Category: Iraq

From the New York Times, July 14, 2010…

“If this country has been misled, if this committee, this Congress, has been misled by pretext into a war in which thousands of young men have died, and many more thousands have been crippled for life, and out of which their country has lost prestige, moral position in the world, the consequences are very great,” Senator Albert Gore Sr. of Tennessee, the father of the future vice president, said in March 1968 in a closed session of the Foreign Relations Committee.

And yes indeed, the country had been misled, but there were no consequences for any of the liars who lied us into Vietnam.

At another point, the committee’s chairman, Senator William Fulbright, Democrat of Arkansas, raised concerns that if the senators did not take a stand on the war, “We are just a useless appendix on the governmental structure.”

And thirty years later, in 2001 and 2003, that same “useless appendix,” the United States Senate, was once again stampeded into endorsing useless wars based on nothing but lies.

Even at the time, there was widespread skepticism about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which the North Vietnamese were said to have attacked American destroyers on Aug. 4, 1964, two days after an earlier clash.

In the end, however, the senators did not further pursue their doubts. As Mr. Church said in one session that was focused on the staff report into the episode, if the committee came up with proof that an attack never occurred, “we have a case that will discredit the military in the United States, and discredit and quite possibly destroy the president.”

“We have a case that will discredit the military of the United States,” said Frank Church, but this was a ridiculous exaggeration.

Would their case have discredited private soldiers on the field of battle, bravely advancing against the enemy?

No!

Would their case have discredited junior officers or even brigade or division commanders?

No!

But their case would have totally discredited the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the CIA, and the President of the United States, and was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 58,000 American soldiers who were killed in Vietnam?

Was saving those goddamned liars more important than the 2,000,000 Vietnamese civilians who perished in that senseless war?

And the answer was yes, for the Washington elite, and even for liberal Democrats like Frank Church and William Fulbright.

But would the American public have been so eager to sacrifice so many lives for nothing, if they had known the truth?

“In a democracy you cannot expect the people, whose sons are being killed and who will be killed, to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them,” said Senator Frank Church.

“You cannot expect the people to exercise their judgment if the truth is concealed from them.”

And how was the truth concealed?

And you thought that meant the U.S. courts I’ll bet {we don’t do accountability of top officials representing us}, nope it’s the British high courts and a Brit Government Inquiry into torture is also setting to begin. But they both will bring out the U.S. participation in that which we condemn those we occupy and are fighting of doing.

The Ruling Borg of Psychopaths  

“What is missing [in psychopaths], in other words, are the very qualities that allow a human being to live in social harmony.”[  

—  Robert Hare

America’s ruling elite have become extremely and increasingly destructive to social values both at home and abroad, to a degree one must recognize as both criminal and pathological.  

Record number of Army suicides in June

7/15/2010 Officials have been grappling with how to identify, treat soldiers at risk

The U.S. Army on Thursday reported a record number of suicides in a single month among active duty, Guard and Reserve troops, despite an aggressive program of counseling, training and education aimed at suicide prevention.

Suicides for the first half of the year are up 12 percent over 2009. In June, 32 soldiers are believed to have committed suicide, including 21 on active duty.

The June report came as the Army also released a 20-minute training video on suicide prevention titled, “Shoulder to Shoulder – I will never quit on life.”  Continued

Sorting through the complexities in Afghanistan

July 13: Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, talks with Rachel Maddow about the history of the relationship between Afghanistan and Pakistan and the different Taliban groups active in the region.

Iraq, Rapidly becoming the Forgotten War!!

There have been 4,729 coalition deaths — 4,410 Americans, 2 Australians, 1 Azerbaijani, 179 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, 1 Czech, 7 Danes, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonians, 1 Fijian, 5 Georgians, 1 Hungarian, 33 Italians, 1 Kazakh, 1 South Korean, 3 Latvian, 22 Poles, 3 Romanians, 5 Salvadoran, 4 Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, 2 Thai and 18 Ukrainians — in the war in Iraq as of May 5 2010, according to a CNN count. { Graphical breakdown of casualties }. The list also includes 13 U.S. Defense Department civilian employees. At least 31,860 {31,839 last month} U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon. View casualties in the war in Afghanistan

This is going to be short.

Meant to inform of this day, to send you to one extremely dedicated individuals own post, to hopefully send some to search out even more {if you haven’t followed the real issues}, for the trolls who won’t see these issues on conservative blogs or news? sites, and we probably won’t hear a peep on any of the Sunday Morning empty blab shows or news outlets.

Angelina Jolie Speaks Out for World Refugee Day

Borrowing from Joe Wilson’s take on “What I didn’t find in…” comes a story today from the NY Times that Afghanistan is rich in untapped natural resources.

WASHINGTON – The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

Do you remember Osama Bin Laden? The reason we went to war. Or was it?  

