Ruth: Friday, the news our group focused on primarily from Iraq was that the 172nd Stryker Brigade was not coming home, that the Bully Boy's vague noises about a few troops coming home were revealed as more weasel words hoping to persuade a nation that, despite the news from Iraq, things were a-o-k.
We took those events and compared them to the war we lived through many, many years ago: Vietnam.
We made comparisons. Such as Dick Cheney's laughable attempts to silence criticism of today's illegal war by saying those who criticize are aiding terrorists, soft on terrorism and the many other smears. We wondered whether the Democratic Party is uninformed, historically ignorant or just bound and determined not to make waves?
Vice President Cheney's attacks, and the attacks of others in the administration, are not surprising, nor are they new. February 1972, H.R. Haldeman says critics of Tricky Dick's so-called "peace plan" are aiding the enemy. We talked of all the nonsense about that so-called peace plan, such as the fact that as early as 1969 it was being accepted at face value as was Nixon's claim, 1969, that the North Vietnemese were the obstacle.
Year after the year, Nixon made noises of a peace plan and, year after year, the war dragged on.
He used terms like "Vietnamization." Bully Boy does not use that term but he uses the same plan. Nixon swore peace was just around the corner and, via Vietnamization, US troops would be able to come home, just as soon as they had trained the South Vietnemese and just as soon as the South Vietnemese were up to the task.
For instance, Nixon spoke of that in January, 1972. Dot remembers it well, it was the day of her son's second birthday. She spoke of how, even though she was against Nixon, as she found herself trying to ice the cake, too soon so sections of the top were coming off, hearing his "six months" bandied about, and thinking, "Okay, the war is going to end." January 25, 1972.
There was the eight-point "peace plan" of May 1969. There was always talk of a "peace plan" and the war went on, day after day, American and Vietnemese losing their lives, but always the talk of "peace" coming out of the White House, always the false promises.
We spoke of how "Vietnamization" was actually started by LBJ. We wondered how many people hearing Bully Boy's empty words that the troops would come home as soon as the Iraqi forces were trained and security was, bit by bit, turned over to them, flash backed to Nixon or LBJ? Remembered those days and the encouragment some found in those words that never did pan out.
They were never meant to produce results of that kind. Their intended result was to lull the American people into thinking the White House had a plan, the White House was interested in ending the war, and that this would happen shortly but be patient.
When people look back on Vietnam today and wondered how the war managed to last so long, those empty words, intended to lull a nation into complacency, were part of it.
So all these years later, when most of us thought that our country had learned some lessons and we would be spending these "golden years" in peace, we instead find our country once again caught in a war of its own making, once again being counseled to be "patient" and to realize it is a slow process. Yes, illegal wars often are a slow process.
So the question we wanted to take from our Friday meeting was, "Do you know about Vietnamization?" We wanted to take that question back to our families and see how many remembered those earlier days of false promises meant to lull the people into accepting the continued killing and dying, the continuation of an illegal war?
Grabbing at a window of time, I called C.I. Saturday afternoon and said the report could be posted as I had e-mailed but I thought I might have something to add. I do. Most of our childen and the majority of our grandchildren really do not grasp this. A few times, some have heard "Vietnamization" with regards to Iraq but they have not heard it explained. So this is what I have to add: If you lived through that time and you remember it, do not make a sentence comparing the two and think the people you are speaking with grasp what you are talking about.
What we have found is that most of the people who nod think you are just talking about the fact that Nixon claimed we would be out when the South Vietnemese could secure the country. That is it only in the broadest sense. They are not aware that this 'promise' began shortly after Nixon took office, that it was regularly presented to the people as a 'peace plan' and for two terms, granted he did not complete his second term, Nixon tried to use it to lull a weary people into a sense of false hope.
There was no plan. Nixon had no plan. Vietnamization was not a plan. He did not even come up with it, LBJ gets blame for that. But that "plan" was no doubt the "plan" when the US first went into Iraq. It is not a plan for ending a war. It is a plan for continuing one. As long as Bully Boy promotes this "plan" today, there is no real plan. The "plan" is the same one he invaded Iraq with. It is over three years later, countless lives later, and the "plan" that will allow US troops to come home is the same "plan" that would have allowed it when the illegal invasion began.
Three years later, as Iraq has spiraled into chaos and violence, he has no new plan. He has no way to adapt. He may not want to. He is being stubborn and sticking with the original "plan" not looking at changes on the ground and rethinking.
The troops do not come home under this "plan." During Vietnam, this "plan" never brought the troops home. The only thing that ends the war, is the American people demanding that it end.
Accepting that a non-changing plan is somehow reason to trust a leader is being foolish.
Again, if you lived through that earlier era and remember it, please share it with the people you know. Please make sure they grasp that it is not just that it is a similar "plan" that Nixon and Bully Boy offered, but that Nixon offered it over and over throughout his time in the White House. It did not bring the troops home in 1969 and the troops did not come home under Nixon at all. Nixon resigned in 1974. The troops were still in Vietnam.
ruths report
the common ills
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts: "Condi Takes Time Out To Perform Again!"
Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts: "Condi Takes Time Out To Perform Again!" Good thing the nations not at war all is peaceful, right?
the world today just nuts
condi takes time out to perform again
condi rice
comic
the common ills
NYT: "Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects" (James Glanz)
The State Department agency in charge of $1.4 billion in reconstruction money in Iraq used an accounting shell game to hide ballooning cost overruns on its projects there and knowingly withheld information on schedule delays from Congress, a federal audit released late Friday has found.
The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.
Called the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion.
[. . .]
The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred questions about the audit to the State Department in Washington, where a spokesman, Justin Higgins, said Saturday, "We have not yet had a chance to fully review this report, but certainly will consider it carefully, as we do all the findings of the inspector general."
The above is from James Glanz' "Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects" in this morning's New York Times and, of course, the State Department hasn't had time to review the report -- Condi's had gigs. That requires not just performance time and warm up time ahead of the performance, it also requires practice time. America just needs to decide whether they want a functioning State Department or Condi Live!
You can't have both. They're full time jobs and she's one person. So before someone rains on her parade, they need to ask themselves if they're willing to give the musical genius that is Condi? She can't be jamming and hitting the stage while also being bothered with reports and audits.
And excuse me, but the Times has been known to review out of town (NYC) performances before. Would it have killed the arts department to provided a review of the musical stylings of Condi?
(The above, my comments -- not the Glanz excert -- was sarcasm. And I'll probably come back in to this entry later and link to Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts that will go up shortly because it's on the same topic.)
From Edward Wong's "Pentagon Extends Tour for 4,000 Troops, Increasing Number in Iraq:"
The 172nd Stryker Brigade was deployed to Mosul in August 2005. The brigade had been preparing to return to its home base, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, when the Pentagon ordered a tour extension.
Many military officials have said that asking soldiers to serve more than a year at a time in Iraq grinds away at morale and motivation. That effect is one of the reasons the Marines usually do six- or seven-month tours here rather than a full year, which the Army prefers. In the spring of 2004, morale plummeted among soldiers of the First Armored Division when they were asked to stay beyond their yearlong tour in order to quell a Shiite uprising.
Wong notes that the prediction (experts and analysts) is that there will "be no significant troop pullout before the year’s end" and also notes that reports (from the US military) differ on the numbers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade -- an official press release by the military states 3,700 but a general has told him it is 3,500 members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade that just got told their August departures have been pulled and they'll be remaining in Iraq "for up to four months".
In "Relentless Sectarian Violence in Baghdad Stalks Its Victims Even at the Morgues," Kirk Semple takes a look the ones who remain. Your loved one's missing. Have they been imprisoned in an Abu Ghraib, have they been kidnapped, have they been killed? Where do you go? The morgues. Semple writes that some Sunnis no longer feel safe going to the central morgue in Baghdad because Shi'ite armed groups are staking it out and there have been reports of killings and kidnappings. Official denials are issued and Semple notes this:
In May, about a dozen Sunni relatives from Tarmiya, northeast of Baghdad, drove to the morgue to look for two cousins who had been kidnapped two weeks earlier. Mindful of the reports that Sunnis had been attacked there, the family had decided to travel in a large group for protection.
But at the front gate, the relatives were surrounded by five carloads of gunmen, said a family member, who only allowed publication of his first name, Thaer, out of fear for his safety. "They asked us to lie on the ground," he said in a recent interview here. "They checked our ID's, looked at our names."
The gunmen, who Thaer said he suspected were from the Mahdi Army, plucked two men from the group and took them away. The rest of the family fled without entering the morgue.
The family paid a hefty ransom for the release of those two men, but never found the two kidnapped cousins.
Where's Ruth, grabbing time for a rewrite (one she wanted to do, she phoned that she was rewriting before I read the report). In terms of The Third Estate Sunday Review, I was asked if we could note an op-ed there. (Not from the Times.) It is both uninformed and insulting. I didn't read it when I said we could probably work it in (due to the topic of the op-ed -- the broad category under which it would be filed). We were moving along relatively quick and then Ava read the op-ed. We called back about it because we hated it and were told pretty much everyone hates it. We had thought we'd be reviewing Grey's Anatomy but went with Primetime instead and the op-ed actually can fall into the TV review section so as soon as we're both ready, we're going back in to the TV review and adding that on. (The friend noting it thought I'd get that it was offensive right away and would have had I read it earlier. I thought, by the topic, it would be a social issue worthy of note. That's not the case.) (This may go up before The Third Estate Sunday Review does. I'm doing this entry while we're on a break and intending to post after we finish the editorial. If it does go up first, it means we're running behind on the editorial. If you see links near the end to new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review, this entry obviously posted after.)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
kirk semple
james glanz
edward wong
the third estate sunday review
The agency hid construction overruns by listing them as overhead or administrative costs, according to the audit, written by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, an independent office that reports to Congress, the Pentagon and the State Department.
