Vietnam Veteran Vernon Hunter Murdered in Texas IRS Crash

Vietnam Veteran Vernon Hunter Murdered in Texas IRS Crash
February 22, 2010 by John Allen

Vernon Hunter, a 2 Toured Vietnam Veteran, killed in Tax War by Patriot Freedom Fighter or by Crazed Domestic Terrorist Gone Bonkers?

Victim’s son is alarmed
Hunter’s son, Ken Hunter, said he was alarmed by comments that called the pilot a hero. He said that if Stack had come in and talked to his father, he would have done his best to help.

“My dad didn’t write the tax law,” he said. “Nobody in that building wrote the tax law.”

Ken Hunter said his dad would likely have tried to save his co-workers from the burning building before escaping himself.

“He was full of life. Probably the best teacher I had in my life,” Ken Hunter said. The elder Hunter had been missing and presumed dead since Thursday, when Stack slammed his plane into the Austin building where Hunter worked as a manager for the IRS.

The crash caused a large fireball that destroyed much of the hulking glass building where Hunter’s wife, Valerie, also worked as an IRS employee. She was not wounded.

“People say (Stack) is a patriot. What’s he a patriot for? He hasn’t served the country. My dad did two tours of Vietnam and this guy is going to be a patriot and no one is going to say that about my dad? That’s what got me started talking. I couldn’t stand it anymore,” Ken Hunter said.

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Vietnam Veteran Vernon Hunter Murdered in Texas IRS Crash

Indiana communities endure wave of Marine deaths

Indiana communities endure wave of Marine deaths
Updated: Monday, 22 Feb 2010, 4:01 PM EST
Published : Monday, 22 Feb 2010, 3:45 PM EST

INDIANAPOLIS (AP/WISH/WTHI) - Residents of three Indiana communities are mourning the deaths of three Marines killed in Afghanistan whose bodies arrived back in the United States over the weekend.

The deaths represent the state's most concentrated losses in that war since four Indiana National Guard soldiers died in a 2005 explosion.

The military said Monday that 24-year-old Lance Cpl. Joshua Birchfield of LaPorte died Feb. 19 while supporting combat operations in Afghanistan's Helmand province but released no details on how he died.

In northwestern Indiana, a sign reading "We Will Miss You Birch -- God Bless" hung outside the Blackhawk Inn in Westville, where Birchfield grew up.
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Indiana communities endure wave of Marine deaths

Death of Marine's Baby Remains a Mystery

Death of Marine's Baby Remains a Mystery
Medical examiners cite "blunt force head trauma"
By GENE CUBBISON

Medical examiners say "blunt force head trauma" is what killed the 4-month-old son of a Marine stationed at MCAS Miramar.

The cause of that injury, apparently suffered in the family's quarters on the base, is what San Diego homicide detectives are trying to determine.

Andru Bixby died Thursday morning at Children's Hospital, about 14 hours after his 22-year-old father called 911 to report that Andru had stopped breathing. Andru's mother had been watching him and his 18-month-old brother before leaving for school when the father came home.

That background presents a delicate and complex task for investigators, according to a local criminal defense lawyer not connected to the case.
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Death of Marines Baby Remains a Mystery

Paperwork delaying funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Alejandro J. Yazzie

Paperwork delaying funeral of Marine from Arizona
The Associated Press
Posted: 02/22/2010 02:37:32 PM PST
Updated: 02/22/2010 02:37:32 PM PST


WINDOW ROCK, Ariz.—Military paperwork has delayed the release of the remains of a Marine from the Navajo Nation who was killed in Afghanistan.

Marine officials say the remains of 23-year-old Lance Cpl. Alejandro J. Yazzie, of Rock Point, Ariz., likely will be released later this week from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Navajo Nation President Joe Shirley Jr. says he'll issue an official proclamation ordering flags on the reservation to be flown at half-staff in Yazzie's honor as soon as funeral arrangements are announced.

