The Failure Of The Liberal Class In The United States

Must Watch Video By Chris Hedges

"I have largely given up on the liberal class in this country"

Poverty Scholars Program Hosts Dialogue with Chris Hedges

The Poverty Initiative's Poverty Scholars Program hosted Chris Hedges on Saturday, April 10th in James Chapel at Union Theological Seminary.  He addressed the assembled low-income organizers, religious leaders and media makers from around the country who had convened from April 8-11th for “Strategic Dialogues” on the topics of the role of religion, media and communications in building a movement to end poverty. Chris Hedges' remarks were in dialogue with Poverty Scholars Dan Jones with the Philadelphia 

Student Union, Ron Blount with the Unified Taxi Workers Alliance and others. 

 

See povertyinitiative.org 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Bill Clinton's Warning on "Extremist" Mood In US

Sheep Getting Restless


• Growing concern in White house about anti-government mood
• Trust in US government at its lowest point for half a century

By Ewen MacAskill

April 22, 2010 "The Guardian" - April 19, 2010 - Washington -- Bill Clinton today warned politicians and commentators to tone down their rhetoric for fear of inflaming hate groups and provoking violence, as a poll suggested that public trust in the US government is at its lowest point for half a century.Amid growing concern in the White House about the anti-government mood and a marked rise in radical fringe groups, Clinton said the internet made it easier to spread ideas to reach "the unhinged". The worry is not so much over populist movements such as the Tea Party but the revival of extreme groups that have been encouraged by general anti-government sentiment.

On the 15th anniversary of the 1995 Oklahoma bombing, the worst terrorist attack in the US before 9/11, Clinton wrote in the New York Times: "We are again dealing with difficulties in a contentious, partisan time … As we exercise the right to advocate our views, and as we animate our supporters, we must all assume responsibility for our words and actions before they enter a vast echo chamber and reach those both serious and delirious, connected and unhinged."

Clinton said it should not be forgotten what drove the Oklahoma bombers. "They took to the ultimate extreme an idea advocated in the months and years before the bombing by an increasingly vocal minority: the belief that the greatest threat to American freedom is our government and that public servants do not protect our freedoms but abuse them."

At a ceremony in Oklahoma yesterday, survivors and victims' relatives commemorated the 168 people who were killed.

The extent of the anti-government mood in the country was revealed today in a Pew Research Centre poll that found public confidence in the federal government was at its lowest for half a century. Almost eight out of 10 Americans surveyed said they did not trust it; only 22% said they trusted the federal government almost always or most of the time.

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Centre, said: "Trust in government rarely gets this low. Some of it is backlash against Obama. But there are a lot of other things going on."

The poll identified several reasons for the rise in anti-government feelings: opposition to Obama; the recession, in particular the role of Wall Street; and anger with both Democratic and Republican members of Congress.

The Southern Poverty Legal Centre, which tracks hate groups, said yesterday there has been a surge in the number of militia and other extremists. Mark Potok, its head, said the mood was so volatile that it needed only a spark to set it off.

Last month nine people linked to the Hutaree, a Christian militia group in Michigan, were arrested over an alleged plot to kill police in the hope of starting an uprising against the government. In February, a lone anti-tax protester flew a plane into the tax office in Austin, Texas.

Members of Congress who last month supported the health reform bill have been targets of vandalism and death threats. Yesterday several hundred pro-gun activists gathered at the Washington Monument to demand the end of restrictions on carrying guns in public.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, said groups such as his were set on ousting moderate Republicans in primaries before the November Congressional mid-term elections.

"We are in a war," Pratt, a former Republican member of the Virginia state legislature, told a rally. He said the Obama administration was out to take their freedom, their money and their childrens because it was socialist.

A newly-formed group, the Oath Keepers, made up of former members of the armed services and police forces, had been due to take part in a rally in Virginia at which they would openly carry firearms but pulled out, expressing fears of confrontation with the police.

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

The Weird Theology of Glenn Beck and His Cohorts

The New Christian Right and Christianity

By Robert Fantina

April 22, 2010 "Counterpunch" -- It is an unfortunate truth that organizations ranging from the mildly amusing to the extremely dangerous have all co-opted the term ‘Christian.’  Christian Right, Christian Coalition, etc., all use the term without, apparently, knowing what it means. It has reached a point where even Christians cringe when they hear the word in political commentary.

A few examples will suffice.

• There is currently a case working its way to the Supreme Court involving the Christian Legal Society chapter at Hastings, a branch of the University of California. Hastings stopped funding this organization in 2004, when the society required its members to sign a statement of faith, and excluded all those who would not do so. Also excluded automatically are homosexuals. 
• The Christian Coalition, on its website, has ‘Action Alerts,’ opportunities for its adherents to further the causes it espouses. As of April 19, 2010, two of the top three ‘Action Alerts’ pertain to opposing health care (‘Last Chance to Say ‘NO’ to Healthcare Takeover;’ ‘Critical House Vote Coming up on Obamacare’), and the third to discrimination against gays and lesbians (‘Help us Defend ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’).
• Sarah Palin, the current darling of the Christian right, preaches abstinence as the most effective sex education, says that U.S. military “is a source for good throughout the world,” and, during her embarrassing campaign for vice-president, talked about how God blessed the U.S. with oil.
• Glenn Beck, also wildly popular with the so-called Christian right, has said that people should leave their churches if those churches preach social justice. 

It might now be worthwhile to appeal to the Bible, to see, as closely as possible, how Jesus Christ, whom these worthies purport to follow, either did, or might have, responded in the areas mentioned above.

