Tag: U.S. military
The U.S. military cannot fight a pandemic. It is not a war, it’s a public health crisis. And this isn’t the only threat that has a global scope. Rather than preparing for public health crises like COVID-19, governments around the world spent a combined $1.917 trillion on weapons, maintaining their militaries, and fighting wars in 2019. #militaryspending
![Veterans Apologize To Indigenous On Behalf Of U.S. Army At Standing Rock [Watch]](http://i2.wp.com/consciouslifenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Veterans-Apologize-To-Indigenous-compressed.jpg?resize=675%2C240&ssl=1 "Veterans Apologize To Indigenous On Behalf Of U.S. Army At Standing Rock [Watch]")
Hundreds of veterans from across the United States took a knee and begged for forgiveness for crimes committed toward indigenous people in the name of the U.S. military.
By September 2012, after almost a decade at the task, the U.S. had allocated and spent nearly $25 billion on “training, equipping, and sustaining” the Iraqi security forces, according to a report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. In the end, the U.S. claimed to have trained roughly 950,000 members of the “steady,” “solid,” and well-trained Iraqi security forces.
And yet just two and a half years after the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, that same force collapsed in spectacular fashion to less than 31,000 ISIS militants (according to CIA estimates) and these forces reportedly were so frightened by 800 ISIS militants that they went running, leaving equipment and even their uniforms behind, thus handing over the second largest city in the country, Mosul.
According to an 800-page report commissioned by the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), US military personnel raped at least 54 children in Colombia between 2003 and 2007. Adriaan Alsema, writing for Colombia Reports, was first to report the story in the English-language press on March 23, 2015.
In contradiction with its own mandate, the World Health Organization (WHO) continues to suppress evidence uncovered in Iraq that US military use of depleted uranium (DU) and other weapons have not only killed many civilians but are also the cause of an epidemic of birth defects and other public health issues. By refusing to release the report publicly, the WHO effectively protects the US military and its government from accountability for the resulting public health catastrophe.
Halliday’s report drew comparisons between the Iraqi case and the legacy of health issues arising from US use of Agent Orange in Vietnam.
The US military has been engaged in a policy of forcing wounded and disabled veterans out of service to avoid paying benefits and to make room for new able-bodied recruits. Identifying injured combat soldiers as delinquent and negligent has lead to a practice called “chaptering out” which results in those soldiers being forced to leave the military without an honorable discharge. Because of this, thousands of soldiers have been chaptered out, losing federally sponsored benefits including health care, unemployment, and educational programs.
