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Cover Story--Cover Up?

CoverStory

Chemical casualties
Colorado soldiers Andrew Pogany and Bill Howell were devastated by Operation
Iraqi Freedom. What caused the damage?

By Joel Warner (editorial@boulderweekly.com
)

Most of the conversation Staff Sgt. Georg-Andreas Pogany and Chief Warrant
Officer William Howell had before they deployed to Iraq is classified. The
two soldiers sat down in mid-September 2003 at Fort Carson in Colorado
Springs to discuss their upcoming mission, which was to take them to one of
the most dangerous regions in Iraq with some of the United States' most
elite soldiers.

Georg-Andreas, better known as Andrew, was a support soldier attached to the
10th Special Forces Group based in Fort Carson. He had just learned that
he'd been picked to fill a vacancy on a 12-man Special Forces Operational
Detachment Alpha, or A-team, that was to leave for Iraq in less than two
weeks. The rest of the team had been training and learning to work together
for ages. Andrew, 32, hardly knew them.

William, who went by Bill, was the second in command on the A-team. At 36,
he had been in the Special Forces for a decade, having worked in Haiti,
Kosovo and Bosnia. This was to be Bill's second deployment to Iraq.

Andrew and Bill remained professional throughout their conversation; they
knew each other only through brief interactions at Fort Carson. At one
point, Bill mentioned his family. He was excited about his newborn daughter,
just days old. Andrew and the rest of the A-team would arrive in Iraq before
Bill, so that Bill could spend a few more days with his wife, Laura, and
their children. The conversation likely caused Andrew to think about his own
wife, Michelle, and their dogs, Amelia, CC and Tippy.

Bill asked Andrew if he was ready to go to Iraq. Andrew said he was.

"You'll have a good time down there," said Bill, or something along those
lines. "We'll roll our sleeves up, and we'll do our work, and before we know
it, we'll all be home."

Bill and Andrew would never see each other again. Bill was only half-right
in his prediction: One of them would return home faster than anyone could
have imagined. The other, arguably, never truly returned home at all.

Deployment

Andrew Pogany, whose cropped hair and boyish face made him look younger than
his age, always knew he wanted a career in law enforcement or intelligence.
He was a natural for the work. Fluent in German, Hungarian and English,
Andrew had a knack for remembering details. He had a sharp wit and a
deliberate way of talking that demonstrated his acumen. In conversation, he
would look straight at those with whom he was speaking, as if he were
reading them.

A naturalized citizen, Andrew grew up in Germany and came to the United
States as an exchange student at the University of South Florida, earning
his associate's degree in criminal justice and law enforcement and his
bachelor's in criminology. In the meantime, while working in a Florida bar,
he met a woman named Michelle. He married her 10 months later.

After college, Andrew, then 26, joined the Army full time. It was a natural
choice for someone who wanted a leg up in the intel community. He would
learn the intelligence trade and travel all over the world. The Army trained
Andrew as an interrogator and, after stints in Texas and Arizona, assigned
him in 2001 to the 10th Special Forces Group out of Fort Carson.

While not a Green Beret himself, Andrew thrived with the Special Forces. He
loved his job, signing off his e-mails with the Special Forces' motto, "De
oppresso liber," which means "Liberator of the oppressed." He received a
superior rating on his military review and was recommended for immediate
promotion. His future promising, he bought a house outside of Colorado
Springs with enough room for himself, Michelle and their three dogs.

Operation Iraqi Freedom began in March 2003 with the bombing of Baghdad. By
that summer, many soldiers at Fort Carson had been deployed to Iraq. Andrew,
a support soldier, stayed behind. In September, just after he returned from
a basic noncommissioned officers course, Andrew got the call. Two soldiers
slotted to deploy to Iraq with a Special Forces A-team had either been
pulled off the mission or had found a way to avoid going. Andrew had been
chosen to fill one of the vacancies.

Andrew was being asked to serve in one of the most highly trained elements
of the U.S. Army. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Special Forces had been an integral
part of the United States' War on Terrorism. Trained in unconventional
warfare, such as guerilla operations, reconnaissance and anti-terrorism,
12-man Special Forces units called A-teams had been among the first forces
to deploy in Afghanistan and Iraq. A-team members were carefully selected
and extensively trained for their missions prior to deployment. Andrew was
not a Special Forces operator, and he missed the pre-mission training for
his A-team.

During wartime, A-teams often operate in areas of intense combat. In
Andrew's case, he would be deployed to Samarra, a city north of Baghdad in
the "Sunni Triangle," a region in central Iraq known for heavy insurgency
attacks.

Andrew did not question his assignment. He had trained for deployment for
years. There was no other option.

The A-team was scheduled to leave for Iraq on Tuesday, Sept. 23. Andrew had
two weeks to get ready. He secretly resumed his smoking habit. If he had
concerns, he didn't voice them to Michelle. They both knew there were
endless possibilities as to what could happen in Iraq, but they tried not to
think about it.

* * *

Howdy Doody. That's what some acquaintances jokingly called William Howell,
thanks to his clean-cut appearance and tendency to blush. He was better
looking than that, however, and he was too smart to let anyone jerk him
around like a puppet.

Bill was a career soldier. He'd joined the Army in 1986, right after
graduating high school in Texas. The idea of college bored Bill, while the
Army offered him seemingly limitless options. He appreciated the military's
discipline and control, the absolute certainty that if he completed certain
tasks, he would achieve a new rank.

After seven years in the Army, Bill began to feel stifled. It seemed like he
had to dumb himself down to fit in. So he joined the Special Forces. Here,
in this close-knit, highly trained community, demands were both physical and
cerebral. As part of the 10th Special Forces Group, Bill worked as a sniper,
traveling to hot zones including Haiti, Kosovo and Bosnia.

Bill's first marriage didn't work out. He met a more suitable match in 1998
at a cold-weather training at Copper Mountain. She was a civilian named
Laura, who was on a ski trip with her friends. Laura was bright, witty and
cute-just like Bill. They met the night before Laura was to fly back to
Michigan. Bill didn't get her last name or phone number, but Laura told her
friends the next day that she knew she was going to marry him. She was
right.

In 2001, after dating long distance for three years, Laura and her son from
a previous marriage moved in with Bill in Colorado Springs. Soon after, Bill
and Laura got married. The two were a good match: They got along easily, but
Laura wasn't about to make Bill lord of the manor just because he was a
Green Beret. He could go skeet shooting, ride his Harley and practice his
gunsmith skills in the basement, but he also had to help out around the
house. This included looking after their first child together, a girl, born
in 2002.

When Bill learned he would be deployed to Iraq in February 2003, he was
thrilled. He'd been devastated when he did not serve in the Persian Gulf
War. Now, after training for 13 years, he would have his chance to go to the
Middle East.

Bill spent four months in Iraq in spring 2003. When he returned in May, he
didn't talk to Laura about what happened there; that was normal. But he was
tiring of the Special Forces life, sick of being away from home six to nine
months a year. After 17 years in the Army, his body was wearing out-his back
was tired, his knees were tired. He was ready to let go of the machismo that
comes with being part of a Special Forces A-team.

The summer of 2003 was the longest period of time Bill had ever spent at
home, and it made him happy. Laura had just moved the family to a
comfortable home in Monument. She was pregnant with their second child. For
the first time in his military career, Bill made his family a higher
priority than his profession.

When Bill's second rotation to Iraq came up in September 2003, he found he
didn't want to go. Deployment would mean another Christmas spent in the
field, another missed birthday, another hockey season gone. His second
daughter had just been born, and he had just weeks to be with her before he
had to leave.

Bill had known he would be sent back to Iraq. He just didn't know it would
be so soon.

Complications

Iraq was dirty. That's what struck Andrew. Dirty and smelly, sand and
garbage everywhere.

Andrew arrived in Iraq with the A-team on Saturday, Sept. 27, 2003. Once in
country, everything seemed to move quickly. After arriving at a large U.S.
military facility, Andrew and the other soldiers unloaded their gear,
pre-loaded their convoy of trucks and ran through pre-combat checks and
pre-combat inspections, verifying that all personnel, equipment and vehicles
were ready for the mission. Despite the activity, Andrew didn't sleep that
night.

The next morning, Andrew drove one of the Land Rovers in the convoy as they
traveled through the Sunni Triangle to Samarra. He and the support soldier
sitting next to him held loaded M4 rifles on their laps, nozzles out the
window. Andrew silently scanned the area for signs of possible attacks or
improvised explosive devices on the road.

Halfway to Samarra, the 5-ton cargo truck ahead of Andrew stopped abruptly.
Guys jumped out. The truck's front wheel-not just a tire, the whole
wheel-had fallen off. The convoy was going to have to wait for a tow truck
and a replacement cargo truck. They were close to where another convoy had
recently been ambushed.

Andrew set up a security point at the front of the convoy. He trained his
gun on every car that drove by. Even with a 50-caliber machine gun covering
him, Andrew felt vulnerable. He watched donkeys go by, the shacks and huts
along the road, the guy with a camel sitting nearby, selling watermelons. He
noticed all the Mercedes and Rolls Royces, as if Europe had donated its old
luxury cars to Iraq. One BMW had a German license plate.

Andrew spoke to one of the Green Berets who had been in the country for a
couple of weeks.

"This is Indian country down here," the soldier told Andrew. "You'll be
lucky to make it out alive."

It took five hours for the tow truck and replacement truck to arrive. When
the convoy rolled out, it was getting dark. Now all Andrew could see was
where his headlights shone in front of him. The soldier next to him started
mumbling.

"Do you like green eggs and ham? I do! I like them, Sam-I-am!"

It was like Rain Man. In a house. With a mouse. In a box. With a fox. Andrew
finally got a cigarette in the guy's mouth and shut him up.

The convoy arrived at Samarra at about 9 p.m. Andrew was told the compound
at which he would be stationed was under attack almost every night. Mortars
had demolished parts of the buildings, and many windows had been shot out.

The soldiers unloaded the trucks in silence. Andrew was assigned to a
bedroom in a single-story wing of one of the buildings. During orientation,
a soldier told Andrew that the compound had been heavily mortared a few
nights before. He pointed out the craters in the ground where the mortars
had hit. Each successive mortar had landed a little closer to the building.
The last mortar had not exploded. It was embedded in the ground next to
Andrew's room.

Andrew unloaded his gear in his bedroom. He laid out his body armor and
helmet so that if he needed to, he could grab them quickly. He took the
round out of the chamber of his M4 and reloaded its magazine. He took off
his sidearm and boots. Finally, he unrolled his sleeping bag on the bed,
laid down and tried to go to sleep.

An hour and a half later, there was gunfire nearby. Andrew went outside to
smoke and asked a soldier what was happening. It was most likely a wedding,
he was told. Iraqis like to fire guns in the air during weddings.

Andrew returned to his room and laid down. Close to midnight, there was more
gunfire, then explosions. He could hear the sounds of trucks coming and
going from the compound. It sounded like all hell was breaking loose.

Andrew got out of bed. A medic ran into the building and told Andrew that
one of their patrols had been ambushed and a bunch of Iraqis had been shot
up. He said there were prisoners.

Andrew went outside and approached the next building. Inside there was
chaos.

Ambulances and Humvees. Smoke and blood everywhere. People screaming.

Andrew could smell blood. He stood in the doorway of the building. To his
right, he saw a body bag lying on the ground. Two guys walked over and
opened it.

Inside, Andrew saw the body of an Iraqi.

The Iraqi had been shot by a U.S. Army Bradley armored fighting vehicle.

The body had caught a 20 mm round in its torso.