The Pharisees and Sadducees, learned religious and political leaders at the time of Christ, were shocked that he associated with ‘sinners’ and society’s outcasts. One such ‘sinner’ was the woman caught in adultery. Rather than accuse her, he accused her accusers. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (John 8; v. 7). When her accusers slunk away in humiliation, he spoke tenderly to her, and offered his divine forgiveness. “Woman, where are those thine accusers? Hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man, Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more” (John 8; vs. 10 -11).

Also outcast from society were lepers. They begged from afar, but were not permitted contact with family or friends; their entire community consisted only of other lepers. Jesus did not shun them, but healed them.” And, behold, there came a leper and worshipped him, saying, Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And Jesus put forth his hand, and touched him, saying, I will; be thou clean. And immediately his leprosy was cleansed” (Matthew 8; vs. 2 – 3).

Other beggars, some blind from birth, some lame, deaf or mute, approached him, and were not rejected. He did not, like some right wing ‘Christians’ did during the health care debate, shout them down, or spit on them. Rather, he brought them to him, and healed them.

The christian right (the lower-case ‘c’ is not a typographical error; this writer is seeking some way of distinguishing those who demonstrate true Christian values from those who use the name but lack the values) is often angry; Mrs. Palin has recommended that they all reload, perhaps hoping for another ‘unifying’ event like the Kennedy assassination almost 50 years ago. During the 2008 presidential campaign, even the Republican presidential candidate, the elderly, doddering Senator John McCain, could not stop people at his rallies from venting their rage and racism, calling then candidate Senator Barack Obama a terrorist and a child-killer, and calling for his death.

When did Jesus get angry? There are few, but notable, recorded evidences of his anger in the Bible. One situation was when calling out the learned scribes and Pharisees, for their hypocrisy. “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! Ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation” (Matthew 23; vs. 13 – 14).

 Might he not have something to say about today’s hypocrites, among whom are right-wing politicians who are forever quoting the Bible, attending prayer breakfasts and disdaining all ‘sinners,’ at the same time that they are having extra-marital affairs? Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina, telling the world that he was hiking down the Appalachian trail, when in actuality he was flying to his mistress’s bed in Argentina, and Senator John Ensign of Nevada, sleeping with his top aid’s wife, come to mind. And can one possibly forget Newt Gingrich? Mr. Gingrich was calling for the impeachment of Democrat Bill Clinton, wringing his righteous, family-values hands over the horror and sin of Mr. Clinton’s extra-marital affair with Monica Lewinsky, at the same time that Mr. Gingrich was sleeping in both his wife’s and his mistress’s beds.

Jesus Christ also became angry when finding merchants in the Temple; they had, he said, made his house a den of thieves. He forcefully and physically ejected those who had done so. “And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the seats of them that sold doves, and said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves”  (Matthew 21; vs. 12 – 13).

Based on this, one might logically consider that Jesus Christ was not as enamored with the almighty dollar as his alleged followers today appear to be.  One of their more modern heroes, former President George Bush, provided huge tax breaks to the nation’s wealthiest citizens.  Without exception, today’s christian right opposes President Obama’s efforts to let those tax benefits expire.

And what of Mr. Beck, urging Christians to leave their churches if they encourage social justice? Mr. Beck is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (possibly the only thing he has in common with this writer). Two LDS scholars, quoted in the New York Times on March 11, weighed in on Mr. Beck’s bizarre remark:

• Kent P. Jackson, associate dean of religion at Brigham Young University, said this: “My own experience as a believing Latter-day Saint over the course of 60 years is that I have seen social justice in practice in every L.D.S. congregation I’ve been in. People endeavor with all of our frailties and shortcomings to love one another and to lift up other people. So if that’s Beck’s definition of social justice, he and I are definitely not on the same team.” 
• Philip Barlow, the Arrington Professor of Mormon History and Culture at Utah State University, further stressed the point: “One way to read the Book of Mormon is that it’s a vast tract on social justice. It’s ubiquitous in the Book of Mormon to have the prophetic figures, much like in the Hebrew Bible, calling out those who are insensitive to injustices. A lot of Latter-day Saints would think that Beck was asking them to leave their own church.

Mr. Barlow also pointed out that just this year, the Church issued a new ‘Handbook of Instructions’ to Church leaders. A major revision was adding a fourth layer to the three-fold mission of the Church. That added mission is simply this: care for the poor.

One might say that minor, anecdotal evidence has been presented here. In response, this writer invites these christian zealots to show him where Jesus Christ ever opposed helping anyone in need. At what point did he disdain the lonely? Where in the Bible is it recorded that he held himself aloof from any common sinner? Where did he court the favor of the rich, and turn his back upon the poor? Yes, he harshly criticized the hypocrisy of the scribes, Pharisees and Sadducees, but while he condemned any sin, he was unfailingly warm and loving to the sinner.

And that, of course, brings up yet another problem with the christian right. In Luke 6: v. 37, Jesus is quoted thusly: “Judge not, and ye shall not be judged: condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: forgive, and ye shall be forgiven.” That statement seems to imply strongly that judgment is left for someone other than the Sarah Palins of the world. For Christians, mankind’s role, it seems, is to follow the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, and leave the determination of sin to him alone.

This writer understands, but also occasionally finds reason to resent, criticism of Christianity and Christians, when it is directed against all who proclaim to be Christians. There is nothing in the Bible to support Christianity as intolerant, judgmental, violent, fearful and paranoid. Rather, the example of the master teacher, revered by Christians as the Savior and Redeemer, shows only love, tolerance, gentleness and acceptance. There seems to be little support for the angry, hysterical ravings of the christian right to be found anywhere in the scriptures.

