"[...]Violence against women is a problem in the U.S. military, and other
slayings and suspicious deaths similar to Johnson's are being classified as
suicides. And Johnson is not the only woman to die a suspicious death on the
Balad military base.

Retired Army Reserve Col. Ann Wright said 1 in 3 women who join the military
will be raped or sexually assaulted by servicemen. Of the 94 military women who
died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom, 36 died from injuries unrelated
to combat. While a number of them were ruled as suicides and homicides, 15
deaths remain that smell suspicious. For example, eight women from Fort Hood,
Texas, died of "non-combat-related injuries" at Camp Taji, three of whom were
raped before their deaths.[...] [...]youth of color, lacking opportunities at
home and in need of money, look to the military as a career option and a way to
pay for school.[...]"

LaVena Johnson: Raped and Murdered on a Military Base in Iraq

By David A. Love, The Black Commentator. Posted March 3, 2009.



Military authorities claimed she committed suicide in her tent in Iraq, but
autopsies revealed she had been brutally attacked and raped.

Have you heard the story about LaVena Johnson?
LaVena Johnson, a high school honor student, decided to enlist in the Army to
pay for college. On July 19, 2005, after serving eight weeks in Iraq, she was
killed, eight days short of her 20th birthday.

Pvt. Johnson -- she was posthumously promoted to private first class -- was
found dead on a military base in Balad, Iraq, in a tent belonging to military
contractor KBR, a spinoff and former subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney's
company. She was the first woman from Missouri to be killed in Iraq or
Afghanistan.

The U.S. Army officially ruled her death a suicide, saying she shot herself in
the head, case closed. But this is where the story begins.

Johnson's family knew something was wrong. They had talked to her on the phone a
few days earlier, and she was in a great mood as usual, and was planning to come
home for the holidays, earlier than expected.

Questions were raised when Johnson's family viewed her body. There were
suspicious bruises, and while the military claimed that this right-handed
soldier had shot herself in the head with an M-16 rifle, the gunshot wound was
on the left side of her head.

But the truth began to make itself known when the family received the autopsy
report and photos they had requested under the Freedom of Information Act:

The 5-foot tall, 100-pound woman had been struck in the face with a blunt
instrument, probably a weapon. Her nose had been broken, and her teeth knocked
back. There were bruises, teeth marks and scratches on the upper part of her
body. Her back and right hand had been doused with a flammable liquid and set on
fire. Her genital area was bruised and lacerated, and lye had been poured into
her vagina. The debris found on her suggested her body had been dragged.

And despite all this mutilation, she was fully clothed when her body was found
in the tent, with a blood trail leading to the tent.

Despite the overwhelming evidence, the Army has refused to investigate. Through
an online petition, ColorofChange.org demanded an investigation by the House
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Johnson's story is really several stories in one, and is about more than an
individual Black woman who was raped and killed by her fellow soldiers. African
Americans have fought in every war since the Revolutionary War, and often their
country has been a far more formidable foe to them than the so-called enemy they
were told to fight.

Often, youth of color, lacking opportunities at home and in need of money, look
to the military as a career option and a way to pay for school. But in light of
all the death and destruction of the unjust and immoral war in Iraq, fewer of
them took the bait this time, and opposition to the war among Black youth has
posed a challenge for Army recruiters.

Perhaps these young people were channeling war resisters of a prior generation,
such as Muhammad Ali, who once said, "I ain't got no quarrel with them Viet
Cong. ... They never called me nigger." That war was devastating to poor
communities of all races, and the black community in particular, as their young
men came home in the thousands in body bags, or maimed, traumatized, as dope
fiends or completely insane.

It was this "cruel manipulation of the poor," as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
called it, one that united people of different races "in brutal solidarity
burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on
the same block in Detroit."

Forty years later, we find ourselves in another unjust and senseless war. This
"home invasion" of Iraq, as Philadelphia veteran journalist Reggie Bryant aptly
characterized it. And Johnson is a symbol of this war, as a casualty who risks
being swept under the rug.

We may never know how many crimes have been hidden in Iraq. War is good for that
sort of thing and little else, concealing the rapes, murders, shooting of
children, bombing and pillaging of homes, the money stealing, and other crimes
that are committed -- including the crime that is war itself. People are taught
to kill like animals, to dehumanize and humiliate others.

But the case of Johnson raises yet another issue: Violence against women is a
problem in the U.S. military, and other slayings and suspicious deaths similar
to Johnson's are being classified as suicides. And Johnson is not the only woman
to die a suspicious death on the Balad military base.

Retired Army Reserve Col. Ann Wright said 1 in 3 women who join the military
will be raped or sexually assaulted by servicemen. Of the 94 military women who
died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom, 36 died from injuries unrelated
to combat. While a number of them were ruled as suicides and homicides, 15
deaths remain that smell suspicious. For example, eight women from Fort Hood,
Texas, died of "non-combat-related injuries" at Camp Taji, three of whom were
raped before their deaths. Camp Taji is an Army base about 10 miles northwest of
Baghdad.

Also, a number of female employees of Halliburton/KBR have been sexually
harassed, assaulted and gang raped in Iraq. Their employment contract calls for
such cases to be decided through arbitration rather than in a court of law.
Halliburton and KBR, these war profiteers awash with money, even wanted one
alleged rape victim to pay for their costs to defend themselves in arbitration.
Lord have mercy ...

It is clear that under President George W. Bush, no friend of justice, the cases
of these brutalized and slain women could not see the light of day. But we are
living in a new time, so it seems, and perhaps now is the time that the family
of LaVena Johnson, and all those other nameless women killed by the military,
will find the justice they deserve.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/129646/lavena_johnson%3A_raped_and_murdered_on_a_\
military_base_in_iraq/?page=entire


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]