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War, War, War
See other War, War, War Articles

Title: Four Unspeakable Truths
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/120404
Published: Mar 8, 2007
Author: Jacob Weisberg
Post Date: 2007-03-08 07:38:38 by leveller
Keywords: None
Views: 606
Comments: 96

What politicians won't admit about Iraq

When it comes to Iraq, there are two kinds of presidential candidates. The disciplined ones, like Hillary Clinton, carefully avoid acknowledging reality. The more candid, like John McCain and Barack Obama, sometimes blurt out the truth, but quickly apologize.

For many presidential aspirants, the first unspeakable truth is simply that the war was a mistake. This issue came to a head recently with Hillary Clinton's obstinate refusal to acknowledge that voting to give President Bush the authority to invade Iraq was the wrong thing to do. Though fellow Democrats John Edwards and Christopher Dodd have managed to say they erred in voting for the 2002 war resolution, Clinton is joined by Joe Biden and a full roster of Republicans in her inability to disgorge the M-word. Perhaps most absurdly, Chuck Hagel has called Bush's 21,500-troop "surge" the biggest blunder since Vietnam without ever saying that the war itself was the big blunder and that he favored it.

Reasons for refusing to admit that the war itself was a mistake are surprisingly similar across party lines. It is seldom easy to admit you were wrong—so let me repeat what I first acknowledged in Slate in January 2004, that I am sorry to have given even qualified support to the war. But what is awkward for columnists is nearly impossible for self-justifying politicians, who resist acknowledging error at a glandular level. Specific political calculations help to explain their individual decisions. Hillary, for instance, worries that confessing her failure will make it easier for hawks to savage her if she gets the nomination. But at bottom, the impulse is always the same. Politicians are stubborn, afraid of looking weak, and fearful that any admission of error will be cast as flip-flopping and inconsistency.

A second truth universally unacknowledged is that American soldiers being killed, grotesquely maimed, and then treated like whining freeloaders at Walter Reed Hospital are victims as much as "heroes." John Kerry was the first to violate this taboo when he was still a potential candidate last year. Kerry appeared to tell a group of California college students that it sucks to go and fight in Iraq. A variety of conservative goons instantly denounced Kerry for disrespecting the troops. An advanced sufferer of Senatorial Infallibility Syndrome, Kerry resisted retracting his comment for a while, but eventually regretted what he called a "botched joke" about President Bush.

Lost in the debate about whether Kerry meant what came out of his mouth was the fact that what he said was largely true. Americans who attend college and have good employment options after graduation are unlikely to sign up for free tours of the Sunni Triangle. People join the military for a variety of reasons, of course, but since the Iraq war turned ugly, the all-volunteer Army has been lowering educational standards, raising enlistment bonuses, and looking past criminal records. The lack of better choices is a larger and larger factor in the choice of military service. Our troops in Iraq may not see themselves as cannon fodder or victims of presidential misjudgments, but that doesn't mean they're not.

Reality No. 3, closely related to No. 2 and following directly from No. 1, is that the American lives lost in Iraq have been lives wasted. Barack Obama crossed this boundary on his first trip to Iowa as an announced candidate when he declared at a rally, "We ended up launching a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged and to which we have now spent $400 billion and have seen over 3,000 lives of the bravest young Americans wasted." With lightning speed, Obama said he had misspoken and apologized to military families.

John McCain used the same proscribed term when he announced his candidacy on Late Night With David Letterman last week. "We've wasted a lot of our most precious treasure, which is American lives." This was a strange admission, given McCain's advocacy of a surge bigger than Bush's. In any case, McCain followed Obama by promptly regretting his choice of words. (The patriotically correct term for losing parts of your body in a pointless war in Mesopotamia is, of course, "sacrifice.") These episodes all followed Kinsley's law of gaffes. The mistake Kerry, Obama, and McCain made was telling the truth before retreating to the approved banality and euphemism

A fourth and final near-certainty, which is in some ways the hardest for politicians to admit, is that America is losing or has already lost the Iraq war. The United States is the strongest nation in the history of the world and does not think of itself as coming in second in two-way contests. When it does so, it is slow to accept that it has been beaten. American political and military leaders were reluctant to acknowledge or utter that they had miscalculated and wasted tens of thousands of lives in Vietnam, many of them after failure and withdrawal were assured. Even today, American politicians tend not to describe Vietnam as a straightforward defeat. Something similar is happening in Iraq, where the most that leaders typically say is that we "risk" losing and must not do so.

Democrats avoid the truth about the tragedy in Iraq for fear of being labeled unpatriotic or unsupportive of the troops. Republicans avoid it for fear of being blamed for the disaster or losing defense and patriotism as cards to play against Democrats. Politicians on both sides believe that acknowledging the unpleasant truth will weaken them and undermine those still attempting to persevere on our behalf. But nations and individuals do not grow weaker by confronting the truth. They grow weaker by avoiding it and coming to believe their own evasions.

http://www.slate.com/id/2161385/fr/rss/

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Then they could mop-up the remaining 0.1% by shutting off the electricity & water for 24 hours.