Robert Fantina is author of 'Desertion and the American Soldier: 1776--2006. 

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

America is having a psychotic break with paranoid tendencies

If you thought that the wildly popular Left Behind series of apocalyptic novels told the entire End Times/Rapture story, think again. Welcome to LaHaye’s ‘Edge of Apocalypse,’ the first novel of his new and improved, and even more apocalyptic, series of books. 

Given the Tax Day Tea Parties, the 15^th anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, and the 40^th anniversary of the burning of the student union building on the campus of the University of Kansas, the National Football League’s draft, and news about the Hutaree Christian militia, you may have missed one of the major literary events of the week; the return of the Tim LaHaye with a new series of apocalyptic novels.

Yes, to paraphrase the great Lou Christy, for the Detroit, Michigan born Tim LaHaye who will turn 84 on April 27, the Apocalypse is striking again and again and again and again.
And, cash register drawers at bookshops all across the country are once again ringing – perhaps not as loudly as they did for his Left Behind series – the mega-bestseller sold more than 65 million copies and was translated into 30 languages -- but they’re ringing nevertheless.

Don’t underestimate the market for the new LaHaye series. As Chip Berlet of Political Research Associates, a liberal think tank focusing on the political and Christian right, has pointed out, a pretty large segment of Christians believe in the inevitability of the End Times. “Popularized in 1970 by Hal Lindsey whose book ‘The Late Great Planet Earth’ has sold over 19 million copies, Berlet said about 30 percent to 40 percent of Americans believe the end is near and they watch for signs of the times for Christ's second coming,” American Baptist Press recently reported.

On April 20, Zondervan, a HarperCollins company which describes itself as “a world leader in Christian communications,” published “Edge of Apocalypse,” the first novel in a new series of apocalyptic novels called The End, co-authored by LaHaye and Craig Parshall. Zondervan, which released the book on April 20, is promoting “Edge of Apocalypse” as “an apocalyptic epic infused with political intrigue ripped from today’s headlines.” It will have a first print run of 250,000 copies.   

LaHaye and Parshall are giving the public a kind of “son” of The Left Behind series: more threats from rogue states, more betrayal in Washington, more talk of the Rapture and the Last Days, and perhaps most importantly — in a “ripped from today’s headlines” kinda way -- “a secret group known only as The Patriots [that] can save the United States from terrorists abroad and traitors within.”

Set in the near future, “Edge of Apocalypse,” according to Zondervan, “jumpstarts the series as military-hero-turned-inventor Joshua Jordan attempts to save Manhattan from two nuclear missiles. Using his Return to Sender military defense system, Jordan finds himself facing an unbearable ransom to the nation he loves. As tensions escalate and global alliances topple, only Jordan and a secret group known only as The Patriots can save the United States from terrorists abroad and traitors within. Set in the very near future, The End series chronicles the earth shattering events which eventually lead up to the Rapture and the beginning of the prophesied Last Days of mankind.”

“I’m thrilled to partner with Zondervan to produce a series hopefully even more innovative than Left Behind,” said LaHaye, a longtime figure on the Religious Right whose career has gone from marriage and family counseling to direct political action – most notably he helped found the Council for National Policy a secretive right wing lobby group that has been called "the most powerful conservative organization in America you've never heard of" -- to one of the major keepers of the apocalyptic flame. “While my past works have piqued interest in biblical prophecy on a global level, The End series includes many prophecies that were not covered in Left Behind.”

According to his bio at Zondervan’s website, Craig Parshall “is a highly successful lawyer from the Washington D.C. area and the author of the legal thrillers, Chamber of Justice series. He has also co-authored three books with his wife Janet [a leading right wing radio talk show host] including their new Thistle and Cross Series.

It was LaHaye’s Left Behind series that thrust him, and his co-author Jerry Jenkins, into the national spotlight, as at least seven titles in the series reached #1 on the bestseller lists for The New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly. From most reports, it is clear that LaHaye didn’t actually do the writing. That was left to Jenkins, a former sports writer who has authored several best-sellers on his own. Rather, LaHaye offered up a batch of notes -- the idea man if you will – and Jenkins swept it into novel form.

"I write the best I can,” LaHaye has said. “I know I'm never going to be revered as some classic writer. I don't claim to be C. S. Lewis. The literary-type writers, I admire them. I wish I was smart enough to write a book that's hard to read, you know?"

The Left Behind series has spawned its own cottage industry of kids books, screensavers, wallpaper, several full-length feature films, and the Left Behind video games -- LEFT BEHIND: Eternal Forces, was the most widely distributed Christian game in history.

The website of the Tim LaHaye Ministries offers a horde of resources about the End Times: “The Complete Bible Prophecy Chart,” at only $3.50, is probably the best bargain amongst LaHaye’s stock. As LaHaye points out, “A lot happens in the Bible – so much that quite a bit of reading and study is necessary to grasp the big picture of all that takes place from the beginning to the end.” The Chart “presents a complete panorama of much that happens in the Bible – both the past and the future ….  [and it] takes you step by step through each of the major ages in God’s master plan, beginning with the Age of Innocence and continuing onward to the Millennial Kingdom and beyond, into eternity.”