The body bag was open for six seconds. But it was more than Andrew needed to
see.

Andrew turned away and walked back outside. He saw five Iraqi prisoners
handcuffed and on the ground. One had a gaping leg wound; the lower part of
his leg was completely ripped apart.

Andrew noticed a U.S. soldier, maybe 21 or 22, sitting on a table against a
wall. He was pale, shaking. Other soldiers walked by, pointed and laughed at
the kid. Andrew asked one of them who the kid was. He's the driver or gunner
of the Bradley, someone said. The one that shot up the Iraqi.

Some soldiers learn to deal with the violence they see by laughing at it.
Andrew was never one of them. He started to feel like the shaking kid. But
he couldn't let the others see he wasn't OK. He was Special Forces.

He walked back to his building. On the way, everything started moving in
slow motion. Andrew. Other soldiers. Everything.

Andrew smoked a cigarette and tried to go to bed. It didn't work. Thirty
minutes later, he ran to the latrine and threw up. When he returned to his
room, he was trembling. Then came the terror.

After 15 minutes, he tried to collect himself. It's going to be like this
everyday, he thought. This will all become normal.

But it didn't work. He fell asleep, dreamed horrible dreams and woke up
panicked. The room exploded around him. The ceiling caved in. The mortar
embedded in the ground outside finally detonated. He didn't know if it was
real or a hallucination.

He picked up his M4, put a round in it and put it on the bed next to him. He
put his sidearm back on. If the door to his room had opened, he would have
fired.

The next morning, Andrew's hands were still shaking. He was dry heaving. He
went to see his team sergeant.

It was not an easy decision. He was the odd man out on the team; they didn't
know him. Maybe they would think he'd lost it. But he had to tell somebody.
If they went out on a mission and he was the third or fourth or fifth guy in
line and he lost it, the guy in front or in back of him would probably get
killed.

Andrew told his team sergeant he needed help.

The sergeant just looked at him. "Do you think you're the only one who
didn't sleep last night?"

But Andrew knew something was wrong. He had been a volunteer firefighter,
had seen some gruesome stuff. He had never experienced a reaction like this.
He told his sergeant he thought he was having a nervous breakdown.

His sergeant told him to pull his head out of his ass, get himself together
and act like a soldier. Andrew was told to go away and think about what he
was saying, because it could lead to serious complications for his career.

Andrew returned to his room, unsure what to do. He tried to eat a
Nutri-Grain bar. It tasted disgusting. He had diarrhea, couldn't drink,
became dehydrated. The only thing he could do was smoke cigarettes. He lit
up one after another, burning through four packs that day.

Andrew was confined to his room and relieved of his weapons. He was given
two sleeping pills-Ambien-which knocked him out for seven hours. His head
filled with bizarre nightmares, and he woke up in the middle of the night
with a feeling of impending doom.

He returned to his team sergeant and told him again that he needed help. The
sergeant said that wasn't an option.

"So everything's not an option," Andrew said. "So, well, if you can't help
me here, I guess you are going to have to send me home."

The next day, Andrew and his belongings were loaded onto a convoy. He heard
that, earlier that day, a convoy had been attacked nearby. Now, in the dark,
they would drive the same route.

Andrew requested his weapons back. His superiors said no.

The convoy took Andrew to a large military compound in Tikrit fashioned from
one of Saddam Hussein's palaces. He was put under suicide watch.

For several days, Andrew had been asking to see a chaplain. At Tikrit, he
was allowed to meet with one. He told the chaplain what had happened: the
body, the nightmares, the room collapsing. The chaplain looked at Andrew and
said his reaction was normal. It happened on a daily basis. He said Andrew
didn't have anything to worry about.

Andrew broke down and cried.

The chaplain brought Andrew to the combat-stress control team of the 85th
Medical Detachment, which was stationed at Tikrit. An army psychologist
listened to Andrew's story for an hour and a half. Then the psychologist
repeated what the chaplain had said: Andrew was having an abnormal reaction
to an abnormal environment, which was normal. Completely normal.

The psychologist told Andrew he should spend a couple of days with the
combat-stress control team, where he'd get plenty of rest, good meals and
counseling. He said Andrew should be able to return to duty within a week.
The psychologist suggested the same in his report to Andrew's superiors:
"Soldier reported signs of symptoms consistent with those of a normal
combat-stress reaction. Short-term rest, stress-coping skills, and/or brief
removal from more dangerous situations are often adequate to resolve such
reactions. If desired, the combat-stress team can work with this soldier at
FOB Speicher. Rest and a concentrated stress-reduction program are provided,
with return to duty assumed."

Andrew's superiors had different plans.

On Andrew's sixth day of war, he was told to report to his commander and
sergeant major at 11 a.m. For an hour, the officers berated him.

You are a coward, they said. We're gonna make sure everyone back home knows
what you did. If it were 50 years ago, we'd take you out back and shoot you
in the head.

They told him he was going home.

On Tuesday, Oct. 7, Andrew landed at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado
Springs. The rest of the soldiers on the plane met their families, but
Andrew was met by armed guards, who searched him and put him in a Suburban.
They drove Andrew to Fort Carson, where his commander ordered him to the
hospital for an immediate emergency suicide evaluation. Then he was escorted
home to Michelle. Before he was released, he had to turn over his personal
weapon, a 9 mm pistol.

One week later, he was called onto the carpet by his superiors. They read
him the charges: Violating Article 99 of the Uniform Code of Military
Justice-cowardly conduct as a result of fear. The last recorded conviction
of a U.S. soldier for cowardice was in 1968. It was a crime punishable by
death.

Andrew was stripped of his security clearance, stripped of his job. He sat
in a chair at the base all day or swept the parking lot. He was harassed
constantly, a monkey in a cage. Only half a dozen friends stood by him.

Two days later, the local paper broke the story. His answering machine was
swamped with calls from the media. Paula Zahn. Soledad O'Brien. What a news
hook: "coward." The perfect counterpoint to Private Jessica Lynch, America's
hero.

Andrew continued to experience panic, anxiety, confusion, nightmares,
depression. He kept the symptoms to himself, hid them even from Michele. He
would hide in his bedroom, his car, anywhere where no one could see him.

The first thing he tried to do was figure out what was going on inside of
him. He didn't think he was just going crazy. There had to be something
physically wrong with him.

* * *

Bill returned from Iraq on Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004. While he'd been stationed
in Samarra in December, the city had been the scene of a bloody
confrontation. The military reported that more than 50 insurgents had been
killed. He didn't talk to Laura about it, nor did he say much about his team
sergeant, who'd been killed in January. He never really said anything about
Staff Sgt. Andrew Pogany. Bill had been deployed later than the rest of his
team; by the time he'd arrived in Iraq, Pogany had been shipped out of the
country. All Bill said to Laura was, "OK, I'm home."

Bill seemed happy to be back with his family. He was tired of being away,
tired of work, ready to recharge his batteries. Other than a slight skin
rash and diarrhea, he seemed fine.

On Sunday, March 14, three weeks after he'd returned, Bill and his stepson
left home at 7:30 a.m. to go skeet and trap shooting with Bill's father.

The weather was decent that day. Bill and his stepson returned home at 3
p.m. Bill was excited; he'd finally out-shot his father. He unloaded the
ammunitions and firearms, cleaned them and put them away in the basement.
When he came upstairs, Laura was working on the family taxes. Someone needed
to make a run to the grocery store, and Bill offered to go.

He returned home an hour later, agitated.

"You'd never guess who I ran into," Bill said to Laura. There was an edge to
his voice.

She knew immediately: Bill's ex-wife. The ex had told him he'd never have to
worry about seeing his daughter from his first marriage again. She'd said
she was going to move away with the child. It was a typical conversation for
Bill and his ex-wife, the type of confrontation that would put him in a bad
mood for hours.

Laura made dinner for the kids, put the youngest two to bed. At 6:30 p.m.,
the phone rang. It was one of Bill's Army buddies. Bill talked on the phone
for an hour and a half, drinking Jack and Cokes. He had three or four of
them.

At 8 p.m., he hung up the phone, in a foul mood. When Laura walked to the
kitchen, he tried to trip her.

Laura knew when she'd done something to piss him off; this time she hadn't
done anything. Bill followed Laura into the kitchen. When she tried to get
to the refrigerator, he stood in her way.

"I need milk for my cereal," Laura said.

Bill didn't move.

Laura didn't say anything but reached around him and took the milk out of
the refrigerator.

A little after 9 p.m., Bill found Laura in the den and said, "Take out the
fucking trash."

He was snarling. He'd never talked to her like that.

Laura face him. "What did you just say?"

"Take out the fucking trash."

"No," she responded. "One, you don't talk to me like that. Two, you're not
my dad. You can't tell me what to do-"

Bill punched Laura in the forehead.

Laura hit him back, a blow to his mouth. Bill stepped back, then punched her
twice, in the eye and the neck. His rage was quiet, controlled.

Laura told Bill he had 10 minutes to get out of the house.

"I've told you and told you never to bring violence into this house," she
said. "Whatever you've seen on the job, whatever you've done, you've brought
it here, which is not acceptable. You are going to have to find somewhere
else to go for a while. You can't stay here and conduct yourself that way.
It's not going to happen."

Laura walked into the living room, where her son was watching The Matrix on
TV. She told him to go upstairs and take a shower.

Ten minutes later, Bill was still there. He confronted Laura in the kitchen
and began yelling at her.

You don't love me, he said. You've cheated on me. You're a bitch.

He wasn't making any sense.

Laura fired back. You're not in Iraq anymore. I want a divorce.

This went on for 15 minutes, until Laura told Bill he was going to have to
get one of his friends to come pick him up, or she was going to call the
police.

"Fine," he said. "I'll make a mess of your fucking house."

He walked out of the room, and Laura heard the basement door open.

The only thing down there were his guns.

Laura picked up the cordless phone in the kitchen. She ran out to hide in
the backyard and dialed 911.

"My husband just hit me, and he's going downstairs to get his gun," she told
the dispatcher.

When Bill walked out into the backyard where Laura was hiding, she hung up
the phone, afraid he would hear her. She thought she could make out a weapon
under his gray sweatshirt.

The 911 dispatcher called back. Laura picked up. Bill did, too.

"Hello. Hello," said Bill into the phone. His voice was flat.

"Yeah, who am I speaking with?" said the dispatcher.

"Who's calling?" said Bill.

"This is Mike with the Sheriff's Office."

"Yes, sir."

"Your wife just called and said you guys were having some problems there?"

"Well, that's fine."

"Can you tell me what's going on?"

"Well, I don't know. She's the one that called, you should talk to her."

"OK, can I talk to her?"

"I don't know where she is."

"OK, is everything OK there?"

"It's OK by me."

"Well, what's going on?"

"I don't know."

"OK, is everything OK there?"

"I think it's fine."

"OK, do you know why she called?"

"I have no idea."

"OK, who else is at home with you? Is it just you and your wife at home?"

"Yeah, the best thing would be to talk to my wife."

"OK, can you go ahead and put her on the line?"

"Hold on."

Bill hung up. While he'd been talking, Laura had moved around the side of
the house. When she reached the front yard, she saw two police officers
approaching from the street. Then she heard the front door open.

Laura took one step forward, and Bill met her between the garage and their
truck, which was parked in the driveway. He grabbed her by the shirt and
pulled a gun out of his waistband. A .357-caliber revolver. It was huge.
Bill pointed the gun at Laura's face.

"You're going to watch this. You're going to watch this," he said.

He meant that she would watch while he shot her.

Laura smacked away the hand holding the revolver.

It was then the officers noticed the gun.