The only stalwart resistance would come from the Unabomber.

leveller  posted on  2007-03-08   16:55:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

If Americans had to live without electricity or running water for a week (think of that for a moment- what that means to the quality of your life if you had say a three year old, a newborn, and your elderly parents living with you in a three room apartment 4th floor walk up in Baghdad) they would dawn black pajamas and straw hats and wave around Mao's little red book while burning down their libraries is they thought it would turn the boob tube and the AC back on.

Burkeman1  posted on  2007-03-08   16:57:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Yeah...I know.

Esso  posted on  2007-03-08   17:02:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

The below site has the Wall Street Journal interview of Colonel Bui Tin on 3 August 1995. I think this is what you're referencing, since he's the guy who accepted the surrender. It's posted elsewhere also, this site was convenient. He doesn't say that they were ready to sue for terms, but it is an interesting interview.

http://www.viet- http://myths.net/buitin.htm

a. Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter wrap themselves with glee using the words of Colonel Bui Tin and parading the reason he gives for America missing out on winning one heck of noble war as the last word on the subject - like this Colonel Bui Tin is the official oracle on the Vietnam War..

What Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter and Michael Savage and Mark Levine fail to tell everyone is that Colonel Bui Tin is a former communist "true believer" recently turned disenchanted vocal anti-communist dissent who lives in exile in Paris. Hmmm...let's think about the reasons why Colonel Bui Tin would be motivated to say what he said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal ( HA!)...capitalism symbol par excellence....

Here's a little background on the good colonel - and by the way he was a communist army journalist during the Vietnam War and he served on general staff of the NV army so knows the value of good propaganda - he stepped into a moment of history by chance due to circumstance and not because he was an experienced battle hardened war officer for the NV.

I believe he's telling his American benefactors what they want to hear when he gives the reason he does.

Also consider the fact that the Vietnamese had a history of fighting outsiders for long stretches of time - 1000 years against the Chinese dynasties - how long were we prepared to bleed in Vietnam and fight for its "independence" or whatever we thought we were doing there.

They didn't want us there. They did not like the corrupt S. Vietnamese gov't we were supporting. We left when we did because we should not been been in that stupid war in the first place. What a waste of blood and treasure and an example of our shameful use chemical weapons against civilian populations. That war has no redeeming qualities whatsoever.

But worse, we did not even learn a lesson from that grotesque mistake.

When GWB did his WTO thumping for communist Vietnam this January, I felt relieved that many of the parents who gave up their sons for that elective Vietnam war "to fight communism" were not alive to see our gov't sponsoring communist Vietnam into the WTO. Pathetic. Nor were they alive to read newly released documents that showed LBJ lied us into the war due to a faux Tonkin Incident.

Here's a little current info on Colonel Bui Tin.

http://www.hrw.org/reports/1992/WR92/ASW-15.htm ( Human Rights Watch)

b. Here's some background info on new behind the scenes docs about the Vietnam War quagmire and also some info regarding what MacNamara said about the reasons why Vietnam and why this also so similar to the Iraq debacle.

http://newsaigonsanjose.blogspot.co m/

Nov. 17, 2005

"On the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq"

Newly-released secret documents reveal that the Bush administration is struggling with the same issues that faced the administration of Richard Nixon.

Full text of NYT article here - cut and paste the url:

http://www. >http://nytimes.com/2005/11/17/international/17nixon.html? ex=1173502800&en=9c5c9f67c421ed62&ei=5070

"Vietnam Archive Casts a Shadow Across Decades" Thom Shanker and David Stout

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16, 2005 - White House advisers convene secret sessions about the political dangers of revelations that American troops committed atrocities in the war zone, and about whether the president can delicately intervene in the investigation. In the face of an increasingly unpopular war, they wonder at the impact on support at home. The best way out of the war, they agree, is to prop up a new government that they hope can unite the fractured foreign land.

The National Archives and Records Administration on Wednesday released 50,000 pages of previously classified documents from the Nixon administration that reveal how all of that president's men wrestled with issues that eerily parallel problems facing the Bush administration.

There are many significant differences between the wars in Vietnam and in Iraq - a point that senior administration officials make at any opportunity. But in tone and content, the Nixon-era debate about the impact of that generation's war - and of war-crimes trials - on public support for the military effort and for White House domestic initiatives strikes many familiar chords.

As the Nixon administration was waging a war and trying to impose a peace in South Vietnam, it worried intensely about how the 1968 massacre at My Lai of South Vietnamese civilians by American troops would hurt the war effort, both at home and in Asia.

My Lai "could prove acutely embarrassing to the United States" and could affect the Paris peace talks, Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird warned President Nixon. "Domestically, it will provide grist for the mills of antiwar activists," Mr. Laird said.

Documents show how the Nixon White House fretted over politics and perception, much as the Bush White House has done during the Iraq war, and that it feared that mistreatment of civilians could be ruinous to its image.

