"My Name Used to Be #200343"

[Jcrowley]

"My Name Used to Be #200343"

By David Phinney, IPS News. Posted April 7, 2007.

An American former Navy soldier and private contractor imprisoned and tortured in Iraq by the U.S. military and falsely accused of "aiding terrorists" warns that our worst fears about Iraq have come true.

A year ago, Donald Vance learned what its like to be falsely accused by the U.S. military of aiding terrorists. He was held without charge for more than three months in a high-security prison in Iraq, and interrogated daily after sleepless nights without legal counsel or even a phone call to his family.

On Wednesday, the former private security contractor was honored for his ordeal in Washington and for speaking out against the incident. At a luncheon at the National Press Club, Vance received the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, an award named in memory of Army helicopter gunner Ron Ridenhour who struggled to bring the horrific mass murders at My Lai to the attention of Congress and the Pentagon during the Vietnam War.

Vance was joined by former president Jimmy Carter, who won a lifetime achievement award, and journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran of The Washington Post who was recognised for his recent book, "Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone".

As hundreds at the luncheon finished their lobster salad, Vance, a two-time George W. Bush voter and Navy veteran, recounted the events of his imprisonment and the grief of his fiancé and family. They did not know if he was alive or dead, he said. They were already making inquiries to the U.S. State Department on how to ship his body home.

http://www.alternet.org/waroniraq/50191/

[doublethink]

1. K&R.

:kick:

[Richard Steele]

2. This guy's case seems like a BIG step down the slippery slope, and deserves more attention, IMHO.

[Jcrowley]

3. US soldier tortured

by US military.

[walldude]

7. Uh.. just to be clear he's not a U.S. soldier

he's a former soldier turned Mercenary.

[sicksicksick_N_tired]

4. OMG!!! I assumed this was a story about,...the holocaust!

:cry:

Am I losing it?

GOD!

[file83]

5. That's what I thought too.

You are not losing it - you are "getting" it. Your eyes are wide open.

[Kurovski]

6. K&R. (nt)

[donco6]

8. Randi did this today.

Good show - scary story.

[AspenRose]

9. Randi was talking about this today.

I don't know what to say. It left me speechless.

[Canuckistanian]

10. What a dysfuntional nightmare the US government has become

Rumsfeld's Pentagon was against the State Department, the FBI and the contractors.

And yet, the contractors keep getting multi-million dollar contracts. And those same contractors are running a "beer for bullets" program, selling soldier's weapons to insurgents.

When I first heard of this on Randi's show, I really thought she was kidding.

Unbelievable.

[Afghan_Vet]

16. Believe It!

This is the nature of the Military-Industrial Complex that Eisenhower warned the US about in his farewell address. Just as George Washington warned us of the dangers of maintaining a standing army (military), so too has his warning been since forgotten. The wielding of influence by the MIC has surpassed the people's ability to outweigh barring total unity of the population in a singular stand against the administration and any public official who would support the MIC or the continuation of this so-called war on terror.

Five enemies of peace inhabit us - avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace.
~Francesco Petrarch (1304-1374)

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.
~General Smedley Butler, USMC

Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.
~Senator Robert M. La Follette

For what can war, but endless war, still breed?
~John Milton


...Violence as a way of gaining power...is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor national security...
~Alfred Adler


A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.
~Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
~James Madison

Look at you in war...There has never been a just one, never an honorable one, on the part of the instigator of the war.
~Mark Twain

Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it.
~Noam Chomsky

[Canuckistanian]

17. Good quotes, thanks

And welcome to DU!

:toast:
:hi:

[unhappycamper]

20. Hey Afghan_Vet!

Welcome to DU!!1! :hi:

[Call Me Wesley]

21. Welcome to DU, Afghan_Vet!

Glad to have you here! :hi:

[Marie26]

11. K&R

Unbelievable.

[redqueen]

12. K&R

:kick:

[slowry]

13. K&R&H&R n/t

[Kurovski]

14. It sounds like he got caught in the structured web of corruption

That is Bush's war. Maybe he was just SUPPOSED to let the nefarious activities continue unimpeded. The company has reformed, according to Phinney. I dunno.

"If they can do this to a former Navy man and an American, what is happening to people in facilities all over the world run by the American government?"

[aikoaiko]

18. Note to self-- Don't work for corrupt Iraqi securuty firms.

otherwise I might get caught up in some serious shit even from my (American) side of things.

[philosophie_en_rose]

15. Who tortured his own people?

Sounds like the only reason Bush hated Saddam was to eliminate the competition.

[Afghan_Vet]

23. That's The Idea, Philosophie. . .

Few people know that Hussein had decided to discontinue trading his oil in Dollars, opting instead for the Euro. That did not bode well for either US oil interests or the US economy as a whole. At the time, and to a large extent still today, the Dollar depends on the backing of the Iraqi oil reserves to prop it up against the Euro. Any deviation on the part of Iraq away from the Dollar would have been devastating for our energy industry, and would have likely pulled the rug of economic stability, however worn it may be, from under our feet.

Petroleum has been the main focus of the NeoCons since before Bush stole the election (or Rehnquist gave it to him!--it was a distinct pleasure to defile his grave before the earth had even settled around it!). Why else would the president spend the summer of 2001 negotiating with "known terrorist supporters and an oppressive regime", the Taliban, for a pipeline through Afghanistan, then rush to oust them from power mere months later? The invasion of Afghanistan and then Iraq marked the overt beginning of militant imperialism as the basis of US foreign policy.


Imperialism is an institution under which one nation asserts the right to seize the land or at least to control the government or resources of another people.

~John T. Flynn


Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. It's great to be here!!

[TahitiNut]

19. "a two-time George W. Bush voter"??

Man-o-man ... karma sure can be a bitch. As a "private security contractor" perhaps he learned that jumping into the corrupt political food-chain carries with it a risk of being eaten instead of eater.

It's a helluva price to pay for stupidity, though. :shrug:

Lessons delayed are just bigger lessons later.

[Pastiche423]

22. Greed is unhealthy

Not only did he vote for El Mono TWICE, but he was in Iraq for the big money.

Instant Karma can get ya.