05 Aug, 2008 - FBI In Trouble...Again. FSB, KGB, FBI...You say Tomato, I say Gestapo.

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20 July, 2008 - PTSD Aftermath: Soldier in famous photo never defeated ’demons’

PINEHURST, N.C. - Officers had been to the white ranch house at 560 W. Longleaf many times before over the past year to respond to a "barricade situation." Each had ended uneventfully, with Joseph Dwyer coming out or telling police in a calm voice through the window that he was OK.

But this time was different.

The Iraq War veteran had called a taxi service to take him to the emergency room. But when the driver arrived, Dwyer shouted that he was too weak to get up and open the door.

The officers asked Dwyer for permission to kick it in.

"Go ahead!" he yelled.

They found Dwyer lying on his back, his clothes soiled with urine and feces. Scattered on the floor around him were dozens of spent cans of Dust-Off, a refrigerant-based aerosol normally used to clean electrical equipment.

Dwyer told police Lt. Mike Wilson he'd been "huffing" the aerosol.

"Help me, please!" the former Army medic begged Wilson. "I'm dying. Help me. I can't breathe."

Unable to stand or even sit up, Dwyer was hoisted onto a stretcher. As paramedics prepared to load him into an ambulance, an officer noticed Dwyer's eyes had glassed over and were fixed.

A half hour later, he was dead.

When Dionne Knapp learned of her friend's June 28 death, her first reaction was to be angry at Dwyer. How could he leave his wife and daughter like this? Didn't he know he had friends who cared about him, who wanted to help?

But as time passed, Knapp's anger turned toward the Army.

A photograph taken in the first days of the war had made the medic from New York's Long Island a symbol of the United States' good intentions in the Middle East. When he returned home, he was hailed as a hero.

But for most of the past five years, the 31-year-old soldier had writhed in a private hell, shooting at imaginary enemies and dodging nonexistent roadside bombs, sleeping in a closet bunker and trying desperately to huff away the "demons" in his head. When his personal problems became public, efforts were made to help him, but nothing seemed to work.

This broken, frightened man had once been the embodiment of American might and compassion. If the military couldn't save him, Knapp thought, what hope was there for the thousands suffering in anonymity?

___

Like many, Dwyer joined the military in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

His father and three brothers are all cops. One brother, who worked in Lower Manhattan, happened to miss his train that morning and so hadn't been there when the World Trade Center towers collapsed.

Joseph, the second-youngest of six, decided that he wanted to get the people who'd "knocked my towers down."

And he wanted to be a medic. (Dwyer's first real job was as a transporter for a hospital in the golf resort town of Pinehurst, where his parents had moved after retirement.)

In 2002, Dwyer was sent to Fort Bliss, Texas. The jokester immediately fell in with three colleagues — Angela Minor, Sgt. Jose Salazar, and Knapp. They spent so much time together after work that comrades referred to them as "The Four Musketeers."

Knapp had two young children and was going through a messy divorce. Dwyer stepped in as a surrogate dad, showing up in uniform at her son Justin's kindergarten and coming by the house to assemble toys that Knapp couldn't figure out.

When it became clear that the U.S. would invade Iraq, Knapp became distraught, confiding to Dwyer that she would rather disobey her deployment orders than leave her kids.

Dwyer asked to go in her place. When she protested, he insisted: "Trust me, this is what I want to do. I want to go." After a week of nagging, his superiors relented.

Dwyer assured his parents, Maureen and Patrick — and his new wife, Matina, whom he'd married in August 2002 — that he was being sent to Kuwait and would likely stay in the rear, far from the action.

But it wasn't true. Unbeknownst to his family, Dwyer had been attached to the 3rd Infantry's 7th Cavalry Regiment. He was at "the tip of the tip of the spear," in one officer's phrase.

During the push into Baghdad, Dwyer's unit came under heavy fire. An airstrike called in to suppress ambush fire rocked the convoy.

As the sun rose along the Euphrates River on March 25, 2003, Army Times photographer Warren Zinn watched as a man ran toward the soldiers carrying a white flag and his injured 4-year-old son. Zinn clicked away as Dwyer darted out to meet the man, then returned, cradling the boy in his arms.

The photo — of a half-naked boy, a kaffiyeh scarf tied around his shrapnel-injured leg and his mouth set in a grimace of pain, and of a bespectacled Dwyer dressed in full battle gear, his M-16 rifle dangling by his side — appeared on front pages and magazine covers around the world.

Suddenly, everyone wanted to interview the soldier in "the photo." Dwyer was given a "Hometown Hero" award by child-safety advocate John Walsh; the Army awarded him the Combat Medical Badge for service under enemy fire.

The attention embarrassed him.

"Really, I was just one of a group of guys," he told a military publication. "I wasn't standing out more than anyone else."

___

Returning to the U.S. in June 2003, after 91 days in Iraq, Dwyer seemed a shell to friends.

When he deployed, he was pudgy at 6-foot-1 and 220 pounds. Now he weighed around 165, and the other Musketeers immediately thought of post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dwyer attributed his skeletal appearance to long days and a diet of MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). He showed signs of his jolly old self, so his friends accepted his explanation.

But they soon noticed changes that were more than cosmetic.

At restaurants, Dwyer insisted on sitting with his back to the wall so no one could sneak up on him. He turned down invitations to the movies, saying the theaters were too crowded. He said the desert landscape around El Paso, and the dark-skinned Hispanic population, reminded him of Iraq.

Dwyer, raised Roman Catholic but never particularly religious before, now would spend lunchtime by himself, poring over his Bible.

When people would teasingly call him "war hero" and ask him to tell about his experiences, or about the famous photo, he would steer the conversation toward the others he'd served with. But Dwyer once confided that another image, also involving a child, disturbed him.

He was standing next to a soldier during a firefight when a boy rode up on a bicycle and stopped beside a weapon lying in the dirt. Under his breath, the soldier beside Dwyer whispered, "Don't pick it up, kid. Don't pick it up."

The boy reached for the weapon and was blasted off his bike.

In late 2004, Dwyer sent e-mails to Zinn, wondering if the photographer had "heard anything else about the kid" from the photo, and claiming he was "doing fine out here in Fort Bliss, Texas."

But Dwyer wasn't doing fine. Earlier that year, he'd been prescribed antidepressants and referred for counseling by a doctor. Still, his behavior went from merely odd to dangerous.

One day, he swerved to avoid what he thought was a roadside bomb and crashed into a convenience store sign. He began answering his apartment door with a pistol in his hand and would call friends from his car in the middle of the night, babbling and disoriented from sniffing inhalants.

Matina told friends that he was seeing imaginary Iraqis all around him. Despite all this, the Army had not taken his weapons.

In the summer of 2005, he was removed to the barracks for 72 hours after trashing the apartment looking for an enemy infiltrator. He was admitted to Bliss' William Beaumont Army Medical Center for treatment of his inhalant addiction.

But things continued to worsen. That October, the Musketeers decided it was time for an "intervention."

Minor, who had moved to New York, overdrew her bank account and flew down. She, Knapp and Salazar went to the apartment and pleaded with Dwyer to give up his guns, or at least his ammunition.

"I'm sorry, guys," he told them. "But there's no way I'm giving up my weapons."

After talking for about an hour and a half, Dwyer agreed to let Matina lock the weapons up. The group went for a walk in a nearby park, and Dwyer seemed happier than he'd been in months.

But Dwyer's paranoia soon returned — and worsened.

On Oct. 6, 2005, when superiors went to the couple's off-base apartment to persuade Dwyer to return to the hospital, Dwyer barricaded himself in. Imagining Iraqis swarming up the sides and across the roof, he fired his pistol through the door, windows and ceiling.

After a three-hour standoff, Dwyer's eldest brother, Brian, also a police officer, managed to talk him down over the phone. Dwyer was admitted for psychiatric treatment.