The big ticket item is the LaHaye End Times 10-pack, which, at a hefty $155.00 per, brings you 10 of LaHaye’s  Greatest Hits, including: “Are We Living in the End Times”; “Charting the End Times”; “The End Times Controversy”; “The Merciful God of Prophecy”; “The Popular Bible Prophecy Commentary”; “The Popular Encyclopedia of Bible Prophecy”; “The Rapture, Who Will Face the Tribulation?”; “Revelation Unveiled”; “Tim LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible, New King James Version”; and, “Understanding Bible Prophecy for Yourself.”

LaHaye and his wife Beverly, a best selling author and the founder of the conservative lobbying group, Concerned Women for America, have been married since 1947.

In addition to a number of book store appearances, LaHaye will be in Kalamazoo, Michigan on May 1 to speak about the end of times at a prophecy conference hosted by Calvary Chapel.

Frank Schaeffer, the son of Francis Schaeffer, one of the godfathers of the Religious Right, and a former member of the Christian right in good standing recently wrote that “Jerry Jenkins and Tim LaHaye’s LeftBehind series … represents everything that is most deranged about religion." “What happened with this militia group [the Hutaree in Michigan] is that their paranoid, deranged fantasy jumped from the page into sick brains and was turned into action.”

Schaeffer pointed out that while he wasn’t “blaming Jenkins and LaHaye's [Left Behind] product line for the plot to murder cops or any other evil intent or result,” he did feel that it was “feeding the paranoid delusions of people on the fringe of the fringe contributes to a dangerous climate that may provoke violence in a few individuals.”

And now comes “Edge of Apocalypse.” If LaHaye, and his new partner Craig Parshall, have 

their way, there will be more apocalyptic wallpaper, apocalyptic screen savers, apocalyptic movies and apocalyptic video games. Unfortunately, there is also likely to be more apocalyptic weird guys in camo running around in the woods somewhere near you. 

BILL BERKOWITZ

There is nothing civil about civil wars!

Disposable Soldiers

By Joshua Kors

April 22, 2010 "The Nation" - - The mortar shell that wrecked Chuck Luther's life exploded at the base of the guard tower. Luther heard the brief whistling, followed by a flash of fire, a plume of smoke and a deafening bang that shook the tower and threw him to the floor. The Army sergeant's head slammed against the concrete, and he lay there in the Iraqi heat, his nose leaking clear fluid.
"I remember laying there in a daze, looking around, trying to figure out where I was at," he says. "I was nauseous. My teeth hurt. My shoulder hurt. And my right ear was killing me." Luther picked himself up and finished his shift, then took some ibuprofen to dull the pain. The sergeant was seven months into his deployment at Camp Taji, in the volatile Sunni Triangle, twenty miles north of Baghdad. He was determined, he says, to complete his mission. But the short, muscular frame that had guided him to twenty-two honors--including three Army Achievement Medals and a Combat Action Badge--was basically broken. The shoulder pain persisted, and the hearing in his right ear, which evaporated on impact, never returned, replaced by the maddening hum of tinnitus.

Then came the headaches. "They'd start with a speckling in the corner of my vision, then grow worse and worse until finally the right eye would just shut down and go blank," he says. "The left one felt like someone was stabbing me over and over in the eye."

Doctors at Camp Taji's aid station told Luther he was faking his symptoms. When he insisted he wasn't, they presented a new diagnosis for his blindness: personality disorder.

"To be told that I was lying, that was a real smack in the face," says Luther. "Then when they said 'personality disorder,' I was really confused. I didn't understand how a problem with my personality could cause deafness or blindness or shoulder pain."

For three years The Nation has been reporting on military doctors' fraudulent use of personality disorder to discharge wounded soldiers [see Kors, "How Specialist Town Lost His Benefits," April 9, 2007]. PD is a severe mental illness that emerges during childhood and is listed in military regulations as a pre-existing condition, not a result of combat. Thus those who are discharged with PD are denied a lifetime of disability benefits, which the military is required to provide to soldiers wounded during service. Soldiers discharged with PD are also denied long-term medical care. And they have to give back a slice of their re-enlistment bonus. That amount is often larger than the soldier's final paycheck. As a result, on the day of their discharge, many injured vets learn that they owe the Army several thousand dollars.

According to figures from the Pentagon and a Harvard University study, the military is saving billions by discharging soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan with personality disorder.

In July 2007 the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs called a hearing to investigate PD discharges. Barack Obama, then a senator, put forward a bill to halt all PD discharges. And before leaving office, President Bush signed a law requiring the defense secretary to conduct his own investigation of the PD discharge system. But Obama's bill did not pass, and the Defense Department concluded that no soldiers had been wrongly discharged. The PD dismissals have continued. Since 2001 more than 22,600 soldiers have been discharged with personality disorder. That number includes soldiers who have served two and three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This should have been resolved during the Bush administration. And it should have been stopped now by the Obama administration," says Paul Sullivan, executive director of Veterans for Common Sense. "The fact that it hasn't is a national disgrace."

On Capitol Hill, the fight is not over. In October four senators wrote a letter to President Obama to underline their continuing concern over PD discharges. The president, almost three years after presenting his personality disorder bill, says he remains concerned as well.

Veterans' leaders say they're particularly disturbed by Luther's case because it highlights the severe consequences a soldier can face if he questions his diagnosis and opposes his PD discharge.

Luther insisted to doctors at Camp Taji that he did not have personality disorder, that the idea of developing a childhood mental illness at the age of 36, after passing eight psychological screenings, was ridiculous. The sergeant used a vivid expression to convey how much pain he was in. "I told them that some days, the pain was so bad, I felt like dying." Doctors declared him a suicide risk. They collected his shoelaces, his belt and his rifle and ordered him confined to an isolation chamber.