This was previously blogged this afternoon over at FDL much better than I could do it, so I’m going to direct you over to there and Jane Hamsher and Jim White:

Transcript:  Daniel Ellsberg Says He Fears US Might Assassinate Wikileaks Founder

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.c…

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange released the Iraq War video “Collateral Murder” this past April, which is shot from the viewpoint of the US Apache Helicopter crew who murdered 2 Reuters journalists in 2007.   The person who leaked the video to Wikileaks, Spc Bradley Manning, was arrested May 26th 2010 in Iraq.

My previous diary 6/7/10  “Wikileaks source arrested, hacker snitched”

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

Diary on the video, 4/5/10,   “Wikileaks: Reuters and kids as collateral damage”

https://www.docudharma.com/diar…

For you younger folk, Daniel Ellsberg was the reason we finally began to get out of the Vietnam War, because he leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.  

Ellsberg wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D…

He attended Harvard University, graduating with a Ph.D. (summa cum laude) in Economics in 1962 in which he described a paradox in decision theory now known as the Ellsberg paradox. He graduated first in a class of almost 1,100 lieutenants at the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Virginia, and served as an officer in the Marine Corps for two years. After his discharge, he became an analyst at the RAND Corporation.

Ellsberg served in the Pentagon from August 1964[1] under Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (and, in fact, was on duty on the evening of the Gulf of Tonkin incident, reporting the incident to McNamara). He then served for two years in Vietnam working for General Edward Lansdale as a civilian in the State Department.

After returning from Vietnam, Ellsberg went back to work at the RAND Corporation. In 1967, he contributed to a top-secret study of classified documents regarding the conduct of the Vietnam War that had been commissioned by Defense Secretary McNamara.[2] These documents, completed in 1968, later became known collectively as the Pentagon Papers. Because he held an extremely high-level security clearance, Ellsberg was one of very few individuals who had access to the complete set of documents.[3] They revealed that the government had knowledge all along that the war would not likely be won, and that continuing the war would lead to many times more casualties than was ever admitted publicly.[4] Further, the papers showed that high-ranking officials had a deep cynicism toward the public, as well as disregard for the loss of life and injury suffered by soldiers and civilians.[4]

Pentagon Papers wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P…

The Pentagon Papers, officially titled United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense, was a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States’ political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Commissioned by United States Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara in 1967, the study was completed in 1968. The papers were first brought to the attention of the public on the front page of the New York Times in 1971.[1]

Daniel Ellsberg quote, years later:

Well, I had been consulting for the government, and this is now ’64, for about six years at that point, since ’58, in particular since ’59: Eisenhower, Kennedy, and now Johnson. And I had seen a lot of classified material by this time-I mean, tens of thousands of pages-and had been in a position to compare it with what was being said to the public. The public is lied to every day by the President, by his spokespeople, by his officers. If you can’t handle the thought that the President lies to the public for all kinds of reasons, you couldn’t stay in the government at that level, or you’re made aware of it, a week. …..   The fact is Presidents rarely say the whole truth-essentially, never say the whole truth-of what they expect and what they’re doing and what they believe and why they’re doing it and rarely refrain from lying, actually, about these matters.[26]

Daniel Zwerdling {link takes you to a page of his reports}, of NPR, has been doing stellar investigative reporting on PTSD and TBI, now for a number of years, as the two occupations we’re engaged in continued on. It took the media a few years to finally grasp what was already known as to the results of War on the soldiers we send. Even with the some four decades of many of us Vietnam Veterans, as well as other Veterans, and the Civilians who recognized those results and have been speaking out about. Like everything else the public either ignored or certainly didn’t want to hear. We didn’t have the present day technology and sadly it’s taking two more long occupations for the realities to finally speak of what happens and reach more and more people who now can’t ignore. The media to finally started reporting on the results of war, not recognized before, as well as the understanding that same happens within the civilian populations, wars are not the only cause. Traumatic Brain Injuries have been known about and treated in the public but even those are being looked at and re-studied, as there is much more now known in needing to understand and bring new treatments for or advance the treatments used.

Honoring the fallen in Afghanistan

Staff Sgt. Rachel Martinez, USAF Photo by SSgt. Matt Davis, USAF NTM-A

31 May 2010 As the sun set over Camp Eggers on Memorial Day, hundreds of coalition members gathered to pay tribute to comrades lost in battle – not just U.S. fallen heroes, but fallen heroes from every nation.

During the coalition memorial remembrance ceremony, service members who gave their life in support of Operation Enduring Freedom were honored with a moment of silence and a roll call of their names during a candlelight ceremony.

“Those that have given their last full measure for this mission are as varied as those that serve here today,” said Army Lt. Gen. William Caldwell IV, NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan and Combined Security Transition Command-Afghanistan commanding general. “Privates to chief warrant officers to lieutenant colonels – from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Canada, Latvia, the United States and from Afghanistan – they are members of all services, from National Guard, Reserve and Active components.”

While many countries have their own dedicated day set aside to remember the fallen members of their armed forces, special effort was made to include all coalition countries into the Memorial Day remembrance as a sign of the joint effort and sacrifice happening in Afghanistan. Representatives of many coalition nations were present at the ceremony, raising flags, lighting candles and paying their respects. Continued