"Sir, drop the gun. Sir, drop the gun. It's not worth it. Sir, drop the
gun."

Bill took a couple steps backward, the gun pointed at Laura.

Then he raised the gun to his head and pulled the trigger.

One of the officers fired, hitting Bill in the arm, but it was too late. The
.357-caliber bullet had already blasted through Bill's head.

Chief Warrant Officer William Howell was dead.

Laura spent the next week coordinating the funeral and answering questions
from the sheriff's department and the Army. Reporters suggested the suicide
cast doubt on the military's mental-health screening for returning vets.

Laura didn't know what to think. She'd known Bill for six years. Until he'd
pulled the trigger, it hadn't occurred to her that he would commit suicide.

Bill had a temper and had been violent before. In 2001, he'd hit Laura. He
was on anabolic steroids at the time. He'd always been sensitive to drugs,
and the steroids likely caused him lose his temper. Even then, Bill had been
able to stop himself; he'd got off the steroids and had never hit Laura
again.

Bill had been a member of an A-team. He'd been trained to be in control at
all times. He'd lived his life under control.

On the night of March 14, there had been no control. It didn't make sense.
Laura had looked into Bill's eyes. Nothing had seemed to be registering.

As Laura relived the night in her head, one thing kept bothering her. It had
to do with the police.

Bill had walked into his front yard with a loaded handgun, while police
officers approached the house. Laura had noticed the officers; Bill should
have noticed them, too.

Bill had been exceptionally bright, able to outthink, outtalk and
out-maneuver almost anybody. There was no way a Special Forces soldier like
him was going to give up his entire career after a few drinks and a fight
with his wife. Bill could have easily ditched the gun or evaded the
officers. Or he could have killed the police, and Laura, without too much
trouble.

That is, unless there was something very wrong with Bill.

* * *

For both Andrew and Laura, the answers started with a phone call.

Two and a half weeks after he returned from Iraq, Andrew received a call
from his newly hired lawyer. Andrew had been through enough at that point to
know he needed legal help. The lawyer asked Andrew if he'd taken
antimalarial pills in Iraq. Andrew thought back and realized that he had.

The day he'd been assigned to the A-team, he'd met the team medic, who'd
handed Andrew a box of pills. The medic had said the pills would prevent
malaria and that the team had to take them every Monday. They'd called it
Malaria Monday to remember.

Andrew had taken the first two pills before he'd deployed. He'd put the foil
blister packs of scored, white pills in his first-aid kit when he'd packed,
leaving the box at home. He'd taken the third pill the morning of his
initial panic attack.

Laura received the first call a few days after Bill died from a soldier
she'd never heard of, who'd never met Bill.

At first Laura said she didn't want to talk. But the soldier kept calling
back. Finally she agreed to speak to him.

The soldier told her he was sick. He described his symptoms; they sounded a
lot like what Bill had experienced the night of his suicide. The soldier
told Laura to find out whether Bill had taken antimalarial pills.

Laura did as the soldier suggested and found a notation in Bill's medical
records indicating that he had.

Both Andrew and Bill had been taking a drug called mefloquine hydrochloride,
better known as Lariam.

Answers

In 1965, the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) was in trouble. In Vietnam,
malaria was downing 800 soldiers a month, a greater number than those
dropped by North Vietnamese bullets. Malaria, a mosquito-born parasite,
causes fever, nausea, chills, sweats, headaches, general malaise and, in
severe cases, death.

Chloroquine, the antimalarial drug of choice for decades, was no longer
working. In some regions, the parasites had become immune to the medication.
Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, DOD's primary biomedical research
laboratory, screened a quarter-million compounds in search of a replacement.
They came up with mefloquine hydrochloride.

A structural cousin to quinine, mefloquine hydrochloride was found to be
highly effective in preventing malaria. Army experiments with the drug
reportedly revealed few side effects. In locations where chloroquine was
failing, mefloquine hydrochloride worked.

In 1989, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a commercial
version of mefloquine hydrochloride, manufactured by the Swiss
pharmaceutical company F. Hoffman-La Roche. Roche, as the company is more
commonly known, named the drug Lariam.

Lariam was desperately needed. While malaria had been effectively eradicated
in the United States in the 1950s, nearly half of the world's population
lived in areas where malaria was transmitted, including parts of Africa,
Asia, the Middle East and Central and South America. In these regions,
millions of people died of malaria each year. Older antimalarial drugs were
often no longer an option. The problem was so severe that the Peace Corps
considered abandoning its Africa programs when half of its volunteers there
contracted chloroquine-resistant malaria.

Thanks to Lariam, malaria cases dropped immediately. It was hailed as a
miracle drug, becoming the drug of choice for many of the most malaria-prone
places in the world. These were the places where America's tourists went for
vacation-and where America's soldiers went to fight.

* * *

B. Meredith Burke had an overwhelming urge to experience what it would feel
like to walk through space. She kept eyeing the window of her high-rise
hotel.

In 1991, Meredith, a demographer and writer working as a contractor for the
World Bank, was in Nigeria on a business trip. Something was very wrong. She
was considering jumping out her window. For the past few days, she'd been
experiencing tingling in her hands and feet, violent dreams, hallucinations.
When she mentioned her symptoms to her companions, they asked if she was
taking Lariam. She said yes, and they advised her to stop taking it.

Meredith recovered, but she wasn't satisfied. When she returned to the
United States, she asked other World Bank employees if they had taken Lariam
while traveling, and she began collecting horror stories. As a professional
demographer, Meredith suspected Lariam caused serious side effects more
frequently than its manufacturer, Roche, suggested.

In 1997, Meredith founded Lariam Action USA, a volunteer organization
providing information and services for people with questions about Lariam.

Lariam Action USA collected countless stories of strange side effects
apparently linked to Lariam. A British schoolmaster who'd inexplicably
stolen thousands of dollars of school-trip money. A former Democratic
congressman who'd said he'd lost all ability to tell right from wrong and
had swindled millions of dollars from friends. A young traveler who'd
thought the television was telling her to live on another planet. A police
sergeant who'd suffered two seizures without explanation and hadn't been
able to resume normal work for years. A hospital administrator who'd dealt
with a lingering pain in the base of his skull by placing a shotgun where it
hurt and pulling the trigger.

Members of Lariam Action USA suspected the science behind Lariam was flawed;
they believed it had been faulty since the drug was introduced.

When Lariam was first licensed in the United States in 1989, the medication
was recommended at a dosage of one 250-milligram pill every two weeks. A
year later, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommended increasing the
dosage to one pill a week. The change was based on a study of Peace Corps
volunteers taking mefloquine. CDC chief malaria expert Dr. Hans Lobel,
suggested that because some of the study participants had contracted malaria
while taking the pill bi-monthly, the dosage should be increased.

Lariam Action USA volunteers claimed that the study hadn't involved Lariam.
They said its participants had been given a European brand of mefloquine
that was only three-quarters the strength of Lariam. Lariam Action USA
volunteers believed the weekly dosage of Lariam might be excessive,
especially since the extra dose could possibly expose those who took the
pill to additional side effects.

These side effects could be serious. Roche's 1999 Lariam label warned that
the medication could cause balance problems, nervous-system disorders,
anxiety, depression, restlessness and confusion. Near the end of the lengthy
label, Roche listed additional adverse reactions: nausea, dizziness,
vertigo, headaches, sleep disorders, diarrhea, convulsions, hallucinations,
psychotic or paranoid reactions, aggression, hearing impairment, vestibular
disorders, visual disturbances and, possibly, thoughts of suicide.

Lariam Action USA volunteers believed Roche's Lariam warning label didn't
tell the whole story. In Great Britain, the Lariam label noted additional
adverse reactions, including disabling psychiatric reactions that could last
for weeks. In Canada, the label warned users to avoid alcohol; the U.S.
label did not.

For most people who took Lariam, the warning label was probably irrelevant;
U.S. pharmacies were not required to distribute the entire label with the
medication. It appeared likely that many Lariam users, doctors and medical
experts didn't know exactly what the medicine could do.

Lariam wasn't the only new antimalarial medicine on the market; a drug
called doxycycline also protected against new strains of malaria and was
often cheaper. Throughout the 1990s, however, the CDC continued to recommend
Lariam as the drug of choice for regions where chloroquine-resistant malaria
was present. CDC officials said Lariam was extremely safe; they cited a 1993
Roche-sponsored study that determined the rate of serious side effects to be
one in 10,000.

Lariam Action USA volunteers believed Lariam-induced adverse reactions
occurred more frequently than officials were letting on. They cited a study
published in 1996 in the British Medical Journal that determined that 1 in
140 travelers taking Lariam suffered serious side effects. A study conducted
by a competing drug company published in 2001 in Clinical Infectious
Diseases reported more troubling findings: Out of nearly 500 travelers who
took Lariam, 29 percent experienced neuropsychiatric effects.

The other shoe finally dropped in 2002. In May, reporters Mark Benjamin and
Dan Olmsted of United Press International (UPI) broke the story. Between
1998 and 2002, the FDA had received reports of 11 suicides, 12 suicide
attempts, 41 cases of thinking about suicide and 144 cases of depression
associated with Lariam, problems doctors were not required to report.

And then there was the 1994 Roche safety report, which noted that a causal
link between suicide and Lariam could not be ruled out.

After more than a decade in the spotlight, Lariam had lost much of its
luster. In 2001, the CDC changed its antimalarial recommendations. Now
doxycycline and a newer drug called atovaquone/proguanil were also
recommended. In October 2002, after the UPI story, Roche changed its Lariam
label significantly, noting, among other things, unconfirmed links between
Lariam and suicide. A year later, the FDA announced that all patients taking
Lariam must be given a medication guide about the drug. The guide noted,
"Some patients taking Lariam think about killing themselves, and there have
been rare reports of suicide."

Roche and the FDA stopped short of making a direct correlation between
Lariam and suicide. Officials said there was no scientific proof.

* * *

On June 17, 2003, Steve Robinson received an unusual e-mail. It was from an
Army lieutenant colonel stationed in Iraq; he said he'd just been medically
evacuated from the country. He was experiencing insomnia, sweats, confusion,
increased heart rate. The soldier had spent 19 years in the Army and had
been in excellent health. He said he believed he'd suffered an adverse
reaction to Lariam.

Steve, a retired Army ranger, was the executive director of the National
Gulf War Resource Center, Inc., a Gulf War veterans advocacy group based in
Washington, D.C. He'd heard a lot of scary stories from soldiers coming back
from the Persian Gulf. Depleted uranium poisonings. Anti-nerve-agent
experiments. He'd never heard of anyone being given Lariam as part of
Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Steve asked DOD officials if they were using Lariam in Iraq. They said no.
Steve then e-mailed the lieutenant colonel, informing him of the officials'
response.

"Your source on Lariam is incorrect," the lieutenant colonel responded. "Our
entire field artillery brigade was issued six weeks of Lariam medication in
Kuwait."

In his visits to Army hospitals, Steve began asking questions. The more he
looked, the more he found. And the more he learned about Lariam, the less he
liked what he found.

For years, DOD had been routinely prescribing Lariam to soldiers in regions
where chloroquine-resistant malaria was prevalent. Steve, however, began to
question whether the drug made sense in any combat environment. Lariam's
label warned, "Caution should be exercised with regard to activities
requiring alertness and fine motor coordination, such as driving, piloting
aircraft, operating machinery, and deep-sea diving, as dizziness, a loss of
balance, or other disorders of the central or peripheral nervous system have
been reported during and following the use of Lariam." Lariam was not
recommended for patients with a history of depression or anxiety.

