Prometheus 6

I think this one is worth email AND a stamp, nevermind the petition Color of Change is running on this. This goes out today.

Rep. Henry Waxman
Chairman, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
8436 West Third Street, Suite 600
Los Angeles, CA 90048

Rep. John Tierney
Chairman, Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs
17 Peabody Square
Peabody, MA 01960

Re: PFC LaVena Johnson

Gentlemen:

Though I do not live in either of your districts, I am contacting you directly because as Chairs of your respective committees I feel you are acting as national representatives in the affairs you oversee, and because my representative, Vito Fossella, is among the lamest of lame ducks.

I hope you are aware of the increased public discussion of PFC. LaVena Johnson's case. It is three years old, and the Army does not see there is still a case to discuss. A great number of us feel otherwise. The Army had not cooperated with her family in determining the details of her death. They claim it was a suicide via an M16, regardless of the physical evidence that calls that into question (such as the impossibility of a woman her size using an M16 to shoot herself in the head in the first place). If you are not aware of it, I would refer you to

1. an interview with PFC. Johnson's family and former Army Reserve colonel Ann Wright on Democracy Now!,

2. The PFC. LaVena Johnson Petition website, where they are tracking the public response to the case in the press and the blog network.

There have been several on line petitions, from the initial one created by the operator of The PFC. LaVena Johnson Petition website to the most current one run by Color of Change. I signed the first one because, as a father of a young woman (who I guarantee you will never be a part of the U.S. Military for this and other reasons), I saw a sane approach needed to be made to an outrageous situation. I signed the last because Color of Change I work with them whenever our interests align.

But this case is important enough that I don't want to just check a box and click a button. Because if we assume the Army is honest in saying she killed herself they are disingenuous at minimum in not determining WHY she may have done it.

That you are holding oversight hearings on sexual assault in the military means you know there is military rape is a massive, extensively reported problem. You know the military under Bush has misled people, crafted whole legends to build or maintain popular support for the Iraq invasion. You know how PTSD has impacted the community of Iraq veterans. And PFC. Johnson's body was mutilated in a manner reminiscent of that which earned one troop a 100 year sentence when done to an Iraqi teenager...well deserved, but doesn't a citizen of the United States of America deserve equal justice? She was mutilated at a time when Pat Tillman's accidental death was turned into mythology, when the Bush administration was at the peak of its prevarications...everyone in authority in the military knew what would happen if the story as we've reconstructed it came out.

And all the ugliness hasn't stayed in Iraq. It is come home. In January, the burned body of Lance Cpl. Maria Lauterbach, 20, who was eight months pregnant, was discovered in a shallow grave near Camp Lejeune in the back yard of her former co-worker and a man she accused of rape, Cpl. Cesar Laurean. Laurean fled to Mexico but was arrested April 10. He has been charged with murder and is awaiting extradition. Army 2nd Lt. Holley Wimunc, 24, was found dead in a wooded area near Camp Lejeune three days after a suspicious fire at her Fayetteville apartment. Her estranged husband, Marine Cpl. John Wimunc, has been charged in her death.

So now your subcommittee is addressing the issue that I believe began, in this war, with PFC. Johnson. She was just the first.

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.

The female soldiers who were at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait, for example, where U.S. troops go to demobilize, told me they were warned not to go out at night alone.

"They call Camp Arifjan 'generator city' because it's so loud with generators that even if a woman screams she can't be heard," said Abbie Pickett, 24, a specialist with the 229th Combat Support Engineering Company who spent 15 months in Iraq from 2004-05. Yet, she points out, this is a base, where soldiers are supposed to be safe.

Spc. Mickiela Montoya, 21, who was in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005, took to carrying a knife with her at all times. "The knife wasn't for the Iraqis," she told me. "It was for the guys on my own side."

Please, don't let PFC. Johnson's family suffer simply because their child was victimized before the pattern became apparent. Please, honor their request for a full investigation of the circumstances of her death.

Thank you for your time.

Earl Dunovant
[Address redacted]