as a therapist and acting team leader in Providence, R.I., with the VA's Readjustment Counseling Program (or Vet Centers), the Washington Post's May 16, 2008, story "Official Urged Fewer Diagnoses of PTSD" sounded familiar.

Watching another generation of soldiers and veterans face a repeat of history with the Iraq war, I am outraged and feeling a sense of déjà vu. Unfortunately, this war is costing veterans the ability to truly "come home."

In 1979, the year the American Psychological Association made post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) the official diagnosis for victims of war trauma, Congress finally authorized the comprehensive Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act, which created Vet Centers, and I was hired by the VA. Throughout my VA service, I encountered attitudes that ran from indifference to open hostility towards veterans with PTSD. Other VA officials said virtually the same type of things as Norma Perez — psychologist and PTSD program team leader at the Department of Veterans Affairs' Olin E. Teague Veterans Center in Temple, Tex. — is quoted as saying in the Washington Post: "Don't tell vets they have PTSD because they'll want compensation" and words to that effect.

From the very beginning of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I was one of many who cautioned, warned, and implored government officials at the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Veteran Affairs (DVA), and Congress to increase the VA system's capacity for a substantial influx of returning soldiers with PTSD. In 2003 -2004, I attended DOD and VA briefings to voice concerns over a lack of resources and preparedness. Sadly, those warnings were ignored.

The problem is bigger than Perez or "repudiation [of PTSD as an issue] at the highest levels of DVA." Until government officials and the American people understand and accept that veterans' health care is a cost of war, their refusal to take PTSD seriously will amount to déjà vu - all over again.

This year at GA, UUSC was able to bring together exciting panelists to talk about who pays the price of the Iraq war, how families in Iraq and the United States have been devastated by the war, and how many veterans are speaking out.

Our speakers included Dahlia Wasfi, an Iraqi American who has traveled to Iraq twice since the 2003 invasion; Nancy Lessin, co-founder of Military Families Speak Out; Lindsay Burnett, who helped found Appeal for Redress; Camilo Mejía, of Iraq Veterans Against the War; and Andy Shallal, an Iraqi American who has helped found several peace groups and owns Busboys and Poets, in Washington, D.C.

The diversity of the speakers highlights the Civil Liberties Program's attempt to bring diverse groups together to work collectively to end the occupation. It also shows UUSC's commitment to freedom of speech and social justice by building coalitions.

Over the past few weeks, I was so busy planning GA events that I lost sight of how painful the content can be. Wasfi spoke eloquently of the pain and suffering of her family in Iraq, sharing disturbing pictures of not only what the current war has done to the country but of the huge role that the United States played in destroying vital infrastructure through economic sanctions in the 1990s.

Lessin shared painful stories of how military families feel betrayed by the government and how many lives of military families had been shattered by this war, even when a soldier survives to return home. Many of the veterans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and struggle to get vital care. Suicide rates have skyrocketed. One poignant story she shared was of a woman who walked into her house only to find her three-year-old daughter beside the dead body of her father who had shot himself in the head. After that, she and her two daughters had to live in the basement because her kids were afraid that "Daddy's ghost" was in the house. They did not have enough money to pay for funeral expenses.

Mejía talked about how some of the things he was asked to do in Iraq disturbed him and how, when he returned to the United States, he could not convince himself to go back and applied for conscientious-objector status, only to be denied and sent to jail for nine months for desertion.

Burnett talked about the increase in substance abuse, violence, and suicide among soldiers due to the lack of resources for mental health care. On average, just one psychologist is assigned to 4,000 troops. Service personnel are allowed 30 minutes of therapy for a maximum of 4 sessions. Burnett also talked about how difficult it was for her and others to get medical care when they returned from Iraq. She emphasized that the military was built on the "backs of the poor" because so many who are in the service come from low-income households and joined just to survive.

Shallal spoke movingly about his family in Iraq and how they are suffering without adequate electricity and water in intensely hot weather — and how they lack security. He talked about how the U.S. military were not welcomed at all and how angry Iraqis feel about what this war has done to them.

So, who has paid the price of this war? The answer is all of us. It is clear that the ending this occupation is vital to begin the healing on both sides. During this important election year, we can work hard to make sure our voices are loud and clear. However, the presidential elections are not a panacea to all problems. Our work really begins when a new president has been elected.