In a telephone interview later that month from what he called the "nut hut" at Beaumont, Dwyer told Newsday that he'd lied on a post-deployment questionnaire that asked whether he'd been disturbed by what he'd seen and done in Iraq. The reason: A PTSD diagnosis could interfere with his plans to seek a police job. Besides, he'd been conditioned to see it as a sign of weakness.

"I'm a soldier," he said. "I suck it up. That's our job."

Dwyer told the newspaper that he'd blown off counseling before but was committed to embracing his treatment this time. He said he hoped to become an envoy to others who avoided treatment for fear of damaging their careers.

"There's a lot of soldiers suffering in silence," he said.

In January 2006, Joseph and Matina Dwyer moved back to North Carolina, away from the place that reminded him so much of the battlefield. But his shadow enemy followed him here.

___

Dwyer was discharged from the Army in March 2006 and living off disability. That May, Matina Dwyer gave birth to a daughter, Meagan Kaleigh.

He seemed to be getting by, but setbacks would occur without warning.

On the Fourth of July, he and family were fishing off the back deck when the fireworks display began. Dwyer bolted inside and hid under a bed.

In June 2007, police responded to a call that Dwyer was "having some mental problems related to PTSD." A captain talked him into going to the emergency room.

Later that month, Matina Dwyer moved in with her parents and obtained a protective order. In the complaint, she said Dwyer had purchased an AR-15 assault rifle and become angry when she refused to return it.

"He said that he was coming to my residence to get his gun back," she wrote in the June 25, 2007, complaint. "He was coming packed with guns and someone was going to die tonight." She declined to be interviewed for this story.

In July 2007, Dwyer checked into an inpatient program at New York's Northport Veterans Affairs Medical Center. He stayed for six months.

He came home in March with more than a dozen prescriptions. He was so medicated that his feet flopped when he walked, as if he were wearing oversized clown shoes.

The VA's solution was a "pharmaceutical lobotomy," his father thought.

But within five days of his discharge, Dwyer's symptoms had returned with such ferocity that the family decided it was time to get Matina and 2-year-old Meagan out. While Dwyer was off buying inhalants, his parents helped spirit them away.

On April 10, weary and fearful, Matina Dwyer filed for custody and division of property.

Without his wife and daughter to anchor him, Dwyer's grip on reality loosened further. He reverted to Iraq time, sleeping during the day and "patrolling" all night. Unable to possess a handgun, he placed knives around the house for protection.

In those last months, Dwyer opened up a little to his parents.

What bothered him most, he said, was the sheer volume of the gunfire. He talked about the grisly wounds he'd treated and dwelled on the people he was unable to save. His nasal membranes seemed indelibly stained with the scents of the battlefield — the sickeningly sweet odor of rotting flesh and the metallic smell of blood.

Yet despite all that, Dwyer continued to talk about going back to Iraq. He told his parents that if he could just get back with his comrades and do his job, things would right themselves.

When Maureen Dwyer first saw Zinn's famous photo, she'd had a premonition that it might be the last picture she'd ever see of Joseph.

"I just didn't think he was going to come home," she said. "And he never did."

___

An autopsy is pending, but police are treating Dwyer's death as an accidental overdose.

His friends and family see it differently.

The day of the 2005 standoff, Knapp spent hours on the telephone trying to get help for Dwyer. She was frustrated by a military bureaucracy that would not act unless his petrified wife complained, and with a civilian system that insisted Dwyer was the military's problem.

In a letter to post commander Maj. Gen. Robert Lennox, Knapp expressed anger that Army officials who were "proud to display him as a hero ... now had turned their back on him..."

"Joseph Dwyer who had left to Iraq one of the nicest, kindest, caring, self-sacrificing and patriotic people I have ever known," she wrote, "was forced to witness and commit acts completely contrary to his nature and returned a tormented, confused disillusioned shadow of his former self that was not being given the help he needed."

While Dwyer was in the service, Minor said, the Army controlled every aspect of his life.

"So someone should have taken him by the hand and said, ..We're putting you in the hospital, and you're staying there until you get fixed — until you're back to normal."

But Dr. Antonette Zeiss, deputy chief of the VA's Office of Mental Health, said it's not that simple.

"Veterans are civilians, and VA is guided by state law about involuntary commitment," she told the AP. "There are civil liberties, and VA respects that those civil liberties are important."

The family would not authorize the VA to release Dwyer's medical records. But it appears that Dwyer was sometimes unwilling — or unable — to make the best use of the programs available. In an e-mail to The Associated Press, Lennox, the former Bliss post commander, wrote that Dwyer "had a great (in my opinion) care giver."

Zeiss said the best treatment for PTSD is exposure-based psychotherapy, in which the patient is made "to engage in thoughts, feelings and conversations about the trauma." While caregivers must be 100 percent committed to creating an environment in which the veteran feels comfortable confronting those demons, she said the patient must be equally committed to following through.

"And so it's a dance between the clinicians and the patient."

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, feels the VA is a lousy dance partner.

Rieckhoff said the VA's is a "passive system" whose arcane rules and regulations make it hard for veterans to find help. And when they do get help, he said, it is often inadequate.

"I consider (Dwyer) a battlefield casualty," he said, "because he was still fighting the war in his head."

___

The Sunday after the Fourth of July, Knapp attended services at Scotsdale Baptist, the El Paso church where she and Dwyer had been baptized together in 2004.

On the way out of the sanctuary, Knapp checked her phone and noticed an e-mail.

"I didn't know if you had heard or not," a friend wrote, "but I got an email from Matina this morning saying that Joseph had died on Saturday and that the funeral was today."

Knapp maintained her composure long enough to get herself and the children to the car. Then she lost it.

The children asked what was wrong.

"Joseph is dead," she told them.

"You said he wasn't sick any more," Justin said.

"I know, Justin," his mother replied. "But I guess maybe the help wasn't working like we thought it was."

The kids were too young to understand acronyms like PTSD or to hear a lecture about how Knapp thought the system had failed Dwyer. So she told them that, just as they sometimes have nightmares, "sometimes people get those nightmares in their head and they just can't get them out, no matter what."

Despite the efforts she made to get help for Dwyer, Knapp is trying to cope with a deep-seated guilt. She knows that Dwyer shielded her from the images that had haunted him.

"I think about all the torture that he went through when he came back, and I think that all of that stuff could have happened to me," she said, stifling a sob. "I just owe him so much for that."

Since Dwyer's death, Justin, now 9, has taken to carrying a newspaper clipping of the Zinn photo around with him. Occasionally, Knapp will catch him huddled with a playmate, showing the photo and telling him about the soldier who used to come to his school and assemble his toys.

Justin wants them to know all about Spc. Joseph Dwyer. His hero.

___

EDITOR'S NOTE — AP Pentagon reporter Pauline Jelinek also contributed to this report.

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30 May, 2008 - Iraqis say Marines handed out Christian coins

Let me just say this, Marine or no Marine, this moron should have been handed over to the Iraqis to deal with as they saw fit.  I know all you flag-waving fair-weather patriots will be unable to comprehend anything aside from "He's an American. Go America! Praise Jeebus!". This intellectual mendicant should in no way be representing my beloved Marine Corps.  Not only did he violate the military code of conduct prohibiting proselytizing any religion, faith or practice, but he also willfully jeopardized the lives of all of his fellow Marines in the process.

How so, you ask?  What fucking moron would be trying to convert people in an area primarily consisting of devout Muslims and in the heart of one of Iraq's most dangerous and anti-American regions?  That just set back all of the work we've done in trying to quell the hostility there by about a few years.  By further inflaming the anger of the locals, he has only further increased the resentment and hatred these people already bear for their occupiers, namely, US.  What does that then do?  It only helps drive them further towards sympathizing with the insurgency. and the likelihood of more reprisal attacks on American troops for what in this society would be considered a grave insult.