Extensive medical records written by Luther's doctors document his confinement in the aid station for more than a month. The sergeant was kept under twenty-four-hour guard. Most nights, he says, guards enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on and blasting heavy metal music. When Luther rebelled, he was pinned down and injected with sleeping medication.

Eventually Luther was brought to his commander, who told him he had a choice: he could sign papers saying his medical problems stemmed from personality disorder or face more time in isolation.


'Every Night It Was Megadeth'

Luther entered the Army in 1988, following in the footsteps of his grandfathers, both decorated World War II veterans. In 2005, after Hurricane Katrina, he and his unit were deployed to New Orleans, where he helped evacuate residents and dispose of bodies left in the street. In 2006 he was deployed from Fort Hood in Texas to Camp Taji, where he performed reconnaissance with the First Squadron, Seventh Cavalry Regiment, led by Maj. Christopher Wehri. "Luther was older and more mature than most of the soldiers. He was forthcoming, very polite," says Wehri. "He seemed to have a good head on his shoulders."

Doctors at the aid station didn't see him that way. Following the May 2007 mortar attack, Luther entered the base's clinic and described his concussion symptoms to Capt. Aaron Dewees. Dewees, a pediatrician charged with caring for soldiers in the 1-7 Cavalry, grew suspicious of Luther's self-report. "It is my professional opinion," Dewees wrote in his medical records, "that Sgt. Charles F. Luther Jr. has been misrepresenting himself and his self-described medical conditions for secondary gain." The doctor suggested that Luther was faking his ailments to avoid reconnaissance duty. He called the sergeant "narcissistic" and said Luther's descriptions of his injuries were a mixture of "exaggeration and flat-out fabrication."

Luther's medical records document severe nosebleeds and "sharp and burning" pain. Still, the sergeant says he could sense that his doctors didn't believe him. It was at that point--frustrated, plagued by blinding migraines--that he spoke of pain so severe he wished he were dead. "I made clear that I was not going to kill myself, that it was just a colorful expression to explain how much pain I was in." Dewees agreed. In their records, Luther's doctors note a "suicide gesture" and "'off-handed' comments" that the sergeant was going to kill himself, but Dewees said those gestures were "unlikely to have been a serious attempt" at self-harm. Nonetheless, Dewees wrote, such statements "must be taken seriously and treated as such," that Luther "remains a threat to himself and others given his need for attention, narcissistic tendencies and impulsive behavior."

Luther was taken to an isolation chamber and told this was his new sleeping quarters. The room, which Luther captured on his digital camera, served as a walk-in closet. It was slightly larger than an Army cot and was crammed with cardboard boxes, a desk and a bedpan. Through a small, cracked window, he could look out onto the base. Through the open doorway, the sergeant was monitored by armed guards.

Both Dewees and Lt. Col. Larry Applewhite, an aid station social worker, declared Luther mentally ill, suffering from a personality disorder. The next step was to remove him from the military as fast as possible. "It is strongly recommended that Sgt. Luther be administratively separated via Chapter 5-13," wrote Applewhite, citing the official discharge code for personality disorder. In a separate statement, Dewees endorsed the 5-13 discharge and urged that it be handled rapidly. "I feel the safest course of action," he wrote, "is to expedite his departure from theater."

That didn't happen. For more than a month Luther remained in his six-by-eight-foot isolation chamber, weeks he describes as "the hardest of my life." He says the guards would ridicule him and most nights enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on all night and using a nearby Xbox and TV speakers to blast heavy metal into his room. "Every night it was Megadeth, Saliva, Disturbed." The sergeant pulled a blanket over his head to block out the noise and the light, but it was no use.

"They told me I wasn't a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries. Now suddenly I'm not a soldier. I'm a prisoner, by my own people," says Luther, his voice tightening. "I felt like a caged animal in that room. That's when I started to lose it."

Isolated, exhausted, the sergeant who had been confined for being mentally ill says he began feeling exactly that. Finally Luther snapped. He stepped out of his room and was walking toward a senior official's office when an altercation broke out. In the ensuing scuffle, Luther bit one of his guards, then spit in the face of the aid station chaplain. The sergeant was pinned to the floor and injected with five milligrams of Haldol, an antipsychotic medication. Sedated, Luther was returned to isolation.

Staff Sgt. James Byington, who was serving at Camp Taji with the 1-7 Cavalry, walked the half-mile to the aid station to visit his fellow soldier. Byington says that off the battlefield, Sergeant Luther was "animated and peppy," the comedian of the chow hall. During combat, he says, Luther was focused and prepared, a key component in a farmland raid just outside Taji that discovered a cache of weapons and money. The man he found in the isolation chamber was neither the soldier nor the comedian, he says, but something altogether odd and decrepit. "He wasn't energetic like he used to be. He wasn't cutting jokes. Chuck's one of those guys that talks with his hands. You go into a room with twenty guys, and you're going to hear Chuck Luther," says Byington. "Now he seemed half-asleep. He looked worn out."

A few hours after Byington's visit, Luther was called to his commander's office. Major Wehri was frank. He held the personality disorder discharge papers in his hand. "And he said, 'Sign this paperwork, and we'll get you out.' I said, 'I don't have a personality disorder.' But it was like that didn't matter," says Luther. "He said, 'If you don't sign this, you're going to be here a lot longer.'"

The sergeant signed. "They had me broke down," he says. "At that point, I just wanted to get home." Luther's voice grows quiet as he recounts that final meeting. "I still remember Wehri's face," he says. "He was smiling."

