Iraq veteran pleads not guilty in girlfriend's death

Iraq veteran pleads not guilty in girlfriend's death


Authorities say they had to use a Taser to subdue John Wylie Needham, 25, when they arrived at his condo. They found Jacqwelyn Joann Villagomez, 19, severely beaten. She later died.
By Christine Hanley, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
September 27, 2008
A decorated Iraq war veteran pleaded not guilty Friday to beating his girlfriend to death in his San Clemente condominium earlier this month.

John Wylie Needham, 25, was arrested and charged after Orange County sheriff's deputies found his girlfriend, 19-year-old Jacqwelyn Joann Villagomez, in his bedroom severely beaten. She died a few hours later.


Needham's family and a large group of other supporters filled one side of the courtroom Friday as they waited most of the day for his arraignment. The proceeding was delayed twice because he had not been transported from the nearby county jail as scheduled by sheriff's deputies.

He returned from Iraq a changed man, with severe mental problems and nightmares and still in pain from shrapnel wounds to his legs and back, according to his family. They knew he was struggling but did not expect him to turn violent, they said.
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Veteran speaks in support of Obama at local gathering

Press Photos/Paul L. Newby II
U.S. Army Lt. and Vietnam Veteran Bill Dooling, Veterans Affairs advisor with the Obama campaign, center, listens to Iraq War veterans Grant Collins, of Austin, Texas, left, and Cameron Whitaker, of Grand Rapids, talk about their experiences with war and the veterans' health care system.

Veteran speaks in support of Obama at local gathering
by Kyla King The Grand Rapids Press
Friday September 26, 2008, 7:08 PM

GRAND RAPIDS — As the two major party presidential candidates prepared to debate foreign policy Friday night, veterans stumped for their candidate in Grand Rapids.

Democratic nominee U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., got a boost from retired U.S. Army Lt. and Vietnam Veteran Bill Dooling.

He highlighted the cost of the Iraq War in a Grand Rapids news conference followed by a town hall meeting with local veterans at the UAW region office.

Dooling, a former school teacher and Boston native, said he is backing Obama because he opposed the "costly" war from the beginning.

He also pointed to Obama's Senate voting record and service on the Senate Committee on Veteran's Affairs.
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Marine sues Congressman Murtha for Hadithah comments

Marine sues Murtha for Hadithah comments

By Ramesh Santanam - The Associated Press
Posted : Friday Sep 26, 2008 18:00:52 EDT

PITTSBURGH — A former Marine lance corporal sued Rep. John Murtha for slander Thursday, saying the Pennsylvania Democrat damaged his reputation by saying Marines killed women and children “in cold blood” in Hadithah, Iraq, in November 2005.

The federal lawsuit claims Murtha violated Justin Sharratt’s rights to due process and presumption of innocence with comments on various news shows in May 2006. Sharratt, who was honorably discharged last year, said he received hate e-mails and has been called “baby killer” when he has gone out in Canonsburg, about 15 miles south of Pittsburgh.

“Sharratt, in being labeled repeatedly by Murtha as a ‘cold-blooded murderer,’ and by Murtha outrageously claiming that the Hadithah incident was comparable to the infamous (My Lai) massacre of Vietnam, has suffered permanent, irreversible damage to his reputation,” the lawsuit states. American service members killed as many as 504 Vietnamese villagers in the My Lai massacre.

Military prosecutors have said 24 Iraqis, including women and children, were killed in Hadithah on Nov. 19, 2005, after one Marine was killed and two others wounded by a roadside bomb. Murtha, a former Marine and decorated Vietnam War veteran, blamed the killings on troops under too much pressure in Iraq.
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Military:Electrical review turns up 3,700 fires

Electrical review turns up 3,700 fires
The ongoing Central Command review of electrical malfunctions that have killed at least seven troops and a contractor at U.S.-occupied buildings in Iraq has uncovered more than 3,700 fires at those facilities from May 2007 to August 2008.


The total dwarfs the 483 fires at contractor-maintained facilities reported to Congress at a July 30 hearing, which the command’s 15-member Task Force for Safety Actions for Fire and Electricity now says was the five-month figure for one region, not all of Iraq.

But not all of the 3,726 fires reported were a result of electrical malfunctions, the task force says. Only about 820 were definitively characterized as electrical fires, with about 275 of those resulting from “fluorescent light ballast” malfunctions. The causes of the vast majority of the fires were “undetermined.”

On average, 4.2 fires per day have taken place over the past five weeks at U.S. facilities in Iraq, the task force said. These ranged from power strip flare-ups to full-blown fires, Maj. Gen. Tim McHale, who leads the task force, said in a Sept. 15 telephone interview.


Most, but not all, of the 86,000 U.S.-occupied buildings in Iraq are managed by KBR Inc., McHale said. KBR and Army Contracting Command came under fire in that July hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, whose members were particularly incensed over what is now reported as 18 deaths — an increase of two from earlier reports — because of inadvertent electrocutions, most of them involving U.S. troops, recorded in Iraq since 2003.
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Why does McCain never remember Afghanistan?

Again, while listening to the presidential debate, McCain keeps talking about what will happen if we pull troops out of Iraq but never notices that is exactly what he did when he wanted them pulled out of Afghanistan and sent into Iraq. Why does he keep missing this? Al-Qaeda was not in Iraq but they were in Afghanistan and now they are more numerous and powerful than they were in 2002!