Thank your lucky stars and your Jesus that the chair-warmers back at HQ decided only to pull your stupid ass out of there instead of feeding you to the lions like you deserve, you dumb POS sorry miserable excuse for a Marine.  If anything, they should have let your fellow Devildogs have a go at beating your ass for putting your f'ing "god" before your brothers, before they sent your selfish faith-whoring ass back home.  If that was one of my men, I'd have kicked his ass all the way across the entire f'ing desert already for pulling a dumb stunt like that.  Anyways, that's all I have left to say about that.  Semper Fi

- B




By KIM GAMEL, Associated Press Writer



BAGHDAD - A U.S. Marine handed out coins promoting Christianity to Muslims in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah, outraged Sunni officials said Friday. The U.S. military responded quickly, removing a trooper from duty pending an investigation.

Tens of thousands of Shiites, meanwhile, took to the streets in Baghdad and other cities to protest plans for a long-term security agreement with the United States.

The rallies after Friday prayer services were the first to follow a call by anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr for weekly protests against the deal, which could lead to a long-term American troop presence.

The outcry could sharply heighten tensions over the proposal. The deal is supposed to be finished by July and replace the current U.N. mandate overseeing U.S.-led troops in Iraq.

Demonstrators in Baghdad's Sadr City district chanted "No to America! No to the occupation!" A statement from al-Sadr's office has called the negotiations "a project of humiliation for the Iraqi people."

Smaller protests also were held in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Kazimiyah, Abu Dshir and the Shiite holy city of Kufa.

"We denounce the government's intentions to sign a long-term agreement with the occupying forces," Sadrist Sheik Asaad al-Nassiri said during a sermon in Kufa. "Our army will be under their control in this agreement and this will lead to them having permanent bases in Iraq."

U.S. officials have insisted they are not seeking permanent bases in Iraq, although they have declined to comment on specific proposals until the negotiations are complete.

The distribution of the coins was the second perceived insult to Islam by American service members this month. A U.S. sniper was sent out of the country after using a Quran, Islam's holy book, for target practice.

Photographs of the coins, which were inscribed with phrases in Arabic, were widely distributed via cell phones in Fallujah and were seen by an Associated Press employee.

One side asked: "Where will you spend eternity?"

The other contained a verse from the New Testament: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16."

Such actions by American service members threaten to alienate Sunni Arabs who have become key allies in the fight against insurgents, a movement that started in Anbar province, which includes Fallujah.

Distribution of the coins in Fallujah was particularly sensitive because the city, 40 miles west of Baghdad, is known for its large number of mosques. It was the center of the Sunni-led insurgency before a massive U.S. offensive in November 2004.

Sheik Abdul-Rahman al-Zubaie, an influential tribal leader in the city, spoke of his outrage over perceived proselytizing by American forces and warned patience was running thin.

"This event did not happen by chance, but it was planned and done intentionally," al-Zubaie said. "The Sunni population cannot accept and endure such a thing. I might not be able to control people's reactions if such incidents keep happening."

Sunni officials and residents said a Marine distributed about 10 coins at a checkpoint controlling access to the city, the scene of one of the fiercest battles of the war.

Al-Zubaie said a man brought one of the coins to a mosque on Wednesday to show it to him and other Sunni leaders.

He accused the Marines of trying to do missionary work in Fallujah and said Sunni leaders had met with U.S. military officials and demanded "the harshest punishment" for those responsible to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Mohammed Hassan Abdullah said he witnessed the coins being handed out on Tuesday as he was waiting at the Halabsa checkpoint, although he didn't receive one himself.

The U.S. military — still smarting from the Quran shooting — said a Marine was removed from duty Friday "amid concerns from Fallujah's citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct."

A statement said the reports about the coin's distribution were being investigated and promised "appropriate action" if the allegations are confirmed.

Lt. Col. Chris Hughes, a spokesman for U.S. forces in western Iraq, said it didn't appear to be a widespread problem, stressing that the military forbids "proselytizing any religion, faith or practices."

"Indications are this was an isolated incident — an individual Marine acting on his own accord passing out coins," Hughes said in an e-mailed statement.

Col. James L. Welsh, chief of staff for American forces in western Iraq, also said the matter has their "full attention."

Al-Zubaie said U.S. military officials met with tribal leaders on Thursday and expressed "astonishment about (the) behavior of this Marine, saying that they have already settled the matter of the violation of the Quran and suddenly a new problem has emerged."

Dr. Muhsin al-Jumaili, a professor of law and religious studies in Fallujah, said the act was especially provocative in Fallujah and risked alienating residents who recently have joined forces with the Americans against al-Qaida in Iraq.

"As Muslims, we cannot accept this," he told The Associated Press. "The Americans should concentrate on maintaining security and not doing missionary work."

"Such deeds will not make Muslims trust American troops any more and might create a feeling of hatred among Muslims and Christians" at a time when they're finally living in peace, he added.

The revelation that an American sniper had used a Quran for target practice earlier this month prompted similar outrage and drew apologies from President Bush and senior U.S. commanders.

The alliances between Sunni tribes and U.S. forces have been key to a steep decline in violence over the past year. But tensions have risen over a series of incidents, including the accidental killings of U.S.-allied fighters, that have raised concerns about the fragility of the support for the American forces.

U.S. troops also have struggled to overcome the perception that they are insensitive to Islamic traditions after several missteps in the early stages of the war in Iraq.

___

Associated Press staff in Fallujah contributed to this report.


*************

FOLLOW-UP:


U.S. service member removed from duty following complaints, military says


updated 2:05 a.m. PT, Fri., May. 30, 2008


BAGHDAD - An American service member has been removed from duty in Iraq following complaints that Marines were handing out coins promoting Christianity, the U.S. military says.

Sunni officials in the former insurgent stronghold of Fallujah said the coins were given to Iraqis at an entry checkpoint and had biblical verses written on them in Arabic.

A military statement said the service member was removed from his duties "amid concerns from Fallujah's citizens regarding reports of inappropriate conduct."

The statement said U.S. troops are prohibited "from proselytizing any religion, faith or practices" and the military is investigating the reports.

The military promised appropriate action if allegations against the Marines are substantiated.


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Identity Theft & Fraud - Two Lives, One Social Security Number. Why Govt & IRS don’t care.

Two lives, one Social Security number

Posted: Tuesday, May 27 at 06:00 am CT

by Bob Sullivan

Like arriving home to see a broken window, Holli knew something was wrong when she pulled up the statement from her new 401(k) account and saw a stranger's name there. Under her name and account information, she found a second name: Paulino Rodriguez. But was it an accident, random vandalism or a serious crime? She opened the virtual door to her account and sorted through the broken glass. Her worst fears would soon be confirmed.

After some frantic research, Holli pieced together part of the story. Rodriguez, the 401(k) Web site revealed, lived in Escondido, Calif., about 90 minutes south of Holli's home in Fountain Valley. He was a restaurant worker in an Escondido Burger King. This was no prank -- though Holli would soon feel like several government agencies, corporations and a criminal were having fun at her expense. She was a victim of something experts call Social Security number-only identity theft, generally committed by immigrants who don't have the necessary credentials to work legally in the U.S.

Holli wondered what else the imposter had done to her credit and her good name. (Msnbc.com has agreed to conceal Holli's identity in this story.)

Escondido is Ground Zero of the immigration debate. Just a few minutes north of the Mexican border, near San Diego, Escondido is home to thousands of Mexican immigrants who battle their way every day into the country and into gainful employment. Mexicans have been fighting in Escondido for a long time. Not far away, in 1846, U.S. forces were routed in the Battle of San Pasqual during the Mexican-American war, the worst American defeat of the conflict. Today, some say, Mexicans are again overwhelming American forces in a different kind of battle.

For the past three years, Paulino Rodriguez used Holli's Social Security number for the right to work at the Escondido Burger King. Recently, with his wife and four children, he took up residence in a middle-class subdivision on Espanas Glen Street in Escondido, a short block near Interstate 15.