The Defense Department says Yazzie died Feb. 16 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. That's the site of a major offensive by U.S. and Afghan forces against the Taliban.

Yazzie was assigned to 1st Combat Engineer Battalion, 1st Marine Division, I Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Pendleton, Calif. His coffin arrived at Dover last Thursday.
http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_14449531?nclick_check=1

Georgia National Guard returns from Afghanistan to cheering families

Curtis Compton, ccompton@ajc.com

Sgt. 1st Class James Creager (left) Alpha Battery 118th Field Artillery, left, who was wounded in both legs by a insurgent wearing a police uniform, tearfully embraces Lt. Darren Droullard as the first flight home arrives at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah. Creager promised his men he would be there to greet them when they returned home.

Georgia National Guard returns from Afghanistan to cheering families
By Jeremy Redmon


The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Fort Stewart -- Soldiers from Georgia’s 48th Brigade Combat Team returned to a hero’s welcome here early Tuesday morning after spending a year in Afghanistan training that country’s police and security forces.

More than 70 Georgia National Guard soldiers emerged from several buses, formed ranks on Cottrell Field and listened patiently as the military played recordings of the National Anthem and the Army Song. After a short speech from Brig Gen. Maria Britt, commander of Georgia’s Army National Guard, the soldiers were released to their loved ones.

Cheering and crying with excitement, scores of wives, mothers, fathers and children rushed across the field to the soldiers. Kimberly Smith, of Covington, was among them, scrambling up to her husband, Sgt. Argo Smith.

“I’m not going to let go,” she said as she hugged Argo, whom she met at Tucker High School before they got married 16 years ago. “I can touch him. I can put my hands on him. He’s here.”
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Georgia National Guard returns from Afghanistan

Volunteer army to build house for veteran

The title of this post should be along the lines of when supporting them is real because this is exactly what it is. We can talk all we want about supporting them but if we just wait for the VA or the DOD to do it all, they are the ones suffering for it.

A while ago I had a conversation with a man claiming the "phony PTSD claims" were 50% and that the VA would take care of the legitimate ones. While we know that only a fraction of our veterans seek help for PTSD, that there is no where near enough being done, this man thought they were the problem of the VA and not citizens. He is clearly missing the point that it is the citizens funding service organizations and these organizations exist because the government is not meeting the need.

We can fight all we want to have the VA change but this takes years to do. When a budget is presented, it takes a long time for the funding to be voted on and then even longer for it to work into the system. Yet when people step up, they can write a check and get it done a lot faster. They shouldn't have to do it but because they care, they do and a veteran no longer has to ask himself/herself if anyone cares.

They risk their lives for the entire nation, doing what we ask of them and what few others are willing to do. The least we can do is to answer the call to help them.

An "army" is showing up to help this veteran and it happened after a radio station made his need public. Bless the radio station for making this public and Homes for Our Troops for all the work they are doing to live up to the words "a grateful nation" but also be aware of the thousands of other stories you will never hear about.

Volunteer army to build house for veteran
Mary Umberger
On Real Estate
February 21, 2010
Frank Pierson recalls the moment clearly: One day in March 2008, he was in Baghdad, behind the wheel of a truck that was part of an Army convoy.

"We were driving past a checkpoint, and a big puff of smoke came up — we didn't even know we were being ambushed," the Cicero resident says. "When we drove out of the smoke, I went to stop the truck and didn't know why I couldn't stop it.

"I looked down and noticed my right leg was completely gone and part of my left leg was severely injured."

The "big puff of smoke" had been caused by an electronically fired projectile. What followed were 27 surgeries and 19 months of rehab in Germany and at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Today, minus his legs and dealing with other injuries from the blast, he lives with his wife, Arielle Carroll-Pierson, at her mother's home in Cicero.

