Wisconsin Vietnam Vet Recalls Roger Staubach, Medal of Freedom Recipient

Roger Staubach - Heisman Trophy winner, Navy officer,
NFL Hall-of-Fame quarterback, and 2018 Presidential
Medal of Freedom honoree.

Madison, Wisconsin — President Donald Trump bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom to seven Americans today in the East Room of the White House, (White House).

The recipients include NFL Hall-of-Fame quarterback, Roger Staubach.

Staubach is a Heisman Trophy winner (1963), Super Bowl champ and brilliant and resilient quarterback who never gave up on a play, earning him the moniker, 'Roger the Dodger'.

What is perhaps less known is Staubach's patriotism and humanism.

After winning the Heisman Trophy in 1963 as a college junior, Staubach served four years in active-duty service in the Navy, including a year in Vietnam, before beginning his NFL career.

During Staubach's tour in Vietnam, Don Kosterman, a Vietnam Army veteran and retired journalist living in Dane County (Wisconsin), met Staubach at Chu Lai Base Area in 1965.

Kosterman served as a commanding Army officer at the sprawling complex and recalled a long conversation with Staubach at which the Navy man's character became apparent, four years before Staubach returned to civilian life for which he was recognized today.

"I saw this guy tossing some passes to some really good receivers, and someone told me he was Roger Staubach," said Kosterman, serving as an officer in the area. "Later on I was talking to Staubach, and what I remember before talking with Staubach was that he looked very upset. It was visible, something was obviously wrong."

Kosterman said, "Staubach said he had lost some men to enemy mortar fire, and I could tell he was really broken-up by it. He was Roger Staubach, and he was a guy dealing with some bad loss, and that is what more than anything sticks out — the guy really cared about his men."

Guys in a unit getting killed is something that never leaves, veterans will volunteer if you are privileged to win their trust.

In 2016, Staubach said to ESPN writer, Todd Archer: "I appreciated people cared about me and said, 'I’m a big fan of yours.' I’m really appreciative of that because we had some good teams. But I don’t think that’s quite the same feeling that you have as a veteran when somebody comes up and says, 'We appreciate your dedication to our country.'"

Roger Staubach received the Presidential Medal of Freedom today, the nation’s highest civilian commendation, (New York Times).

Don Kosterman will tell you Roger Staubach as a Navy officer was already a man of mettle and exceptional courage back in 1965.

Two Wars Down: An Ungrateful Nation Now Turns on Its Veterans

- We can afford wars, but not the people who fight and serve, say Alan Simpson, James Webb, ... -

By Gordon Duff in Veterans Today

A week ago, we marched out of Iraq, leaving 50,000 'administrative' troops and tens of thousands of contractors behind. They perform no useful purpose of any kind, no more than the original attack which Secretary of Defense Robert Gates now openly refers to as unnecessary and wrong.

The war that never should have started cost America 3 trillion dollars, much of it unaccounted for. Along with the thousands of American dead and the untold devastation in Iraq, the war also cost America the health and welfare of up to 400,000 of her veterans, America's children. A generation of young adults, another generation of our best and bravest stand betrayed.

We have money for fraud of every kind, projects paid for but never finished, weapons stolen, defective or never delivered, buying poisoned water for our troops at five times the cost of French Wine, I could go on for hours, the list is endless.



This week, when Senator's Alan Simpson, the wild-talking Wyoming Republican and now formerly a stalwart veterans' advocate Daniel Akaka talk about saving money, it is to come from payments to veterans for "presumptive" illness.

Don't believe it's just these two, its the whole gang of them, with few exceptions, and its not the first time. When Bush gutted funding for Veterans and up to nine-million disability claims related to war wounds and the endless environmental crimes against our troops shredded or shelved, even our mainstream veterans organizations stood behind him.

I spent two hours on the phone with a Vietnam veteran I have known for 35 years. He has both a son and son-in-law seriously wounded from Iraq. His 30 years in government and 28 years in the military, many years working with veterans, gave him the skills to help his own family negotiate the minefield of bureaucratic insanity servicemen and women are faced with when returning from war, used up, smashed, maimed or poisoned, discarded and left to die.

How many veterans died with claims in processing? How many died of undiagnosed poisonings or waiting for that medical appointment that never comes? It isn’t thousands or tens of thousands. Is the number as high as a million? It may be, we aren’t allowed to know.

