Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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U.S. troops far away from home still celebrate the new year. This picture is an AP photo from AFghanistan, where troops had cake awaiting them as part of the celebration.

God Bless You!!!!

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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U.S. troops Help Needy in Italy

Tis the season to share. For U.S. troops, every day is another day to help, share and put their lives on the line. As the end of 2008 nears, troops helped the poor and others in need: single mothers and children.
god Bless our troops, wherever they serve, and may the next year bring them safety and peace.

Here’s the story from Stars ans Stripes.

Members of the U.S. military community in Vicenza collect goods for local residents in need By Kent Harris, Stars and Stripes
European edition, Wednesday-Thursday, December 31,2008-January 1,2009

Photos by Rick Scavetta Courtesy of the U.S. Army
Sgt. Sergio Carillo, 27, of Los Angeles, a Southern European Task Force chaplain assistant, carries donated items into a Vicenza, Italy, food pantry run by the local Catholic archdiocese. Soldiers and families in the Vicenza military community collected food, baby formula and other items for a local charity in Vicenza.

Carillo hands bags of donated supplies to Vicenzo Vario, who oversees a Vicenza, Italy food pantry run by the local Catholic archdiocese. VICENZA, Italy — Members of the U.S. military community have responded to calls to help local residents in need — including many who are newly arrived in Italy.

After recent local media reports said the numbers of those seeking aid in Vicenza have increased dramatically this year, the base chapel decided to collect donations.

Maj. Jose Herrera, the Roman Catholic chaplain on base, delivered the items Tuesday to a local charity in downtown Vicenza.

“I think they’re going to be happy with what we’ve got,” Herrera said earlier in the day. “We’re pleased with what we’ve got, but we probably could have received even more if we had more time or there were more people around base now.”

Many servicemembers and civilians are taking time off during the holidays. And a majority of the soldiers who served with the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team in Afghanistan have left for other assignments or returned to the States. Their replacements continue to arrive on base.

Donations were largely gathered during Christmas services in the chapel last week. They included food, diapers and other items for newborns. Community members also donated canned goods, bags of pasta and other food items.

Many of those in need are recent immigrants to Italy, Herrera said. Others include single mothers struggling to provide for their children, he said.

The Italian economy hasn’t had the same housing and financial problems the States is experiencing, but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government has yet to overcome the issue of inflation. The cost of many basic goods rose by double-digit percentages during the year, according to numerous media reports.

Col. David Smith, chaplain for the Southern European Task Force, said no requests for help had directly been made to Americans stationed at Caserma Ederle.

“People realize we need to be good neighbors,” he said. “And we want to be good neighbors. If there’s a way to help, we will.”

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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As I have reported, Move America Forward just returned from a visit to Guantanamo Bay and the prison, which has been wrongly branded as a “gulag” where prisoners are tortured. Lies.
The prison is a state-of-the-art facility designed according to standards for the best American prisons. Prisoners get healthcare that would make most Americans giddy with pleasure, and food menus that fatten terrorists an average of 15 pounds.
So we shouldn’t cry for the two “detainees” who wanted freedom but face more spoiling at Club Gitmo.
The Washington Post reports:

Judge Denies Release For 2 at Guantanamo

A federal judge declined Tuesday to release two detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, finding that the U.S. government had proved that they were enemy combatants.

U.S District Court Judge Richard J. Leon found that Moath Hamza Ahmed al-Alwi, a Yemeni, and Hisham Sliti, a Tunisian, were part of or supported Taliban or al-Qaeda forces. Both men were captured in Pakistan in late 2001 after fleeing Afghanistan and were transferred to the naval base in Cuba.

The government charged that Sliti first traveled to Afghanistan from London in 2000 on a false passport and with financial support from known extremists with ties to al-Qaeda. Leon rejected his assertion that he went to Afghanistan to kick a drug habit and find a wife.

The government charged that Alwi fought with the Taliban and served as one of Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards. The judge said there was enough evidence that he had fought alongside the Taliban to hold him as an enemy combatant.

These two terrorists should write thank you letters to the American people for their superior care.

By the way, Please go here to sign a petition asking President-elect Barack Obama to keep terrorists locked up in Gitmo so Americans will be safe from them.

Posted By:
MAF Blogger Danny
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GTMO: Day 2

It seems unfair to call day two of our trip to Guantanamo Bay “Day 2” because it was really more of the first-and-only day. Still, our day at Guantanamo Bay feels like it happened weeks ago, even though the reality is that it was yesterday. The day we first arrived at Guantanamo Bay’s naval station was a simple check in day. We had a nice boat ride across the bay, shown to our rooms and taken to dinner but that was about it.

