Military Families Speak Out
Michigan Chapter

Do you wonder what the cost of this war is for Michigan? Click here! (pdf file)

Click here to listen to Bruce Springsteen's version of Pete Seeger's "Bring Them Home"

NEW!- in order to make it easier (and quicker) for us to post news, we've transfered those items that are links to external sources to our blog. Please click here for the MFSO Michigan News Blog (or on the articles scrolling in the news ticker below) to see the most recent posts. You can also subscribe to the blog via a RSS feed reader (feel free to e/mail us at mfso.michigan at gmail.com for more info on how to do this). Note you can also subscribe to the blog via this RSS link .

On October 27, 2007, United for Peace and Justice staged rallies across the nation. MFSO Michigan founder, Deb Regal Coller attended the rally held in Chicago. The event was well attended by a very diverse population of individuals wanting to voice their oppostion to the War in Iraq.

Photos by robert coller

THE TIME IS NOW - END THE WAR!

MFSO-Michigan helped coordinate Michigan Peace Network's state-wide advocacy efforts with Senators Levin and Stabenow. We are now planning escalating actions to continue this pressure. We are in a new political phase and the debate is happening right now - we need to continue to give Congress the political will to act boldly and to be accountable for their actions and inactions with regard to the war in Iraq.

Contact Congress (www.congress.org) and tell them that you expect them to work to represent the people - and the people want an end to this war. Keep the pressure on Senator Levin.

Letters to the editors of your local newspapers and the Detroit News (letters@detnews.com ) and Detroit Free Press (letters@freepress.com) are also important. Please copy MFSO-Michigan (mfso dot michigan at gmail dot com) on any emails you send to media or to Congress.


A PowerPoint presentation is available for you to adapt for local use by contacting us at mfso.michigan@gmail.com. It is entitled "How to End the Iraq War." It was prepared by Wendra Chambers, an MFSO DC Chapter member.

Defund the war NOW!

As part of the call to defund the war NOW, we are providing a PDF of the new MFSO postcard (click here to download a PDF file. Print the first page, then turn your cardstock over and print the second page, you'll then be able to cut out two postcards!). Postcards can also be ordered for 10 cents each from Bring Them Home Now (BringThemHomeNow.org, contact bthn@gmail.com). It is very important that we fill Sen.Levin's mailbox as well as the mailboxes of Sen Stabenow and your Representative with these cards for all areas of Michigan! Please do what you can today to call for defunding the war NOW.

Click here to download the PDF file -SUPPORT OUR TROOPS! DE-FUND THE WAR!
MFSO Talking Points-

MFSO (National) also has an effective postcard (shown below), click here to download a pdf file with both the front and text sides of this card.

3,000 U.S. Dead in Iraq - CANDLE LIGHT VIGIL

Click here to see the Fox 2 News coverage of this event.

Click here to view photographs of the event.

Held on Jan. 2, 2007 on the University of Michigan Diag in Ann Arbor Michigan.

As of Friday, December 29th, 2,996 U.S. armed service members had been killed in Iraq (for updates visit www.icasualties.org).
It was expected, especially since Saddam Hussein was executed, that 3,000 would be surpassed by that Sunday, New Year's Eve.

On Jan. 2nd , we meditated upon the cost of this war and the immense suffering brought upon all sides. We held this vigil to stand united in paying respect for lives lost and in calling for Peace in the New Year.

We remember that our military is in Iraq because we, as a nation, have sent them. Likewise, we understand that it is up to us to bring them home safely. We implore our elected officials, Congress and the Bush Administration to heed the call of the American people - "No Surge". We do not support an escalation of the conflict in Iraq by sending additional troops. We call for our troops to be brought back home.

Veterans for Peace read the names of all U.S. service men and women whom have died from the state of Michigan, which as of today stands at 117, with at least five more fallen this past week. At the conclusion, taps was played and funds collected to donate to Ann Arbor's VA hospital volunteer service fund. This event was co-sponsored by Michigan Peaceworks, Veterans For Peace, the Interfaith Council for Peace and Justice, and Military Families Speak Out.

An open letter to Carl Levin

Dear Senator:

My son is a Marine who will deploy to Iraq for the third time next March. While it is comforting to finally see some movement in Washington toward bringing our troops home and ending our involvement in that disaster, I am extremely concerned that an improperly conducted drawdown could expose units remaining in Iraq to an increased, not reduced, level of danger. (read more)

Action to support!:

Here is a note from United for Peace and Justice Legislative Committee that provides MFSO members with great suggestions about how we can bring the special voices of military families echoing the direct and honest words of Rep. Dennis Kucinich spoken on the House floor in December, 2006. Let's get those emails to Congress and letters to the editor going!