Pardon Leo Burt and All Johnson/Nixon War Criminals

Update: Tip on fugitive charged in 1970 UW bombing doesn't pan out

Leo Burt, one of the four people who bombed the Army Math Research Center on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus on Aug. 24, 1970 during the height of anti-war protests is the subject of buzz that the DoJ and FBI are honing in on his whereabouts.

From this morning's Wisconsin State Journal (Madison), Ed Treleven reports:

If something is stirring in the case of Leo Burt, missing for decades after he allegedly took part in a Vietnam-era bombing on the University of Wisconsin campus, federal prosecutors and the FBI weren 't saying on Monday.

But on Friday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Grant Johnson filed a motion in Burt 's long-dormant federal criminal case seeking somebody 's fingerprints. The sealed motion, filed in the dusty case that has been pending against Burt since 1970, is titled "Application for Production of Fingerprints. "

Johnson said he couldn 't elaborate on what was contained in the motion. "If I could I wouldn't have had it sealed, " he said Monday.

Some who have followed the case, however, said it could mean that authorities want fingerprints from someone close to the case, possibly someone suspected of being Burt himself.

The bomb, made of more than a ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer soaked in fuel oil and delivered in a van, ripped apart the UW physics department in the basement and first floor of Sterling Hall and killed 33-year-old physics researcher Robert Fassnacht.

The Armstrongs and Fine were convicted and punished for their roles in the bombing. Burt, however, has never been found and his fate remains a topic of speculation among those who lived in Madison at the time and followed the anti-war movement.

Leo Burt was the only one of the four who has escaped the U.S. government's pursuit of the perpetrators of the bombing, which inadvertently resulted in the tragic killing on a researcher working in the early morning.

I say the DoJ has a bit too much time on its hands.

If criminal violence during the Vietnam War period is really a concern of the government, there are many possible targets who served in the Johnson and Nixon administrations that perpetrated this criminal war under false pretenses and myriad misrepresentations made to the American people.

You want to go after them?

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More Evidence Clears Innocent Jailed Wisconsin Veteran

by Michael Leon

Madison, Wisconsin - This is no misunderstanding.

The VA and DoJ know what they did.

The VA and DoJ indicted and convicted an innocent Wisconsin Navy veteran who blew the whistle, in arguably obnoxious tones of voice, on the VA engaging in one instance of fraud, and the VA's general bureaucratic stall-and-let-the-veterans-die-before-collecting-on-their-claims-policy.

Now comes the latest exculpatory evidence on U.S. Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1968–71), a Wisconsin citizen who became a political and legal VA target because he would not keep his mouth shut.

While seeking a claim for his diagnosed PTSD condition, the honorably discharged veteran ultimately received a criminal conviction (on wire fraud) courtesy of the efforts of the U.S. Dept of Justice, through the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Stephen Biskupic, that Roberts lied about his relationship with and his actions pertaining to a fellow Navy airman's, Gary Holland, death, crushed by a C-54 transport aircraft in a Feb. 1969 accident at a Naval airbase in Naples, Italy.

That's a thin reed on which to base a prosecution, but is typical of the basis of numerous U.S. Atty Biskupic's prosecutions.

Scott Horton, acclaimed human rights attorney of Harper's magazine, writes:

The prosecution smacks of retaliation and a plan to suppress veterans claims—Roberts was prosecuted for tenaciously pursuing a claim for benefits, which VA resisted and which is still in the benefits review process.

More corroborating evidence received here that Roberts, on line duty in 1969, a military position guiding flights on the ground, at the time that Airman Gary Holland was killed, further disconfirms the prosecution's case, a thin case already already discredited.

This new evidence comes from a veteran, and a distant relative of Roberts' in an e-mail, reading:

By the way, Keith had talked to me about the death of (Airman) Gary (Holland) a number of times in 1970 and 1971 when are Navy careers caused us to cross paths in Naples, Italy and in Norfolk, VA. Keith is my brother-in-law's nephew. I never thought this BS from the VA and the US attorney could have every actually led to a conviction and prison time.

Roberts has never varied from his account from 1969 of his actions during which a friend was killed (not even the Navy, VA and DoJ can deny the existence of a corpse), according to numerous intimates and relatives; though their testimony was never introduced at Roberts' 2006 trial.