To Steve, it didn't seem like the kind of thing you'd want to give to people
in the midst of war.

He received more e-mails from soldiers who'd been given Lariam in Iraq. Many
of those who contacted him said they did not receive medication guides with
their Lariam doses. They said their Lariam prescriptions were not noted in
their medical records. DOD policy required that medication guides be
distributed with drugs like Lariam and that all medicines be listed on
soldiers' medical records.

Steve began to doubt whether many of the soldiers-including officers and
medical personnel-knew enough to recognize Lariam problems. It was possible
some were confusing Lariam's side effects-nightmares, hallucinations,
distress, sleeplessness, aggression-with symptoms of post-traumatic stress
disorder, a growing concern in the military.

And then there was Somalia. And Fort Bragg.

In 1993, a group of Canadian troops stationed in Somalia beat a local
teenager to death. Lead pipes. Trophy photos. The officer in charge was
allegedly speaking gibberish.

In a six-week period in the summer of 2002, at Fort Bragg, N. C., three
Special Forces soldiers just back from Afghanistan killed their wives and
then themselves. An Army report blamed marital discord and mission stress.

The Canadian troops had been taking Lariam. So had the Special Forces
soldiers.

Steve kept asking DOD officials about Lariam in Iraq. By the fall of 2003,
the officials' story began to change. Some units in Iraq had been given
Lariam. Just a handful.

Then the story changed again. Lariam was being widely used in Iraq. More
than 4 million doses were bought that year. DOD officials weren't sure if
the malaria in Iraq was resistant to chloroquine, and they were prescribing
Lariam to be safe.

To Steve, it didn't make any sense. To determine what antimalarial drug, if
any, is needed for a given deployment, DOD medical experts usually looked to
CDC recommendations. But in the case of Operation Iraqi Freedom, that didn't
seem to happen.

For at least a decade, the CDC had been recommending one antimalarial
medication for Iraq: chloroquine.

Soon Steve wasn't the only one wondering about Lariam. Suicides were spiking
among U.S. soldiers in Iraq. By the end of 2003, there had been 24 soldier
suicides in Iraq, a rate of 18 per 100,000 soldiers, nearly double the
average.

In September 2003, the Army surgeon general's office launched an
investigation into the suicides. They never considered Lariam.

But people remembered Somalia. People remembered Fort Bragg.

That December, DOD changed its antimalarial recommendations for Iraq.
Chloroquine was now the drug of choice.

Two months later, on Feb. 25, 2004, Lt. Gen. James B. Peake, the Army
surgeon general, appeared before members of Congress to address concerns
about Lariam. DOD would study possible side effects of Lariam, including
reports of suicide, said Peake. But there was no correlation, he said,
between the medicine and the recent rash of suicides. Only four of the
soldiers who'd committed suicide were reported to be from units taking
Lariam.

"We do know the documented side effects of this medicine, but the key causes
of the suicides were failed intimate relationships, legal and financial
problems," said Peake. "We don't think it is as big a problem as has been
made out."

Confrontation

Andrew wasn't going down for something he didn't do. The military had
charged Andrew with a crime punishable by death. The Army brass might have
figured that the moment they offered Andrew a deal, he'd take it and shut
up. If so, they were wrong.

On Nov. 6, 2003, three weeks after Andrew had been branded a coward, the
Army dropped that charge. Now he was accused of dereliction of duty for
"willfully failing to perform his job." If convicted, Andrew could spend up
to six months in prison and could be discharged from the Army for bad
conduct.

In December, Andrew's superiors offered him a hearing under Article 15 of
the Uniform Code of Military Justice, under which a commanding officer could
limit what evidence Andrew could use to present his case. Andrew's lawyer
could be barred from the proceedings. But Andrew wasn't buying it.

"I'm not going to be part of your kangaroo court," he said. "If you have
something on me, if you have a case, let's put it all out there. Have a
trial."

Andrew requested a court-martial.

The Army backed off. They told Andrew that he had to forget about everything
that had happened. He was going back to Iraq.

Andrew said fine-just as soon as he was legally and medically cleared of all
wrongdoing. In writing.

The Army wouldn't do it. The case remained in limbo.

At one point, Andrew and his lawyer asked his superiors about the
antimalarial drug Andrew had been given.

That excuse didn't work for the guys at Bragg, and it's not going to work
for you, they were told.

Andrew wasn't so sure.

The panic. The hallucinations. The nausea. The anxiety. The depression. It
all suggested Lariam. The symptoms started the day Andrew took his third
Lariam pill; the British Advisory Committee on Malaria Prevention had
reported that more than 75 percent of adverse reactions to the drug were
apparent after the third dose.

Andrew didn't have most of the physical symptoms associated with Lariam, but
that changed a month and a half after he returned home. Blurry vision,
balance problems, staggering, stomach problems. He could hardly aim his
rifle. He was the textbook case for Lariam side effects.

Andrew's medical records didn't indicate he'd taken Lariam. But Andrew had
the medication box to prove it.

For months, Andrew requested specialized testing, evaluation, treatment.
There had to be some way to determine for sure whether Lariam was the cause
of his symptoms.

At the end of May 2004, Andrew's superiors relented. Because of his balance
problems, they sent him to the Spatial Orientation Lab at the Naval Medical
Center in San Diego.

There, Andrew met Dr. Michael Hoffer. Hoffer seemed to care about his
patients. He inspected Andrew's ears, nose and throat. He observed how
Andrew walked, how he moved his head and eyes. He sat Andrew in a special
kind of chair, spun him around. He stood Andrew on a platform while he
tilted it from side to side.

On June 2, 2004, the doctor wrote his diagnosis. Eye, ear and balance
functions were abnormal. Parts of Andrew's inner ear and central nervous
system were damaged.

"Drug toxicity antimalarials," wrote Hoffer. "Likely Lariam toxicity."

Andrew wasn't the only soldier visiting Hoffer. Over the next few weeks, the
doctor diagnosed 10 other service members who'd served in Afghanistan or
Iraq with similar balance problems and brain damage. The common thread,
Hoffer told the press, was Lariam. If not treated, the damage could last
indefinitely.

The press jumped the story. DOD had been downplaying Lariam concerns for
months. Now, a DOD doctor had diagnosed soldiers with brain damage caused by
Lariam. One of those soldiers was Andrew Pogany, the nation's "coward."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., demanded that the federal government and
DOD re-evaluate their use of Lariam. Naval specialists in San Diego
announced they would launch a study into Hoffer's diagnoses.

On the evening of July 15, 2004, Andrew was called to a meeting with his
commanding officer. As a result of his medical diagnosis, all charges
against him would be dropped.

This time it was official.

* * *

Laura first heard of Lariam while Bill was still in Iraq. There was talk of
links to suicide. Bill's former teammate, Andrew Pogany, was saying the drug
had caused his much-publicized panic attack.

The next time Laura spoke to Bill on the phone, she asked him about Lariam.

"Sure, we all take it," he said. "We are done taking it anyway."

Malaria season was over. Laura had nothing to worry about.

Three months later, she was wondering if Lariam had killed her husband.

Steve Robinson at the National Gulf Resource Center helped put the pieces
together. Like Bill, Steve had been an Army Ranger. Steve told Laura that
someone like Bill, 17 years in the military, doesn't just snap. Something
had to push him over the edge.

Lariam fit the bill. Thinking back, Laura thought Bill exhibited many
tell-tale side effects: skin rash, diarrhea, fatigue, joint pain. And then,
on the last night, there was anxiety, aggression, suicide.

The Army never denied that Bill had taken Lariam; his medical records proved
he'd taken the drug.

Lariam. There was no other explanation.

It turned out Bill's case wasn't unique. In September, Mark Benjamin and Dan
Olmsted of UPI reported that over the past decade, six Special Forces
soldiers had committed suicide after taking Lariam. Since Sept. 11, 2001,
every Special Forces soldier who'd killed himself had taken the drug.

* * *

Seven months after he'd written "likely Lariam toxicity" on Andrew's
brain-injury diagnosis, Dr. Michael Hoffer changed his mind. He said he'd
been wrong. He didn't know what had caused the damage.

As a result, the soldiers' medical records were changed. Now their disorders
were listed as "of unknown origin."

"We are not sure that this is Lariam," said Hoffer in a Jan. 31 interview.
"Early on when we were seeing [the patients], the early individuals maybe
only gave that history [of Lariam use]. And then, as we started to see more
people, and started to re-question some of the people we first saw, more
came out about them. They may have had an agenda."

But then a soldier told UPI that Hoffer had said he was being pressured
"from the top" to drop the Lariam references. When the soldier asked if
Hoffer meant DOD, the doctor allegedly nodded his head.

Hoffer denied the allegations.

It sounded to some like the Army was circling the wagons, trying to deny the
impact of the drug on its soldiers.

In 2004, the military launched several studies on Lariam and its association
with suicide. One was by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner's Office, another
by the Naval Health Research Center in San Diego. At the time, military
officials announced the public could expect preliminary results within
months. As of February 2005, no findings have been released.

In September 2004, the Army admitted it gave Congress bad information on the
2003 suicide spike in Iraq. DOD officials had said no more than four of the
24 deceased soldiers could have taken Lariam. Now the military acknowledged
as many as 11 could have been on the drug. A year later, after Lariam had
reportedly been all but discontinued in Iraq, only nine soldiers killed
themselves in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

On Feb. 3, 2005, another Special Forces soldier at Fort Bragg, Spc. Richard
T. Corcoran, killed himself after shooting his ex-wife and her boyfriend.
While serving in Afghanistan, Corcoran had been prescribed Lariam.

Roche, the manufacturer of Lariam, continues to maintain there's no
connection between their drug and suicide and violence.

"There is no scientific evidence of a causal link between Lariam and suicide
or suicidal ideation," writes Terence Hurley, director of product public
relations for Roche, in an e-mail to Boulder Weekly. "Based on all the data
currently available, no cause-and-effect relationship between Lariam and
suicide or suicidal ideation has been established. Also, there is no
reliable scientific evidence that Lariam is associated with violent acts or
criminal conduct. Numerous studies show that the incidence of serious
neuropsychiatric events in patients taking Lariam for treatment is very low.
And, Roche is not aware of any study, or other reliable scientific evidence,
that Lariam causes permanent vestibular dysfunction."

Meanwhile, the U.S. military continues to prescribe Lariam to soldiers
stationed in many parts of the world.

Casualties

There's a community now. Andrew's part of it. Laura's part of it. Lariam
Action USA and Steve Robinson nurture it, connecting people looking for
answers with those who might have them. It's military and civilian. The
community is made up of those who say they are victims of Lariam.

Army buddies Bernard Johnson and Chris Heaton are part of the community.
While stationed in Somalia in 1993, they awoke every Tuesday morning to the
Army radio DJ announcing, "It's psycho Tuesday!" In other words, it was time
to take Lariam.

Bernard, Chris and their fellow soldiers were plagued by vivid dreams:
hacking off limbs, decapitation, sucking blood from people. At night,
soldiers woke up screaming. Everyone got mean; soldiers fought with
officers. The unit reportedly marched through villages, destroying huts,
beating up the locals.

When they returned to the United States, Chris nearly divorced his wife and
drank every night for months. Bernard contemplated suicide and asked the
Veterans Health Administration for help; he says they blew him off. Bernard
and Chris think the Army knew what the drug would do to them; they think the
Army wanted to make them more violent.

"They want you to be able to pull the trigger. They want you to be able to
kill your fellow man," says Chris. "I think they probably know this drug
does this, and they send [soldiers] into combat situations, and they give
them this drug, so they guarantee they are going to pull that trigger."

