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This is the final piece in the video series about local Iraq veteran and ex-Marine Chris Raissi. In this chapter we revisit Chris’s trouble with recruiting duty and hear about the hostile chain of command there, an environment that only exacerbates Chris’s post-war stress that he, like many other veterans the MTV Street Team has talked to, self-medicates with alcohol. That approach was one way out of his seemingly dead-end situation.

There was no way to do his story justice in a series of short, web-consumable video bites; you got about 12 and a half minutes of the interview while another 80 or so hit the cutting room floor. (Part 1 aired on MTV2 last Friday, but only 60 seconds of that made it to cable.) I didn’t have room to tell you about the times Chris would call home in a sweat with shaking hands — not from Iraq, but from Macon, as he struggled with an NCOIC who was determined to break him and make him leave the Corps because he wouldn’t sell pure, unadulterated bullshit to the potential recruits. I didn’t have room to tell you about the unspoken loopholes pitfalls that a “picture of a perfect soldier” can be lured into during judicial proceedings and when reaching out for psychiatric counseling. I didn’t have room to tell you about an idealistic patriot watching his fellow Marines and soldiers cause more hostility among the population in al Anbar around them through heavy-handed application of (or disregard for) ill-communicated rules of engagement.

But you can ask him about these things yourself next week. Turns out, the Young Democrats of Atlanta contacted IVAW for a speaker for their next happy hour, and Chris, who I am pretty sure listens to more Neil Boortz than Rachel Maddow, stepped up. Next Thursday, July 17, the happy hour starts at 7pm at Madison Grill in Midtown (on the east side of Peachtree around 16th Street).

(Video source page)

About 39 minutes ago a version of my first veteran video aired on MTV2, as thirteen other Street Team videos will throughout the day. I was too busy watching America’s Next Top Model on the main MTV channel (the only one I get), but I’m sure it kicked ass.

Just in time for today’s holiday, part two in this series.

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Former Marine sergeant Christopher Raissi thought it was important for him to speak out as part of Iraq Veterans Against the War, precisely because he does not fit the stereotype that conservative Georgians may have about anti-war protesters. In Part Two of this series, Chris explains how a patriotic suburban kid who chose to enlist became disenchanted with the "Support the Troops" rhetoric. (Watch Part One here if you missed it.)

(Video source page)

Other MTV Street Teamers had already done plenty of stories about the Iraq War. I hadn’t; no particular reason why.

I’m really glad I did. This is part 1 of what will probably be 3.

Christopher Raissi isn’t your typical anti-war protester. In fact, he isn’t particularly anti-war at all; he’s just against this war, in Iraq. Being against the war doesn’t mean he’s a liberal; he’s a libertarian. And while he could have gone to college for free, this suburban Atlanta kid decided after 9/11 to enlist in the United States Marines. He may not think his government is doing its best to faithfully uphold the American way of life our founding fathers envisioned, but he wanted to defend it. The son of an Iranian immigrant, Chris enlisted to protect the only country that has “the American dream” that made his family’s story possible.

After serving his first deployment to the Horn of Africa, Chris pushed his chain of command for an advance deployment to Iraq. He then volunteered for an extended 12 month tour in al Anbar province instead of the normal six month Marine deployment, from December 2004 to December 2005. As a Combat Operations Center watch officer, he coordinated intelligence and logistics on everything from rocket attacks, “casevacs” (casualty evacuations), and deployment of up-armored Humvees. When he returned from Iraq, he re-enlisted and was sent to Recruiters School in San Diego to become a Marine recruiter in Macon, GA.

And that is when things began to fall apart. Along with the rest of the country, Chris began to reexamine the justification for the war and compare the political rhetoric to his own experiences in Iraq. As he became disillusioned with the war itself, he also could not accept the disingenuous tactics that his superiors were recommending he employ as a recruiter. And while he dealt with an increasingly hostile work environment, he was also trying to deal with his own post-combat mental and emotional stresses which, as a Marine, he was expected just to “suck up” and keep inside.

This video is just a brief introduction to Chris and his story. Stay tuned for future videos about life after Iraq, what really saps troop morale, the challenges of recruiting for an unpopular war, and Chris’s ultimate departure from the Corps.