Van Jones, founder and president of Green For All, based in Oakland, Calif., who delivered the UUA's Ware Lecture last night, bluntly said that the hard work of the last eight years was just flexing muscles for the real workout ahead. He said that the social-justice movement has become very successful in protesting and working against a powerful and irresponsible government. However, it is important to prove to those who have become disillusioned that people with progressive values, in government and in society, are prepared to govern and know what it takes to get this country back on track.

Camilo Mejía worked tirelessly on behalf of UUSC this past week. Over the course of this year's General Assembly in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., he presented at four workshops, an activist training, and two youth events — and still had time and energy to sign books at the UUSC booth.

Numerous UUSC staff have remarked that his contributions are always thoughtful and responses to questions gentle yet powerful — I couldn't agree more. For example, when asked if the withdrawal of troops from Iraq would produce chaos, Camilo's simple and direct response: "There already is chaos there." He followed up that assertion by likening the occupation and withdrawal of Iraq to a common occurrence: a house raid. "We invade your house, tie up the women and children, take the men. We shoot them. We break things. We destroy the home. And then instead of leaving, we say, we are going to stay in your home indefinitely because if we leave there will be chaos."

This reasoned, leading approach, as if he is extending a hand and inviting you to follow him, was particularly pronounced in Camilo's candor with the youth groups he interacted with throughout the week. Sitting among a group of high school-aged students on Saturday, he talked about military recruitment. Camilo spoke of his experience of "just happening to be home" when the recruiter called — a time when he was looking for friends and a community to belong to in the States.

Now, years later, he has the experience to explain what signing an enlistment agreement really means. He did not discuss "stop-loss" in a hysterical, fear-inducing tone; instead, he presented this counter-recruitment discussion in a calm, peaceful one, meant to give young people an accurate depiction of the devil's bargain that is offered to them.

At Saturday afternoon's program "Join Patriots and Veterans in Saying No to the War in Iraq," Camilo poignantly framed his internal struggle, which continues to inform his outward struggle. It's his grappling with these forces that makes him such a great activist. "We were trying to reconcile the people who we were with the people who we are after the war." His efforts to deal with the moral questions that came with participating in war "came with a lot of guilt, a lot of confusion, of fear, and of pain."

He acknowledges that veterans groups such as Iraq Veterans Against the War are the ones at the forefront of the resistance — protesting this unjust war and working hard with communities, faith-based groups, and NGOs, like UUSC, for change. Each time I heard him speak, I felt proud and privileged to be a part of an organization that partners with such courageous, outspoken people like Camilo. If you haven't heard him speak firsthand, I encourage you contact UUSC and arrange to invite him to your congregation or other community gathering to witness his courage — and to join hands with him.

At the UUSC workshop entitled Bring the War Home, UUSC Associate for Civil Liberties Fatema Haji-Taki began by quoting Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy's recent majority opinion from the Boumediene decision (a writ of habeas corpus made on behalf of a Guantanamo Bay detention camp detainee), in which he declared that our rights are designed to withstand intense pressures, that our nation's Constitution should survive in extraordinary times. That decision, another razor thin 5-4 rebuke of the Bush administration's steady erosion of civil liberties, probably got less media attention than what some Hollywood celebs were up to that day.

In fact, media and its impact was a large part of the discussion. Camilo Mejía, who was court martialed and imprisoned for refusing to return to his post in Iraq after deciding the war was morally unjust, spoke to the group, telling how the mainstream media was not giving the full picture of the war from the outset. News outlets were not talking about the killing of civilians and not showing the blood and the suffering. Instead, they focused on the morale of the troops and whether it remained high in the name of patriotism. He reminded the audience that as much as mainstream media may choose what to report or ignore based on its parent company's interests, the independent media, bloggers, and activists have a power too - many times not fully realized - but which has enormous potential for impact.

Toward the end of the workshop, Haji-Taki reminded participants that another potential place for change is fast approaching in November, but she added that "elections are not a panacea." She noted that even with a White House and Congress that respects human rights, the hard work only begins after the election. We must struggle to ensure that our government respects its citizens enough to tell them the truth and to restore its peoples' constitutionally guaranteed liberties.

World Refugee Day is observed every year on June 20. According to a June 2008 report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the total number of people considered as refugees and internally displaced people amounts to 67 million.

On this day, it is important to reflect on how climate change, poverty, and conflicts (both long-standing and new) have ravaged the lives of millions of people who were forced to flee from their homes. It is also important to take this moment to pressure our government to provide more resources to assist and protect this vulnerable and sometimes forgotten population.