Toward bringing our troops home NOW,
Deb Regal Coller, MFSO Michigan

Rep. Kucinich has made a great statement on the floor of the House . Please consider using it -- send a copy to your Rep. and or Senator and ask them to make a similar statement.... or quote Rep. Kucinich in a letter to the editor of your local paper asking if your Rep. could be this courageous and supportive of our troops.

Kucinich on House Floor (12/6/06)

The American public did not vote for the Iraq Study Group. They voted for a new congress and a new direction in Iraq - - out. Many who voted for change will be surprised to learn some who oppose the war will continue to fund it, in the name of supporting the troops in the field.

"We will not abandon the troops in the field," some solemnly pronounce, while continuing to fund a war that even generals say cannot be won militarily. Well, we have abandoned the troops in the field already. We have abandoned them to lies about why the war was being fought. We have abandoned them to getting shot from all sides. We have left them in a type of hell while we profess a strange love for them by keeping them there.

The money is in the pipeline right now to bring the troops home. $70 billion dollars was appropriated for Iraq on October 1st. The Administration will ask for another $160 billion in the spring. That is a total of $230 billion for the Iraq war. In less than two years the war and the so called defense budget will cost more than $1 trillion. Stop wasting money. Stop wasting lives. Bring the troops home now. Cut off any more funds for the war.

Message To West Point
by Bill Moyers

Wednesday, November 29, 2006 -- This is an excerpt from the Sol Feinstone
Lecture on 'The Meaning of Freedom', delivered by Bill Moyers at the United
States Military Academy on November 15, 2006. Click here to download a PDF version of this lecture.

Since "battlemind" is part of the training our military forces experience as standard procedure, why should we be surprised when they have difficulty turning "battlemind" off when they return home? Click here for a very interesting powerpoint presentation regarding "BattleMind" (note, this is a "zip" file which must be uncompressed after download. This file has been checked and confirmed as safe to download and "unzip")

Report on Military Families Speak Out Activities in Washington, D.C. November 9-11, 2006
 
Military Families Speak Out members from across the country traveled to Washington, D.C. November 9th – 11th to speak out against the war in Iraq, call for an end to the Back Door Draft, and honor the fallen on Veterans Day.
                                                                                                                               
On November 9th, a group of 30 Military Families and Veterans gathered near the Pentagon to hold a press conference and deliver petitions to the Pentagon with thousands of signatures to Stop the Back Door Draft and Bring Our Troops Home Now. On November 8th, President Bush had announced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, so MFSO members were able to share our perspective on this development with the press. We said that while we welcomed the resignation of one of the key architects of the war in Iraq, a war based on lies, it was way too little, and way too late. We expressed our concern that this was, in fact, a move to continue the war by putting it under different “management”. We made it clear that a change in management of the war isn’t enough – the war itself must end, we need our troops brought home now and we need them taken care of when they get here.

The procession of Military Families and Veterans was blocked by Pentagon police as we neared the Pentagon. While Pentagon officials refused to accept our petitions, the press heard us as we addressed not the Secretary of Defense’s empty office in the Pentagon across the way, but the people across the nation and the world who need to hear the ground truth about this war and about the urgency to end it now.
 
We then moved on to Congress, and delivered petitions to the members of the House and Senate Armed Services Committee. A small group of MFSO members and a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War met for almost an hour with soon-to-be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s Chief of Staff. We told her our personal stories about the continuing horrors of this war and the impact of the Back Door Draft on troops and their families. We underscored responsibility of Congress to take immediate action to end the war.
 
On Friday, Military Families Speak Out members gathered for a meeting to talk about ideas for activities and directions over the coming months. As always, it was extremely moving to get together, tell our stories, connect with each other, discuss, debate and come together as a powerful and united force for ending this war. 
 

We spent much of the time talking about ways to increase the pressure on Congress to bring our troops home now and
take care of them when they get here. The new Congress will arrive in Washington, D.C. on January 3rd for organizational meetings. On January 4th,the new Members of Congress and new Senators will be sworn in, We talked about the possibility of having a presence there – perhaps a version of Operation House Call so they know we’re around to hold their feet to the fire!