Wehri confirms his statements to Luther. He says he pressed the sergeant to sign because he felt it was in Luther's best interest and in the best interest of the Army. The sergeant, he says, "had gotten so belligerent. If we had returned him to his unit, he would have been a danger to himself and to others. His behavior was not suitable to military service. And he wanted to get home. So I told him, 'If your goal is to get home, and we've diagnosed you with personality disorder, your fastest way is to sign the papers. If you don't sign, you're just subjecting yourself to further anguish and discomfort.'"

Wehri insists that his comments to Luther were not pivotal to the sergeant's discharge. Even without a soldier's signature, a PD dismissal can proceed. But the papers would then move to an Army lawyer, and the process would be delayed. "You can't force anyone to sign," he says. "But if you're going to be stubborn and not sign, try to play hardball, you run the risk of a dishonorable discharge. With Luther's biting and spitting, I could have court-martialed him out right there for failure to perform in a military manner."

The major says Luther's real story is that of a good soldier who came home for leave, saw his wife's new haircut and slimmed figure and was driven mad by fears of her infidelity. "When he came back to Iraq, something had changed. He had a negative attitude. He wouldn't respond to direct orders. His head wasn't in the game." Wehri says it became clear to him that Luther was intent on returning home right away, a realization that left him disappointed but not shocked. "Soldiers are conniving," he says. "They are manipulative. If they get in their minds they want to do something for personal gain, including going home, they'll go to any lengths to get it."

Wehri rejects the idea that the mortar attack and subsequent concussion could have triggered Luther's woes. "That mortar attack was nothing," he says. "Insignificant. Maybe he fell down. Sure. I've fallen down lots of times." The major wonders aloud whether Luther is using that injury to justify his instability. He says if he thought the attack was significant, he would have investigated it fully and gotten the ball rolling for a Purple Heart.

The major confirms that Luther was confined to the aid station for several weeks and that his room was minuscule. But he says those circumstances were unavoidable. "Discharging a soldier with personality disorder is a very long and drawn-out process," he says. "And Luther was a danger to himself and others. He needed to be watched. The aid station, that's where they had 24-7 supervision."

Wehri says he marvels at the idea that Luther could be a poster child for false personality disorder discharges. He has seen seven personality disorder cases in his career, he says. "And Chuck Luther was by far the clearest one." The major says that when Luther's troubles began, the sergeant's behavior confounded him. Then, says Wehri, he heard from a commander who said Luther's family had spoken with him and revealed that Luther had suffered from psychiatric problems before entering the military and had been treated with medication. "Then suddenly it made sense to me," says Wehri. "This was not new. His symptoms were just popping up now, after he'd kept a lid on them for many years. It all clicked into place."

But Luther's wife and his mother say that story is flatly false. Both say they never had such a conversation with an Army commander and are emphatic that the sergeant never faced any psychiatric problems before entering the military. "Hearing that makes me really angry," says Luther's mother, Barbara Guignard. "Chuck was an all-American boy. He never took any medication, and he never had a problem."

How Dewees and Applewhite came to the conclusion that Luther was suffering from a pre-existing mental illness remains unclear. They declined to elaborate on their notes or discuss the diagnosis of personality disorder in general. What is clear is that neither Dewees nor Applewhite spoke with Luther's family before determining that his problems existed before his military service. The sergeant's wife and his mother say that had they been asked, both could have provided key information demonstrating Luther's stability and health before the mortar attack.

Spc. Angel Sandoval says he could have helped as well. Sandoval, who was stationed at Camp Taji and served under Luther in the 1-7 Cavalry, laughs at the idea that the sergeant was mentally ill. "Chuck was a lot more than 'not mentally ill,'" he says. "He saved my life." Sandoval describes heading into combat under Luther's command. The specialist was ready to dump his side-SAPIs, large ceramic plates that strap to the side of a bulletproof vest, protecting the kidneys from machine-gun fire. "They're bulky and kinda heavy, but he said, 'No way, you have to wear them,'" says Sandoval. "Two days later I got shot right there, under my arm. It could have killed me."

Luther, he says, was "one of the greatest leaders I had. He never steered me wrong. If they thought he was ill and needed medical help, they should have given it to him instead of kicking him out of the Army."

But it was Wehri and Applewhite's view that mattered. Soon after signing the personality disorder papers, Luther was placed in a DC-10 and whisked back to Fort Hood. There he would learn about Chapter 5-13's fine print: he was ineligible for disability benefits, since his condition was pre-existing. He would not be receiving the lifetime of medical care given to severely wounded soldiers. And because he did not complete his contract, he would have to return a slice of his signing bonus.

At the base, a Fort Hood discharge specialist laid out the details. "He said I now owed the Army $1,500. And if I did not pay, they'd garnish my wages and assess interest on my debt," Luther says.

Luther was then released into a pelting Texas rain. He called his wife, Nicki, to pick him up. "When I got to Fort Hood he was in the parking lot, alone, wet, sitting on his duffel bag," Nicki recalls. "He had lost a lot of weight. He looked like...a little boy. I remember thinking, My God, what have they done to my husband?"

The President 'Continues to Be Concerned'

Luther's case is not an isolated incident. In the past three years, The Nation has uncovered more than two dozen cases like his from bases across the country. All the soldiers were examined, deemed physically and psychologically fit, then welcomed into the military. All performed honorably before being wounded during service. None had a documented history of psychological problems. Yet after seeking treatment for their wounds, each soldier was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then discharged and denied benefits.

