Tag: Woodstock

At least according to this Counter-intelligence Afghanistan Vet:

Jay Bagwell, Afghanistan Veteran, Counter-intelligence



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

Jay Bagwell:

My name is Jay Bagwell. I became a Counter Intelligence Agent in 2005, and deployed to Afghanistan in 2006.

As a Counter Intelligence Agent it is very clear to me, Torture puts our Troops in Danger.

Torture makes our Troops less Safe.

Torture creates Terrorists.

…

Forty years ago, during the darkest days of the Vietnam War, seekers of peace and love gathered at Woodstock. They came because they shared a common belief in the power of love, a common hope that music could heal America’s wounds and show it the way.

I came upon a child of God,

He was walking along the road,

I asked him, where are you going,

And this he told me.

I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm,

I’m going to join in a rock and roll band,

I’m going to camp out on the land,

And get my soul free.

Then can I walk beside you,

I have come here to lose the smog,

And I feel like a cog in something turning.

Well maybe it’s just the time of year,

Or maybe it’s the time of man,

I don’t know who l am,

But life is for learning.

By the time they got to Woodstock,

They were half a million strong.

And everywhere there was song and celebration,

And they dreamed they saw the bombers,

Riding shotgun in the sky,

Turning into butterflies,

Above our nation.

The dream of Woodstock didn’t come true.  40 years later, NSA surveillance satellites are riding shotgun in the sky, song and celebration are hard to find, the specter of war crimes and corruption and economic disintegration hangs above our nation.  America cynically rejected everything the Woodstock generation believed in.  Joni Mitchell’s song of peace and love could have been the anthem of a nation seeking redemption, but it survives only as a nostalgic reminder of what might have been.  

In 1967, John McCain was shot out of the North Vietnamese sky, crash landed in a lake, taken prisoner, and held in captivity for … 41 years, so far.

No one can dismiss the unimaginable agony of enduring six years in an enemy prisoner of war camp. It is surely a brutal experience both physically and mentally. It is the sort of experience that never leaves you and, indeed, it seems never to have left John McCain. His entire post-POW frame of reference is shaped by what he went through, and also by what he missed as a consequence of his incarceration.