

On a final note, the British paper and website, Telegraph, reports in a story published August 3, 2003 that a Bush servant, former assistant secretary of state for Africa and one of America's most experienced Africa hands - Herman Cohen has applied pressure on President of Niger Mamadou Tandja to keep his mouth shut regarding the lies told about the bogus documents alleging the Niger/Saddam WMD uranium deal that never happened, but was used by the Bush administration and British PM Tony Blair as one of their many trumped up excuses to convince the U.N., the world, American and British citizens of their reasons for sacrificing the lives of soldiers and Iraqi citizens to overthrow jerkoff Saddam Hussein and take over Iraq, a country destitute by the combination of the previous Gulf War, over 12 years of economic sanctions that cost the lives of millions of Iraqis, and harsh living conditions caused by nature and Hussein's rule. (Thank the CIA for conspiring in their efforts in the 1950's to help Hussein to overthrow the previous Iraqi leadership and replace them with this evil, but previously U.S. compliant, dictator.)