Images courtesy of Sgt. Jay C Gentile
Images courtesy of Sgt. Jay C Gentile
Since the post has gone viral online, the user has added to the site that he is located in South Jersey and has been so moved by response on the Web that he now says he plans to attend Occupy movements across America in the coming days.
“I'm very much for the movement and encourage everybody I know to get involved,” the author published as an addendum to the original posting.


http://voiceshakes.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/%E2%80%9Ci-risked-my-life-to-come-home-to-this%E2%80%9D/
Excerpt:
Unfortunately, Olsen is not the first Iraq veteran to sustain potentially life-threatening injuries from a police attack while peacefully demonstrating. In 2008, former Sergeant Nick Morgan was crushed by a police horse in New York as veterans and allies protested the Iraq-war and the treatment of veterans outside of the presidential debates.
Morgan, who served in Iraq from 2004-2005 with the 1st Cavalry Division, was peacefully demonstrating outside of Hofstra University when Nassau County police attacked the crowd with horses and batons. As he was pulled to the ground, a police horse’s hind legs came down on Morgan’s face, crushing his cheekbone and orbital, breaking his nose, and giving him a concussion. Police pushed those trying to protect him away and dragged him unconscious across a large intersection where he was arrested.
A week after the attack, Morgan underwent surgery to keep his eye from sliding into his sinus cavity and to hold the shattered bones in his face together.  Absorbable plates were inserted under his right eye to reconstruct his shattered lower orbit and a titanium plate remains screwed across his cheekbone. For over a year his vision was impeded until a second surgery removed the scar tissue that was causing the complications.
Similar to the police attack on Morgan, when a crowd rushed to aid Olsen after he was knocked to the ground on Tuesday, a police officer lobbed a Concussion grenade into the crowd to disperse them, possibly furthering Olsen’s injuries.
Morgan and Olsen are both members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, whose members have been participating in occupations around the country. Morgan says that many veterans have been and will continue to participate in this movement because “we have offered to put our lives on the line for this country just to come home and see that our rights are being blatantly disrespected.”

http://www.lewrockwell.com/sheehan/sheehan16.html
Excerpt:
What Noble Cause?
by Cindy Sheehan
It has been one month, one week, and 4 days since I sat in a ditch in Crawford, Texas. My request was simple: I wanted to speak to the man who has sent over a million of our young people to fight, kill, and die in a country that was absolutely no threat to the United States of America. I wanted to ask him: "What is the Noble Cause that you keep talking about?"
Well, we all know now that George Bush never came down the road to talk to me. Thank God! Many people have been saying that I am the "spark," "catalyst," "face" of the anti-war movement, etc. I beg to differ. George Bush and his arrogant advisers are the spark that lit the prairie fire of peace activism that has swept over America and the entire world. If he had met with me that fateful day in August, it would not have been good for him (because I knew he was going to lie and I would have advertised that fact), but it would have had less of an impact on the peace movement if he had.
Upon reflection on the events of this past August, I have come up with two reasons why George could not meet with me: He is a coward and there is no Noble Cause. If George had as much courage and integrity in his entire body as Casey had in his pinky, he would have met with me. But, ironically, if George had that much courage and integrity, he never would have preemptively invaded a practically defenseless country. His sycophantic cabinet and hangers-on are also incontrovertible evidence that he is a coward. No one had better disagree with him. How dare a mom from Vacaville, California, have the nerve to contradict the emperor of Prairie Chapel Road?
All of the "Noble Cause" reasons that George has variously given for the invasion and continued illegal occupation of a sovereign nation are also patently false and ridiculous. He has been claiming recently (since he admitted a long time ago that Iraq had no WMDs or links to 9/11) that this occupation of Iraq is spreading "freedom and democracy" in the Middle East. Really? Does he have any idea that the constitution that the Iraqi governing body is working on is based on Sharia and that it undermines the freedoms of women? Does he realize that for over 50 years women had equal rights with men in Iraq? Does George realize (of course he does) that the puppet government the US put in place in Iraq is comprised of the very same people who encouraged the invasion to line their own pockets? What kind of freedom and democracy is this?
If George is so hellbent on freedom and democracy for Iraq, then why doesn't he practice them here in America? Up to 62 percent of Americans believe that what George has done in Iraq is a mistake and we should begin to bring our troops home. Well, George, 62 percent is a clear majority and you should begin to listen to the people who pay your salary.
He has also claimed that what we are doing in Iraq is "making America safer." This statement is even easier to disprove than the "freedom and democracy" baloney. To refute this little bit of deception, all we have to do is look at the Gulf states. Ask the people of New Orleans, especially, if they feel safer. By misappropriating all of our personnel and equipment, and pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the sands of Iraq, George has made our country more vulnerable to attack by outside forces. Also, from the cold and callous statements of people like Michael Chertoff and George's own mama, the people of New Orleans seem to be "acceptable" collateral damage to the ruling elite of this country.
It is my opinion that the only thing that will make America safer is to get George and his unfeeling and dangerously incompetent supporters out of our White House.
We all now know the reason that we are in Iraq. George told us so from a break he was taking from Crawford in San Diego on the same day that Katrina was hitting the Gulf States: it is for oil. It is so George, Dick, and their evil buddies can extract more money and power from our children's flesh and blood.
This is not a Noble Cause. It is a highly ignoble one. We as Americans knew either in the front of our brains, or in the back of our consciousness, that this war was to feed the corporate state. Fifteen brave young Americans have been killed so far this month while our attention has been focused, and rightfully so, on the Gulf states. More than 200 innocent and unfortunate Iraqis have been killed this week alone. How much more blood are we going to allow George, Congress, and the state-connected corporations to spill before we demand an end to this war and an accounting for the lives that have been needlessly ruined?
It is also time to stop hemorrhaging money in Iraq. I witnessed the abject poverty and sense of abandonment the less fortunate people of New Orleans were living in even before the levees broke. It is time to start taking care of Americans. How many millions of our tax dollars are we going to allow George, Congress, and the special-interest corporations to misuse and waste in Iraq?
Not one more drop of blood. Not one more life. Not one more penny for killing.
If you love our country and want to see a change for the better, come to DC on the 24th of this month and stand up and be counted for peace. The whole world is counting on you.

September 19, 2005
Cindy Sheehan [send her mail] is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04 She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. She is the author of Not One More Mother's Child and Dear President Bush.

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Casey Austin Sheehan (May 29, 1979–April 4, 2004) was a Specialist in the United States Army who was killed by enemy action while serving in the Iraq War. ...

John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy About this sound pronunciation (help·info) (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963),

Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968)