According to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, António Guterres, the number of refugees and displaced people are expected to continue to increase: "Now, unfortunately, with the multiplication of conflicts and the intensification of conflicts, the number is on the rise again...people being forced to move, unfortunately, will be one of the characteristics of the 21st century."

Over the past year, much of the increase in the number of refugees and internally displaced people can be attributed to conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

For the past year, UUSC's Civil Liberties Program has focused on The Cost of Iraq: Who Pays the Price?, drawing attention to, among others, the millions of Iraqis who have been displaced by the war. Since the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, almost 5 million Iraqis have been forced from their homes by violence and insecurity. Almost half of those are "internally displaced," having fled elsewhere in Iraq. Others have fled to Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Syria, and other neighboring countries. Because the vast majority of these refugees do not have an official refugee status, they could be deported back to Iraq at any time. They face challenges in finding housing and employment, obtaining food, and accessing health and education systems, particularly in host countries.

The lack of security and the political deadlock in Iraq have contributed to this situation. These issues need to be addressed in earnest by members of the international community, especially the United States.

According to a June 28, 2008, article in the Christian Science Monitor, Sweden is home to the largest number of refugees in Europe, 40,000; while the United Kingdom houses about 22,000. To date, only 8,000 Iraqis have been settled in the United States. Recently, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pledged that the United States will process applications for 12,000 Iraqi refugees by September. While this is good news, much, much more needs to be done for the millions of Iraqis displaced by the war.

UUSC supports legislation to assist Iraqi civilians and calls on Congress to increase funding for programs authorized under the Torture Victims Relief Act. We also advocate increased assistance for internally displaced Iraqis, Iraqi refugees in the region, and Iraqi refugees resettling in the United States.

I watched a young man cry the other day. Tears streamed down his face as he described, in vivid detail, the atrocities he both witnessed and participated in, in Iraq. He, alongside other veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, was participating in a four-day conference called Winter Soldier.

The point of Winter Soldier, as I saw it, was two-fold. First, it provided a space for these damaged souls to raise their voices and build solidarity, while painting a picture of large-scale, systemic abuse within the military. Secondly, it aimed to grow the resistance movement within the military, a task that, after listening for four days, I realize is incredibly, painfully difficult.

I think about this today in the wake of Justice Sunday 2008, because, more and more, I am thinking about the value of life, the values of our society, and the moral questions this war raises.

This year, UUSC is asking UU congregations around the United States to examine the question: The Cost of Iraq: Who Pays the Price? I am finding, on close examination, that we are all paying the price, both economically and spiritually, for this ever-shifting mess we call the war in Iraq (part of the larger so-called Global War on Terror). Right now, if you examine the financial debt created by this war, there is no argument that, as a society, we will, indeed, pay an economic price for this war. Our kids, and our kids’ kids, will likely be saddled with the $3-5 trillion of debt created for this war.

But to me, far more distressing than this debt is the human toll of this war – the price that those waging this war, on the ground, are paying. After listening to four days of testimony, one thing is clear to me: when it comes to the war in Iraq, abuses within the military are not anomalous episodes that are limited to individual soldiers. They are the result of orders issued from the highest levels of our government.

Below are just a few of the snapshots from Winter Soldier, an event that should be examined by everyone who wants to understand the toll on humanity that this war is exacting.

*****

Dehumanization – Part 1
It was excruciating to hear soldiers’ first-hand experiences. More than once, I had to look down and focus inward, unable to listen to another story about death, destruction, or dehumanization alongside gross illustrations of ignorance and racism.

Take, for example, the way that four soldiers described in detail how they were forced to take pictures of the dead. Not pictures for documentation purposes or for keeping records of those killed in friendly fire, but what soldiers described repeatedly as “trophy photos,” photos of their “kills.” They described not only being congratulated on their first kills, but also being encouraged to photograph the dead, sometimes in front of community and family members, while other soldiers laughed, jeered, and, at times, mutilated the bodies.

When one soldier refused to take such a picture, he was hazed in a variety of cruel and dangerous ways – as punishment, he was given only a half-empty medical kit and not provided the gas mask that all other soldiers in his platoon carried.

Dehumanization – Part 2

There was the story of an 18-year-old soldier who signed up as a “foreign observer.” On September 11, 2001, from the small community he grew up in on Long Island, he had seen smoke rise from the twin towers. Angry, he made the choice to enlist, to fight for the things he held dear, his family, his town, New York, and America. But now, as I looked at him, he was something else entirely – deadened, quiet, pained. Testifying in front of cameras, he wished he could take that day back, that day of anger, when he chose war.

