Thanks for the insights, Roger. I had a chance to jack it up last
weekend and take a look.  When I rotated the wheel (with and without
brakes) everything was fine and no sign of squeaking and binding. Looked
at it some more and wiggled it some more and discovered lots of slack in
the bearings. It seems the wheel was pivoting up and pushing on the
break shoes (or something) because of the play in the bearings.
Tightened the axle nut back up and all was well, until last night, when
the squeaking came back.

Looks like new bearings is the next step.

On Mon, 2006-11-06 at 15:58 -0500, Roger Sisler wrote:
> I had my Vanagon up on blocks,once.Real concrete blocks. The blocks
> crushed,and the Van came crashing down  on the brake drum. The drum hit
> concrete.An imovable object. Well, the weakest link was damaged. The
> Vanagon. I had a pulsating in my brake pedal. Could it have been a bent
> brake drum? A bent wheel bearing? A bent hub?A bent stub axel? Could have
> been all the avove.I didnt want to replace each, trial and error. Each
> could have been at fault.What I did was to go to a junkyard and get a low
> mileage hub and brake assembely.Had a stub axel in it. A backing
> plate,bearing,housing,ext.I replaced them, all in one fell swoop.The
> pulsating went away.To this  day, I do not know what component was
> damaged.Perhaps each was a bit bent. I had no noise as you tell.You say a
> tire blew out? Are your lug nuts tight?
>