It's home, but it's not easy. Even though the family has adapted the house to his needs somewhat, there are huge physical inconveniences. The only bedroom in the home that's vaguely accessible to him, for instance, is in the basement, and to reach it, Pierson climbs out of his wheelchair and scoots down the stairs and gets into another chair.

It will be a contribution from Homes for Our Troops, a Taunton, Mass., charity that since 2004 has built 51 houses for disabled veterans and has 32 others in various stages of construction around the country, at an average cost of $250,000 to $300,000, plus the cost of land.

The organization, which aids military veterans who have been severely injured while serving in a combat zone after Sept. 11, 2001, receives funding from corporate sponsorships and private donations, according to Vicki Thomas, a spokesman for the group.

But the projects depend on labor donated by contractors and skilled workers and from donated materials, she said. There are ways for friends, neighbors and total strangers to help too.

Homes for Our Troops got the word out recently on a Chicago radio station that it needed help for the Piersons' house. It will be the group's first effort in the Chicago area, though it recently completed a home for another veteran in Mahomet, Ill., near Champaign.

Though the organization is used to fielding an outpouring of support in the communities where the organization is building homes, Thomas said she was surprised at the immediate response from Chicago after the radio plea for help, when 548 individuals and companies responded.

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Volunteer army to build house for veteran

Joseph Stack's Daughter Considers Her Dad a Hero

Joseph Stack's Daughter Considers Her Dad a Hero

(Feb. 22) -- The daughter of Joseph Stack, who flew a small plane into a federal building in Austin to protest the IRS on Thursday, answered "Yes" on "Good Morning America" when asked if her father was a hero, saying "now maybe people will listen."

Samantha Bell, Stack's 38-year-old daughter from his first marriage, told "Good Morning America" that her father's suicide mission was "wrong" but said she agrees with his anti-government message.

"I think too many people lay around and wait for things to happen, but if nobody comes out and speaks up on behalf of injustice then nothing will ever be accomplished," Bell said.

Before he allegedly set his house on fire, loaded his small airplane with an extra gas tank and flew it into a building that housed IRS offices, killing IRS employee Vernon Hunter and himself, Stack posted a ranting anti-government manifesto online.

"The father I knew was a loving, caring, devoted man who cherished every moment with me and my three children, his grandchildren," she said. "This man who did this was not my father."

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Joseph Stacks Daughter Considers Her Dad a Hero

New push to protect custody rights of troops

New push to protect custody rights of troops

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Monday Feb 22, 2010 11:08:30 EST

An Ohio lawmaker who has been blocked four times in his efforts to pass legislation to protect deployed service members from losing custody of their children has launched a new two-pronged effort to try to get his proposal into law.

Republican Rep. Michael Turner will try once again to attach to the annual defense policy bill provisions designed to prevent courts from denying child custody to service members while they are deployed. Turner hopes a promised meeting with Defense Secretary Robert Gates will result in objections to his legislation being dropped.

As a backup plan, Turner also has introduced a separate bill, HR 4469, that falls under the jurisdiction of the House and Senate veterans’ affairs committees. This gives him another avenue if he cannot overcome objections from the Defense Department and Senate Armed Services Committee, which have been the roadblocks to date for his legislation.

Turner’s bill has been referred to the House veterans’ affairs subcommittee on economic opportunity, which plans to include it among other bills discussed at hearings this year.

His new bill would protect existing child custody orders for troops deployed in support of contingency operations, which is a more limited approach than some of his previous attempts.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/02/military_childcustody_022210w/

Flying wounded from combat zone is a life-saving advancement

Flying wounded from combat zone is a life-saving advancement
By Seth Robbins, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Tuesday, February 23, 2010

JOINT BASE BALAD, Iraq — It was during World War I that an injured soldier was first evacuated by air, in a “Jenny” biplane modified to allow a single stretcher in place of the rear cockpit. And for nearly a century afterward, air evacuations of the badly injured out of the combat zone were the exception, not the norm.