That group includes Sgt. Jose Rivera, whose hands and legs were punctured by grenade shrapnel during his second tour in Iraq. Army doctors said his wounds were caused by personality disorder. Sailor Samantha Stitz fractured her pelvis and two bones in her ankle. Navy doctors cited personality disorder as the cause. Spc. Bonnie Moore developed an inflamed uterus during her service. Army doctors said her profuse vaginal bleeding was caused by personality disorder. Civilian doctors disagreed: they performed emergency surgery to remove her uterus and appendix. After being discharged and denied benefits, Moore and her teenage daughter became homeless.

"The military is exacerbating an already bad situation," says Sullivan of Veterans for Common Sense. "This is more than neglect. It's malice." Sullivan's organization has spent the past few years pressing officials in Washington to take action on the personality disorder issue. In July 2007 he testified before the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs. Sullivan told the committee that PD discharges needed to be halted immediately.

That month Obama put forward his bill to do just that. The bill was matched in the House by legislation from Representative Phil Hare, and it had passionate support on both sides of the aisle, from prominent Democrats like Senator Barbara Boxer to high-ranking Republicans like Senator Kit Bond. Sullivan and other veterans' leaders say they were hopeful that Obama would use the spotlight of the presidential campaign to generate further momentum for his bill.

That didn't happen. In the twenty-one months of his presidential run, the Illinois senator never spoke publicly about PD discharges or his bill to halt them. Eventually, without widespread public knowledge or support, and facing opposition from senators who had never heard of personality disorder and worried the bill would open a floodgate of expensive benefits, Obama and Bond, the bill's co-author, were forced to reshape it into an amendment and water down its contents. Their amendment did not halt PD discharges. Instead, it required the Pentagon to investigate PD dismissals and report back to Congress. The amendment, part of the Defense Authorization Act, was signed by President Bush in January 2008.

Five months later the report landed on Obama's and Bond's desks. The Pentagon's conclusion: no soldiers had been improperly diagnosed, and none had been wrongly discharged. The report praises the military's doctors as "competent professionals" and endorses continued use of pre-existing personality disorder to discharge soldiers whose "ability to function effectively" is impaired. The report's author, former Under Secretary of Defense David Chu, further notes that though the Navy's official label for the discharge is "Separation by Reason of Convenience of the Government," soldiers "are not wantonly discharged at the convenience of the Military."

It is unclear how Chu came to these conclusions. The report does not cite any interviews with soldiers discharged with personality disorder, or their families, doctors or commanders. That fact infuriated many military families, as it triggered memories of a 2007 study by former Army Surgeon General Gale Pollock. Pollock had been asked to examine a stack of PD cases. Five months later she released her report, saying her office had "thoughtfully and thoroughly" reviewed them. Like Chu, she commended the soldiers' doctors and determined that they all had been properly diagnosed. The Nation later revealed that Pollock's office did not interview anyone, not even the soldiers whose cases she was reviewing [see Kors, "Specialist Town Takes His Case to Washington," October 15, 2007].

"He doesn't talk to soldiers, and he doesn't talk to their families?" says Nicki Luther, the sergeant's wife, her eyes welling with tears. "I heard the same thing from that surgeon general, and I thought, You haven't been in my house. You don't know what I've dealt with. How dare you sit there and say you've investigated thoroughly and found nothing. That's a crock."

The Chu report does recommend several changes to the PD discharge system, alterations, it says, that will protect soldiers from being wrongly discharged. Those protections include requiring that a doctor diagnose the soldier's personality disorder and a lawyer counsel him on the ramifications of the discharge. The report also recommends that the surgeon general review each soldier's case and endorse the PD discharge before releasing the soldier from the military.

Chu, a Bush appointee, left office in 2008 with the president. But his findings remain as the Defense Department's position on PD discharges. In early April the Pentagon released a statement saying that Clifford Stanley, the current under secretary, is implementing Chu's recommendations and fully embraces his findings.

That fact left many on Capitol Hill enraged. "This study, with the new requirement to have the upper-ups approve discharges--all it basically did was set up one more hurdle. As far as we can tell, the impact has been somewhere between zero and less," says Senator Bond. Bond says the Pentagon still hasn't explained the fundamental contradiction of a PD discharge: recruits who have a severe pre-existing mental illness could not pass the rigorous screening process and would not be accepted into the military in the first place. Yet he says his office is looking at several cases, like Luther's, in which the soldiers have been deemed physically and psychologically fit in several screenings before their personality disorder is diagnosed. "These men and women who have put their lives on the line, we owe them," says Bond. "We have a responsibility. Discharging them with personality disorder--it's just an easy way to duck that responsibility."

The Republican from Missouri says he's hopeful that Obama, his partner on the PD bill, will take action from the White House. "He has a unique chance now to change the whole operation, to alter the system from the inside." In October Bond gathered a small coalition of senators and wrote a letter to the president, asking him to confront the issue once again. "In 2007 we were partners in the fight against the military's misuse of personality disorder discharges," wrote the senators. "Today, we urge you to renew your commitment to address this critical issue."

The next week Senator Boxer, a co-sponsor of the original bill, submitted a statement of her own. "It is simply appalling that any combat veteran with a Traumatic Brain Injury [TBI] or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder would be denied medical care for injuries sustained during combat," Boxer wrote. Even with the reforms that followed the Chu report, "we must make sure that the new discharge process...is working."

The White House responded quickly, assuring the senators that the president still has his eye on personality disorder. President Obama "is determined to fulfill America's responsibility to our Armed Forces," says White House spokesman Nicholas Shapiro. "The president was concerned with personality disorder discharges as a senator, and he drafted a bill. He continues to be concerned as commander in chief."

