Ann Wright: 'My Daughter’s Dream Became a Nightmare': The Murder of Military Women Continues

[babylonsister]

'My Daughter’s Dream Became a Nightmare': The Murder of Military Women Continues

by Ann Wright


"My daughter's dream became a nightmare," sadly said Gloria Barrios, seven months after her daughter, US Air Force Senior Airman Blanca Luna, was murdered on Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas.

On March 7, 2008, Senior Airman Luna, 27, was found dead in her room at the Sheppard Air Force Base Inn, an on-base lodging facility. She had been stabbed in the back of the neck with a short knife. Luna, an Air Force Reservist with four years of prior military service in the Marine Corps including a tour in Japan, was killed three days before she was to graduate from an Air Conditioning, Ventilation and Heating training course.

When she was notified of her daughter's death, she was handed a letter from Major General K.C. McClain, Commander of the Air Force Personnel Center, which stated that her daughter "was found dead on 7 March 2008 at Sheppard Air Force Base, Texas, as the result of an apparent homicide." When her body was returned to her family for burial, Barrios and other family members saw bruises on Blanca's face and wounds on her fingers as if she were defending herself. One of the investigators later told Mrs. Barrios that Blanca had been killed in an "assassin-like" manner. Friends say that she told them some in her unit "had given her problems."

Seven months later, Luna's mother made her first visit to the base where her daughter was killed to pry more information about her daughter's death from the Air Force. Although the Air Force sent investigators to her home in Chicago several times to brief her on the case, she was concerned that the Air Force would not provide a copy of the autopsy report and other documents, seven months after Luna was killed. The Air Force says it cannot provide Mrs. Barrios with a copy of the autopsy as the investigation is "ongoing." Mrs. Barrios plans to have an independent autopsy conducted.

She was accompanied by her sister and six persons from a support group in Chicago and by several concerned Texans from Dallas, Fort Worth and Denton. The Chicago support group, composed of long time, experienced social justice activists in the Hispanic community, also included Juan Torres, whose son John, an Army soldier, was found dead under very suspicious circumstances in 2004 at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Because of his battle to get documents from the Army bureaucracy on the death of his son four years ago, Torres has been helping the Barrios family in their effort to gain information about the death of Luna.

When Mrs. Barrios and friends arrived on the Air Base they were greeted by five Air Force officials. Mrs. Barrios requested that her support group be allowed to join her in an Air Force conducted bus tour of the facilities where her daughter went to school and the lodging facility where she was found dead, but the request was denied. Mrs. Barrios then asked that her friend and translator Magda Castaneda and retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright be allowed to go on the bus and attend the meeting with the base commander and investigators.

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http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/10/06-4

[alstephenson]

1. K & R (with great sadness)...

[Joe Chi Minh]

2. I believe in the area of rape of every kind, the US , and maybe one or two of its fascist allies

in South America, far exceeds any level of depravity plumbed by any other totalitarian regime within the last century or so. As far as I can judge from the absence of hostile propaganda on the theme, Communist regimes must have been beacons of spiritual purity in comparison.

It seems to approach the depravity of the lynchings in the US, the shooting of the street children in Brazil, the bestiality of Pinochet's torturers and Mengele's handiwork on the bodies of Jewish infants. Man cannot worship Mammon and exhibit such hatred towards his brothers and sisters and not plumb the depths of sexual depravity.

[bertman]

7. KCabot, I wouldn't get too effusive with the praise for the Communists on this issue. Check

out a book written by James A. Michener immediately after the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. The Soviets were absolutely ruthless in their suppression of the uprising against them by the Hungarians. The cruelty and savagery are horrendous. And it was institutional.

We have some very sick people and some horrible things have happened in our military, but we are talking about millions of people who are trained to fight and kill. In that setting and with that many service members, it is no surprise that these types of things are going to happen at least as often as in civil society. When it does, the military honchos are going to do everything they can to keep it quiet. That said, it does not appear to be institutional, meaning sanctioned by the military, but rather a byproduct of some individuals who have gone over the edge.

I am not trying to diminish the monstrous nature of what happened to those soldiers, but I also do not want to paint our military as being anywhere near the level of the Soviets or even the Japanese during WWII. Because it is not the case.

[Joe Chi Minh]

10. "..... but I also do not want to paint our military as being anywhere

near the level of the Soviets or even the Japanese during WWII. Because it is not the case.