But the second day was the only real “full day” of our visit. We had a tightly packed schedule planned but as I will go into later, deviated from it after we were approved to visit detainee camps. We spent the night in the BOQ or Bachelor’s Officers Quarters provided for us by the military at NAVSTA GTMO. Many officers live in these little apartments and there is also a separate tower called Bachelors Enlisted Quarters. The rooms we had were all a little different, with different styles of furniture and couches and chairs, but they were all very nicely furnished overall. All rooms came with TVs and DVD players in the front room and another TV in the bedroom.


The Hospital

Our party of 6 visiting the island were; Melanie Morgan, the Chairman of MAF and our fearless leader, Catherine Moy, MAF’s executive director and our chief writer, Debbie Lee, MAF spokesperson and Gold Star mother of Marc Alan Lee who was the first Navy SEAL killed in Iraq; also Kylie Williams, Miss Florida 2007 who helped us organize our trip to GTMO, Ryan Gill, MAF’s Operations Director, and then me.

We had to meet downstairs at 8:30 for a 9:00 visit to the military hospital at Guantanamo Bay. We drove for a few minutes, not long, down a nicely paved and well maintained road up to a small white building of two stories that featured a big red cross up top. The hospital overlooks the bay and has a stunning view of the water, the bountiful foliage around the bay, the little cays that inhabit it and out to the mountains in the distance which are communist Cuba.

We entered the hospital and were greeted by Bolinger, our tour guide. He had set up a table for us to meet and greet the sailors who worked in the hospital. They had made an announcement earlier that Miss Florida 2007 would be visiting and so there was a trickle of people coming by steadily. Kylie had a stack of her pictures that she had brought with her and a sharpie to make autographs for the guys. We took pictures and Melanie and Debbie Lee introduced themselves and passed out cards and thanked the troops for serving our country.

The reason for the low numbers of troops available was obviously because of the holiday season. Guantanamo Bay houses only about 1,500 troops at any given time, which isn’t much but the base had considerably less than normal at this time because many were able to get holiday leave. In addition to the 1,500 troops there are about 1,000 stationed there as support personnel and families but the rest of the base is comprised of private contractors who are there for a variety of purposes, and many foreigners who work for those contractors to provide services for the troops stationed there.

We stayed for about half an hour in the tiny little hallway that served as a lobby. Bolinger called all the chiefs in the hospital down for a group shot in front of the little wall monument that recorded past commanders, chiefs and COs of the hospital unity. I believe there were 8 chiefs which comprised the heads of the different departments of the hospital. After we took the group shot with the chiefs we headed up to the 2nd floor of the hospital to do a little tour of the facility.


Long-Term Care

We first stopped at the long-term / convalescent ward. The hospital at GITMO is not only the sole medical facility for the whole base at NAVSTA GTMO but it’s also the best medical care in the whole region of Cuba. While there is no formal agreement to treat anyone from Cuba, and transfers of patients are never arranged ( to my knowledge ) with the Cuban government, it is still the hospitals policy to treat any patient who presents themselves in need of care, regardless of their ability to pay or their country of origin or their legal status.

In the convalescent ward there are several older patients who basically live at the GTMO hospital, and have lived there for much of their lives. They are old and cannot care for themselves but they don’t really have anywhere else to go and simply live in the hospital ward. It looked to me just like the same kinds of places we have here in the States. The whole place was white; white tile floors, white walls, white lamps overhead. The place looked clean, sterile, but like any hospital it also carried that peculiar smell – a mix of urine and alcohol – that reminds you this is a place where people are sick and unable to care for themselves. Bolinger told us that NAVSTA GTMO is the only naval station in the world that houses a wing of permanent, long-term in-patient care.

It felt like any hospital I have ever been in, the beds they had were high quality hospital beds, adjustable height with guard rails so patients don’t get out. The patients have TVs in every room and since they are placed there for long periods they have put up some decoration to personalize the area around their beds. Debbie Lee and Melanie gave cards to many of the patients. Kylie tried to talk to some of them but they only muttered incoherently. Most of the actual treatment needed in the hospital that actually has to do with our troops is the result of accidents or is related to your basic medical care; checkups, maintaining your teeth, getting your appendix out, etc.

