This is no misunderstanding.

The VA and DoJ know what they did.

The VA and DoJ indicted and convicted an innocent Wisconsin Navy veteran who blew the whistle, in arguably obnoxious tones of voice, on the VA engaging in one instance of fraud, and the VA's general bureaucratic stall-and-let-the-veterans-die-before-collecting-on-their-claims-policy.

Now comes the latest exculpatory evidence on U.S. Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968–71), a Wisconsin citizen who became a political and legal VA target because he would not keep his mouth shut.

- Lee Rayburn for a full hour discussing the Keith Roberts obscenity - [Give the radio show's file some time to load, hour-long show.]

Madison, Wisconsin — Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1969-71) sits in a federal penitentiary in Minnesota, serving a 48-month sentence since March, awaiting news from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit of his appeal for his conviction on federal wire fraud.

Wow!

I'm having flashbacks for sure.

UW students will protest on the Madison campus against a recruiting visit by Halliburton.

There's a national antiwar Moratorium on Friday.

And, right on cue, just like when they used to yell "Take a bath!" at protestors in the 60s, the wingnuts complain about what anti-war people look like.

Some fun now, hey?

George W. Bush's invoking the Vietnam withdrawal and post-World War II American occupation of Japan to support the continued occupation of Iraq is of-course laughable on its academic merits. [Via the Poltico, see one Bush-cited historian's knocking down such a comparison in November 2002.]

To the anti-intellectual and authoritarian Bush administration, facts and history are malleable instruments that can be changed to fit whatever ideological and political objective is on the administration docket.

But the well-crafted and politically risky speech is revealing of the desperate situation in which the anxious administration fabulists and fantasists find themselves.

They well know that if the invasion and occupation were to continue into the 2008 elections and be perceived by the electorate in anything resembling reality, the war party would face losses approaching the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election.

This is a column I wrote in 1969, for a small Illinois daily newspaper, of which I was the editor. I've resisted the urge to edit it. I think it could be greatly improved, but let it stand the way I wrote it when I was 26 and the memory was still fresh. 

 I visit Bob Davis at the Vietnam Wall every time I am in Washington, D. C. The casualty numbers are smaller, but I feel the same way today about Iraq as I did about Vietnam when I wrote this 38 years ago. -- Bill Christofferson.

* * *

Bob Davis was so easygoing it was hard to believe he was real.

Even Marine Corps boot camp didn't get him down. His only comment, no matter what ridiculous experience or torture we were undergoing, would be, "I don't believe this."

He was proud to be a Marine. Even had a "USMC" tattooed on his arm. Unlike most, he didn't apologize for it or say he got it when he was drinking.

He couldn't wait to get to Vietnam. After all, that's what he came in the Marine Corps for -- to do his bit, get out and get back to Alton (Ill.) and his girl, Sue. I was supposed to meet Sue on my next leave, when Bob and I returned Stateside. We didn't know he'd be coming back much sooner than I would -- in a rubber bag.