 
On Saturday, November 11th, we constructed a powerful and moving testimony to Honor the Fallen of this war, our troops and Iraqis.  On the National Mall, almost in the shadow of the Washington Monument, we displayed 2,844 American flags representing U.S. troop deaths in Iraq as of November 11, 2006, and photographs of Iraqi children, women and men who were casualties of this war. Fifty Military Families Speak Out members spent the day talking to the public about the exhibit (there were thousands of visitors to Washington, D.C. on this Veterans Day), conducting media interviews, meeting and talking with each other.  A number of Veterans and military families who happened by the exhibit sat with us in grief over the losses of this war.
 
Thank you to all who came from near and far to Washington, D.C. for these powerful and moving Veterans’ Day events. A very special thank you to Tina Richards and Stacy Hafley from MFSO’s Missouri Chapter for initiating the Stop the Back Door Draft event at the Pentagon and the Honor the Fallen display on the National Mall. And another special thank you to George Adams from Veterans for Peace, who worked so hard to make the Honor the Fallen display so beautiful.

Take Action: Send postcards to members of Congress! This link will download a pdf file of a postcard to send to your representative in Congress.

Recounting a fallen Marine's last days

By JOHN FENTON

In the four months since the death of my son, Sgt. Matthew J. Fenton, from injuries suffered in Iraq, I have stated many times the horror of what I saw in the National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.

I believe that the time has arrived to tell the whole story of his death and the carnage that was inflicted on some of his fellow Marines. I do not find this easy to do, but as the death toll and injured number continues to climb, I cannot sit silently. (read more here)

MFSO Workshop at Michigan Peace Network Conference August 12

On August 12, over 30 diverse peace and justice organizations participated in the Michigan Peace Network Conference . Deb Regal Coller from MFSO-Michigan facilitated a workshop entitled "The Human Cost of Militarism: The Iraq War and Occupation."

The Human Cost of Militarism: Iraq War and Occupation
Deb Regal Coller, Military Families Speak Out (MFSO) - Michigan
http://www.mfso.org, http://www.mfsomichigan.org

I.  Overview

• Over 3,000 families nationwide and growing; Michigan Chapter up and running; sister organizations:  Gold Star Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Gold Star Families for Peace
• MFSO provides an oasis for those of us in the peace movement with family members in the military and serves as an entry point for those new to peace activism. MFSO Key Positions:
• Support Our Troops: Give them what they need to protect themselves from harm and to respect international law and human rights.
• Bring Them Home Now: no phased withdrawal; no more waiting for elusive milestones and deadlines.
• Take Care of Them When They Get Home: fully fund VA to provide complete services for medical and psychological ailments that result from military service; provide economic benefits to allow returning troops to receive education, civilian job training, housing assistance and transition assistance for families; provide compassionate listening for returning vets.

II.  Human Costs
US Costs

• Cost of illegal war and occupation to US taxpayers: over $300 billion; costs borne by Michigan taxpayers: almost $9 billion. 
• Cost trade-offs: the people of Louisiana have paid $2.6 billion to the war—enough to construct 34,000 affordable housing units.

Iraqi Costs

• Estimates range from 50,000 to 250,000 Iraqi civilians killed.  Civilian death counts are not generally released by US military; tallies are kept on "bleeder boards" accessible to those with military intelligence clearance. 
• The number of Iraqi civilians wounded is unknown.

US Military Personnel Casualties: Physical

• Ratio of US military personnel to severely wounded: approximately 1:8.
• “Official” US military personnel death count: over 2,600. Includes: at least 90 troops with ties to Michigan. Excludes: suicides, those who die after their return to the US, or those who die in designated "non-combat" situations.
• “Official” count of wounded US military personnel: approximately 20,000.  Excludes: illnesses, some attribute to depleted uranium exposure as no routine testing for DU exposure is required.  Allegations by some returning troops and their family members question the thoroughness of physical assessments completed when service members return from deployment and describe them as "a wink, a handshake, and a nod."

Sources:
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count ( http://icasualties.org/oif/ )
Faces of the Fallen ( http://projects.washingtonpost.com/fallen/ )
DU( http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Presentations_on_agent_011704.htm)
Maimed in Iraq ( http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Maimed_in_Iraq_021804.htm )

