Brittany DeBarros, an army reserve officer, scheduled a series of tweets and facebook posts with facts on U.S. militarism during her #14DayOrders. She got to Day 8 when the Army Times released an article calling her actions "anti-military" and indicated that she is being investigated for political speech while serving.
In solidarity, About Face: Veterans Against War, Veterans For Peace and other veteran advocacy groups have continued to tweet the remaining facts and include more information on each of the facts. All of the posts that Brittany has made are facts, sourced from the military itself, (click here to see Brittany's sources), so to indicate that these posts are anti-military would mean that the military disagrees with their own actions.
Day 1: At the current rate, the U.S. drops a bomb every 12 minutes. (FB and Twitter)
Day 2: The U.S. military burns 10,273,972 gallons of oil per day. (FB and Twitter)
Day 3: On any given day, the U.S. is actively bombing 7 predominately Black/Brown and Muslim countries (FB and Twitter)
Day 4: Number of Foreign Military Bases- United States: 800 Rest of the world combined: 70 (FB and Twitter)
Day 5: Afghan Civilians killed/injured- 2009: 4,732 2018: 8,019 (FB and Twitter)
Day 6: Approx. 45% of kids on military bases are eligible for free or reduce cost lunch. (FB and Twitter)
Day 7: Defense corporations made contributions to 496 of 525 Congress members in 2018. (FB and Twitter)
Day 8: The U.S. Dept. of State cleared a record breaking $75.9 billion in foreign weapons sales last year. (FB and Twitter)
Day 9: The DOD has transfered $5.4 billion in military equipment to state/local police agencies. Studies show as police gain more military equipment they tend to kill more civilians, sometimes up to 129% more. (FB and Twitter)
Day 10: The 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force has been used to justify at least 37 operations in 14 countries. The Senate voted against fixing/repealing it last year 61-36. (FB and Twitter)
Day 11: The cancer rate in Iraq is at least 40 times higher now than before the first U.S. invasion. Logs show birth defect rates 14x higher than Hiroshima and Nagasaki experienced. (FB and Twitter)
Day 12: The Pentagon environmental program reported 39,000 contaminated sites spread across 19 million acres in the U.S. alone. (FB and Twitter)
Day 13: The DOD admits to killing 499 civilians last year, though 450 cases remain to be "investigated". 3rd party researchers place numbers closer to about 12 people a day. (FB and Twitter)
Day 14:
Birttany's courageous actions are bringing much needed attention to the ways the Military Industrial Complex operates, and highlighting the ongoing #DroptheMIC campaign initiated by About Face: Veterans Against War.
We are assembling letters of support for Brittany, who is being overwhelmed with negative responses by trolls. Send your note of support to press@veteransforpeace.org and we will compile them all for Brittany.
Press Coverage:
Army Times: Army Reserve officer who went on anti-military Twitter tirade is now under investigation
Business Insider: An Army officer is publicly protesting the US government's 'war machine' — and it's gotten the Army's attention
Task & Purpose: The Army Is Investigating An Officer For Publicly Protesting The US Government’s ‘War Machine’