The Dentist’s Office

We proceeded across the hall to the next wing of the hospital’s 2nd floor where they do all the dental work. The main dentist in charge there boasted how GTMO has access to all the modern dental equipment necessary for a state of the art facility and that they provided treatment on a needs-based sliding scale that takes into account the patient’s ability to pay. They also have a pretty quick turnaround, I am told, so they can even operate on patients at short notice if they have a dental emergency. Here, again, our troops are used to treating not only their cohorts but many foreigners who come to GTMO out of desperation and inability to secure care in their own homeland whether it be Cuba, Haiti, or some other nearby island. The dentists at GTMO can perform basically any procedure or operation in the book with only one exception, they lack the ability to make the replacement teeth or caps for when people need crowns and things, so they have to just make the molds of the patient’s mouths and send them out to another facility to create the prosthetic tooth or cap and ship it back to base.

The director or chief of the dental wing also has a stunning view of the island because he gets the 2nd floor office that overlooks the bay.

Also, we visited the hospital cafeteria where the work of preparing the food is mostly outsources to contractors who then employ foreign workers to feed our troops. They were all really excited to meet our group, especially Kylie…understandably this happens when you travel around with a beauty queen.


O.R.

We made a visit to an emergency ward where people either had serious medical problems, or had just gotten an operation and were recovering. There was only one of our troops there, I think they said he had an accident playing sports on base, flag football , and was injured but I don’t remember how or what kind of procedure he needed to fix him. We all had a big laugh at his expense because he had his finger hooked up to one of those pulse monitor machines and it was hilarious as our beauty queen Kiley Williams came over and hugged the young man and stood by his bed you could literally hear his heart monitor going beep……..beep……..beep……beep……beep…..beep…beep…beep…beep! beep!beep!beep! faster and faster! Melanie bluted out “Did you hear his heart rate go up when he saw Kylie?!” Everyone including the doctors and nurses just cracked up and the young marine turned bright red and laughed along with us.

I thought to myself how noble of our troops there who take care of these foreigners, many of whom basically escaped to GTMO out of desperation, who have no one to care for them, no place in the world. Our navy provides medical services to them and asks nothing in return. Sure I guess that costs the Navy money, which comes of course from our tax dollars, but I have to admit a sense of pride that only America is willing to give so much to those who aren’t even from our country, those who have nothing to give back, but our troops are compassionate and are still willing to care for them when no one else will.


The White House

We moved on to “The White House” where the Marine Corps detachment was stationed, but first we made a stop at the BOQ (Bachelor’s Officers Quarters, where we were assigned our living spaces for the duration of our trip) for Debbie Lee to pick up some more cards that she was running out of.

The Marines on NAVSTA GTMO are basically there to be the first response to any type of land based threat. The security for the bay itself is shared between the navy and the coast guard but anything on land is the sole responsibility of the USMC. The Marines post guards on many observation posts situated around the island, especially near the Cuban border. They also have to patrol the beaches very closely because that’s where most of the refugees, illegals, or criminals on the run come in. Some of these are simply trying to escape political persecution from Cuba or their home country, but there are many that come in because they are criminals or running some kind of illegal operation.

Anyone who the military acquires who is there for political reasons is granted asylum and is allowed to stay in Cuba or go to some other country who agrees to take them, even sometimes the mainland USA whenever they receive permission for that. Most often they elect to stay in GTMO for the rest of their lives. On the other hand, when they apprehend someone who is there illegally, not for political asylum, or is doing something illegal or running from authorities because of a crime they are wanted for, the military contacts the Cuban or whichever applicable country of origin and hands the over. We are told that the communists in Cuba make execution a regular activity, especially when it comes to anyone who harbors anti-communist views.


to be continued...

Posted By:
Catherine Moy
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Temendous work by U.S. troops means better security and more peace for Iraq. The deaths to our troops is down 66 percent thank God and our troops’ professionalism.

By Joe Sterling
CNN

(CNN)—American military deaths in Iraq have dropped dramatically this year, a trend observers attribute to the lasting effects of the U.S.-led surge offensive, more robust Iraqi security performance and civilians’ disgust with warfare.

A CNN count of Pentagon figures shows that 309 U.S. service members in Iraq have died this year: 222 in hostilities such as combat and attacks, and 87 in non-hostile circumstances such as traffic accidents, suicides and natural deaths.

The U.S. death toll has been much higher in past years. Last year, 906 died: 768 in combat and attacks and 138 in non-hostile circumstances. There were more than 800 deaths in 2004, 2005 and 2006 as well.

“It’s no single effort. It’s a combination of efforts,” said Maj. Gen. Jeffery Hammond, commanding general of Multi-National Division-Baghdad. “The people of Iraq are tired of violence, and they are assisting the security forces; the government is improving its ability to govern and to apply the rule of law.”

CNN has the story here.