When SPC Michael Anthony joined the Army at 18, he went in with high hopes and sterling ideals; coming from a family with a proud military background, Anthony expected to meet mentors, heroes and lifelong friends while earning money for college and becoming a man. What he discovered was a disenchanting web of mundane corruption and self-serving lies. Unlike accounts exposing the military's most shameful iniquities, Anthony's memoir focuses on an endless parade of petty offenses--the cowardice, drug addiction, thievery, adultery and rampant hypocrisy--he found while working in a base hospital. Relentlessly honest and reflective, Anthony's record communicates perfectly the stranglehold of sadness, fear and disappointment that came with his lost innocence; just as worse is his eventual acceptance of the pointless, dysfunctional bureaucracy maintaining the status quo. Avoiding the intensity of the battlefield and the OR itself, Anthony's frustrations resonate with the feelings of any young man learning about the nature of authority and his helplessness before it. Readers curious about the human side of the ongoing Iraqi conflict will be struck by Anthony's strong voice, direct storytelling and stark honesty.

Learn more about Mass Casualties at — www.CAMMMO.org

There has been, and will no doubt continue to be, much debate over the preparedness of our troops for the types of atrocities they would be exposed to in the wars currently being waged by America. There was a media frenzy about four months ago, reports of PTSD related crimes committed by veterans of the wars currently being fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by a media frenzy more recently pointing to "stand down" days of reflection and hastily assembled suicide prevention courses. But as with anything in the government, the facts come from situations that happened 3-4 years ago because of the bureaucracy involved with obtaining documents and other information. Most of today’s conversations involve events that occurred in 2006-2007. It has been well documented that up until 2006, the U.S. Army had a standard operating procedure of using unlicensed psychologists in the field, including war zones. Now comes a report from Army Col. Rich O’Connor in which he talks about the amount of mental health training he had before he took a squadron in the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment to war in Iraq’s Diyalah province in 2006. "What kind of training did I receive on post-traumatic stress?" he said. "Zero. How much did our soldiers receive? None."

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30 Republican Senators got some much needed, but unwanted attention after voting "Nay" on a Bill written by Senator Al Franken (D) that would bar the U.S. government from doing business with contractors who force their employees to sign agreements not to prosecute if sexually assaulted. There was widespread media ridicule of these 30 senators– all white, all male and all Republican. Because it was so clearly a logical bill to pass. And it did pass overwhelmingly. But America should be paying attention to these certain senators, brazen enough to take a stand on such a basic principle, and to be on the wrong side of the stand, trading the People’s wishes and votes for personal political and financial gain, forever bowing to the military industrial complex. Is it not bad enough that 1 in 3 female service members is sexually assaulted during her service? Now we have Legislators who seek to continue to subject former military females, when currently working for defense contractors like Halliburton, KBR and Blackwater/Xe, to ongoing and widely accepted sexual abuse in the industry? Learn how the Department of Defense was aligned with these 30 Republican senators, and read the DoD’s official statement on the Bill by reading the full story.

It’s in our War Profiteering section at CAMMMO.org — www.CAMMMO.org