Dahr Jamail on BP then Veterans with Military Sexual Trauma
We hear about Dahr Jamail's most recent reports to Al Jazeera on the BP oil spill in the gulf and illnesses that are starting to become life threatening for residents. Plus Military Sexual Trauma in the Military.
TRT:29:02
Produced by Dori Smith in Storrs, CT
Airing on WHUS Radio FM 91.7 Wed. 5 PM
Music by Fritz Heede
(Coming up extended interviews with the Yale Law School students working on cases involving the Military.)
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Journalist Dahr Jamail joins us to talk about his latest reports in Al Jazeera. He has been focusing on the BP oil spill and also writing Military Sexual Trauma. He says residents and first responders to the spill continue to get sick, many are being tested for toxicity due to both oil and the chemical dispersant that helped sink it to the ocean floor.
Contacts:
The Service Women's Action Network, S.W.A.N. Vietnam Veterans of America Miles Foundation, SAAM Public Policy Initiatives, Yale Law School, litigation, VVA,ACLU/Swan, Case, Sergeant Chuck Luther, New Haven Independent story by Lisa Chedekel, December 15, 2010, re litigation, Yale Law Students, Dahr Jamail's Web Page www.dahrjamailiraq.com here See story, Rape Rampant in the Military, December 21st, 2010 | Al-Jazeera
Statistics and soldiers’ testimonies reveal a harrowing epidemic of sexual assault in the US military.
The numbers of rapes and other types of abuse within the U.S. Military are staggering, according to Dahr Jamail. Victims continue to say that both their commanders and the Department of Defense in general has been ignoring pleas for help.This is part one of a two part special. In part two we hear from Yale Law Students who are helping try cases for soldiers denied benefits because the military wrongly classified them as having "personality disorder" when in fact they have other problems like PTSD or TBI. And MST, in both cases the students are involved in two landmark cases to demand that the military provide information that would be useful to the soldiers in obtaining their rights, and benefits. Many remain out of work due to the military's inaction..
Dahr Jamail is author of two recent books, “Beyond the Green Zone, Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq”, and “The Will To Resist, Soldiers who Refuse to Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan”. 
Headlines of Note: Our special centers on the state of the U.S. Military. We are also tracking the breaking news that the Obama administration and DOD are now broadening the scope of the Afghan war, heading further into Pakistan border regions, and maintaining a force in Iraq; the damage is rising in the form of killed and wounded soldiers and civilians.
See: Democracy Now Headlines for December 21, 2010, "U.S. Seeks to Expand Military Raids Inside Pakistan" and:
"The New York Times reports senior U.S. military commanders in Afghanistan are pushing to expand special operations ground raids inside Pakistan. The Times reported the proposed escalation amounts to the opening of a new front in the nine-year-old war. U.S. forces have been engaged in a secret war inside Pakistan for years, but the Pentagon appears ready to openly expand its role. One senior American officer said, “We’ve never been as close as we are now to getting the go-ahead to go across.” "