Kenn Miller spent two years in Senegal as a Peace Corps volunteer. At first,
Kenn and his friends liked Lariam; it caused them to have wild, lucid
dreams. But then the dreams became dark. Kenn's extremities went numb. His
memory started failing. He passed out. A local doctor diagnosed him with
brain swelling. Two years after leaving Senegal, Kenn still experiences
headaches, nausea, disorientation and dizzy spells. He can only work part
time. Today, 85 percent of Peace Corps volunteers take Lariam.

A Special Forces soldier, who asked to remain anonymous, was deployed to
Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom as an A-team medic and
engineer. After taking Lariam, he experienced nightmares, coordination
problems, anxiety and headaches. He could no longer function in combat: If
he sensed someone was near him, he would want to pull the trigger-even
before he knew whether they were friend or foe.

Destanie was deployed to Afghanistan in 2002. While taking Lariam, Destanie
lost 30 pounds, suffered severe nightmares and panic attacks and experienced
extreme mood swings. She couldn't complete her duties. Medics put her on
antidepressants and sleeping pills. Eventually she pointed a gun at her
lieutenant, threatened to shoot him and was kicked out of the military.

"[The Army] was my whole life. It was all I had ever known. Growing up, that
was all I wanted to do," says Destanie. "It's gone. I can never have it
back. It hurts."

Donnie Pomponio joined the military in 1986 because he wanted to fly Black
Hawk helicopters. In 2002, he was sent to Afghanistan. Almost immediately,
he appeared to suffer a bad reaction to Lariam: hallucinations, anxiety,
extreme distress. His medic suggested he stop taking the drug. When Donnie
returned home in 2003, he was a different person. He would swing between
feelings of rage and defeat. He began sweating so heavily at night that he
had to change the sheets. He often hid himself in a bathroom or closet,
crying. He slept for two, three, four days straight. He was recently
diagnosed with brain damage. Since July 2004, Donnie has rarely been able to
leave the house without sedation.

Stacy, Donnie's wife, is outraged.

"My husband is alive and I am grateful and in no way can I compare myself
with the families who laid there soldiers into a grave," she says, "but he
has definitely experienced 'loss of life.'"

* * *

Laura sits in the living room of her Monument house. Looking through the
front window she can see, more or less, where her husband ended his life on
March 14, 2004.

Laura's told the story of what happened that night numerous times. She's
spoken with so many news outlets she can classify the type of reporter who's
interviewing her. Male reporters are a breeze; they just want the facts.
Female reporters, on the other hand, aren't so easy. They want to know her
emotions.

Laura knows it wasn't really her husband who pulled the trigger. But she
also knows that if someone had to die that night, it had to be Bill. Better
him than a police officer, the children or herself.

Pretty soon Laura will probably stop telling the story; she'll
compartmentalize it, just like her husband had been trained to do with what
he saw in Iraq. But for now, it's part of her therapy. She feels people need
to know what happened. They need to know what the symptoms look like, and
they need to know how to get help. Maybe then it won't happen again.

"People, you need to know that this is out there," says Laura. "Because if
it can happen to someone as strong and as intelligent and well-trained and
as experienced and as normal as Bill was, it can happen to you, if you are
not aware."

Laura doesn't know why her husband was given Lariam. She wonders if there
were financial incentives. Roche derived Lariam from the Army's research;
maybe the Army got a good deal on the drug in return. The military, after
all, is one big business, she says. It's all about savings.

Laura is also curious about what Bill and Andrew Pogany might have had in
common. Why did two of the most high-profile allegations of Lariam side
effects in the Army come from the same 12-man A-team? Could the team have
been given a bad supply of Lariam? Or are the medication's side effects so
common that Lariam can debilitate two out of 12 soldiers who take it?

Laura hasn't launched a one-woman crusade against the military officers who
prescribed Lariam in Iraq when it apparently wasn't needed, the ones who say
Bill's suicide was most likely caused by marital problems. She knows it
would be a waste of time. That doesn't mean she's OK with what they did.

"[Soldiers] know that they could die in the field," she says. "They know
they could die in an accident at any second, and they accept that. They do
not expect-and why should they?-that a medication that they were given by
their employer could cause damage or death."

Laura is coping. She's created new routines to replace her old life,
eliminated Bill's presence as much as she can from the house. She remodeled
the basement. Where there were guns, there is now a home-theater system, a
play area, a spare bedroom.

But Bill's still here. Laura's first daughter with Bill, a toddler, thinks
Daddy's still in Iraq. 'Raq, she calls it. Sometimes she speaks with Daddy
on the phone.

Laura finds Bill's lingering presence kind of useful. He's the perfect
scapegoat. He can't talk back. He gets yelled at on occasion. If something
breaks, it's Bill's fault. If something goes bad, it's Bill's fault. All the
girls' bad traits-they're Bill's fault.

"I'm still in my anger phase," says Laura with a smile. "So when I catch up
to Bill, there will be some retribution."

* * *

Andrew takes a sip of his water. He's sitting in a bar in Boulder; it's
Thursday afternoon. As part of his therapy regimen, Andrews drives to
Boulder each week, an hour and a half each way, to see a specialist.

First, he has to get through another interview. He's meeting a documentary
filmmaker at the bar. He'll likely tell his story in amazingly accurate
detail, down to how he unpacked his gear the night of his first panic
attack. He'll list the extensive documentation he's collected on Lariam,
boxes and boxes of files.

Andrew doesn't tell his story as much as he used to. As he says, he's last
year's news. But Andrew's not done fighting. He's still waiting for an
apology from the Army. He's still waiting for answers.

Andrew isn't into conspiracy theories. He's not about to say the military
drugged him up on a psycho-pill to turn him into a killer. Maybe the Army
gave him Lariam because it was cheaper. Maybe the Army used Lariam because
officials really did think it was easier to take than a daily antimalarial
pill.

Andrew is far less understanding about the military's apparent failure to
take Lariam concerns seriously. All those soldier suicides, caused by
marital problems? Financial difficulties? Stress? Come on, he says. It
doesn't make sense.

The worst part, says Andrew, is that the Army could be ignoring countless
soldiers coming back from war who need serious help. Andrew was lucky; he
was one of a handful of soldiers who was diagnosed (for a while) with Lariam
toxicity and who received appropriate treatment. If the Army doesn't green
light more testing, there's no telling how many soldiers could fall through
the cracks.

"I strongly believe that having received treatment is what's keeping me on
track today and keeping me from pretty much imprisoning myself in my room,
like so many have done before us, and potentially like so many Iraqi Freedom
vets are going to be doing, too, if they don't receive the correct
treatment," he says.

Andrew takes another sip of his water. He says he thinks about Bill Howell
all the time.

"I wish I would have had an opportunity to talk to him."

Bill probably wouldn't have spoken to him, he says. Bill was part of the
A-team; Andrew was essentially an outcast.

"It's so disturbing to think that nobody else saw anything, that nobody else
did anything for him," Andrew says. "And the reason I find that so
disturbing is that is what happened to me. Nobody did anything for me. They
just kicked me to the curb. If I just got one opportunity to sit down with
him and have everything else detached and just listen to the guy. Just
listen. I just wish I could have talked to him."

For more information

To find out more about Lariam, or if you think you've experienced Lariam
side effects, contact: Lariam Action USA
www.lariaminfo.org
info@lariaminfo.org .

If you are a member of the military and you have questions about Lariam,
contact:
National Gulf War Resource Center, Inc.
http://www.ngwrc.org
301-585-4000 x162

Good Old Days--Back with a Vengeance

Back in the days before shrink-wrap and open bins, where a customer can inspect and even take a sniff to determine the quality of what he's about to buy, it wasn't unusual for the butcher or green-grocer to hold up a prime specimen of his wares and then wrap up or bag some putrid or rotten item that should have gone to the hogs.

The "bait and switch" was a classic, used most often on patrons who really had no choice about shopping anywhere else. Those who could act on the injunction, "caveat emptor," actually didn't have to, because it was unlikely they would suffer such disrespect. "Buyer beware," was just a way of asserting that if people were misled, it was because they weren't paying attention--i.e.their own fault.

We used to think that more competition would take care of this problem. But it didn't. The reason it didn't was because the problem was caused by an attitude. And attitudes don't go away just because the survival of a business is threatened.
Indeed, we all know that disrespect is alive and well in the malls and Walmarts that have replaced the small-town merchants. What is not so obvious is that it's actually been incorporated under a new name, "the free market."

While we all realize that nothing in the market is likely to be free, that the proponents of privatization are really about setting up a system, bound by no rules that might in any way interfere with the accumulation of wealth by world traders (and the impoverishment of everyone else) is not as easy to see.

It's a classic bait and switch. Only this time the pepetrators are much more ambitious. They've gone global. See Wolfowitz installed at the World Bank.

Dean Then---2003

How The Poor Live Now
editorial in Vanity Fair, December 2003
Many of America's poor can't find a job. Others work two or three. Then there are the children. The number who live below the poverty line continues to climb. If we decide this is unacceptable, writes a leading presidential candidate, we can do something about it

Growing up in New York City, I was acutely aware of those around me. The city has a particular closeness that makes it impossible to shield oneself from social inequality; some of America's richest and poorest families live literally within blocks of one another. As a child, I often rode the Lexington Avenue subway; studying the faces of the working-class adults who commuted down from Spanish Harlem and the Bronx. They sometimes had their children in tow, and it did not take a great leap of imagination to envision trading places with one of them. Even at that young age, it was obvious to me that there was very little separating us, other than a few subway stops and circumstances of birth.

Working hard and giving back to the community and to society were familial expectations, and the effects of my doing so would prove far deeper than just a sense of civic duty and a solid work ethic. As my three brothers and I grew older, our exposure to people across the economic spectrum began to shape how we saw the world. Charlie (who would perish in Laos in 1974, near the end of the war in Southeast Asia) spent time working with underprivileged children, while I chose a summer clearing fields and repairing corrals on a Florida cattle ranch. I worked alongside Cuban exiles who spoke little or no English; many could not find employment of any other kind. It was a grueling job, but the toil was tempered with the knowledge that I had a comfortable home to return to at the end of the summer. The same could not be said for most of my Cuban counterparts, a reality to which I was not oblivious.

Poverty had many faces, I was learning; it seemed not to spare those who worked the longest or labored the hardest, and there was certainly no guarantee of escape, regardless of dedication or force of will. A stint as an undergraduate teaching junior-high-school children from low-income families in New Haven only deepened my sense of the realities of social inequality. I clearly had opportunities that others never would, and although I did not feel guilty about my upbringing, it was obvious that the playing field was not a level one.

After graduating from college, I followed in my father's footsteps and began working on Wall Street. I wasn't sure what I was cut out for, but it clearly wasn't investment banking. After some soul-searching, I decided that I wanted to pursue a career in medicine-- the idea of setting up my own practice appealed both to my impulse toward community responsibility and my hope of making a concrete, tangible difference in the world, one person at a time.

While in medical school, I had an encounter that crystallized my thinking about the effects that poverty can have on the entire course of an individual's life. I was attending Albert Einstein College of Medicine, in the Bronx, and I was on my psychiatry rotation in one of several Bronx hospitals among which I circulated. A 14-year-old Puerto Rican boy came in for treatment. Robert (a pseudonym to protect the patient's privacy) was psychotic, and he was also from a poor family. I knew enough about the condition to understand that it could be influenced by any number of factors-- lack of pre-natal care, nutrition, early medical attention, or ability to pay for treatment, to name a few. If Robert's family had been able to shoulder the burden of his incredibly expensive condition, would it have progressed to such a stage?

