A U.S. Army medic who refused to load his gun in Iraq and then escaped through a base window in Germany rather than be deployed a second time returned home to Los Angeles this week after serving six months in a U.S. military prison. Augustin Aguayo, 31, was born in...
Suicidal and Facing a Third Tour in Iraq
At the beginning of May, Cpl. Cloy Richards tried to kill himself. "He punched out all his windows and cut major arteries," his mother, Tina Richards, told IPS. "He had to go to the hospital because he almost bled to death." Cloy Richards, who...
Iraqis’ Mental Health Suffering, Say Doctors
More than 1,000 people turned out this week for one the largest conferences to date on the health effects of the Iraq war. Leading researchers flew in from around the United States to speak at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF). "We have been...
Moms Spend Their Weekend Protesting War in Iraq
Antiwar activists from around the country will celebrate Mothers' Day by converging on Washington, DC, where they will demand Congress end the U.S. occupation of Iraq. Five days of activism, sponsored by the women-for-peace group CODEPINK and "peace mom"...
Ex-Soldier Recalls Horrors of Abu Ghraib
Saturday marked the third anniversary of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. On April 28, 2004, CBS broadcast the first graphic photos of torture inside of the U.S.-run prison in Iraq on its 60 Minutes II program. "Americans did this to an Iraqi prisoner," news...
Iraq, Afghanistan War Vets Find Relief in the Footlights
LOS ANGELES - The house lights go down and the stage lights come up on The Wolf, the first production of VetStage, a nonprofit theater company run by veterans of the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It opens with a funeral: a Roman Catholic priest preparing to...
Civilian Court Sides With ‘Conscientious Objector’
University of California Santa Cruz student Robert Zabala joined the Marine Corps thinking it would be a "place where he could find security" after the death of his grandmother in 2003. But when he began boot camp in June 2003, Zabala said he had an ethical...
Congressman Trades Iraq Vote for Spinach
A liberal Congressman who represents California's picturesque central coast region is under fire for trading his vote on the Iraq war for spinach. Rep. Sam Farr, a Democrat from the hippy college town of Santa Cruz, originally voted against the Iraq war and has voted...
US Religious Leaders Urge Bush to Talk to Iran
A delegation of U.S. religious leaders called Monday for Washington to negotiate with Tehran, following the delegation's landmark two-and-a-half-hour meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The 13-person religious delegation was the first to meet with an...
US Ill-Equipped to Deal With Wave of Troubled Vets
Staff Sergeant Don Hanks had served 15 years in the U.S. Army before he spent a year running patrols in the heart of Iraq's Sunni triangle. He said he returned from the conflict a changed man. "I lost friends over there and some of those friends I'd had for my...