Disposable Warriors

Luther hopes that concern will translate into action. The sergeant stands in his backyard, 1,500 miles from Washington, five miles from Fort Hood, talking about Obama's bill and watching his 7-year-old daughter floating high above the family's oversize trampoline, her face wild with joy. Luther looks on with sullen eyes. "Right now I can't worry about Washington, or even about fixing my discharge papers," he says. "First thing, I got to fix myself." He gestures to his daughter, a mop of blond hair leaping to and fro. "I used to be like that: a goofball, all this energy. Now... I don't know."

Some nights he doesn't sleep. Others he's back in Iraq, in the aid station, in endless isolation. The blinding headaches and piercing shoulder pain still plague him, he says, along with panic attacks and bursts of post-traumatic stress-fueled rage. Luther broke four bones in his hand punching a hole in his bedroom wall. His family's hallway is pocked with holes from similar incidents.

"He's not the man I married," says Nicki Luther. "And when I'm honest with myself, I don't think I'll ever have that man again. He wakes up screaming in the middle of the night, sweating, swearing." Nicki says he tries to be a good dad to their kids. "He used to wrestle around with them. But his body's like an old man's now. And he's so quick to anger. The kids say, 'We want our dad back.' I don't know what to tell them."

Three years after the mortar blast, Luther's life is still on shaky ground. Some days he's posting love notes on his wife's Facebook page and hand-delivering her favorite salad to her office at lunchtime. Another day, in the midst of an argument, he knocked down a family photo, then ripped the furniture out of the living room and dumped it in the garage, scaring his children. Soon after the birth of their fourth child, Marlee Grace, Luther and his wife separated. They reunited a few months later, in time for their eighteenth anniversary.

Luther knew he needed help. This time he sought it outside the military. He began seeing Troy Daniels, a psychologist, once a week. One fact was clear immediately, says Daniels. "He did not have personality disorder. The symptoms we were looking at looked more like traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. To take a soldier having problems with vision, hearing and so forth--and to say he has personality disorder--that's a bogus kind of statement. I don't even think a master's student would make that kind of mistake."

While Daniels dismisses the Army doctors' diagnosis as a "gross error," he says he was not surprised by it. "I've treated hundreds of soldiers over the years, and I've seen a dozen personality disorder diagnoses. None of them," says the psychologist, "actually had personality disorder."

Yet all of those soldiers, he says, faced serious repercussions because of their discharge. "Many of the soldiers can't get hired anymore. Every time they go for a job, they'll have this paper that says they've been diagnosed with a personality disorder. Employers take one look at that and think, 'This guy's crazy. We can't hire him.' For most of the soldiers," says Daniels, "it becomes a lifetime label."

Luther luckily has secured a job, as a truck driver for Frito-Lay. Securing benefits has proved a bit tougher. Since being released from the Army, the sergeant has been locked in battle with the VA, fighting to prove that despite his PD discharge, his wounds are war related and thus worthy of disability and medical benefits.

Those efforts stumbled at first. In May 2008 the VA declared Luther "incompetent" and demanded that a fiduciary collect any disability benefits he may receive. Eventually, following a slew of paperwork and medical exams, the sergeant re-established his full standing. This past December--after VA doctors found Luther to be suffering from migraine headaches, vision problems, dizziness, nausea, difficulty hearing, numbness, anxiety and irritability--the VA cited traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder and declared Luther 80 percent disabled. "PTSD, a consequence of the TBI," wrote one VA doctor, "is a clear diagnosis."

The VA rating cleared the way for the sergeant to receive disability benefits and a lifetime of medical care. But it hasn't changed the Army's view--or altered Luther's discharge papers, which still list the sergeant as suffering from personality disorder. The sergeant, in return, has refused to pay back the $1,500 of his signing bonus that the Army says he owes, despite threats to garnish his wages. "I told them, Let me put it this way: as long as I'm breathing of my own free will, I'm not paying you a dime."

Luther says what really boils his blood is having to accept that his military career is over while the careers of those who devised his discharge are flourishing. After Luther's dismissal, Wehri, a captain at the time, was promoted to major and selected to be an executive officer with NATO. Dr. Dewees returned to Kentucky, where he continues to serve with the National Guard. Social worker Applewhite is now an instructor at Fort Sam Houston, where he teaches a class on how to identify mental disorders.

With or without the Army, Luther says he will continue to serve. With his health gradually improving and the bulk of his battle over, the sergeant is taking on a new mission: fighting the military on behalf of other soldiers like himself. Luther is now the founder and executive director of Disposable Warriors, a one-man operation that assists soldiers who are fighting their discharge and veterans who are appealing their disability rating.

Luther's organization did not receive a hero's welcome. Soon after founding the group, he discovered a threatening note on his windshield. "Back off or you and your family will pay!!" it read, in careful, black ink cursive. Weeks later, thieves broke into the home of a veterans' organizer who worked closely with Luther, taking nothing but the files of the soldiers they were assisting.

The sergeant, characteristically, is undaunted. "This is the right path for me," he says, his voice resolute. "I got to be there for these other soldiers. I'm not the only one who needs help."

Joshua Kors covers veterans' issues for The Nation. He is the winner of the National Magazine Award, George Polk Award, and Military Reporters and Editors Award. He was also a finalist for Harvard's Goldsmith Prize for Investigative Reporting and the American Bar Association's Silver Gavel Award. His work is featured in the American Society of Magazine Editors' recent anthology "The Best American Magazine Writing 2008."

There is nothing civil about civil wars!