Save Our Sheriff

SOS Admin wrote on 1275288518|%e %b, %H:%M (%O ago)
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Arlington Cemetery's Section 60 is where military service members who died in Iraq and Afghanistan lie. It's a place to remember, a place to mourn. For many others, those untouched by war, this Memorial Day as just like any other holiday: a day to picnic, drink beer and watch children play. Certainly, there is a time for everything, but as adults, let us not neglect this occasion. Let's try to remember the terrible price that was paid to secure our liberty, and moreover, the war America is now fighting—and that cost to our Nation.

10 Things To Remember

1. To date, there have been 90,955 documented U.S. troop casualties in the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of these, 4,378 troops have died; 37,280 have been wounded in action; and 48,272 have been medically evacuated due to injury or disease.

2. The Department of Defense last year warned that as many as 20 percent of veterans (360,000) may have suffered traumatic brain injury from IED blasts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blast injuries generally do not result in skull fractures or loss of consciousness yet the Institute of Medicine has reported that these traumatic brain injuries may cause diffuse brain bleeding and result in PTSD and problems with mood, attention, concentration, memory, pain, balance, hearing and vision.

3. 508,152 Iraq and Afghanistan veterans are patients in the VA system. Thousands more are waiting as much as a year for VA treatment for serious ailments including traumatic brain injury. 243,685 (48 percent) are mental health patients and 143,530 (28 percent) are being treated for PTSD. A recent University of Michigan study demonstrated that PTSD sufferers have more physical illness in later life as their immune systems take back seats to systems needed for crises.

4. Every day, five U.S. soldiers attempt suicide, a 500 percent increase since 2001.

5. Every day 18 U.S. veterans attempt suicide, more than four times the national average. Of the 30,000 suicides each year in the U.S., 20 percent are committed by veterans, though veterans make up only 7.6 percent of the population.

6. Female veteran suicide is rising at a rate higher than male veteran suicides.

7. In 2009, there were 3,230 reports of sexual assault including rape, according to the DoD, with many more that number thought to be unreported. In a 2003 survey of female veterans 30 percent reported being raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans with PTSD reported that 71 percent of women seeking treatment said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving in the military.

8. The number of U.S. service men and women killed in Afghanistan has doubled in the first quarter of 2010. compared to the same quarter last year. In the first two months of 2010, injuries tripled, with U.S. casualties expected to rise still more with the troop surge in Afghanistan.

9. 2,052,405 service men and women have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001. Over 40 percent of them have been deployed two or more times. Some will have been deployed as many as five years Currently 94,000 U.S. troops are serving in Afghanistan and 92,000 in Iraq.

And last but not least:

10. Estimates of civilian deaths from violence in Iraq alone range from a conservative 105,000 (Iraq Body Count project) to over 1.2 million (UK pollster Opinion Research Business), with estimates by Johns Hopkins at 655,000. More than 125,000 civilians have been injured in Iraq and 4 million displaced, with civilian death and injury in 2010 rising each month. By most estimates, tens of thousands of Afghan civilians have been killed or injured since the 2001 invasion, over 200,00 have been internally displaced, and over 2 million have become refugees, with civilian deaths and injuries rising dramatically in 2010.

The war in Iraq is in its seventh year. The war in Afghanistan, in its ninth year, is the longest war in our history. On Memorial Day, as we remember the dead and wounded, ours and theirs, the latest installment of 30,000 new troops is readying for new battles with Taliban fighters in Kandahar. 135 years after the end of our Civil War, our nation is engaged in near civil wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which we had a part in starting and no plans for ending.

This fact is heavy on my mind as I return from my recent trip to Texas where I visited the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg. It is dedicated to everyone who served in the Pacific in World War II under Admiral Chester W. Nimitz. Nimitz, the last of the five-star admirals, was a native son of Fredericksburg.

Being an avid reader it took two whole days to walk through this National Museum and gave me a lot to think about this Memorial Day. Mostly what I'm thinking about is how different America is today and the direction we are heading. The treatment of our soldiers by the government is reprehensible in the extreme.

Our soldiers are fighting, dying and killing in two wars, with the promise of more to come, and for what? A natural gas pipeline? For the sake of Oil, Israel and Opium? Is it that really that profit driven? Yes, I fear it is.

America needs to wake up to the fact that our politicial “leaders” are enemis to the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We need to honest with ourselves about the fact our politicians work for BP, Goldman Sachs, the FED and they do not represent WE THE PEOPLE.

All theses Big Money parasites who run the show in Washington from behind the curtain are our enemies….they launch wars for profit as they militarize local police here at home. They don't care if our soldier are exposed to depleted uranium any more than they care about your 1st amendment rights. When will the American people say enough?

…such a time is now!

Do you really want another world war? Do you really want to see America turned into a police state? Think about that this Memorial Day. Then go find a Oath Keeper you can support for Sheriff. In my view, there is no better way to stop this New World Order than at the county line. The reality is we are living under a Bankster occupation now (Washington D.C. was lost a long time ago) the only way to take back our country is from the bottom-up. Turning things around must start with the Office of Sheriff.

"Our own Country's Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions - The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth." —George Washington, General Orders, 1776.