Aaron Glantz

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 Mexico and grew up in … Continue reading “Latino Soldiers Who Refused Iraq Speak Out”

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 lives in rural Salem, Mo., has served two deployments in the … Continue reading “Suicidal and Facing a Third Tour in Iraq”

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 silent too long," former UCSF chancellor Haile Debas told the … Continue reading “Iraqis’ Mental Health Suffering, Say Doctors”

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" Cindy Sheehan’s Gold Star Families for Peace, will culminate in what organizers call a "Mother of … Continue reading “Moms Spend Their Weekend Protesting War in Iraq”

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 anchor Dan Rather said as a slide show of disturbing torture … Continue reading “Ex-Soldier Recalls Horrors of Abu Ghraib”

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 deliver a eulogy for a U.S. soldier … Continue reading “Iraq, Afghanistan War Vets Find Relief in the Footlights”

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 awakening that would not allow him to kill other … Continue reading “Civilian Court Sides With ‘Conscientious Objector’”

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 against proposals to fund it each of the last four … Continue reading “Congressman Trades Iraq Vote for Spinach”

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 Iranian president since the Islamic Revolution in 1979. ”It was a very cordial meeting,” said Reverend Shanta Premawardhana of … Continue reading “US Religious Leaders Urge Bush to Talk to Iran”

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 whole frickin’ adult life," he … Continue reading “US Ill-Equipped to Deal With Wave of Troubled Vets”