On Memorial Day, I always remember my maternal grandfather, Captain Edward F. Zimmerman, MD, USN, who served on the USS Shasta during World War II. Thoughts of him are usually accompanied by a twinge of regret that I didn’t follow in his footsteps in naval service, a career decision I am still trying to “atone” for. So this Memorial Day weekend, the words of Under Secretary of Defense John Young, Jr., who spoke at Georgia Tech last Friday morning, were welcome and reassuring.

Continue reading this post at ThinkMTV…

For those of you who aren’t addicted to politics like chocolate-covered crack, there’s yet another debate tonight — this time on CNN, and not that irritating MSNBC with its crappy anti-Mac website.

It’s seven weeks till the Iowa caucus. I’ve gone through kind of a roller coaster on this campaign, first thinking Joe Biden would emerge quickly in the spring as the obvious candidate of experience, then settling into a slow-but-steady state of calm, but dipping into the occasional bouts of I-hate-my-country despair, in all honesty.

I have a feeling about tonight, and I have a feeling about Iowa. I feel it in my bones like arthritic joints before a big storm. It’s still going to be a hard press to make a stand in Iowa and try to blast out of the caucuses with the momentum to stun New Hampshire, but it’s really within reach, and I’m no longer using the word “quixotic” about this bid. You just wait; Iowa is going to shock you. Hope you get to watch tonight, and I hope Wolf friggin’ Blitzer gives Biden more time than Russert and Williams did last week.

And I hope Pakistan can run itself for a few hours while Joe is on stage.

On Friday, Caucus4Priorities, some bunch-of-hippies PAC headed up by Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen that wants to cut defense spending and re-route the money to happier domestic agendas, endorsed John “My priority is a 28,000sf house with a recreational building” Edwards. This “sweet” deal, as the papers like to pun it, apparently comes with 10,000 bleating Iowans that have pledged to caucus for the endorsee. A CBS News story talks of Edwards’s defense-cutting plans thusly:

If elected, Edwards said he would examine the nation’s missile defense system and the F-22 fighter jet.

“The idea that America, over the long-term, can control the spread of nuclear weapons — and just look at what’s happening in Pakistan as a perfect example of this — is a fantasy, it will not happen,” he said.

Good thing CBS decided to cherry-pick missile defense and the F-22 as cost-cutting opportunities for Edwards, because if you look at the rest of the candidate scorecard, you’ll notice how many other defense programs about which they just couldn’t get a real answer out of John Edwards.

Reducing the nuclear stockpile? Undecided.

Cancelling the DDG-1000 destroyer or C-130J transport plane? Undecided.

Pledge to eliminate earmarks in defense spending? No answer.

It probably won’t surprise any of the regular readers who I’m about to tell you had answers to all those questions that Caucus4Priorities would have found favorable: Joe Biden. And of course, by record alone, those hippies should’ve given Dennis Kucinich their much-deserved support, since he’d pretty much cancel everything deadly under the sun and fight global terror networks with his pocket-sized copy of the Constitution. But I guess C4P hasn’t got the balls to gamble on anyone outside the top three.

Hippies.

Greenville, SC, is a lovely town; if you ever have the occasion, I suggest a weekend getaway there. I would not, however, suggest any kind of getaway in Islamabad.

While I was in Greenville interviewing Senator Joe Biden about Pakistan, among other things, General Pervez Musharraf decided to suspend the constitution in Pakistan and declare a general charlie-foxtrot. If I had only checked my stupid email on my crappy cellphone while waiting for my face time with the Senator, I could have gotten his first, raw reaction to the actualization of the kind of suck he warned us about in last Tuesday’s debate. Little old me and my camcorder. But no, I had to settle for the much less exciting, measured, official statement after we drove off in opposite directions and everyone checked their damn PDAs:

“General Musharraf’s decision to declare a state of emergency and suspend the constitution underscores the need for the United States to move from a Musharraf policy to a Pakistan policy. President Bush should personally make clear to General Musharraf the risks to U.S.-Pakistani relations if he does not restore the constitution, permit free and fair elections and take off his uniform as promised. Then, we have to build a new relationship with the Pakistani people, with more non-military aid, sustained over a long period of time, so that the moderate majority in Pakistan has a chance to succeed.” –Joe Biden

But yeah, Greenville is nice.

I come from a Republican family, but they are good people, and as much as a Huckabee government would frighten me on so many policy grounds, I would be far, far happier with my kin voting for someone who is a genuine, principled conservative than a guy like Rudy Giuliani. “Mayor of 9/11” my ass, Rudy has got to be one of the most irritating, hot-headed, ignorant weirdos running for Commander in Chief of this great nation, and I can only hope the pro-lifeness of my Catholic family gets them to vote for anyone but this sack of French showers.