Rodriguez, according U.S. immigration officials, is a Mexican national with no right to work in the United States. But thanks in part to Holli's Social Security number, he had found a decent life for his family in Escondido, which means "hidden" in Spanish. But that that life was safe only if no one found out he was sharing Holli's identity.

Across America, perhaps millions of U.S. citizens are sharing their identities with undocumented workers who are virtually hiding behind Social Security numbers like Rodriguez. The data on the subject are incomplete, but each year nearly 10 million workers pay their taxes using the wrong Social Security number. While this can happen for a variety of reasons, most often it involves restaurant and farm workers, suggesting many of those 10 million workers are employees who are using someone else's SSN to satisfy federal employment requirements.

Information at her fingertips
Holli, a woman in her 50s, panicked one month ago when she saw Rodriguez's name on her 401(k) account, then she started putting the pieces together. It wasn't hard -- she had all of Rodriguez's personal information right there on her screen, including his age: 38. She called his employer, Reddy Restaurants Inc., which supplies workers to Burger King. Holli says she was told that nothing could be done because Rodriguez fulfilled the requirements for employment when he started work -- namely, he supplied what appeared to be a valid Social Security card.

Mike Holly, owner of Reddy, confirmed that Rodriguez was an employee but refused to otherwise discuss the situation.

Holli then called the local police, who took a report but said nothing could be done. She contacted the Social Security Administration, the Federal Trade Commission, even her 401(k) administrator. The message she heard from each was the same: We can't help you. She even went to an attorney, who delivered bad news.

"(He) said since my credit hadn't been affected, they couldn't do anything for me," Holli recalled.

But Holli was persistent. She eventually convinced her local police department to take a report, and to forward it to Escondido police. Then, she pestered the dispatcher in Escondido enough that the file was passed on to the investigations department. Detective Damon Vander Vorst took an interest in the case.

Rodriguez entered the country nearly 20 years ago, public records suggest. It's unclear where in Mexico he grew up, or how he crossed the border. At about the same time, Holli was just starting her career.
Precisely when their lives were blended isn't clear. But about three years ago, Holli remembers getting a funny look from a clerk while she was filling out insurance paperwork at an optometrist's office. "There's someone else's using that (SSN) number," she remembers being told. Then, "I'm not supposed to tell you this, but the name Paulino Rodriguez."

Holli assumed it was an error. But around that same time, Rodriguez signed up with Reddy Restaurants and began working -- using her SSN -- at Burger King.

Holli has no solid information on how her number was stolen, but she has one guess: About five years ago she was laid off from her job and went back to school to finish her college degree in finance. Her school, Long Beach State, used her SSN as her ID number during that time. Her first brush with Rodriguez happened within a few months of her graduation.

Three years passed without incident. Then in April, she opened up the Web site for a new company benefit – a 401(k) plan – and saw the name Paulino Rodriguez again. Holli's heart sank and her quest began. It ended a month later when she talked to Vander Vorst. On May 13, Vander Vorst staked out a home in a gated subdivision named Villas Espanas, waiting for his suspect.

While there is an obvious Latino majority, the neighborhood looks just like any other middle-class San Diego suburb, full of neat white stucco townhomes with red-tile roofs. Most store signs are in English only. A dry cleaner, grocery store, and school are just a few blocks away. During a recent visit by an msnbc.com reporter at midday, the neighborhood was quiet. The subdivision has a large pool; hanging in Rodriguez's front window, three pairs of child-sized goggles were visible from the sidewalk.

Just outside the home, Vander Vorst arrested Rodriguez. Police allege he had falsified Social Security card and work visa.

Getting such documents is hardly an obstacle for illegal immigrants seeking work. Fake Social Security cards and work visas can be purchased in Los Angeles for around $200, law enforcement officials say -- a small investment for the opportunity to work in the United States.

Rodriguez was charged with identity theft and with falsifying government documents, according to Escondido police spokesman Lt. Craig Carter. He was shipped to nearby Vista Detention Facility, where he awaits his fate on the criminal charges. meanwhile, the Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agency has placed a "hold" on him. That means he is "subject to deportation," according to Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for ICE.

Rodriguez refused an interview request by an MSNBC.com free-lance reporter who visited the jail.

Mixed feelings
Holli had mixed feelings when she began her quest to track down her imposter.

"When all this began a month and a half ago, I was worried I might be ruining his life when all he wanted to do was work," she said. But the bureaucratic tangle had changed her. "Now after spending numerous hours of my time trying to find out what is going on as well as worrying, losing sleep and using my work vacation time, I no longer feel bad for Paulino. He made the choice to steal my number. And the fact that privacy laws keep me from being able to see what he is doing with my number infuriates me."

She also fears possible retribution for her actions; that's why she insisted that msnbc.com preserve her anonymity. She also wants to prevent Rodriguez from finding out who she is. Generally, SSN imposters don't commit full-blown identity theft, and don't know who their victims are – Rodriguez likely never even knew Holli's name.

Immigrant imposters usually just provide a Social Security card to their employer on their first day of work to fulfill what's known as the "I-9" requirement. Since new employment rules took effect in 1983, U.S. workers must supply documentation to prove they are eligible to work; nearly always, a Social Security number is used. While employers can call the Social Security Administration to perform limited verification of the information, that's seldom done. So it's possible -- in fact common -- that employees' names and numbers don't match. When that happens, no one gets credit for the taxes paid by the worker. The money simply ends up in the U.S. Treasury. Since 1983, more than $500 billion in uncredited Social Security wages have been earned by so-called "no match" employees like Rodriguez. That hidden financial benefit for the government is one reason, Holli suspects, that agencies don't act more quickly on reports of SSN-only identity theft.

San Diego-based immigration rights advocate Lilia Velasquez sees similar cases in her practice all the time. Imposters run the spectrum from hardened criminals who ultimately take out loans in the victim's name to well-intentioned Mexicans who are simply doing what they need to do to get a job and feed their families.
"It's not that these people intentionally and maliciously stole someone's name and identity. ... They may feel that they are using the number out of sheer need," she said.

But victims like Holli should do what they need to do to protect their identities, Velasquez said. "That's a situation which needs to be investigated until the issue is resolved."

37 people shared one SSN
If not, what appears to be a simple bout of ID theft can spin out of control. Immigrant workers who successfully use someone else's identity can pass the information around. Three years ago, a Chicago-area victim named Linda Trevino discovered that her Social Security Number had been used by workers at 37 different companies.

When another person is using a consumers' Social Security Number for employment purposes only, there is almost no way to discover the identity theft. The misuse will not show up on a credit report; it won't be detected by credit monitoring. Because the wages earned are not credited to the victim, they won't show up on annual Social Security statements either. In fact, there is no way for anyone to inspect the history of their Social Security Number, or to find out where and when it's been used. Only an anomaly or coincidence – such as having an imposter show up on a 401(k) Web site -- betrays the theft.

That's why this is an important victory for Holli; she's among the first to find her SSN imposter and stop the ID theft. Of course, she has no way of knowing if her identity is now secure, because her number may have been used by other immigrants.

"The fact that I can check my credit but not my whole credit is absurd," she said. "In any case, this is my identifier that follows me around and I should be able to protect myself (and my identifier) by knowing what is attached to it." She plans on urging Congress to fix the problem. Meanwhile, she's left with a sour taste in her mouth -- she acted in self-defense, but worries that some will see her as a villain who caused Rodriguez's arrest. She's angry at the criminal who stole her identity and at the system which put her in this compromising situation.

The future of Rodriguez and his family is unclear. If his children are U.S. citizens, law enforcement officials say, he may be allowed to remain in the U.S.. Otherwise, deportation is a likely outcome, but not right away. Before the immigration issue is settled, he will likely face state criminal ID theft charges in state court.

Jacqueline Dizdul reported from San Diego.

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Chalabi-gate: None dare call it Treason. Neocons behind bars? In a perfect world...