“I was a great soldier once upon a time,” he said. “But now I stand here doing more for my brothers than I ever did there.”

He told a story about pushing humanity’s limits, about dehumanizing the other, about the place that war can take us. Once, he saw a little boy on the side of the street holding up a small stick, as if to indicate a gun. The boy was about six years old, maybe playing at war the way many children do – a real life Iraqi version of cops and robbers, right there with an American soldier. But for the soldier, it was not a game. This soldier, the young man in front of me, told of his internal struggle not to shoot this boy, a six-year-old with nothing more than a stick in his hand. He was angry at this son of Iraq for things he had never done, for things he had nothing to do with.

When he told the audience of not shooting the boy, they stood up and clapped. How far has humanity gone when not shooting a six-year-old with a stick is something we can applaud?

That, in turn, made me cry.

*****

Abuses and the rules of engagement

Over four days, we saw other evidence of a disintegrating moral compass. Take the stories I heard about shovels, which are read by the U.S. military as indicators of Iraqi hostility. According to on-the-ground military protocol, an Iraqi who is simply walking on a road can’t be considered hostile simply by virtue of his or her existence. However, an Iraqi who is carrying a shovel on the road is an entirely different story. The argument is that shovels could be used to bury improvised explosive devices, or IEDs.

That’s why, in testimony after testimony, soldiers described how they carried shovels with them, sometimes entire truckfulls. The shovels provided cover in cases where an Iraqi was accidentally killed. By placing one next to him or her, that Iraqi was transformed into a hostile combatant. If the soldiers felt remotely threatened, they knew they could act with impunity – as long as they had a shovel handy. It was that simple.

But, in a country desperately struggling to rebuild, shovels are often necessary. People need to rebuild their homes, their schools, their mosques – and they often have nothing more than the labor their bodies can generate. In a country where shovels are ubiquitous with the effort to rebuild, the idea that a shovel alone indicates hostile intent is more than ironic – it’s criminally absurd.

But what about helping?

Sometimes cruelty came in other forms. We heard testimony about humanitarian rations, which, according to the soldiers I listened to, they were told not to hand out. One soldier told a story of how he was specifically ordered to stop handing out humanitarian rations, and only carry them. At the end of his deployment, on his return to Kuwait, he still had the rations with him. His sergeant told him to bury them. That’s just what he did, heart heavy – he buried the humanitarian rations he’d been carrying around.

Other soldiers told stories of “meals ready to eat,” or MREs, which are equipped with a chemical mechanism that heats the meal. By themselves, outside this meal-heating mechanism, the chemicals are dangerous. Many soldiers talked about giving these chemical packets, without the food, to young children. Others talked about throwing bottles of urine at people on the side of the road, driving their Humvees over the ruins of ancient Babylon, defecating in U.N. headquarters, and, possibly most sad, shooting and bombing mosques for no other reason than that they were there.

*****

Supporting our troops

I also heard the story of attempted suicide. One young man was charged with misconduct when he attempted suicide because, by making the attempt, he prevented his return to Iraq. Once he was dishonorably discharged from service, he lost his ability to get benefits from the army or go to college. He had few options open to him.

He decided to deliver pizzas, but only once a week, because he couldn’t handle more than that. Now, on some days, he gets so drunk he blacks out. That takes care of the pain. Sometimes, instead of going to his job, he spends his day at the VA hospital, begging for help to get him back on his feet. But so far, he’s gotten none.

This was the same man who’d seen the twin towers fall, who on September 11 was looking to kill. And, slowly, he got to the point where the only thing he wanted to do was die. He hated Iraqis, once upon a time. But where is he now?

Our responsibility

Winter Soldier is not a story of good and evil, where everything works out just so. It’s not black and white or us versus them. It’s a story of some of the darkest moments in American history; of systematic racism and imperialism; tradeoffs between human resources and human life; the erosion of faith in the military; and destructive aggression by an occupying power – the United States of America.

But this story is not just their story. It’s our story too, as citizens, as humans. We own this war. We pay for it. We vote for and against it. Few questioned the government when they told us that weapons of mass destruction existed or that Saddam Hussein was linked to Al Qaeda. We listened when they told us that we had to send more troops for the surge. We have failed too.

In the end, this is a story of judgment. It’s a story of coming to terms with anger and frustration towards the troops, who, in many ways, are the machinery that propels this war. It’s the story of my internal struggle with the issue of supporting the troops and what that means. In many ways, Winter Soldier helped me realize that it’s the troops who are leading this movement against the war, that they own this resistance movement.