Robert was not unique. Every day in the Bronx, I saw how low-income patients who had left serious illnesses untreated because they couldn't afford to go to the doctor. It was a terrible cycle being played out in slow motion before my eyes: a small, treatable condition appears; it goes unattended, grows into a serious health risk that finally erupts with a vengeance; and the patient lands in the emergency room. The bill is astronomical, and the family is bankrupted.

Any sane person could conclude that this was not the most efficient way for our health-care system to be run, nor the most humane. I had no doubts that capitalism was the best possible economic model (I had been raised by a stockbroker, after all), but there were gaps, inconsistencies, and plain cruelties that the market alone would never address, and not only in health care. It seemed to me that local communities and national government had roles to play in easing the pain of economic inequalities.

This view was in line with prevailing attitudes at the time. Politically, the question of the government's role in addressing poverty appeared to have been settled long ago. I came of age during John F. Kennedy's New Frontier and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, saw Barry Goldwater's anti-government extremism beaten back in an electoral landslide, and took note as Republican Richard Nixon followed in his Democratic predecessor's footsteps in continuing to develop progressive initiatives to fight a "War on Poverty". Regardless of ideology, everyone seemed to agree that using government as a tool to ensure social justice was generally in the best interests of the nation as a whole, as long as it was done sensibly.

It's hard to believe how much we've changed since then. The ideal of national community, along with an ethos stressing that "we're all in this together," has been replaced by a widening chasm between the rich and the poor, a shrinking middle class, and a "fend for yourself" attitude. This transformation happened gradually, but was influenced by governmental actions and rhetoric from the top down. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the presidency while denouncing "racial quotas" and "welfare queens," convincing a dispirited electorate that someone else was to blame for their problems (a technique which is particularly effective if the "enemy" is a group, such as low-income single mothers, in no position to fight back). Since then, many on the far right have become more and more fearless about promoting tax cuts for those at the top (resulting in fewer services for those who need them most), while accusing those who oppose these measures of inciting "class warfare."

The numbers are startling: When you adjust for inflation, the minimum wage in this country has actually decreased 38 percent since 1968, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Meanwhile, the booming economy of the 90s did not assist many of those in the lowest income categories, especially in areas where housing prices rose while incomes remained stagnant. In 2002 alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, 1.7 million more Americans dipped below the poverty line, bringing the national total to 34.6 million. Nearly one-third of those-- 12.1 million-- are children. Tax cuts tilted toward the highest earners have accelerated the problem; as federal income taxes are reduced, state and local taxes are often forced to rise. Many of these, such as the sales tax, disproportionately affect low-income workers. Supporters of tax cuts will tell you that everyone benefits, but in many cases they don't. I recently received an e-mail concerning a Georgia family about to be evicted from their home. They had just received their tax-rebate check. After paying their federal income taxes last year, they were expecting the promised $400 per child. But their total rebate for their two children was $13.50.

What we have seen since the 1970s is a governmental effort that has ended up directing even more wealth into the hands of those at the top, while the safety net for those at the bottom slowly frays. This has resulted not in a rising tide lifting all boats but in an ever shrinking middle class and a breakdown of our American community. Most critically at risk are families like Robert's, which have had the odds against them from the beginning, and which now have no recourse available to them other than that offered by a government whose anti-poverty program, they feel, is rapidly becoming little more than "Get a job."

If only it were that simple. Some American families are on the verge of permanent hunger in spite of the fact that the parents may be working not one but two or three jobs. Their problems are usually not limited to putting food on the table; many such families cannot house themselves or afford to seek treatment for their medical problems. Poverty knows no prejudice: my first patient on my first E.R. rotation in the Bronx was a 13-year-old African-American girl who was dealing with complications from an unwanted pregnancy; my first patient on my first E.R. rotation in Vermont was a 13-year-old girl in exactly the same circumstances, but Caucasian. The face of poverty is rural, it is urban, it is black, white, Hispanic, male, female, young, and old. It is an American face. These families work as hard as any of us, and many work harder than most, and yet they spend their lives one paycheck, one accident, or one medical emergency away from total financial ruin.

And the problem is not confined only to those below the poverty line. As I've traveled the country, I've felt nothing so much as a sense of fear. People everywhere are afraid that very little separates them from disaster, that their jobs are not secure, and that if they lose their jobs there will not be another one waiting. They know something is wrong in our country, and they don't know what they can do to make it right. Most are good people who work hard. I have seen their joys, their frustrations, and their attempts to change their reality. The problem is not one of the motivated versus the lazy. It is larger and deeper, and if we are going to address it, we must do so honestly.

Ultimately, the question is: What kind of country will we be? Will we be a country that declares anti-poverty efforts a national embarrassment or a national priority? Will we be a country that values escalating tax cuts for the highest income brackets, or one that values the services that tax cuts inevitably kill through financial starvation? Will we accept the problem of poverty as a consequence of capitalism, or will we strengthen capitalism by restoring fairness? Will we choose leaders who practice a politics that polarizes, or leaders whose politics address the common good, targeting not just those most likely to go to the polls but also those who don't or can't? In short, will we close our eyes and ignore one another, or will we stand together as a community?

I do not accept that there is no solution. I know, because in cities and towns across America, I have seen remarkable ones. I believe that, since poverty stems first and foremost from a breakdown in community responsibility, community-based solutions can lead the way in helping us understand how to overcome it.

Fighting poverty can be about providing more opportunities to get ahead. In Mississippi, Governor Ronnie Musgrove recognized that even in today's technological world many of the students in his state were not being taught any computer skills, largely because so many districts could not afford up-to-date equipment. Job training and entrepreneurship were also in short supply in Mississippi, crippling economic growth. The state came up with a beautifully innovative solution. Through a Computers in the Classroom initiative, the governor teamed up with the AOL Foundation and a local Mississippi nonprofit group to train teachers in educating students about repairing, upgrading, and building computers. Classrooms across Mississippi became impromptu high-tech factories-- some were compared to old-fashioned barn-raisings-- where students not only made computers for themselves and their fellow students, but learned skills to which they likely never would have been exposed. Many graduates of the program now have plans to pursue careers in computer science and computer repair, and some even plan to start their own local tech businesses.

Long-term investments in communities can also reduce the likelihood of poverty for future generations. In West Los Angeles, the Mar Vista Family Center, which is funded both publicly and privately, interacts with low-income parents and children in order to help develop truly nurturing environments so that kids have the skills to succeed later in life. I've long been a believer in early education as a key to success, and Mar Vista, like Vermont's Success by Six program, operates on the premise that investing now in families with young children beats investing in social programs or prisons later.

Another approach to the problem of long-term poverty is to eliminate those expenses that can trap families in a cycle of debt. In my home state of Vermont, the rising costs of health insurance had caused many of our small businesses to cancel coverage for their employees, and many more poor families had gone uninsured for long periods of time. As I had witnessed years before in the Bronx, many illnesses were going untreated until circumstances were dire and costs were prohibitive. We felt that something had to be done to make health care more accessible to those who could not afford it. By working within existing programs, we were able to expand coverage to 91 percent of adults and to virtually every child in the state. Low-income Vermonters now have a resource to ensure that they remain healthy and are not ruined by medical expenses.

The hard truth is that there is no single solution to long-term poverty. But simply because the problem is daunting does not mean we should shy away from trying to solve it. The faces on these pages come from communities across America, and I believe that, when we pull together as a national community and focus on the faces behind the statistics, the American people can effect extraordinary change. We must invest in that change. To paraphrase John F. Kennedy, our work may not be finished in the next few months or the next few years or perhaps in our lifetimes. But for the sake of our United States and all who dream of living out its promise, let us begin-- one face and one community at a time.

When is it Treason?

A letter to the citizens of Iowa, Georgia, Vermont and Pennsylvania, because Specter has been a target too.
*********************************************************************************************

Wonder what the fellow who organized those nasty Club for Growth ads against Max Cleland and Howard Dean is up to? Well, one thing Stephen Moore is not doing, when he goes to talk to the people at the Hudson Institute, is touting his connection to that infamous group. No, when he's at a conservative think tank, he's just the President of the Free Enterprise Fund and the Cato Institute.
But his message is no less bent on destruction. Though he's fairly happy that our system of welfare no longer supports mothers and children like it used to, and more children are living in poverty than before, there's no question he's not satisfied that the "wars" against "the legal system, the tax code, and the Social Security program," which in his book are "corrupt and decaying institutions" are far from complete.
Which is why he says, "we must seize control of the next generation of wealth. In the next 10-20 years, trillions of dollars of wealth will be passed through trusts, foundations and inheritances. . . .We must. . .insure that money that is meant to build-up free market institutions isn't intercepted and used to tear them down."
While that sounds like a pretty ambitious agenda, it's really very simple. What the "we" Stephen Moore is speaking of want is to destroy our public institutions so their secular religion, the free market can reign supreme and they can do whatever they want.
No rules, no obligations, no legislative restrictions. Sounds like any crook's ideal. So, my question is, at what point does a conspiracy to destroy our government become treason? How many more people, who stand in the way of the Club for Growth, are going to have to be destroyed before the rest catch on that they're next?

Not Quite Spring

Bunch of Social Raiders

In the beginning was the Word and the Word was made Flesh. What that means, I think, is that nothing is real for man until he gives it a name. And the name has to be a proper one--one that relates to the identity of a person or thing appropriately.

When one is inventing a new language, the fit of sounds and symbols to things might not be quite right at first. But in a language like English, which has roots in many tongues, the right word just has to be found by trial and error.

Just so, there has been considerable effort lately to find a proper designation for the people who seem to have hijacked our democracy. While some of them refer to themselves as neocons, short for neo-conservative, that's not an appropriate designation. What they are about is neither new nor conservative.

Others have identified them as the Religious Right or part of a right wing conspiracy. But, though they most surely conspire to achieve their ends, there's nothing religious or right about how they deport themselves. Wing, on the other hand, suggests a fleeting presence--one we might hope for but have little reason to expect.

Perhaps it's their current agenda to destroy our Social Security that's led me to name them the Band of Social Raiders. The characteristics that define them are stealth and sleaze and while one of their spokesmen, Grover Norquist, had visions of drowning government in the bathtub, their ambition has grown considerably. Now it's the whole nation that's to drown in a sea of red ink.

That red we see spread across a map of the American heartland is the stain of bankruptcy. We used to talk about the rust-belt, but before the rust set in, our industries were driven into bankruptcy. Then it was the turn of small business, the life-blood of our small towns and the family farmers who labored on the surrounding plains. Slowly but surely traditional enterprise has been destroyed and the vultures who come to pick clean the carcass would have us believe that a lack of individual effort has done it in.

It's probably no co-incidence that promoting the agenda of the Band of Social Raiders has been handled by the associates of Tom Delay, using the name Red Sea, LLC. There's no doubt what they are about. The destruction of political aspirants under the aegis of the Club for Growth was just a start. Social Security is next and then it's the body of law that's to be overturned. While stealth and sleaze are their trademarks, the stench of corruption seems to attract them like flies to the corpses of Fallujah.

As Stephen Moore, Executive Director of the Club for Growth and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute outlined quite clearly in a recent speech at the Hudson Institute:

" we must seize control of the next generation of wealth. In the next 10-20 years, trillions of dollars of wealth will be passed on through trusts, foundations, and inheritances. The Left is looking to create the next generation of Ford and Rockefeller Foundations with these massive wealth holdings. We must protect against this and insure that money that is meant ot build-up free market institutions isn't intercepted and used to tear them down."

