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Warehousing soldiers in the homeland Sgt. Travis Bishop sentenced for resisting Also: Courage to Resist joins Vandenberg protest
Petition in support of Spc Stevens and the Ft. Bragg 50!
We recently helped expose the outrageous treatment of dozens of soldiers at Fort Bragg, NC with “Echo Platoon - Warehousing soldiers in the homeland” by Sarah Lazare and Dahr Jamail. The Army reacted swiftly, not by improving the situation, but by formally charging the most outspoken soldier, Spc Dustin Stevens (photo right), with “desertion”. The Army has since begun an investigation into these “allegations”; however, it is clear we will need to hold the military accountable for the treatment of our soldiers in Echo.
Echo Platoon - Warehousing soldiers in the homeland
Echo Platoon is part of the 82nd Replacement Detachment of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. Soldiers in the platoon are relegated to living quarters in a set of dimly lit concrete rooms. Pipes peep out of missing ceiling tiles and a musty smell permeates beds placed on cracked linoleum floors. For soldiers who have gone AWOL (Absent Without Leave) and then voluntarily turned themselves in or were forcibly returned, the detention conditions here in Echo Platoon only serve to reinforce the inescapability of their situation. They remain suspended in a legal limbo of forced uncertainty that can extend from several months to a year or more, while the military takes its time deciding their fate. Some of them, however, are offered a free pass out of this military half-life -- but only if they agree to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq.
Specialist Michael St. Clair went AWOL because he could not obtain treatment from the military for his post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On turning himself in, he ended up consigned to Echo Platoon. As he recalls it, "The number fluctuates all the time, but on an average you have 50 people sharing two functioning toilets and a single shower… Except for a couple of rooms none have doors, and there is minimal privacy with four or more people to a room. It's stressful not knowing what's going to happen to you."
Sgt. Travis Bishop sentenced for resisting deployment
Sergeant Travis Bishop, with the US Army's 57th Expeditionary Signal Battalion, pled not guilty at a special court martial on Thursday to two counts of missing movement, disobeying a lawful order and going absent without leave (AWOL). Friday, in a trial full of theatrics from the jury, prosecution witnesses and the prosecution, he was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to 12 months in a military jail. Sgt. Bishop is the second soldier from Fort Hood in as many weeks to be tried by the military for his stand against an occupation he believes is "illegal." He insists that it would be unethical for him to deploy to support an occupation he opposes on both moral and legal grounds, and has filed for conscientious objector (CO) status. A CO is someone who refuses to participate in combat based on religious or ethical grounds, and can be given an honorable discharge by the military. Last week, Specialist Victor Agosto was sentenced to 30 days in a county jail for his refusal to deploy to Afghanistan. Agosto, like Bishop, feels the war is illegal, something that James Branum, the civilian lawyer for both soldiers, agrees with. "The war in Afghanistan does not meet the criteria for lawful war under the UN Charter, which says that member nations who joined the UN, as did the US, should give up war forever, aside from two exceptions: that the war is in self defense, and that the use of force was authorized by the UN Security Council," Branum told Truthout in an earlier interview, "The nation of Afghanistan did not attack the United States. The Taliban may have, but the nation and people of Afghanistan did not. And under US law, the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution, any treaty enacted by the US is now the 'supreme law of the land.' So when the United States signed the UN Charter, we made that our law as well."
Courage to Resist joins Vandenberg protest
Before sunrise this morning, the U.S. Air Force launched a Minuteman III Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) from Vandenberg Air Force Base in southern California. The missile is designed to deliver a lethal nuclear payload capable of killing millions of human beings. Four members of Courage to Resist from the San Francisco Bay Area joined other opponents of U.S. military policy outside Vandenberg's main gate to protest the launch. |
Support Spc Stevens and the Ft. Bragg 50!
By Courage to Resist
By Dahr Jamail and Sarah Lazare for 
Specialist Kevin McCormick, 21, who was held in Echo Platoon for
more than seven months on AWOL and desertion charges, was typically
offered release, subject to accepting deployment to Iraq, despite being
suicidal. "Echo is like jail," he says, "with some privileges. [You
are] just stuck there with horrible living conditions. There's black
mold on the building [and] when I first got there, there were five or
six people to a room, which is like a cell block with cement brick
walls. The piping and electricals are above the tiles, so if anything
leaks or bursts, it goes right down into the room. "
By Dahr Jamail, Truthout 
By Courage to Resist