May 28, 2004

Chalabi-gate: None Dare Call It Treason
Neocons behind bars? Sounds good to me….
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8:26 AM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

by Justin Raimondo

The fallout from Chalabi-gate continues to rain down on the heads of the War Party, opening up the exciting prospect that some neocons might well wind up behind bars. The charge? Espionage, as Sidney Blumenthal informs us: "At a well-appointed conservative think tank in downtown Washington and across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the plans of the U.S. government and military?" This information, says Vince Cannistraro, formerly at the CIA and the Pentagon, was so "very, very sensitive" that only a few U.S. government officials had access to it: "The evidence has pointed quite clearly, not only the fact that Chalabi might be an agent of influence of the Iranian government and that [Chalabi's intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib] may be a paid agent of the Iranian intelligence service, but it is shown that there is a leak of classified information from the United States to Iran through Chalabi and Karim and that is the particular point that the FBI is investigating. In other words, some U.S. officials are under investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to these people that ended up in Iran." Blumenthal has more: "A former staff member of the Office of Special Plans and a currently serving defense official, two of those said to be questioned by the FBI, are considered witnesses, at least for now. Higher figures are under suspicion. Were they witting or unwitting? If those who are being questioned turn out to be misleading, they can be charged ultimately with perjury and obstruction of justice. For them, the Watergate principle applies: It's not the crime, it's the coverup." The lies Chalabi fed to Washington policymakers, who eagerly scarfed them up and regurgitated them to the American public, originated with Iranian intelligence, as we are beginning to learn. But the neocon-Tehran information superhighway ran in both directions. As Julian Borger reports in the Guardian: "An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from an electronic communications intercept by the National Security Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of officials. 'This was 'sensitive compartmented information' – SCI – and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib,' the intelligence source said." UPI's Richard Sale reports that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation has launched a full field investigation into the matter," and gives more information on what was compromised and how the Iranians pulled off this intelligence coup: "Chalabi allegedly passed National Security Agency/CIA intercepts to intelligence agents of the Iranian government using intermediaries or 'cut-outs' or 'gophers' within the INC, another former CIA agent said. Some of the intercepts, dated from December, were the basis for a recent Newsweek story, but there are others of a later date in possession of the FBI, this source said." How did Chalabi get his hot little hands on highly secret information? That's why the FBI – instead of going after, say, Brandon Mayfield, or some other completely innocent person, as per usual – is now calling on "prominent" neocons at Washington's poshest thinktanks. I hope they're bringing an ample supply of handcuffs. But whom might they be handcuffing and frog-marching out the door, into a waiting paddywagon? UPI gives us the scoop, citing "a former very senior CIA official" as saying: "'Chalabi passed specially compartmented intelligence, extraordinarily sensitive stuff, to the Iranians.' This source said that some of the intercepts are believed to have been given Chalabi by two U.S. officials of the Coalition Provision Authority, both of whom are not named here because UPI could not reach them for comment." Well, they aren't named, but they might as well have been: "One former CPA official has returned to the United States and is employed at the American Enterprise Institute, the former very senior official said, a fact which FBI sources confirmed without additional comment. The other is still a working Pentagon official, federal law enforcement officials and former CIA officials said." Independent journalist Bob Dreyfuss, whose excellent articles on the neocons in The American Prospect and Mother Jones puts him up there with Jim Lobe, Michael Lind, and Joshua Marshall as a veritable maven of neocon-ology, names names: "The two officials in the UPI story are, according to my sources, Harold Rhode, an official in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment, and Michael Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute." Rubin, formerly of the Office of Special Plans and the CPA, who served as liaison with Chalabi's group, the Iraqi National Congress, certainly fits the bill. No wonder he's been so … cranky lately, what with FBI agents barging into his office and giving him the third degree. Rhode, a longtime Pentagon official assigned to the Office of Net Assessment and a specialist on Islam, is reportedly Douglas Feith's chief enforcer of the anti-Arab party line among the civilian Pentagon hierarchy. In refusing to be interviewed by Dreyfuss for a piece on the neocons in Mother Jones, Rhode's laconic reply was: "Those who speak, pay." Prescient words, and truer than perhaps even Rhode realized at the time. Hauled up before a grand jury, however, Rhode, Rubin, and the rest of Chalabi's Pentagon fan club may have no choice about speaking – especially with the prospect of a long "vacation" at a federal facility staring them in the face. Much is being made of how the Iranians "duped" us into invading Iraq, and "used" the U.S. in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and "paving the way," as Julian Borger puts it, for a Shi'ite-ruled Iraq. But a simple map of the region and rudimentary knowledge of the history of the past decade or so would have revealed as much. As I wrote in this space over a year ago: "In view of Iran's growing sphere of influence in Iraq, it seems rather disingenuous to destroy the Sunni minority government run by the Ba'ath Party and then deny any responsibility for the Shi'ite-y outcome. The U.S. has made a gift of Iraq to Teheran, reigniting the religious passions that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi of Iran and propelled Khomeini to power." In charting the outlines of "phase two" of the invasion of Iraq, that same week last year, I pointed out: "The main political consequence of the war, internally, is to increase Iranian influence: if free elections were held in the southern Shi'a provinces of Iraq, they would undoubtedly usher in some sort of 'Islamic Republic.' The effort by the neocons in the administration to install Ahmed Chalabi as the Pentagon's puppet, far from forestalling this possibility, only makes it a more credible threat to the postwar order." But why would the militantly pro-Israel neocons, American partisans of the ultra-nationalist Likud party, act as patrons and promoters of an outfit, Chalabi's INC, that was really a cover for Iranian intelligence – their alleged mortal enemies? That's what I couldn't quite figure out, at least not until I read Robert Parry's excellent piece on the subject, and here's the money quote: "As Chalabi's operation fed anti-Saddam propaganda into the U.S. decision-making machinery, Bush also should have been alert to the Israeli role in opening doors for Chalabi in Washington. One intelligence source told me that Israel's Likud government had quietly promoted Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress with Washington's influential neoconservatives. That would help explain why the neoconservatives, who share an ideological alliance with the conservative Likud, would embrace and defend Chalabi even as the CIA and the State Department denounced him as a con man. "The idea of Israel promoting an Iranian agent also is not far-fetched if one understands the history. The elder Bush could tell his son about the long-standing strategic ties that have existed between Israel and Iran, both before and after the Islamic revolution of 1979. It was Menachem Begin's Likud Party that rebuilt the covert intelligence relationship in 1980. Since then, it has been maintained through thick and thin, despite Iran's public anti-Israeli rhetoric." The enemy of my enemy is my friend: it's a principle often invoked to justify a course of action seemingly in contradiction to the professed ideology of the actors. Lined up against a common enemy, American Likudniks and Ahmed Chalabi, an Iranian intelligence asset, teamed up to drag us into the Iraqi quagmire, with both members of this oddly coupled tag-team benefiting from the deal. While the neocons fed Chalabi – and his intelligence chief, Arras Karim Habib, a paid Iraqi agent – a steady diet of U.S. secrets, Chalabi fed the neocons (in government and much of the American media) a fresh serving of tall tales cooked up in the INC's kitchen, and delivered piping hot to Judith Miller's doorstep. The Iranians, for their part, feasted on U.S. secrets so deep and dark that only a few top officials were privy to them – and had a good chunk of Iraq handed to them, while a de facto Kurdish state emerged as a buffer between Israel and the Shi'ite power rising in the East. The whole thing was supposed to have been presided over by the ostensibly pro-Western Chalabi, the neocons' Alger Hiss. That was the plan, at any rate, but something seems to have gone awry…. As in the Abu Ghraib photo-gallery of horrors, the nature of the crime suggests that a few lowly spear carriers – Rubin is just barely out of knee pants, and Rhode was certainly not in the loop on super-sensitive intelligence – didn't pull this off all on their own. Before it's all over, Chalabi-gate will reach into the favored nesting place of the neocons, the very top echelons of the Pentagon. As UPI editor Martin Walker reports: "The real target goes beyond Chalabi. The hunt is on, in the Republican Party, in Congress, in the CIA and State Department and in a media which is being deluged with leaks, for Chalabi's friends and sponsors in Washington – the group known as the neo-cons. In particular, the targets seem to be Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the former assistant secretary (in Reagan's day) Richard Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney's national security aide Scooter Libby, and the National Security Council's Middle East aide Elliott Abrams. The leaking against them – from sources who insist on anonymity, but some CIA and FBI veterans – is intense. Some of the sources are now private citizens, making a good living through business connections in the Arab world." Speaking of business connections, how does Richard Perle make his living except by using his government connections to profit handsomely from the war-driven neocon agenda? Oh well, never mind that: let's get to the juicy part. Walker also reports that these poor persecuted neocons "are now beginning to fight back," and in a familiar fashion: "Richard Perle told this reporter Tuesday that the gloves were off. … Perle has no doubts that some of the attacks on him are coming directly from the CIA, in order to cover their own exposed rears, attacking Chalabi's intelligence to distract attention from their own mistakes. 'I believe that much of the CIA operation in Iraq was owned by Saddam Hussein,' Perle said. 'There were 45 decapitation attempts against Saddam – and he survived them all. How could that be, if he was not manipulating the intelligence?'" Gee, I guess this means that, on account of all those failed "decapitation attempts" on Fidel Castro over the years, the Cuban Communists exercised joint ownership of the CIA along with Saddam's Ba'athists. Oh, what a Perle of wisdom, but the Prince of Darkness was just getting started: "Perle went on to suggest an even darker motive behind the attacks on the neo-cons; that the real target was Israel's Likud government and the staunch support for Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon in the Bush administration. When this was put to one CIA source, the reply was mocking: 'That's what they always do. As soon as these guys get any criticism, they scream Israel and anti-Semitism, and I think people are finally beginning to see through that smokescreen.'" How and why an investigation into Iranian penetration of our most closely guarded secrets constitutes evidence of "anti-Semitism" is a question I'll leave for weightier intellects to ponder. But such an unseemly outburst ought to put to rest any doubts about a neocon-Iranian convergence of interests: we know something's afoot when both Richard Perle and the Iranian mullahs sound absolutely identical in tone as well as content. We knew what the neocons were capable of: smearing their enemies, lying about practically anything, even outing a CIA agent doing high-priority undercover work. Is anyone surprised that they're capable of espionage? Perle is right about one thing: it's time to take the gloves off. ~ Justin Raimondo