Bumper stickers and flags are not actions of support; no, supporting the troops means listening to those who have waged this war, and then responding to what they need and what they know.

And, it’s up to us to do this.

So, look at it, watch the testimony, and hear for yourself.

On an early spring morning, the day outside bright and clear, UUSC Civil Liberties Program Manager Wayne Smith stood at the pulpit of the First Church in Belmont, Unitarian Universalist, in Belmont, Mass., for Justice Sunday. Against the backdrop of a Tiffany window, through which the late March sun shone its beams, Smith got ready to speak, his face and figure limned by the glow of the chalice flame that burned before him.

Reminiscent of a prophet of old, he delivered a jeremiad, asking what we are prepared to do to help those whose lives have been forever changed by the Iraq war. Though he paid a great deal of attention to the people who’ve borne the most immediate costs of the war – members of the U.S. military and their families and the people of Iraq – his overarching point was unmistakable: all of us are paying for this war.

In building his case, Smith cited a list of figures that describe in concrete terms exactly what the dollars spent on the war could have paid for in terms of domestic needs. For the $3 trillion that this war is now estimated to cost, how many millions of Americans could have been provided health care? How many elementary schools could we have built, and how many teachers to staff those schools hired? (Click here to learn more.) Broken down like this, astronomical (and highly abstract) figures like billions and trillions of dollars become more comprehensible, enabling us to grasp the full scope of what has been lost.

*****

After the service, Smith and fellow speaker Camilo Mejía met with interested congregants for an open, back-and-forth discussion. One congregant raised an interesting point: while she noted the effectiveness of describing the financial cost of the war in terms of forgone social benefits, she reminded the group that the government has financed the war using borrowed money. To the extent that these funds are, in some measure, nonexistent, she wondered about the accuracy of drawing comparisons of the kind that UUSC and others have made. These “could-have-been” assessments may give people the impression that, but for the war, the government would have provided social programs.

As UUSC’s communications director, I’ve given a great deal of thought to this point. Intellectually, I agree with her. These social benefits would not have been provided, because the money to pay for them (or the war, for that matter) only exists as a gigantic footprint of debt. Moreover, if history is any guide, it’s highly unlikely that a Republican administration would have engaged in such astronomical amounts of borrowing to pay for social programs.

As a first response, I would say that to preserve intellectual honesty and rhetorical precision, it is important for us to use the operative verb “could have,” as Smith and others representing UUSC have done, and not “would have.”

Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, while it’s true that our government would not have placed a $3 trillion charge on the nation’s credit card in order to provide social programs, that it did so to pay for a war that’s gone terribly wrong is an irrefutable fact. This year, with UUSC’s focus on the Iraq war, on Justice Sunday and at the UUA General Assembly 2008, we are asking Unitarian Universalists, and all concerned Americans, to consider how this reality squares with their values. Does this reflect the priorities of “we, the people of the United States,” to whom is assigned the singular responsibility of ensuring that our government remains by, for, and of the people?

Freedom of inquiry and thought, values of both Unitarian Universalism and our democratic society, oblige us to consider this question – and more: to take action once we’ve found our answer.

There has been an incredible amount of energy here at GA around UUSC's Drumbeat for Darfur campaign and the work to end the Darfur genocide. But there is another issue that is very much on people's minds here in Portland, Ore., and that's the war in Iraq.

This afternoon, the UU Peace Fellowship presented Camilo Mejia with its Adin Ballou Peace Award, given annually to someone who has made a significant contribution to advancing the cause of peace in the world. After five months of service in Iraq, Mejia came to the conclusion that he could not and would not support the Iraq war. For letting his conscience be his guide, he served one year in military prison for refusing further duty in Iraq.

During his time in Iraq, one of Mejia's jobs was to "soften" Iraqi prisoners, many of whom he knew to be innocent civilians. He became disgusted with this abuse and could no longer stomach the things he was asked to do. His compassion grew, but at first he felt powerless to act.

"In the face of the abuse of the dignity of the Iraqi people, I remained paralyzed and kept my mouth shut," he said. "But a change was taking place inside of me. Not because of how the war was affecting me, but because of how the war was affecting the people of Iraq."

"We're doing the Iraqi people a disservice if we turn away from the horror," added Charlie Clements, UUSC's president.

Mejia was adamant that we have to stand up for what we believe in, and fiercely defended the right of our service men and women to do so. "It is not only our right to refuse to fight," he said, "it's our legal duty. It's our moral duty to humanity to refuse and resist."