Again, McCain brought up his "support" for veterans but he has a proven record of failing veterans. Why didn't Obama bring that up since he is on the veteran's committee? Is he too nice to state the truth on this? McCain's record on veterans is almost as bad as his record on POW/MIA's accounting. If you look up his record, compare it to what he claims, then you see that he can lie with absolutely no problem at all just as he did when he talked about Palin's record.

Army drafting new blogging guidelines

Army drafting new blogging guidelines
By Seth Robson, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Saturday, September 27, 2008



GRAFENWÖHR, Germany — The Army is working on a set of guidelines for soldiers’ conduct in online forums such as blogs and message boards, but it might be a while before the message reaches the troops.

The guidelines — a compilation of the scattered rules and regulations governing online activity by soldiers — will be included in a rewrite of Army public affairs regulations to be published in the next six months to two years, Department of the Army public affairs specialist Lindy Kyzer said in an e-mail. Soldiers will be told about the guidelines during pre-deployment public affairs training, she said.

But that doesn’t mean soldiers can blog with impunity until the new guidelines are published.

Operational security rules, which prohibit the publication by soldiers of classified or sensitive information, and the Uniform Code of Military Justice, already limit what soldiers can do online, Kyzer said.

"What the new public affairs guidance … will provide is further clarification of what is acceptable in online postings or digital communication," she said.
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http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=57702

Congress orders review of barracks problems

Congress orders review of barracks problems

By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Sep 26, 2008 15:29:54 EDT

Lawmakers are ordering a defense-wide survey of all barracks and dormitories to determine how many do not meet health and safety standards.

The survey, to be completed by Feb. 27 under an order from the powerful House and Senate appropriations committees, is intended to provide details on the extent of problems, the estimated cost of fixing them and when this might be done.
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http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/military_barracks_review_092608w/

McCain said "take care of veterans" but voted against doing it

When McCain said in the debate with Obama about taking care of veterans, I was lucky to not have anything in my hand to throw at the TV set!

He's voted against them every chance he's gotten to prove it!

Iraq, the "surge" didn't bring about the drop in violence but was only part of it. Paying off the Iraqis to stop killing our troops was a bigger part of it but McCain likes to leave this part out as well. McCain talk about how he's right but when he turned around and said we should hit Iraq right after 9-11 and then pushed to do this, he was wrong and he was wrong when he said Afghanistan was won so it was fine to pull the troops out. He's been wrong all along and the troops along with our veterans can't afford any more of his mistakes in judgment.

Next, if the military really believed McCain would be the better choice as Commander-in-Chief, then they would put their money behind him instead of Obama, who has received the bulk of military donations as well as Ron Paul, who on the Republican side, received a lot more than McCain did.

I am listening to the debate now and still stunned at the lack of any kind of understanding of what all of this is costing the troops and our veterans. You would think that if anyone would understand the suffering of the men and women who serve this country would be understood by anyone, it would be another veteran, but he hasn't a single clue.

Conclusion of manhunt allows healing to begin

Conclusion of manhunt allows healing to begin

By Nathan Key, nathankey@newstopic.net

Thursday, September 25, 2008 10:55 PM EDT


A day after the body of Skip Brinkley was found and Deputy Adam Klutz was memorialized in a moving funeral service, members of the Caldwell County Sheriff's Office started to get back to their daily operation as best they could.

For five days, members of the Sheriff's Office and countless agencies across western North Carolina as well as the State Bureau of Investigation and FBI conducted a massive search to find Brinkley, the 32-year-old military veteran suspected of fatally wounding Klutz Sept. 19 when the deputy responded to a 911 hangup call at 3940 Fox Winkler Road in Oak Hill.

That shooting set off a massive search for Brinkley that ended Wednesday when a member of a Hickory S.W.A.T. unit found his body in an upright position near a tree about a half mile from his residence on the 30-plus-acre farm he had in Oak Hill. The body was located on a densely wooded area of the property looking toward Brinkley's residence at the same time Deputy Klutz' funeral was taking place at Mountain Grove Baptist Church.

Brinkley apparently died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The SBI continues to investigate the case.
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http://newstopic.net/articles/2008/09/26/news/8manhunt.txt

Soldiers need support at home, too

ED GRANEY: Soldiers need support at home, too
Joseph Serino would tell the driver to slow down, that he needed to scan the tops of buildings for snipers and the roadside for bombs. He would look at a bush moved by the breeze and wonder if the enemy lurked behind. He always wondered what danger waited around the next bend.

He was in Palo Alto, Calif., at the time, in the charming, affluent city in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, where some of the world's most famous high-tech companies surround Stanford University.


By all accounts, he was in heaven.

But even while passing all the Colonial homes along the tree-lined streets, Serino's mind drifted back to Southern Baghdad, back where his Army vehicle was ambushed in June 2007, back where it hit a bomb and his legs were blown off, back to hell.

"It took awhile to adjust (coming home)," Serino said of those days while rehabbing in the Bay Area. "I was very paranoid. It doesn't go away. Some soldiers deal with it. Some can't."

Many just give up and kill themselves.

More than you can imagine.

The words have been repeated for years now, painted on buildings and stuck to automobile bumpers and printed on T-shirts and shouted from atop parade floats.

Support Our Troops.

There should be an addendum to that motto ... Especially When They Come Home.
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