April 2, 2008 - Wednesday

02 April, 2008 - The Troubled Homecoming Of The Marlboro Marine: Rollingstone The Troubled Homecoming Of The Marlboro Marine This is the face of the war in Iraq. The mind behind it will never be the same. By JENNY ELISCUPosted Apr 03, 2008 11:39 AM Luis Sinco/LA Times Blake Miller can’t stand cats. He didn’t always hate them, but that was before Iraq; before he fought in the battle of Fallujah; before the first enemy soldier Miller killed lay rotting in the street for three days, his remains picked over by a hungry cat that had crawled inside the dead Iraqi’s hollowed-out chest. Miller’s life divides like that, into then and now. Before November 9th, 2004. Before the photograph. On that day, as Miller paused for a smoke during a lull in the fighting, a photographer from The Los Angeles Times captured the battle-weary Marine with a cigarette dangling from his mouth. Miller’s face was smeared with soot and sand and blood and war paint, none of which could camouflage his bewilderment and exhaustion. The image was soon plastered all over the news, appearing in more than 150 publications worldwide and earning him the moniker "Marlboro Man." Overnight, the photo made Miller an unwitting icon, a symbol of the indomitable spirit of U.S. troops, the heroism and virility of the American fighter. The New York Post ran the shot — later nominated for a Pulitzer Prize — under a simple headline: SMOKIN’. That was then. These days, Lance Cpl. James Blake Miller spends much of his time sitting on the floor of the run-down trailer he keeps as a residence behind his father’s house in the tiny coal-mining town of Jonancy, Kentucky (population 297). This is his favorite spot in the trailer, where he reclines against an easy chair whose upholstery has turned a dingy nicotine brown. From here, Miller can anticipate any possible threat, keep an eye on all avenues of approach an enemy might take. As cigarette butts overflow in the ashtray and empty beer bottles collect around him, he silently cycles through procedures the Marine Corps drilled into his head: defend, reinforce, attack, withdraw, delay. He knows it’s only seven steps to the front door, but he worries whether his truck has enough gas to make an escape. He wishes someone had told him that "there may come a time when all that shit you learned, you might not be able to turn it off." Since returning home from Iraq three years ago, Miller rarely sleeps more than once every few days. When he can get some sleep, he makes sure he’s got a gun under his pillow. His entire life has been thrown into a strange and purposeless blend of chaos and inertia; though he doesn’t do much these days besides smoke, drink beer and ride his Harley, he seems to teeter perpetually on the brink of a meltdown. Occasionally, and without provocation, Miller becomes so overwhelmed by blind rage that he imagines shooting a stranger in the kneecaps or beating a fellow bar patron to a bloody pulp. "I can be drinking a beer and get pissed off and think, ’I’m gonna break this bottle and cut that guy’s throat over there,’" he says. "And then something hits me, and I snap out of it." Once an affable troublemaker eager to go out with friends his own age, the twenty-three-year-old Miller now spends most of his time alone or with an ill-reputed motorcycle club called the Kentucky Highwaymen, many of whom are Vietnam vets who also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Miller’s nightmares, insomnia, heightened alertness, self-imposed isolation and persistent recollections of his seven months in Iraq are all classic symptoms of PTSD, an anxiety disorder that results from exposure to an event so psychically frightening that the aftershocks continue for months or even years. Studies estimate that as many as 500,000 troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan will suffer from some form of psychological injury, with PTSD being the most common. Miller hasn’t been to a doctor in over a year, and, like so many vets, he seems to have fallen off the government’s radar. He tried the abundance of medications — antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds, mostly — that the Veterans Administration has sent him, but they only exacerbated his nightmares, jitters and apathy. And therapy is hard to get in places like Jonancy: For a while, he tried living in West Virginia to be near a PTSD specialist, but he missed his familiar surroundings and moved back home. Besides, the VA bureaucracy is hell for anyone to navigate, let alone a guy who feels like he could snap at any moment. "The military makes it hard for these guys to get help," says Rep. Bob Filner, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. "We’re letting ticking time bombs out into society. Suicides are increasing among vets, and many of those with PTSD have felony convictions. The VA and the Department of Defense won’t acknowledge the incredible size of the problem, and it’s yet another indictment of the war we’re fighting and how we deal with these fighters." Like many disabled vets, Miller feels betrayed by the military, neglected by the VA and misunderstood by pretty much everyone else. "People hear ’PTSD’ and they think that means you’re crazy," he says. "My aunt tells her kids, ’Don’t go around Blake. He might flip out and shoot you.’" Because he has a hard time staying in one place for very long, Miller rarely spends the night at his trailer, crashing wherever his aimless driving — on the back of his 2006 Harley-Davidson Softail Standard or in the cab of his forest-green pickup truck — takes him. "It’s hard to hang out with him sometimes," says Luis Sinco, the photojournalist who snapped the iconic picture of Miller and who has since become his close friend. "You end up driving 1,500 miles at the drop of a hat because he’s in the mood to go somewhere." Miller’s recklessness behind the wheel is typical of his ambivalence about his mortality: During our first drive together, in the midst of a drenching nighttime storm, he navigated winding Kentucky mountain back roads while wearing sunglasses, at one point steering with his knees as he opened a bottle of beer with a pocketknife. The only place Miller feels comfortable these days is at the home of his friends Lita Holbrook and Jeff "Bodean" Hall in nearby Wheelwright. The couple keep a spare pistol around the house he can take to bed, so he makes a habit of heading up the mountains to see them every few days. "I’m not caged inside my mind when I’m at Lita and Bodean’s," Miller says. "It’s like I actually forget. Normal is only as normal as the people you’re around, and for the first time since I came home, I’ve met people that make me feel normal." Lita also suffers from PTSD — the result, she says, of an emotionally damaging relationship she escaped before she shacked up with Bodean. To Miller, whose own mother has long been absent from his life, Lita is "Small Maw," and she lavishes him with the unconditional love and concern that he clearly craves. Wherever he finds himself, though, Miller counts his time in days. "I don’t worry about tomorrow unless I wake up," he tells me one night in his trailer. "I have no goals, long-term or short-term. I don’t worry about paying the bills. I don’t worry if I’m gonna have money to eat tomorrow. I don’t worry about fuckin’ nothin’. As long as I keep telling myself I wasn’t there — if I can believe that for thirty minutes out of the day just by telling myself over and over and over, ’I wasn’t there. It didn’t happen’ — that thirty minutes is worth it." Blake always wanted to be a Marine. His grandfather, James Clint Miller, served in the Corps in ’53. Clint died before Blake was born, but the family always told the junior Miller that he was exactly like his grandpa in almost every way. Standing in his trailer, Miller takes two group portraits from the wall and hands them to me. One is a photo of Clint’s Marine Corps graduating class, the other of Blake’s. "Look, he looks just like me," Miller says. "You oughta see my face cleaned up. I’m him made over." Like Grandpa Clint, who was discharged after he decked an officer, Blake has always seemed to find ways to get himself in trouble. As a kid, he was quick to join in if a friend wanted to set fire to a neighbor’s tree or vandalize a car. By thirteen, he had started experimenting with gunpowder. "I didn’t need the Internet to tell me how to make a fuckin’ bomb," he says. "I