In other words, the Band of Social Raiders have already targeted the wealth of the nation as their own. Free market institutions obviously cost money. So, the only sense in which they are free is that they operate in a lawless environment. Which of course, is why raiding the body of laws is next, funded, no doubt, with the revenue stream USANext aims to divert from the pensions of our elderly population.

Nothing conservative there. Just a bunch of raiders planning their next heist.

To Filibuster or Not?

There's a new call for people to contact our Senators and let them know that eliminating the possibility of a filibuster when inappropriate legislation or nominations are being forced down the throats of conscientious and considerate Senators is a bad idea.

I have to admit that I am ambivalent about this suggestion. One thing that bothers me is that it is being couched in terms of the Religious Right having an agenda to get partisan judges into office. Now, I don't think ordinary religious folk want to have incompetent judges. In fact, I am beginning to think that religious folk are being taken for a ride by people with only one interest--power.
These people have been very good at exploiting the fears of ordinary people and making them think that various immoral trends are the fault of people they don't know very much about. In a sense, that's correct. The people who are promoting gambling, sexual license in images on TV, multiple sexual partners in addition to multiple divorces (true destroyers of traditional family values) are the very people who are passing themselves off as paragons of virtue.
Indeed, the people who put up those disgusting ads against Howard Dean during the run-up to the presidential election, are now attacking the AARP. Why? Because they hope to destroy people's confidence in that institution and sign them up with the organization being set up by their cronies, the United Seniors Association.
I'm not sure that progressives uniting in opposition to this or that strategem is going to be effective.
If incompetent people are being nominated to the federal bench, then their incompetence needs to be widely exposed. Letting Senators drone on for hour after hour about all kinds of nonsense is not going to take care of the problem.
Or to use a sports metaphor, stopping the opponents on the goal line is not going to win a game.

A Conservative Vision for America

If you read Stephen Moore's outline of their goals, it's quite clear that the Social Raiders are at war and that their targets are mainly four:

1) Welfare for women and children--bad because the program (as it used to work) established a base for a living wage and undercut the inclination to pay workers close to nothing.

2) Social Security--bad because it prevents seniors from working for next to nothing.

3) Legal/judicial system--bad because laws prevent workers and the environment from being exploited at will by those whose destiny it is to control all wealth.

4) System of public education--bad because it not only teaches fundamental skills but prepares people to expect that their treatment will be fair and consistent with the laws of the land.

Vision and Philanthropy, A Bradley Center Symposium

Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Stephen Moore
President, Free Enterprise Fund
Senior Fallow, Cato Institute

The conservative movement is in a triumphant position in America today. We are winning on most fronts. The United States and the world are moving in a free market capitalist direction--though on some issues the pace of progress has been frustratingly stifled. Still, the ideological and public policy shift to the right in the United States over the past 30 years has been both stunning and uplifting. John Micklethwait's 2004 book THE RIGHT NATION captures many of the conservative movement's victories over this period.

Let me mention a few that I believe have been most momentous. I will focus on the economic trends, because that is my area of expertise.

First, tax rates have fallen dramatically in the U.S. and around th world. When Reagan entered office the highest tax rate was 70%. Today the highest tax rate is 36%. A Heritage foundation study recently discovered that across the globe, tax rates have fallen by an average of almost 20 percentage points. Russia and other Eastern European nations are adopting flat taxes.

Second, inflation has been tamed with the intellectual routing of the illogical Keynsian notion of the Phillips Curve and the idea tha inflation and unemployment are a tradeoff. Inflation rates, which hit a high tof 13% in 1980, have been replaced with stable prices.

Third, free trade is on the march, though this movement goes through political peaks and valleys. NAFTA and other trade agreements have led to lower tariffs globally.

Fourth, socialism has been routed and as Reagan put it, has been relegated to the "dustbin of history."

Fifth, welfare reform was enacted in the United States in 1996 and has been one of the great policy triumphs of the last 50 years.

And sixth, the policy debate in Washington as I write these remarks is dominated by talk of litigation reform, Social SEcurity private accounts, a flat tax and death tax repeal--to name a few.

These ideas of supply-side economics, welfare reform, free trade, an ownership society and limited governent have been triumphant politically in large part because conservatives have won the war of ideas against the ideology of income redistribution, collectivism, entitlement, and victimization, which are the rallying cries of the Left over the past quarter century.

The conservative foundations have done an enormous service in funding these ideas that have taken fruit. By building great institutions--Heritage Foundation, Cato Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and state think tanks--the conservative movement has an intellectual infrastructure that never existed before the 1970s. The conservative foundations provided the seed corn for these great institutions and developed them with millions of dollars of invested funds. But despite the large donations, it is still safe to say that the institutions of the Left--which include liberal foundations, the media, unions, and government itself--have outspent the Right by many multiples. The good news is that conservative foundations and individual donores have given their money more efficiently to bring about change.

It also has helped that on the issues: we are right, and they are wrong.

But now we are starting to see the Left's counterassault against conservative victories in the policy wars and in the elections. George Soros and other billionaire liberals recently vowed to raise $100 million over the next two years to sponsor new thought and build new think tanks, new political machines, new grassroots operations.

Hence, we as conservatives cannot sit on our past policy victories or our recent electoral successes. This is a chess match against the Left and the tactics that won twenty years ago may not be victorious over the next quarter century.

I would argue that going forward, there are four central challenges ahead for the conservative movement.

First, we must win the wars that are not complete. Social Security reform, legal reform, and tax reform are all at the top of the Bush agenda and it is clear that these corrupt and decaying institutions--the legal system, the tax code, and the Social Security program--are in dire need of modernization.

Second, the education system is getting worse, not better. Market-based education reforms are the next big clash between Left and Right in this country, and it's a fight we can't lose or our capitalist system will be in real jeopardy. We need to topple the educational blob--which is depriving at least half of American children from obtaining a successful financial future.

Third, we must seize control of the next generation of wealth. In the next 10-20 years, trillions of dollars of wealth will be passed on through trusts, foundations, and inheritances. The Left is looking to create the next generation of Ford and Rockefeller Foundations with these massive wealth holdings. We must protect against this and insure that money that is meant ot build-up free market institutions isn't intercepted and used to tear them down.

Fourth, we need to create "do tanks" not more "think tanks." Our movement is now well endowed with idea factories. The next generation of fighting vehicles for the conservative movement need to be groups oriented towars providing strategic policy advice for policy makers. building grass roots to match the Left's troops, helping educate candidates, taking issues that are inside the "red zone"--to use a football cliche--and figure out the best means to push them over the goal lines. This means learning and then adopting some fo the successful legislative strategies of the Left.

Finally, we need to continue to build out a conservative alternative media and work to penetrate Hollywood. We are in much better shape today in have a voice for conservatives, thanks to the internet, talk radio, and FOXNews, but the mainstream media is as hostile as ever to free markets. We are nowhere near parity when it comes to media coverage of politics. Hollywood hates conservatives, though we are gaining footholds in the entertainment industry and we need to nurture, protect and multiply the conservative presence in Hollywood.

My dear friend, Fred Smith, president of the indispensible Competitive Enterprise Institute, often asks the question: "If we're so smart, why aren't we winning?" The answer is that we are winning, but not nearly as much as we shoud be given the superiority of our ideas and core beliefs. But Fred also notes that we now live in a $25 trillion economy that is built on the foundation of free market capitalism. But only perhaps one-one thousand of one percent of that money is used to protect the free market institutions that made the wealth possible. If we could raise this number up to one-one hundredth of one percent, the conservative movement would really shift into high gear. Is that level of giving asking so much, given the stakes? Why not spend at least as much each year on the preservation of capitalism what was spent to bring relief to the tsunami victims in Asia?

So we need the conservative foundations to help fund these new strategies for winning the war of ideas and we need MORE conservative foundations whose missions are never intercepted by the Left. Si8nce most foundations begin with a conservative mandate from the original donors, but are soon captured by the Left, a program to safeguard the sanctity of donor intent would be a huge leap forward for the conservative movement and would have the double blessing of defunding the Left.

Pontius Pilate Redux?

What exactly is the difference between George W. Bush putting his signature
to an order providing, without further review, for the capture and torture,
even unto death, of dissident men and Pontius Pilate washing his hands of
the torture and death of Jesus of Nazareth?

First, of course, is the fact that George W. Bush was not set in place by a
foreign power. No, he's our very own creation, set up in the White House
by us, the American people, in whose name he makes decisions.

George W. Bush may issue instructions that he not be bothered with the
distateful particulars of the executions, that there be no more asking or
telling and no accounting to anyone, but that doesn't relieve the American
people of responsibility for what's being done in their name.

At least Pontius Pilate had the decency to confront the man he was about to
turn over to his executioners in person. So, that's another difference.
The American people, along with their leader, seem quite content to have
orders carried out in secret. And some, who lend their private jets for
the transport, are even eager to be paid.

Yes, the secrecy. That's the big difference. Under Roman law, the fate of
a man was decided and carried out in public and the complicity of the
Sanhedrin was recorded for posterity. Does the silence of our Senate then
suggest clean hands? One might hope. More likely, the absence of outrage
on the part of the Senate, as these outrages come to light, is evidence
that they have all been as complicit as the Sanhedrin, only in secret.

Which raises the question if we the people have just been blind or simply
overlooked that the big difference between representative government and
democracy is that Republican rule is by definition secret; that decisions
are to be made behind closed doors and in the dead of night "for the
benefit" of the people; and that this is both good and right and what we
should expect?

If that's what America has come to, a place where democracy is nothing more
than a vote for a cabal of secret interests, then the fact there's little
support for its spread around the globe should not come as a surprise. We
need to open our government up, let in the light and get government by the
people back on track. There's been enough suffering and death for
secrecy's sake. Let it not have been in vain.

Those Who Know

IVAW Statement on the Second Anniversary of the Iraq War
Today marks the second anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, a key milestone in the current U.S. Government?s campaign of lies and deceit common since 9/11. We were first told that there was a link between Iraq and the horrible 9/11 attacks. But there was none. Then we were told that Iraq had Weapons of Mass Destruction; yet only a few old warheads and some dormant bacterial cultures have been found despite rigorous searching. Then finally, we were told that Saddam Hussein was training terrorists to attack the United States, but no terrorist presence seems to have existed in Iraq prior to the massive build-up in early 2003. Post-invasion Iraq, however, has clearly become a hotbed for new terrorist threats.

We, the veterans of the war, now know all of these reasons for invading the sovereign country of Iraq were false, and we have paid a heavy price for these lies. Two years into a seemingly endless war, our nation has incurred a terrible debt, while the corporations who profit from the business of war reap millions. Our deficit has climbed to a rate that can only be paid by our children?s grand children. While our domestic programs crumble, the social and economic future of our children is indeed bleak. Most tragic, over 1,500 of our comrades in arms have given the ultimate sacrifice for this senseless, imprudent, and immoral policy of war and occupation. A cross section of our county, these extraordinary men and women came from all walks of life. They were both poor and wealthy, high school dropouts and highly trained professionals. All believed in their country?s leadership and in their own duty to that country, and so they went into needless slaughter. Every one of these fallen comrades was loved by their families and many in their community. They were our sons and daughters, our husbands and wives, our brothers and sisters, our fathers and mothers; most of all, they were our friends and they are sorely missed. If they could arise from their graves and speak, they would tell us to find a better way to solve our conflicts.