Other veterans at the Italy airbase corroborate Roberts' account, but their accounts conflict with the government's, and therefore are narratives in which the VA and DoJ maintain an abiding disinterest.

The case remains under appeal at the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit at which oral arguments were addressed Oct. 25.; and at the U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC), fully briefed.

Do not look for U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Stephen Biskupic, to admit his travesty of justice in the Roberts' affair, anymore than he admitted his error in the prosecution of the innocent and decent Wisconsin woman, Georgia Thompson, whom he prosecuted for his selfish and appalling political motives.

Radio News: - Listen to the Lee Rayburn radio show for a full hour discussing the veteran Keith Roberts obscene prosecution by the U.S. government. [Give the radio show's file some time to load, long show.]

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Innocent Jailed Wisconsin Navy Vet's Plight on Radio

- Lee Rayburn for a full hour discussing the Keith Roberts obscenity - [Give the show's file some time to load, long show.]

Madison, Wisconsin — Navy Airman Keith Roberts (1969-71) sits in a federal penitentiary in Minnesota, serving a 48-month sentence since March, awaiting news from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit of his appeal for his conviction on federal wire fraud.

The honorably discharged veteran’s criminal conviction is based upon the U.S. Dept of Justice’s assertions, made through the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, Stephen Biskupic, that Roberts lied about his relationship with and his actions pertaining to a fellow Navy airman who was crushed to death by a C-54 transport aircraft in a Feb. 1969 accident at a Naval airbase in Naples, Italy.

The Lee Rayburn show on Madison's The MIC (92.1 F.M., Madison, Wisconsin) has covered the case thoroughly.

Listen to Lee Rayburn for a full hour discussing the Keith Roberts obscenity.

- Listen to Wisconsin Public Radio News (May 10, 2007).

Oral Arguments in U.S. v. Roberts
Access oral arguments held Oct. 25, 2007. [Enter 07-1546 in the Case Number's fields by entering 07 in the "Year," and entering 1546 in the "Year Fragment's" field. Give the file some 45 seconds at least to load.]

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Iraq-Vietnam Speech Reflects Desperation

George W. Bush's invoking the Vietnam withdrawal and post-World War II American occupation of Japan to support the continued occupation of Iraq is of-course laughable on its academic merits. [Via the Poltico, see one Bush-cited historian's knocking down such a comparison in November 2002.]

To the anti-intellectual and authoritarian Bush administration, facts and history are malleable instruments that can be changed to fit whatever ideological and political objective is on the administration docket.

But the well-crafted and politically risky speech is revealing of the desperate situation in which the anxious administration fabulists and fantasists find themselves.

They well know that if the invasion and occupation were to continue into the 2008 elections and be perceived by the electorate in anything resembling reality, the war party would face losses approaching the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater election.

So now, Bush attempts to once again reinvent reality, create his own history, and have his talking points bounce around the rightwing echo chamber, while proclaiming that the administration cannot be held accountable by the American public today but rather can be judged only by history.

Nothing to lose at this point for the Bushies, might as well try setting the record straight (by their lights) on Vietnam for which one segment of the Bushies' base still maintains a vague I-bet-we-coulda-won-that-one-too feeling. [The Watergate-Vietnam reforms making the executive branch constitutionally accountable to the people's representatives could use some reworking too, the Bushies feel.]

And war frightens the hell out of democrats.

It's like the 1970s movie, The Longest Yard, in which the quarterback Burt Reynolds repeatedly rifles a football into the most vulnerable part of the male anatomy, killing a man (Packers great Ray Nitschke) though no one really wants to find out for sure.

It worked once, it ought to work again, said Reynolds, to the giggles of his teammates in the huddle.

Bush is throwing war at the democrats again. And the typical democrat today is no Ray Nitschke.

The Vietnam-Japan gambit meant to capture or at least confuse the imaginations of one depoliticized segment of the public was predictably ridiculed by those for whom some semblance of reality is still necessary.

But the Bushies don’t care what a bunch of historians and intellectuals think; the Bushies can spin their own history just fine.

Even as the specter of another grand, foolish military venture dances around Washington scaring many of the testicularally-challenged democrats who appeased Bush on Iraq, Bush knows in his heart most Americans believe him to be wrong.

But when the rain falls, one ought to truly hold his head up high.

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Bush, Iraq and Vietnam