was gonna figure it out myself, no matter what. I got in trouble, and I stayed in fuckin’ trouble." But he was also uncommonly industrious, washing cars for a buck apiece to buy his first pickup at age twelve and, the following year, mowing lawns to raise money for the first of nine motorcycles he’s owned. His dad likes to say that Blake’s got only one speed: breakneck. When he does something, he does it all the way. At seventeen, he found religion, and went from sinner to ordained Baptist preacher in a couple of years. There is nothing Miller does with as much gusto, however, as smoking cigarettes. He started at twelve, after a neighbor gave him a butt to keep his hands warm while he waited for the school bus. Although he quit briefly during basic training, he now goes through as many as five packs a day when he’s drinking or anxious. It was the same way with the Marines: Once he decided to enlist, no one could talk him out of it. He was only seventeen, sitting in his doctor’s office for his annual athletics physical on September 11, 2001, when he heard that terrorists had crashed a pair of airplanes into the World Trade Center. The next day he insisted his father sign him up — or else he would quit high school. If present-day Blake came face to face with his teenage self, he’d have more than words of warning. "I’d be beating my ass with a shovel all the way through them fuckin’ cornfields," he says. "I’d ask myself, ’What the fuck are you thinking?’" So what was he thinking? "Get the fuck out of Kentucky," Miller says, his lip curling in a half-smile. "It was the only way I knew to travel and see the world. I just happened to pick a weird time to go. I got to travel, and it was a life-altering experience, that’s for sure." The town of Jonancy, nestled deep in the Appalachian Mountains, is the kind of place that inspires thoughts of escape. Unemployment in the area is thirty-five percent higher than the national average, the median household income is less than $24,000 and only ten percent of county residents earn college diplomas. Miller’s friend Lita is one of the few who made it to college — she has an associate’s degree — but she’s still working the register at Bates Quick Stop, a backwoods grocery store. Business is slow — boxes of Duncan Hines cake mix collect dust on the shelf — but beer sales are brisker than ever. Behind the cashier’s counter, two handwritten signs remind customers that their accounts must be settled by the fifth of the month. "You know Mayberry?" Lita asks, hushing her voice so she won’t be overheard by an elderly patron with one hand who goes by the name Peckerhead. "Well, you are in it." Miller, who, along with Bodean, likes to hang out at the store, pipes up from his chair by the door. "Hey, Maw," he shouts, "what do you call a rabbit with a bent dick?" He pauses. "Fucks Funny!" A set of chimes over the door jingles, and a customer walks in asking for Rolaids. "We’ve got Tums," Bodean says. "What do we look like, Wal-Mart?" Lita adds, laughing good-naturedly. Miller is slouched down in his chair, his features obstructed by his baseball cap, sunglasses and thick strawberry-blond beard, but the Rolaids guy still notices him. "I’ve seen you before," he says. "You look familiar." Miller stays quiet, but the customer finally figures it out. "You’re that Marlboro Man!" he says, loud enough so everyone can hear. "I knew I knowed you from somewhere!" Miller is visibly unnerved by the attention and loathes his position as a local celebrity. He grew his beard, he says, to avoid being constantly recognized. The door jingles again, this time in jarring disharmony with the tune being sung by a potbellied local they call Boss Hogg, who rolls in staggering drunk in the midafternoon. "I’ll be headed down the road to Buford," croons Boss, a Vietnam vet who also not only suffers from PTSD but reminds you of its ravages with every slurred condemnation of Uncle Sam. Boss, who served several years in prison on drug charges after the war, has neither married nor had children, and spends his days trying to pickle his Vietnam memories in beer and moonshine. "That there is the Marlboro Man," the Rolaids guy tells Boss, showing off. "I know!" Boss says. "That’s my friend." He grabs a twenty-pack of beer and heads out to his truck, where his two Jack Russell terriers, Sparky and Spanky, are waiting in a basket in the front seat. Later, when we get to Lita and Bodean’s four-bedroom house, Miller unloads some aggression in the driveway by firing off a few rounds from the revolver he packs in his cowboy boot. While Bodean and I look on, Boss insists on his own round, and, steadying himself against a car, he actually hits his mark. I ask Bodean if he thinks Blake will end up like Boss. "Definitely not," Bodean says. "We won’t let that happen." Charlie company — 1st battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Division — had been in Iraq for five months, patrolling Anbar Province, when they got the word they would be headed to Fallujah in November 2004. "There’s some shit going on in Fallujah," Miller’s commanding officer announced, "so we’re gonna hit the city and roll right through it." Miller didn’t believe it for a second. He and his fellow Marines were already coming under sniper fire every day. Fallujah, he knew, would only be worse. "Are you fuckin’ serious?" he thought. "Goddamn, no more than two weeks ago we just started getting shot at. Now you tell us we’re gonna go full fledge against guys who are running right at us, waiting to commit suicide?" Miller is chuckling now, aware of the absurdity of the situation. "I mean, how do you soak all that in when you’re fuckin’ twenty years old?" he says, pulling another beer from a fridge stocked with little else. "It’s like they were asking us, ’Are you willingly ready to just fuckin’ die?’ You know what? No, I don’t feel like it. Not yet. I started thinking then, ’Did I really fuckin’ sign up for this?’" The fighting began in the dark of night and continued over the next twenty-four brutal hours, during which Miller’s squad endured nonstop bombardment by rocket-propelled grenades and machine-gun fire. Sinco, the photojournalist embedded with Miller’s company, was shocked by the ferocity of the battle. "I was scared shitless," he recalls. "We came under heavy fire, and I remember running across the street with bullets flying everywhere. We encountered three insurgents who were horribly, horribly dead. One had half his head blown off, and another guy was half-alive, speaking in Arabic. You could tell he was saying ’Help me, help me, help me.’ The brutality was so extreme and so relentless." The unit sought shelter in a house and made the roof its command post. "I was standing near Miller, and an RPG came flying right at us," Sinco says. Miller radioed for tanks to bring support fire. Soon a massive explosion shook the structure so hard it seemed it would collapse. Sinco saw a building nearby, smoldering. "I thought it was over. I slumped down against a wall with my camera, and for some reason Miller slumped down across from me and lit a cigarette. He told me later that he thought he’d never see another sunrise." Sinco snapped the photo of Miller that was soon reproduced all over the world. Sinco was shocked, however, when media outlets presented the image as a symbol of triumph. Seventy-one American soldiers were killed in Fallujah, and more than 600 were wounded, making it one of the war’s deadliest battles. "We were gonna die!" Sinco says. "It was all up in the air about who was kickin’ whose ass. But people were looking for any shred of American heroism in the wake of Abu Ghraib. And a certain segment of society wanted to see something else in the photo — a weird, twisted thing about American masculinity." Among many veterans, the image remains a matter of debate. "There’s almost too much in that picture to talk about," says Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq vet and the executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America. "He’s the gritty patriot who is willing to sacrifice everything, the poster child for the tough Iraq War hero. It’s one of those pictures that is vague enough so you can manipulate it into whatever you want it to be." The best way to understand the photo, Rieckhoff suggests, is to put it next to a picture of Miller now. "That’s a fair way of understanding that war is not what just happens over there — that when we come home, there is a whole other fight we have to deal with. That’s the part of the fight when nobody takes pictures, and it’s hard to get people’s attention, and it’s hard to get resources." It wasn’t until Miller returned home to Jonancy in February 2005 that he realized how big a deal Sinco’s photo had become — and how much pressure there would be for him to live up to its symbolism. "I get home, and there’s news vans and motherfuckers all over here," he recalls, the anger putting gravel in his voice. "There were people offering me all kinds of deals, like, ’Hey, this guy wants to make pillowcases and T-shirts with your picture on it,’ and ’This guy wants to make a rifle after you.’ "The Marine Corps attempted to license the photo and asked Miller to become a recruiter — an offer he declined. After a month at home, he returned to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina to prepare for redeployment to Iraq. While Miller’s company waited for its orders, it was dispatched to conduct search-and-rescue missions in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Miller was in the galley of the USS Iwo Jima when a petty officer made a whistling noise that sounded exactly like a rocket-propelled grenade. Something in Miller snapped, and he blacked out. When he came to a few hours later, he was lying in the ship’s clinic, surrounded by a doctor and a shrink. Though Miller has no recollection of the incident, he was told that he slammed the petty officer from one wall to the other, threw him down and started beating him. "I flipped out because I done this and I don’t remember," Miller says. "I was like, ’What the hell is wrong with me?’ It’s been like that ever since." Shortly after the incident, Miller received an honorable discharge: He became a civilian exactly one year to the day after Sinco’s photo first ran. Miller saw several therapists after leaving the Marines, but eventually gave up. Dr. Laurie Harkness, who worked with Miller at a VA-affiliated center in Connecticut, says that most PTSD cases are treatable with intensive counseling and the right combination of meds. But there is a heavy institutional stigma about mental-health issues in the armed forces, and since the military doesn’t conduct mandatory post-deployment psych evaluations in person, vets like Miller are left to make their own health-care decisions. "Fuck ’em," Miller says. "They wanna dope me up to try to make me forget that the world is fucked up or forget that the shit that I done is fucked up." Miller receives a monthly benefit of $2,500 in disability payments — compensation not only for his mental injuries but for an array of physical impairments including hearing loss in his right ear, shrapnel scarring and a bacterial infection in his tear ducts. He has no cartilage left in either knee, and the muscles in his feet have calcified from carrying a 200-pound pack on his back in Iraq. "People say, ’You draw money for being fucked up, so what’s your problem?’" Miller says. "I’d pay the government three times what they give me to have the sanity I had before." In June 2006, Miller renewed his wedding vows with his childhood sweetheart, Jessica Hobrooks, a twenty-five-year-old psychology major at Pikeville College. The couple had hurriedly married between deployments a year earlier, but they split up ten days after the renewal ceremony when Miller had a meltdown and disappeared on his motorcycle. Papers were filed, but their divorce has yet to be finalized. It wasn’t the first troubling episode Jessica had witnessed: Months after Miller returned from Iraq, he blacked out while cleaning his rifle and awoke with it pointed at Jessica. "I was willing to do anything in the world just to keep my wife, to help her understand what I was going through," he says. "You would think being a psych major would make her more understanding than most, but instead it just made her ask more questions." Calling Miller the Marlboro Man in the context of Fallujah may have been an oversimplification, but the photo’s power derives in part from the simple truths it actually does convey about its subject: Miller is a man’s man, without even a whisper of metrosexual vanity. In the bathroom of his trailer, a gift basket of melon-scented shower gel and lotion is still covered in plastic that’s coated with a layer of dust. There’s a nearly empty bottle of generic mouthwash on the shelf, and his personal-hygiene arsenal consists of nothing but a razor and some "sport" body wash. While we’re sitting on the floor in his trailer, Miller clicks on the television. He flips quickly past CNN, which earlier that night had broadcast a debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. "I don’t care much for the news," he says, "but I hope like hell Hillary wins. I just think she’s a baaad bitch. She’s great." The television plays country-music videos in the background for the next hour, and then Miller switches to the Hustler channel and orders porn. In this masterpiece, a sinewy fellow covered in tattoos ejaculates on a toilet seat and his faux-goth-girl concubine licks it off. "I’m sorry," Miller says, blushing. "I hope you don’t mind. We had porn on all the time when I was a little kid, so it’s just like background noise to me. We would sit down to dinner, and my dad got mad if the TV wasn’t on Playboy." The next afternoon, Miller and Lita work on a series of songs they’ve written, including "Lonely Highway" — a plaintive, acoustic ballad about escaping your troubles on the back of a motorcycle — as well as covers of "Me and Bobby McGee" and "Take It Easy." Miller plays guitar by ear, and though he’s only got one good ear, it’s a good ear. Boss, whose speech has grown progressively more slurred, demands his turn, and he takes us through a country breakup song called "Left Side of the Bed." Miller makes an exaggerated sobbing sound as Boss gets to the end, and then busts up laughing. For an instant, he seems genuinely happy. He even hints that, over the past several months, things have felt a little less bleak. "I used to believe that I was gonna be just like Boss — the old vet that everyone is afraid of, who just wants to crawl in a hole and disappear," he tells me. "That’s the way I felt when I first came back. But Bodean and Lita really keep me out of it." Sitting next to each other, Miller and Lita talk about their struggles, often completing each other’s sentences. "I just want people to understand what PTSD is," Miller says. "It’s not that you’re a wack job who needs a straitjacket. It’s just that you have thoughts not exactly on the level . . ." "And you can’t stop them," Lita adds. "Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam," Boss mutters, almost entranced. Even more than wanting to be understood, Miller wants vets suffering from mental injuries to receive the same honor awarded to those with physical wounds: the Purple Heart. Currently, veterans receive the medal only if they have endured bodily harm during battle. "What’s the difference between going into a combat zone and being injured physically versus being injured mentally?" Miller says. "One gives you a visible scar and the other doesn’t. Imagine how you would feel to be completely whole and not have the mind to function — just locked inside a hell you can’t escape." With the number of suicides among returning veterans climbing, it’s hard not to worry about Miller. Though he believes that taking one’s own life is morally wrong, his thoughts often take a dark turn. One night, sitting in his trailer, he says something that makes me fear he will end up another war casualty, dead and buried long after leaving Iraq. "I have a blatant disregard for life," he says. "Every day that I wake up, it’s like, ’Why do you keep giving me more?’ The Bible says the big man don’t put no more on you than what you can stand. . . ." Miller pauses, the sound of porno moans wafting from the TV. "I mean, He must think I deserve to fuckin’ be punished baaad. And the only reason why I can figure that I’m still alive is that this is God’s way of letting me feel the guilt for all the bad shit I did. Because there’s not a morning when I don’t fuckin’ wake up and the first thing I think is, ’Another day I’m here.’ What did I do to make me deserve another day? What have I done in my life that my buddies didn’t do to make me deserve so many days?" [From Issue 1049 — April 3, 2008] - 9:04 AM - 4 Comments - 8 Kudos - <