Now, troops wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan are routinely flown to hospitals in the United States within three days. Some burn patients make it back within 24 hours, said Col. James King, the Critical Care Air Transport, or CCAT, theater medical director.

“We are moving patients thousands of miles,” King said, “that some civilian trauma doctors would be reluctant to even put on an elevator.”

Troops are treated at the front lines and then shuttled by helicopter to nearby combat support hospitals for life-saving surgeries, often within a critical one-hour window. The surgeons perform the minimum amount of operations to stabilize the patients, and then they are flown to hospitals in the U.S. or Germany, where they can receive more specialized care.
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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=68221

Capt. Carl Subler, Chaplain and Human

The church I attended back home in Massachusetts had a Greek Orthodox priest comfortable in working at the church functions with sleeves rolled up, running around serving others food and chatting over a couple of drinks with a cigarette in hand. He was my favorite priest. When appropriate, he would wear the vestments, prim and proper, but then he always managed to show exactly how human he was the rest of the time. He was easy to talk to because we knew he would understand.

While I've managed somehow to walk the walk and talk the talk helping veterans, they understand I am not one of them. I was adopted into all of this from birth and by marriage. They also know that there was not one day of my life when I had perfect faith. I still don't even though I'm a chaplain now. The most important message they get from me is that they don't have to be perfect or have faith that is absolute.

We have Chaplains working with police officers, firefighters, emergency responders just as we have some working with the homeless, bikers, prisoners and every other walk of life you can think about. We all come called from the lives we have to serve others needing help getting thru their lives because we've walked in their shoes. We understand.

Think of being a soldier in Afghanistan needing spiritual help but finding the person they are supposed to talk to has never once stepped into human life with all the struggles and decisions everyone else seems to make. Never drank? Never smoked? Never used vulgar language? How are they supposed to understand what it's like for the soldiers? How are the soldiers supposed to be able to go and talk to someone with a "perfect life" when their own life is falling apart?

Well here's a story about my kind of Chaplain. He drinks, smokes and while he apparently takes his faith very seriously, he has it in perspective the same way Christ did. This may not be the kind of "spiritual" leader a polite church would want but he is the type they need.

This was sent by Lily Casura over at Healing Combat Trauma

Driven Life" and others in a dynamic conversation about faith and its impact on the world.

In Afghanistan, Sunday Mass on a makeshift altar
By CHRISTOPHER TORCHIA
The Associated Press
Monday, February 22, 2010; 1:01 AM

BADULA QULP, Afghanistan -- The U.S. Army brigade's Catholic priest spits, smokes, cracks jokes and has come under fire like so many other American soldiers. He keeps altar bread in an empty grenade canister. On Sunday, he donned purple and white vestments over his uniform and celebrated Mass on a makeshift altar of four stacked boxes of MREs.

Capt. Carl Subler stood in the dust at an earthen-walled compound and prayed for the safety of those assembled, half a dozen soldiers who are fighting the Taliban near the contested town of Marjah in southern Afghanistan. He also prayed for peace in a country that has known war for decades. The men kneeled in their faded uniforms and some took communion, a reflective moment in a time of war.

"I find that my prayer life kind of suffers when I'm back home. I can pop a top on a cold one and watch TV," said Subler of Versailles, Ohio. "I find the more creature comforts are taken away from us, in many ways, we look to God with even more hope."


A busy Subler gave Mass on Sunday in three patrol bases - "Keep it rolling, baby," he said - in the Badula Qulp region of Helmand province, where the Army is supporting a Marine offensive against an insurgent stronghold. He is the only Catholic chaplain in the 5th Stryker Brigade, which has lent 400 soldiers to a mission that has waged daily firefights as forces push the Taliban out of villages.

"When you're separate from your families, sometimes you feel powerless to do anything when they're in trouble," Subler said during the service. "When you're over here, you kind of feel helpless."
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In Afghanistan, Sunday Mass on a makeshift altar