Iraq Veterans Against the War | You are not alone

This Bud's for You, Soldier

I have an admission to make: I didn’t watch the Super Bowl this year, and the commercials. My veteran friend’s barely hid their disgust when they told me I had to see the Budweiser ad. So I pulled it up on Youtube:

I got misty eyed when the real life returning soldier Lt. Chuck Nadd gets a small town ticker tape parade and hugs his mom; most people would (and that’s the point).

Then another strong emotion hit me: I wanted to throw my lap top across the room and stomp on it.

Don’t get me wrong, Lt. Chuck Nadd deserves his hometown’s respect, just as every returning veteran does. But let’s be clear, this ad was all about using our troops’ image to fuel beer sales.

Here’s my idea for a Bud ad:

Demanding the Right to Heal

Posted to: Staff

We are joining with Iraqi human rights groups and our allies to hold the U.S. government accountable for the lasting effects of war and to demand the right to heal. Check out the Right to Heal Initiative website at http://righttoheal.org and sign the petition to demand a hearing.

Three days ago I saw the aftermath of explosives that tore through a crowd of unsuspecting bystanders, shrapnel leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. I read how children lost their lives, others lost limbs and a nation looked on in horror. On Monday, this same scene played out over and over again. All of them separate bombings, all on the same day and all in the same country. Iraq is this country, where over 25 blasts rocked major metropolitan areas, many of them car bombs, that resulted in more than 61 deaths and over 274 injured. No doubt the enormity of the loss of life and carnage is hard to imagine but if you had watched the news or read American newspapers you could be forgiven for not knowing it happened at all.

Monday was also significant for another bombing, one that most of us heard about. The kind of terror inflicted at the Boston Marathon just a handful of days ago will not readily leave my mind. The images, testimonies and the moments of bravery demonstrated by people like Carlos Arredondo will continue to haunt me. Unfortunately, the destruction in Boston is all too familiar for those of us that have experienced the unending senseless violence in Iraq. Both for the Iraqi civilians that live in a country that has witnessed more than a decade of war and for US veterans that have returned home to a country that has seemed oblivious to its existence.