Whatever the reasons for this counterproductive conflict, it is now clear that it had nothing to do with helping the Iraqi people. We, the troops, were told that we were not invaders and occupiers, but liberators and protectors of the Iraqi people, and that we would bring them freedom, prosperity and a better life. Specific numbers of the Iraqi dead are not known, since ?We don?t do body counts,? as General Tommy Franks said. However, we do know that we shoulder some of the responsibility for the thousands of innocent civilians that have been killed. In addition, important commodities such as food, water, power, and sanitation are not readily available ensuring the continued suffering and death of countless innocent Iraqis. Iraqi Children play amongst explosives and clouds of depleted uranium dust, and bombings of markets and mosques are a daily occurrence. In many ways, we have made the lives of average Iraqis worse, not better, since the invasion. It is no wonder, then, that the terrorism that was not present in Iraq prior to the US invasion is now a daily reality there.

On the second anniversary of this unwise, unjust, and unproductive invasion, Iraq Veterans Against the War call upon our President, the Congress, and all elected officials to immediately and unconditionally withdraw all U.S. troops from Iraq and the Middle East. We also demand full funding for the medical needs of our returning veterans, including treatment for post traumatic stress disorder and the effects of depleted uranium. Finally, we call for all citizens of the United States to demand that their government end the pillaging and destruction of Iraq so that everyday Iraqi people can control their own lives and country.

Unintended Consequences

When the campaign finance laws were tightened there was the hope that by making it illegal for corporations to give money to support a political candidate for election or re-election, the political process would be cleaned up and money would be less important.

Then it was discovered that these regulations could not be applied to interest groups whose focus was not a particular candidate, but a particular issue that they and the candidates they favored supported. Thus the rise of 527 groups, of which DFA is one, I think.

Perhaps, I should state at this point that I do not favor any limitations on what people do with their own money. On the other hand, political contributions by corporations should not be permitted, unless that corporation is in the business of funding and promoting candidates. We call them political consultants.

If I had my druthers, I'd impose strict limits on office holders and potential office holders to stipulate that they can only accept money from individual citizens who are qualified to vote for them. In other words, the Town Council candidate can only take money from registered voters in his town and the candidate for president of the country can take money from the 200+ million qualified voters in the country.

Anyway, the unintended consequence. Perhaps because the legislation specifies "support" for candidates, those who spend money in opposition to one or more candidates have no limitations on them at all. Which is probably why we have just been witness to a political season where negative stuff has been more abundant than ever.
In addition, a whole new industry is springing up, staffed by people who have discovered that they can make a living year in and year out being against things and no longer have to rely on the campaign cycle to make a lot of money. In fact, a lot of the "consultants" and "pollsters" and "pundits" are getting rich by playing on the fears and antagonisms of ordinary citizens. In a sense, they're a secular version of the denizens of various flavors of organized "religion" who seem to thrive like kudzu.
Of course, when you consider that people with very modest incomes manage to pump billions into one-armed bandits, lotteries, and "gaming establishments," there's obviously a large market to be tapped.

I mentioned Eberle in an earlier post. That's because he's one of those milking the conservative, pro-family, anti-p!rn community at the same time that he's promoting p!rn on cable under the guise of the free speech movement.

Now I don't much care about p!rn on cable, though I do object to women being forced to give up their natural sense of privacy in order to make a living, but the deception that is being perpetrated against the modest and hard-working and church-going people in the heartland needs to be stopped.
Interestingly enough, it's actually the ghetto mentality that's responsible. There's a particular pattern. It involves people being isolated in their community and then preyed on by the very people who claim to protect them.
What we need is some potent law enforcement. I had actually hoped Kerry would provide that. Guess we'll have to deputize someone else.

Who's going to be the new sheriff in town?

GOP Talking points

Note that the subject's name is spelled wrong.
Note that the subject's welfare is not an issue.
Note that the definition of "custody" makes no sense.
Note that "withdrawal of food" is not likely, since it is probably a physical impossibility.
Note that the grammatical flaws of this legislation are likely to render it unenforceable.
Do you think that's an accident?

S. 529., The Incapacitated Person's Legal Protection Act

Teri Schiavo is subject to an order that her feeding tubes will be disconnected on March 18, 2005 at 1p.m.

The Senate needs to act this week before the Budget Act is pending business, or Teri's family will not have a remedy in federal court.

This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue.

This is a great political issue, because Senator Nelson of Florida - has already refused to become a cosponsor and this is a tough issue for Democrats.

The bill is very limited and defines custody as "those parties authorized or directed by a court order to withdraw or withhold food, fluids, or medical treatment."

There is an exemption for proceeding "which no party disputes, and the court finds, that the incapacitated person while having capacity, had executed a written advance directive valid under applicably law that clearly authorized the withholding or withdrawal of food or fluids or medical treatment in the applicable circumstances."

Incapacitated persons are defined as those "presently incapable of making relevant decisions concerning the provision, withholding or withdrawal of food fluids or medical treatment under applicable state law."

This legislation ensures that individuals like Teri Schiavo are guaranteed the same legal protections as convicted murderers like Ted Bundy.

Life and Death--Who Decides

The issue is whether the state has the ultimate power to decide who lives and who dies. The persistence of capital punishment affirms that the state has the power to put people to death and, if it does, then it's logical that it should also be able to determine who lives.
The assertion that government is merely being responsive to the demands of certains sects of organized religion is a subterfuge, a way of saying "it's not us that's telling you what to do; we're just the agents of a higher being."

You may think that the role of government is to do the people's bidding, to be public servants. That's not how those who govern see it. From their perspective they have been "selected" to tell others what to do and, in particular, to tell them to do things they don't want to do on their own.

Now, there are two ways to get people to do what they don't want to do on their own volition. You can threaten them with punishment, if they don't obey, or you can bribe them with a promise of rewards. Needless to say, threats are cheaper. But, if a threat is to have any meaning, it has to be backed up with the ultimate threat, to deprive a recalcitrant individual of life itself.

Death to those who do not do as they are told is entirely consistent with the position of those who adhere to the philosophy of limited government. What it means is that the least possible effort is to be expended to get people to comply with directions--i.e.control is maintained by threatening survival.

Of course, the threat is much less powerful, if not vitiated entirely, if people can decide for themselves who lives and who dies. That's why suicide is against the law. Even when suicide is permitted to be "assisted," that's still consistent with the assertion that the authority of the state is determinative. When a state grants a permit, it asserts the power to withhold it and, if the covered behavior occurs without a permit, to punish the culprit.

When our Constitution states that all powers not specifically assigned to government are retained by the people, it doesn't mean the individual person. It just means they haven't been specifically assigned YET. If esential rights were personal, there would be noone without them, such as minors or incompetents.

It would take a significant ammendment of the Constitution to recognize the equal, human rights of every person--equal not just to every other person but to the state itself.

Taking away the authority of the state to make life and death decisions about the people within its jurisdiction would be truly revolutionary. Because, once tasted, authority is not likely to be relinquished lightly.

Just think, there would be no more executive privilege.

GOP HUMOR

World Tribunal on Iraq

WORLD TRIBUNAL ON IRAQ
PORTUGUESE HEARING
(LISBON, 18, 19 and 20 March 2005)
TRIBUNAL-IRAQUE

World Tribunal on Iraq
Portuguese Hearing
Torre do Tombo National Archives (University), Lisbon, Portugal
March 18-19-20, 2005
www.tribunaliraque.no.sapo.pt

Gannon International

Anyway, to start sort of at the beginning. The revelation of
Guckert/Gannon as a fake reported in the White House, working for an
outfit called, GOPUSA, whose main business seems to be setting up
conservative media sites to attract people who can later be dunned for
contributions to unwinnable positions (gay marriage,e.g.) and asking
leading questions during the campaign that allowed the White House to
spin its message into the MSM, got me into trying to follow the money.
After all, the line was that all those fake reporters (there were some
to target Daschle, Gephardt, and, of course, Dean) were volunteers who
put out a story a day, at least, and pretended to be following the
candidates and just happening to pick up information that could be spun
negatively. It's just not credible that they were living on air.

Since there seemed to be some co-ordination with the SBVT and the
writers for GOPUSA and Talon, it seemed reasonable to take a closer look
there and, now that various FEC and IRS filings are being put out by the
Center for the Public Interest, there's a bit more information about how
much was spent and by whom. Also about who contributed, but I think
that's less important. The contributors were probably ideologically
motivated. The people who spent it are probably criminals.

Anyway, two pieces of information about the SBVTs that I think are of
interest are:
1) Although their official report states that they took in about $17
million and spent $21 million (much more than was ever reported in the
media), the detailed breakdown of who got paid indicates that one outfit,
Mentzer Media got $31 million out of some $35 million total.
2) The details supporting these latter figures, on documents that
purport to have been acquired by Public Interest from the IRS, show that
some time in early October 2004, every payment to every vendor and
employee is entered twice--two identical payments on the same day in
every case. The overage, roughly calculated, comes to the difference
between the $21 million reported spent and the $35 million reported
received by the vendors of services. Whether they actually got paid
double should be checkable. http://www.public-i.org/527/handler-download.aspx?act=txt&type=exp&org=707&year=2004

The fellow who was in charge of the day to day operation of the SBVT
enterprise is one William E. Franke,
http://www.gannonintl.com/BiographicalSketches.htm
Franke has a history of defrauding his first wife after their divorce and
of defaulting on HUD loans. Franke's normal enterprise is an outfit
called GANNON INTERNATIONAL, which has been a going concern since the
1980s. Gannon International has a number of subsidiaries, one of which,
Gannon Technologies Group, boasts on its web site (I am going to copy all
of it so it won't be lost. The home page of Gannon International seems
to be blank) about its stellar client list.

http://www.gannonintl.com/Frames_Tech_files/pagestream.htm

The Gannon Technologies Group was initiated to deliver products and
services to the vast new industry associated with the Internet.

Staking a claim at the epicenter of this technology, The Gannon
Technologies Group provides high volume electronic image conversion and
optical character reading services, capable of attaining a virtual 100%
accurate full text data base (ASCII) retrieval for 100% accurate data
reproduction for unlimited volumes of data stored on any medium.
Further, this group develops various software applications for the
efficient management of massive databases.

The capacity of The Gannon Technologies Group is both highly strategic,
and highly valued. Few companies can match its operating capacities, its
long history of such services, and the software necessarily borne of
such a history.

The constituent entities comprising The Gannon Technologies Group have
their central offices at 1000 North Payne Street, Suite 200, in
Alexandria, Virginia with a processing facility in Warsaw, Virginia.

The Gannon Technologies Operating Systems

The Electronic Imagery and Optical Character Recognition Operating
Systems, designed and owned by The Gannon Technologies Group, permit the
high speed conversion of massive amounts of data into electronic images
from paper of virtually any size or condition, microfilm, microfiche or
aperture cards.

While requiring several steps, each requiring software developed by The
Gannon Technologies Group, the in common steps performed by The Gannon
Technologies Group are imaging and optical character recognition.

Imaging is the process of converting documents from any format (paper,
microfilm, microfiche, and aperature card) into an electronic image. It
requires several different software applications, from image enhancement
to anti-skew to compression/decompression softwares.

Optical character recognition is the second step in the process, whereby
the entire text is placed into the ASCII format, thereby making every
single word or figure individually retrievable. While typical OCR
software achieves character recognition to an approximate 85% level for
machine generated data, The Gannon Technologies Group can achieve a
recognition frequency exceeding 96% through its supplemental software
application, and a virtual 100% recognition factor through the complete
cycle of its process.

This database can be placed onto any prescribed medium, including
magnetic tape, CD-ROM, optical platters and magnetic cartridges in the
desired format. This database is then up-loaded to the electronic image
information management system.

The system is an all inclusive process, including material preparation,
scanning, image clea