Mail Call

Dear fellow citizens of the United States of America,

There is a grave injustice in this great nation that I believe every tax payer needs to be notified of. For those who support our troops whether at home or abroad I am asking you to please bear with me as I tell you the story of our Sailor who left on March sixth of this year as one hopeful to serve His country as He gained his education. Due to the abuse He suffered while in the Recruit Training Command at the hands of his leadership he is now in a Psychiatric Hospital in Pensacola, Florida. He suffers now from depression, panic attacks and anxiety to say the least. Every time He is confronted by someone in uniform he shakes uncontrollably and many times is left unable to speak due to the deep seeded fears he lives with daily. I am not asking for a healer but rather someone who will step forward and demand that the rights he once wanted to fight for are given to him. The Navy continues to find reasons to which the paperwork they have promised will be completed is always never done. He has been in the psychiatric hospital for over a month and we are looking at more weeks of the same to follow. We have contacted our local State Senators, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and even the Vice President seeking someone who will help us in this fight to bring our Sailor home. We have been through the proper channels and only receive one rejection letter after another. Now we lay his life before you and ask that someone will please help us heal our child with the right medicine, therapy and love that He so desperately needs. His boot camp experience was unlike any other and the way this division was run was as Allen’s Navy Recruiter has stated, “was beyond cruel and inhuman.” They were cussed out daily, nicknamed by the other divisions as the F.E.D, f’d every day. As Religious Petty Officer he was singled out and threatened because of His religion, commitment to excellence and devotion to the God he followed. One Petty Officer even spoke the words during one of His yelling sessions, that he would, “show him that He was bigger than the God Allen served.” We sent to the World’s Greatest Navy a happy, well rounded, faithful Christian who had preached since he was fourteen years old and even baptized someone two weeks before he was shipped out. What we got back was a scared and abused shell of the person he used to be. After much deliberation he has stayed at a hospital costing over a thousand dollars a day for over a month and they are now going to transfer him to a longer care facility for the deliberation of this time. All we want is for our broken Sailor to come home that through therapy and God’s hand alone we may after great time have back a whole child. The horrors he has lived through are to great to mention and the abuse he suffered brings nothing but tears to our eyes and shame to his heart. Please isn’t there someone who will stand up and fight for His right to come home. Can’t the Commander and Chief pardon this Sailor as He pardoned Libby, this Sailor who did nothing more than signed up to serve His country and in the end has signed His death warrant to the life and person he used to be. Won’t you please send your prayers as you send your letters to your local representatives all the way up to the President himself, on behalf of seaman apprentice Allen Hall Webb Jr, stationed at Pensacola, Florida. Please help us fight for the rights of the one who has given up his rights that he may try and fight for yours. Your taxes should not be spent on things such as these when this Sailor wants nothing more than to try and find his way back home again. We are grateful for your help and your letters, together we can change the course of his life. He is of no use to the Navy and has been deemed unfit for active duty, he is not some one who only wants out of a military life but rather someone whose circumstances and now medications have decided this for him. With your help we can make a difference, with your support we can bring him home.

The Allen Webb Family

I'm from Oregon. Nuff said. Have lots of opinions about Texas. Won't vent right now. I have a question. When one from out of state hears from many that the parole board in Texas has "broad discretion" it raises alot of questions. Has your paper ever done an in-depth investigation on the parole board, or are you just as nervous about them as every attorney seems to be??? Yeah, I guess you could consider this a challenge. Thank you Houston Press for coming as close to my beloved Willamette Week as possible in Texas.