Millions of Iraqi civilians have been displaced now. It's a humanitarian crisis that is growing daily, and who better to bear witness than someone like Mejia, who has been there. He is asking us to bear witness with him to two sides of the same of coin that is Iraq: by supporting the rights of the people in that nation, and supporting the rights of our troops who, like him, are trying to right what they have seen as a terrible wrong.

Blackwater, a Private Military Company (PMC), is the scariest thing you haven’t heard of. They bill themselves, on their website, as “the most comprehensive professional military, law enforcement, security, peacekeeping, and stability operations company in the world.” And, apparently, the Bush administration agrees.

In a recent (and disturbing) new novel, Jeremy Scahill talks about Blackwater and its rise to power, its uncanny ability to win no-bid government contracts in places like Iraq and New Orleans, and its utter lack of accountability in its missions. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg -- Blackwater is emblematic of the rise in the private contracting of war and the hefty profits it reaps.

Maybe you heard about Blackwater briefly, when four of their men were killed in Fallujah, Iraq, their bodies dragged down the streets, burned, and then hung from bridges in town. These were the deaths that began a massive ‘counter insurgency’ in the Iraq war. But, these deaths don’t count towards the official tally of U.S. personnel killed in Iraq -- in many ways, they aren’t counted at all.

Herein lies the problem. Blackwater, as well as many other Private Military Companies, have an unknown number of people working as military contractors in Iraq -- but estimates are around 100,000. They function like U.S. military but are not held to the same rules of conduct. This is particularly distressing in light of tragedies like Abu Ghraib, a disgusting abuse of power in which PMCs were key players.

In the 2007 Defense Authorization Act, a small amount of checks were put on PMCs, an attempt by Republican Senator Lindsey Graham to start the ball rolling on holding these contractors remotely accountable for their actions. But, this legislation isn’t enough. Holding accountable PMCs is only one part of the equation -- the other is addressing the massive amount of profits that are a by-product of privatizing war, as well as relief efforts.

Profits reaped by Blackwater and other military contractors are in the billions of dollars. In post-Katrina New Orleans, individual PMCs were paid thousands of dollars a day to "maintain order." In the Iraq war, PMCs are estimated to account for forty cents of every dollar. That’s forty cents of every dollar going to people who are in no way accountable to laws of military conduct, not to mention the Geneva Conventions.

Oh, and if Blackwater scares you, just think about some of these other private military contractors. There is KBR, CACI, Raytheon, SCG International Risk, SOS Temps, Pathfinder Security Services, Top Cat Marine Security, STOP units, Triple Canopy, Titan Corporation, ManTech International, and Vinnell Corporation, to name a few.

The privatization of war and the profits it creates is a relatively new phenomenon. And Blackwater, unfortunately, isn’t alone. We hear about war profiteering to some extent. What we need to be hearing is that private war profiteers are making a killing -- literally and figuratively -- on the backs of Americans and Iraqis alike.

If it bothers you, tell your legislator. Tell them that you want PMCs to be traced, accounted for, and accountable. Tell them that you don’t want your money going to people who answer to no one.

In what can only be described as a stunning victory for defenders of free speech and military opponents to the war in Iraq, yesterday, a military judge declared a mistrial in the court martial of U.S. Army First Lt. Ehren Watada.

By any standards, Lt. Ehren Watada was called an exemplary soldier. But then he decided to face court martial rather than join a war he called "illegal."

As a matter of conscience, Lt. Watada refused deployment to Iraq and, because of his strong moral beliefs, he risked his military career and the possibility of years in prison. Truly a patriot, Lt. Watada was deeply torn between "loyalty to the military and his soldiers" versus his belief in truth and honor. In the end, he chose to speak truth-to-power and decided to "not send his soldiers to their deaths in a war that he believed was illegal."

The military brought the full weight of its power against this proud soldier and lost! Clearly, Judge John Head's ruling the case a mistrial is a major blow. Now, the prosecution of Lt. Watada is in free-fall.

Because Lt. Watada's defense team opposed the mistrial and because it was endorsed by the prosecution, the door is now open to Lt. Watada for a double-jeopardy defense. Double jeopardy, which forbids a person from being tried twice for the same crime, does not apply only after a verdict is rendered, but can apply after a jury is empaneled and witnesses have been called.

Double jeopardy protection is guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution and it certainly applies to citizens. It remains to be seen whether or not the military thinks soldiers should be covered by the Constitution.