Called the United States Agency for International Development, or A.I.D., the agency administers foreign aid projects around the world. It has been working in Iraq on reconstruction since shortly after the 2003 invasion.
[. . .]
The United States Embassy in Baghdad referred questions about the audit to the State Department in Washington, where a spokesman, Justin Higgins, said Saturday, "We have not yet had a chance to fully review this report, but certainly will consider it carefully, as we do all the findings of the inspector general."
The above is from James Glanz' "Audit Finds U.S. Hid Cost of Iraq Projects" in this morning's New York Times and, of course, the State Department hasn't had time to review the report -- Condi's had gigs. That requires not just performance time and warm up time ahead of the performance, it also requires practice time. America just needs to decide whether they want a functioning State Department or Condi Live!
You can't have both. They're full time jobs and she's one person. So before someone rains on her parade, they need to ask themselves if they're willing to give the musical genius that is Condi? She can't be jamming and hitting the stage while also being bothered with reports and audits.
And excuse me, but the Times has been known to review out of town (NYC) performances before. Would it have killed the arts department to provided a review of the musical stylings of Condi?
(The above, my comments -- not the Glanz excert -- was sarcasm. And I'll probably come back in to this entry later and link to Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts that will go up shortly because it's on the same topic.)
From Edward Wong's "Pentagon Extends Tour for 4,000 Troops, Increasing Number in Iraq:"
The 172nd Stryker Brigade was deployed to Mosul in August 2005. The brigade had been preparing to return to its home base, Fort Wainwright, Alaska, when the Pentagon ordered a tour extension.
Many military officials have said that asking soldiers to serve more than a year at a time in Iraq grinds away at morale and motivation. That effect is one of the reasons the Marines usually do six- or seven-month tours here rather than a full year, which the Army prefers. In the spring of 2004, morale plummeted among soldiers of the First Armored Division when they were asked to stay beyond their yearlong tour in order to quell a Shiite uprising.
Wong notes that the prediction (experts and analysts) is that there will "be no significant troop pullout before the year’s end" and also notes that reports (from the US military) differ on the numbers from the 172nd Stryker Brigade -- an official press release by the military states 3,700 but a general has told him it is 3,500 members of the 172nd Stryker Brigade that just got told their August departures have been pulled and they'll be remaining in Iraq "for up to four months".
In "Relentless Sectarian Violence in Baghdad Stalks Its Victims Even at the Morgues," Kirk Semple takes a look the ones who remain. Your loved one's missing. Have they been imprisoned in an Abu Ghraib, have they been kidnapped, have they been killed? Where do you go? The morgues. Semple writes that some Sunnis no longer feel safe going to the central morgue in Baghdad because Shi'ite armed groups are staking it out and there have been reports of killings and kidnappings. Official denials are issued and Semple notes this:
In May, about a dozen Sunni relatives from Tarmiya, northeast of Baghdad, drove to the morgue to look for two cousins who had been kidnapped two weeks earlier. Mindful of the reports that Sunnis had been attacked there, the family had decided to travel in a large group for protection.
But at the front gate, the relatives were surrounded by five carloads of gunmen, said a family member, who only allowed publication of his first name, Thaer, out of fear for his safety. "They asked us to lie on the ground," he said in a recent interview here. "They checked our ID's, looked at our names."
The gunmen, who Thaer said he suspected were from the Mahdi Army, plucked two men from the group and took them away. The rest of the family fled without entering the morgue.
The family paid a hefty ransom for the release of those two men, but never found the two kidnapped cousins.
Where's Ruth, grabbing time for a rewrite (one she wanted to do, she phoned that she was rewriting before I read the report). In terms of The Third Estate Sunday Review, I was asked if we could note an op-ed there. (Not from the Times.) It is both uninformed and insulting. I didn't read it when I said we could probably work it in (due to the topic of the op-ed -- the broad category under which it would be filed). We were moving along relatively quick and then Ava read the op-ed. We called back about it because we hated it and were told pretty much everyone hates it. We had thought we'd be reviewing Grey's Anatomy but went with Primetime instead and the op-ed actually can fall into the TV review section so as soon as we're both ready, we're going back in to the TV review and adding that on. (The friend noting it thought I'd get that it was offensive right away and would have had I read it earlier. I thought, by the topic, it would be a social issue worthy of note. That's not the case.) (This may go up before The Third Estate Sunday Review does. I'm doing this entry while we're on a break and intending to post after we finish the editorial. If it does go up first, it means we're running behind on the editorial. If you see links near the end to new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review, this entry obviously posted after.)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
the new york times
kirk semple
james glanz
edward wong
the third estate sunday review
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