As you may know, Netroots For The Troops, a collaborative effort by members of the Daily Kos, IGTNT and Mojo Friday communities,  will be holding a Special Event/Seminar at Netroots Nation on Saturday, July 19th from 2 PM to 4 PM.

We are pleased to announce some special guests with an important and unique perspective on the topic of Troop Care Packages who will be joining us to talk about both the past and the future.

UPDATE: I have been reminded that if you haven't done it already, you need to go and register for Netroots Nation! -- and hit that recommend button to the right, too! ;-)

^{Crossposted at Docudharma and ePluribus Media}

Good Wednesday evening, team! I have just a quickie announcement before getting into the "meat" (or "tofu" for any vegetarians here) of my diary. With Keith's revelation that he will be doing a "special comment" tomorrow night on Senator McCentury's shameful comments on this morning's Today show, tomorrow night's Countdown diary will be a fun, educational, LIVE free - for - all! I want lots of opportunity for lots of discussion about Countdown's "news of the day" and the "special comment." So, I will be here tomorrow night at 8:00 Indianapolis time and intend to stick around as long as energy permits!

On to the Countdown diary Hump Day edition!

No, I’m not shitting you.  This military hero, respected veteran, Vice Chairman of VoteVets.org, not to mention author, blogger, and one of our own will be joining me and thereisnospoon on BlogTalkRadio at 5:30 Eastern/2:30 Pacific.

Who, you may ask, is this tremendous voice?  Well, none other than Brandon Friedman, formerly known around here as The Angry Rakkasan, and we will be talking about the current state of things on the foreign policy front.

Please, do not let Brandon Friedman's VoteVets diary slide into oblivion; it deserves to be atop the recommended list.

Today, VoteVets.org and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW) released a bombshell of an e-mail obtained from a Veterans Affairs (VA) employee. The email directs VA staff to refrain from diagnosing soldiers and veterans with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Two days ago Brandon Friedman, of Vote Vets and Vet Voice posted this: Congressman McHenry Violates OPSEC; Endangers Troops and followed with this: McHenry Endangers Troops; Tries to Hide Evidence

Well, after this latest verbal diarrhea from Bill O'Reilly, with which Keith Olbermann and IAVA's Paul Rieckhoff blasted him for his assholery, what's O'Reilly to do?

Why, ramp up the attacks on homeless vets and John Edwards, that's what!  The sordid details after the fold.

Today's quote for discussion comes from our own Brandon Friedman's book, The War I Always Wanted, which I highly recommend, and not just because I think he should be rich and famous.

Buy The War I Always Wanted at Amazon.

In an alarming trend that has received scant notice from journalists, more and more consumers of right-wing media have started using violent threats to respond to political opinions that differ from their own.  Once a rarity in American political discourse, it has now become commonplace for people who appear on right-wing media to offer dissenting opinions to subsequently receive emails filled with death threats, promises of physical and sexual abuse.  

While it is difficult to pinpoint one cause for this trend, those on the receiving end of these violent threats have commented that the catalyst appears to be the right-wing shows themselves, both on television and radio.

Commenting during a recent appearance on Real Time With Bill Maher, African-American pundit and TV regular Michael Eric Dyson observed:

What can you say about a Republican party that is actually trying to raise money off of Rush Limbaugh's attacks on Iraq combat veterans? Let me just say that again: they are raising money off of Rush Limbaugh's attacks. On Iraq combat veterans. Iraq. Combat. Veterans.

One word that occurs is shameless. Another good one is desperate. How about unpatriotic? Because surely they are all of those things.

Here's Kossack and VoteVets.org spokesman (and veteran) Brandon Friedman discussing this despicable turn of events with Keith Olbermann on tonight's Countdown.

Besides the obvious, what do Rush Limbaugh and swiftboat financierianancer, Sam Fox, have in common?

Anyone?

Anyone?

Horshack?

       After a conversation with my friend Jon Soltz this afternoon, I’ve made a decision that’s been a long time coming.  It has not been an easy decision, but I know it’s the right one.

       This is the last diary I will write as The Angry Rakkasan.

Hi everybody,

       I’d like to share with you a promotion we’re beginning today at VoteVets.org.  As many of you know, our own Angry Rakkasan (known in real life as Brandon Friedman), has written a book about his time in Afghanistan and Iraq called The War I Always Wanted: The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War.  Now, at VoteVets.org, we like to think of Brandon as the writer and me as the talker.  I can give a speech or go out on TV and manage to keep it interesting, but I can’t convey what war feels like to a soldier in writing the way that Brandon can.

The War I Always Wanted
The Illusion of Glory and the Reality of War
By Brandon Friedman
Zenith Press
St. Paul, MN, 2007

I was a raving storm trooper, but I was humiliatingly petrified of death. I wanted to fight, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody. I wanted to be a hero and I didn’t care if I was [a] hero. I felt alive inside, but disconnected from everyone. I loved my family and friends and I didn’t care if I ever saw them again.

I was suffering from emotional whiplash.