As waterboarding comes up more than Britney Spears in the news this week thanks to the confirmation hearings of Michael Mukasey, Rudy decided to weigh in thusly

MR. HUNT: Let me try a couple of national security questions. Waterboard. You have noted the Congress has not outlawed it, and that you say it’s not necessarily torture; it depends on the circumstances. John McCain says you are wrong and he says you haven’t served in the military and have no experience in the conduct of warfare. Do you know more about torture than John McCain?

MR. GIULIANI: I can’t say that I do but I do know a lot about intensive questioning and intensive questioning techniques. After all, I have had a different experience than John. John has never been - he has never run city, never run a state, never run a government. He has never been responsible as a mayor for the safety and security of millions of people, and he has never run a law enforcement agency, which I have done.:

[Emphasis mine]

Rudy use that same old tired crap in his press availability here in Atlanta about the top 3 Democratic candidates, and that’s fine. But for him to whip out the same tired-ass talking points against a POW in his own party? I’m sorry, but you’d have to have a particular fetish for flogging yourself in your own nay-nays to think that Rudy is the man you want to represent this country, particularly if you claimed to believe in Jesus.

And also if you want to keep this nation safe from nuclear threats:

Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran!

This is some seriously disturbing news from Bush’s last gasp at being relevant: U.S. has “urgent need” to outfit stealth bombers with bunker busters.

Tucked inside the White House’s $196 billion emergency funding request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is an item that has some people wondering whether the administration is preparing for military action against Iran. The item: $88 million to modify B-2 stealth bombers so they can carry a newly developed 30,000-pound bomb called the massive ordnance penetrator…. The one-line explanation for the request said it is in response to “an urgent operational need from theater commanders.”

There doesn’t appear to be any potential targets for a bomb like that in Iraq. It could potentially be used on Taliban or al Qaeda hideouts in the caves along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there would be no need to use a stealth bomber there. So where would the military use a stealth bomber armed with a 30,000-pound bomb like this? Defense analysts say the most likely target for this bomb would be Iran’s flagship nuclear facility in Natanz, which is both heavily fortified and deeply buried.

Hooray.

I just got back from listening to Hillary Clinton accept the endorsement of Congressman John Lewis and deliver a bunch of canned, fluffy Let’s Turn This Country Around rhetoric that left her devoted following weak in the knees.

Bla, bla, bla.

Almost a thousand miles away, at almost the exact same time, a political event that hints at what it’ll really take to turn this country around was going down in Iowa. I’d like to see Hillary pull off something like this:

The Oscar and Felix of politics? Sen. Joe Biden, D-Delaware, and Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kansas, would be strong contenders for “The Political Odd Couple of the Year Award” – if one existed.

On matters of policy, they don’t share that much in common – except what to do about Iraq.

So, the two presidential hopefuls will meet up in Des Moines, Iowa, Friday to talk about their plan to bring stability to the war torn nation. Specifically, the two senators will discuss their legislation that calls for decentralizing Iraq’s federal government and giving more control to local and regional groups. Their amendment passed easily in the Senate last week.

“Partisan politics must not come in the way of finding a solution to the war in Iraq,” Biden said in a statement. “The overwhelming majority of Americans want us to get our troops out of Iraq as quickly as possible without leaving chaos behind.”

Over on an Iowa blog, a John Edwards supporter looks at this kind of event and gets angry:

But this really annoys me. Aside from the fact that I think any partition plan is doomed to fail, Biden is throwing Senate Republicans a life raft. Now they can credibly say that they have voted for a solution to the Iraq problem.

Talk about the kind of retarded partisan-at-all-costs attitude you expect from some DailyKossacks that have the Right foaming at the mouth to accuse us yet again of being national security nincompoops! Yes, let’s not try to change course in Iraq because it’s better partisan politics to keep Republicans over the barrel! Great idea, demoinesdem!

To know me is to know that many Republican politicians make me want to eat glass, but come on: getting this country out of Iraq safely — and getting a better health coverage system, and ameliorating the Iran situation, and shifting our national energy portfolio away from the destruction of the planet — is going to take just this kind of bipartisanship, like it or lump it.

Today, Hillary Clinton had John Lewis by her side.

Well yeah, that was the easy part.