US Military Personnel Casualties: Legal & Moral, Cognitive & Spiritual

• Legal & Moral. Members of the military take an oath to protect the Constitution and the people of the United States and are sworn to obey all lawful orders. Independent sources of information are limited for those deployed in Iraq and the opportunity and encouragement to analyze situations are hardly the norms in military culture.  When US service members are given orders that violate US and/or international laws as well as principles of conscience, are they, in addition, exposed to potential future prosecution for violations of international law? (See Sgt. Ricky Clousing and here; and Lt. Ehren Watada.) In addition, within the past 4 years, more than 30,000 enlisted men and women have left the military without leave, risking court martial and imprisonment.
• Cognitive & Spiritual. Post traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) screening criteria were recently revised, so it is now more difficult for soldiers to qualify for a PTSD diagnosis and thus related treatment: many troops are now counseled by mental health professionals in battlefield conditions and sent back into combat.  But PTSD is a cognitively sane reaction to the insane [cognitively dissonant] and inhumane circumstances of counter-insurgency combat.  In addition, suicide, homicide, domestic violence, substance abuse rates are rising among military families. (Vets exposed to the traumatic scenes of war are often reluctant to seek help in their adjustment to post-combat life owing to the stigma of weakness seeking such help implies.)

Sources:
Suicides ( http://www.veteransforpeace.org/speakers.htm#Suicide )
PTSD ( http://www.mfso.org/article.php?id=544 )
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/The_price_of_valor_071904.htm

III.  Take Action!  Operation House Call
MFSO-Michigan members call on peace and justice organizations to work
with us to make our presence known to members of Congress in their home districts especially during the August Congressional recess and after.  Vigils, shared appointments, letters to the media, press conferences and appearance at town meetings and other events are important actions to take NOW.

• Operation House Call is an organized effort to reach members of Congress and to confront them about their responsibility to act NOW to bring our troops home.  In particular, call on both US Senators (http://senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm?State=MI) and on House Armed Services Committee members Reps. Joe Schwarz ( http://schwarz.house.gov/ )and Candice Miller http://candicemiller.house.gov/
• Download Postcards from the MFSO-Michigan web site.  Each postcard bears pictures of empty military boots and reminds the member of Congress receiving it about the cost in terms of loss of life is mounting day by day as Congress delays action.

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  MILITARY FAMILY TRAVELS FROM PINCKNEY TO WASHINGTON, DC TO URGE CONGRESS TO STOP THE IRAQ WAR

  
  Mother's Day Weekend: Military Families and War Veterans Speak Out

  PINCKNEY,MICHIGAN — Over Mother's Day Weekend, military families and war veterans from across the United States went to the National Mall in Washington, DC for Silence of the Dead, Voices of the Living to send an urgent message to Congress: Bring our troops home now and take care of them when they get here.

  "Last July I stood on the steps of the graduate library at the University of Michigan and viewed Eyes Wide Open: the entire diag area covered with empty boots representing the US troops killed in Iraq and shoes representing the Iraqi civilians dead as a result of the fighting there. My stomach knotted and I choked back tears because as I stood there on that July day, my son, a marine, was deployed to an "unknown location" in Iraq. Although my son has returned from his most recent deployment, the pain I feet for all of the families who face the emptiness left by the deaths of both troops and civilians burns within me. It is that passion I carry with me to Washington, DC for Mother's Day at Eyes Wide Open. For me the sorrow mounts as the numbers of boots continues to grow. It is time to bring our troops home!" --Deb Regal of Pinckney

  WHAT: Silence of the Dead, Voices of the Living, featuring families who lost loved ones to the war in Iraq; families of those currently serving; veterans of this and previous wars; Iraqis and others who bear the heaviest burden of the Iraq war.
  
  EYES WIDE OPEN: THE HUMAN COST OF WAR , the American Friends Service Committee's widely acclaimed memorial exhibition that features a pair of combat boots for every U.S. military casualty. As part of the multi-day event, a dramatic new exhibit featuring boots for soldiers currently in Iraq will be unveiled, whose lives are at risk each day that this war continues. The exhibit also includes a memorial to recognize the thousands of Iraqi children, women and men who have died in the war.

  Saturday, May 13
  Silent march around National Mall; speak out and musical performances.

  WHERE: National Mall, Washington, D.C.

  WHO: Military and Gold Star families, Iraq War veterans and others, including: Deborah Regal of Pinckney, Michigan and Stefani Barner of Macomb County,Michigan

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  On Memorial Day, 2006, MFSO Michigan participated with the local Veterans for Peace group in the installation of crosses at Hanover Park in Ann Arbor. The crosses represented each Michigan Soldier lost in the Iraq War.

  

Important Notes!

Stop the Back Door Draft! Read more here!

The MFSO Midwest Chapter, in conjunction with Military Families Speak Out, Veterans For Peace, and Iraq Veterans Against the War is launching “Stop the Backdoor Draft – Honor the Fallen – Bring All Our Troops Home Now!” Read more here.

The Reality of War by Stefani Barner

Contact Military Families Speak Out - Michigan Chapter at:
mfso.michigan at gmail.com