From the beginning, humans have struggled to make sense of the seeming randomness of individual life events by creating a structure upon which to hang them and assimilate them.. Often this takes the form of explanatory religious stories, family tales and national myths. When personal experience collides head-on with the master narrative of a culture, the result is disorienting and painful; aligning one’s own version of reality to the previously unquestioned storyline can make or break a personality. Something’s got to give – either personal reality gets whitewashed, or the underlying assumptive story arc is revised.

Nowhere is this dissonance more jarring than in the crucible of war, in which fantasies of personal heroism and clean, rational military plans confront the blood, smoke, fear and chaos of a real battlefield. The "emotional whiplash" Brandon Friedman so eloquently describes in The War I Always Wanted has been a mainstay of serious art for a long while now, addressed in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage and Tim O’Brien’s haunting The Things They Carried as well as in films such as Apocalypse Now and Born on the Fourth of July.

What makes Friedman’s book worth a deep look is not just the subject matter, two tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. After all, Paul Rieckhoff in Chasing Ghosts had a story shaped by similar experiences of house raids, boredom, confusion and moments of pure terror. Rieckhoff’s story was told in a less chronologically challenging manner than Friedman’s, with a polish and distance. The rough edges in Chasing Ghosts are rubbed smoother and the backdrop of darkness is more artistically filled in.

The War I Always Wanted, on the other hand, is rough and jangled. Flashbacks abound, as Friedman, an infantry platoon leader in the famed 101st Airborne, patrols Baghdad on his second tour while experiencing terrifying intrusions from his first assignment to Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. The narrative structure, in this case, is part of the message, underscoring and heightening the events recounted in the book itself. Personalities from the separate units come and go, incidents from the past breathe right down the neck of those set in the present. There is a raw and real jagged feel to Friedman’s telling of his story, approaching the boundaries of near real-time dispatches, both from the external Middle East front and the internal personal changes going on within him.

Unlike better online writers, I'm not an on-the-fly type who churns things out easily while on the road. From Chicago to Washington, D.C., I've been busy absorbing a lot of information and talking with a lot of people these past 10 days. From last week's seat on a YearlyKos Convention panel with none other than General Wesley Clark to this week's Journalism That Matters Conference and visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, it's been a busy August.

(Click on links above for more pics...)

A few notes on my comings and goings, disappearances and sightings before getting back to the more important work of covering issues that concern the state of post-combat reintegration in our returning troops.

I'm not a big fan of a lot of reviewers.  And I've never reviewed a book before so keep that in mind.  That said, I recommend you read The War I Always Wanted by our very own Angry Rakkasan.  On to my "review".  

One reason I don't like most reviewers is they end up talking more about themselves than they do about the book.   That said, let me tell you about myself.

As he diaried last night, Daily Kos regular and VoteVets activist The Angry Rakkasan gave today's Democratic response to Bush's weekly radio address.  He wasn't able to post a diary on this for technical reasons, and he was heading out to a Daily Kos meetup, but he sent along some links to coverage of his response and I said I'd get them up.

A transcript and audio are available at the DNC website.  

Army Times:

An Iraq and Afghanistan war veteran will give the Democratic response on July 14 to President Bush’s weekly radio aggress, expressing disagreement with the administration’s Iraq policies.

According to the text of the veteran’s remarks made available July 13, Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer, will say: "It is time for the president and those in his party, including those running to be the next commander-in-chief, to support changing the mission in Iraq. For the sake of our national security, we must begin bringing the troops home."

President Bush’s radio remarks were not available in advance of his address.

Friedman says in his remarks that he stayed away from politics while in the military, but "now I can no longer remain silent as our commander-in-chief continually mismanages and degrades the military I have come to love."

Bloomberg:

Senate Republicans must vote with the Democratic majority in Congress to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq, and President George W. Bush should support bringing the troops home, a veteran of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan said.

Repeated deployments in Iraq have taken a "staggering toll" on U.S. military readiness, posing "a dangerous threat to our national security," Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer in the Army's 101st Airborne Division, said in the Democratic Party's weekly radio address.

"The escalation of the Iraq war is failing and now the mission must change," said Friedman, who led a platoon into Afghanistan in 2002 to battle Taliban and al-Qaeda, and a year later commanded troops during the Iraq invasion.

AP:

In the Democratic response to Bush's radio address, Brandon Friedman, a former infantry officer in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division who served in Afghanistan and Iraq, said it's past time for a transition to diplomatic efforts in Iraq that Democrats have long demanded.

"The fact is, the Iraq war has kept us from devoting assets we need to fight terrorists worldwide — as evidenced by the fact that Osama bin Laden is still on the loose and al-Qaida has been able to rebuild," Friedman said. "We need an effective offensive strategy that takes the fight to our real enemies abroad. And the best way to do that is to get our troops out of the middle of this civil war in Iraq."

He also wanted to let people know that:

I’ve also been told that NBC has picked up the story for all its affiliates for this evening (including Nightly News and MSNBC).

Pretty cool that the Democrats chose him, and it looks like he hit it out of the park.