Wrong. Your civil society, it seems, is just as sick with regard to rape, so your blandishment on that score of the parallel with civil society, in fact, confirms my point.

I was not talking about absolutely ruthless suppression or horrendous cruelty and savagery. The British Empire must have led the way in that for a long, long time. I was talking about a dimension of sexual depravity allied to it, that is so sick as to defy belief, both "freelance", as in your military, and in your Government-sanctioned, institutionalised torture.

When I mentioned on DU that I had heard an American female professor on our TV in the UK saying that women in her country live in a constant state of fear of a sexual attack, I was expecting some very harsh repudiations of that from at least some of the women posters. But, on the contrary, only one woman responded and that was to concur; and she was clearly a very spirited person.

She said that when she parked her car at the supermarket, she parked it as far away from other vehicles as she could. Immensely sick as British society has become, that sounds strange to our ears. We expect that kind of sexual assault from a deranged "loner", but it seems (I'm surmising) this lady fears being abducted and raped by a group of males.


Read the article linked below, and then tell me that Michener described such scenes in the suppression of the Hungarian Revolution. Or that their goons, any Communist regimes, trained dogs to rape their women prisoners; or that police vigilantes in a Communist country ever went on sprees killing steet-children for local shop-keepers - kind of indiscriminate bounty hunters. Just so long as they look "ragged" street-children types. Or, indeed, that any children were homeless, any children lived "rough", always on the edge of starvation in any Communist country. Or that there was child pornography and chiuld prostitution. I never ever read of any, in stark contrast to our far-right, national cess-pits. And I can only assume it reflects a lack of imagination on the part of our normally exotically-mendacious, Western propagandists.

http://www.commonprejudice.com/latin_america/index.html

PS: At an army camp in the UK called Deepcut, several young male soldiers died mysterious deaths, and there is every appearance of a cover-up at the highest level in relation to it. Google "Deepcut", but here is a good article:

http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2007/no1_cathcart

But if there was a pattern of rape against young female sodiers in our forces in the UK, similar to yours, I think there would be hell to pay. I expect we specialise in more deviant sexual assaults, if Deepcut is any guide, though it did seem to be largely localised, and not a thriving culture.

[kas125]

3. Thank you for posting this. Our CP chapter had a fund raiser where

the arrangements were made for Ann to attend the meeting with Gloria in Texas. I am so disappointed to read that they got no new information and that Gloria was treated no better than she was before. My heart just breaks for her, she's such a sweet lady and she just seems so sad and lost.

[bluesmail]

4. SOP: Investigation is ongoing. Where oh where have I heard that before?

[babylonsister]

5. And that's why people like Ann Wright are so important. So we don't

forget, and so they don't get away with this travesty.

[bertman]

6. Thank you, Babylonsister, for posting this. And thanks to Col. Wright for her dedication to

bringing these horrendous acts to light and the perpetrators to justice.

On edit: is there any indication from the family as to what this young woman did that might have made her a target? Sounds like she had mentioned it to her family at some point.

[sce56]

8. Sick Disgusting and looks like the military is not even trying to keep up the rule of law anymore!

This needs a Congressional investigation Sen Boxer where are you? She was appalled at the number of rapes even Doonesbury has put those in his strip! Of course we could not get any help from a maverick on this I'm sure! When I joined the Army in 74 it was a mess and had a lot of the old stereotype things like the mechanic sleeping under the jeep in the motor pool, Drill Sgt's that would drop you off at the training site then pick you up tapping out their pipes and with real red eyes! It took a few years to straighten up but twenty years later the Army was a real professional force when I retired! Now it is just a hollow shell of what it was especially with them having to scrape the bottom of the barrel to get recruits with moral waivers, Killers, Rapist's and Druggies! How many more times will I have to see these reports here at DU? The bastards that did this need to be tried for crimes against our nation and I'm not talking about the criminal that killed this Airman he or she needs to be found and Court Martialed but the leaders that did this sit over in Washington especially the jerks that broke their oath to support and defend the Constitution of these United States! You'll never hear the maverick or the GILF talk about these crimes it is just business as usual to them!


On the investigation I don't understand how it is so hard to find the killer now days when you come in they swab you for DNA identification!

[OakCliffDem]

9. Kick