"The handling of this case to date has strictly observed the code of military justice," Henry A. Kissinger, then the national security adviser, wrote in a memo to the Nixon aide H. R. Haldeman. Mr. Kissinger said the court-martial of Lt. William L. Calley Jr., who was implicated in the massacre and ultimately convicted, would alleviate press concerns about a cover-up.

Moreover, President Nixon believed that images could be changed, as the presidential aide John R. Brown III wrote to Mr. Kissinger. "Secretary Laird's press is a measure of the good things a onetime hard-liner can earn by playing the dove for the liberal press," Mr. Brown wrote on Jan. 14, 1970.

With so many academic studies, popular histories and memoirs on the bookshelf - and more than seven million pages of Nixon documents released since 1986 by the National Archives in an ongoing declassification process - historians combing over the files on Wednesday said they were looking for golden needles in a haystack more than mining a previously unknown vein of precious metals.

The new release of documents included files on early American assessments of Israel's nuclear program, debates about supporting Pakistan during its war with India in 1971 and the superpower rivalry with Moscow.

Some of the Vietnam documents contain details about how the Nixon administration tried to prop up South Vietnam's president, Nguyen Van Thieu, behind the scenes while portraying him publicly as a courageous leader, as President Johnson had done.

In language that resonates with the positions of the Bush administration with regard to building a new government in Baghdad, the Nixon White House said in May 1969 that it wanted to establish in Vietnam "procedures for political choice that give each significant group a real opportunity to participate in the political life of the nation."

"What the United States wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing," said an internal White House planning-initiative memo. "What North Vietnam wants for South Vietnam is not the important thing. What is important is what the people of South Vietnam want for themselves."

The papers illustrate, too, how as late as 1969 American leaders really did not know very much about the psychology of North Vietnam - or, for that matter, about sentiments in the South.

In March 1969, while the Paris peace talks were under way, American officials worried about how strongly to react to a rocket attack on Saigon. Secretary of State William P. Rogers cabled American diplomats about the decision not to retaliate militarily against the North.

"Plainly, we shall need to have the most careful and continuing readings of the South Vietnamese temperature," Mr. Rogers wrote, reflecting concerns in Washington that the Saigon government would suspect it was being sold out.

Around that time, the State Department suggested that the American negotiator Henry Cabot Lodge soften his language in conveying American displeasure to the Hanoi delegation.

"We prefer this language not because it is less ambiguous than the original version but, on the contrary, because it is more ambiguous - and hence more flexible - as to our response," a State Department cable said.

That July, President Thieu fussed over Washington's editing of a speech he was to make recounting all the concessions that had been made to the Communists and calling again for general elections. A secret State Department wire to Saigon and Paris said an aide to Mr. Thieu, in describing his boss's annoyance, "used a phrase which, translated into English, comes out like 'Secretary Rogers has deflowered my speech.' "

President Nixon praised the July 11 speech as "a comprehensive, statesmanlike and eminently fair proposal for a political settlement in South Vietnam."

The documents show an internal debate in Washington over what effects the death of Ho Chi Minh, the North Vietnamese leader, in September 1969, would have.

Mr. Kissinger told the president that Ho's death would hurt North Vietnam's morale but would probably not soften its resolve. But a State Department cable to its diplomats around that time, when the department was headed by Mr. Kissinger's rival, Mr. Rogers, had a different perspective.

"We are, of course, uncertain ourselves of consequences of Ho's death," it read in part. "We are handicapped in our own analysis by paucity of good intelligence information on North Vietnamese intentions and internal politics."

During the summer and fall of 1969, a great effort was made by the Nixon White House to intervene in a military investigation of a group of Army Special Forces who had been accused of killing a suspected double agent in Nha Trang.

In a memorandum to Bryce Harlow, a Nixon aide, on Sept. 26, 1969, Mr. Kissinger counseled him about how to deal with the concerns of Congress. "The main substantive point you should make," Mr. Kissinger wrote, "is that the president is very concerned about the long-term implications of this case and that he is most anxious to dispose of it in a way which will do the least damage to our national security, the prestige and discipline of our armed services and to preserve our future freedom of action in the clandestine area."

"This is clearly a sign of things to come - and we are really going to be hit," Mr. Haldeman wrote to Mr. Kissinger, urging a quiet resolution. "Anything we can do - even at this late date?"

****The blogger who links to the NYT article says the following:***

The similarities are eerie. There are big differences to be sure. But note the similarities:

In 1995, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, the architect of the American war in Vietnam, looked back and listed the major reasons for the failure of U.S. foreign policy there.

Here are some of them:

--We misjudged the intention of our adversaries and we exaggerated the danger to the United States.

--We viewed the people and the leaders in terms of our own experience. We saw in them a thirst for and a determination to fight for freedom and democracy. We totally misjudged the political forces within the country.

--We underestimated the power of nationalism to motive a people to fight and die for their beliefs and values – and we continue to do so today in many parts of the world.

--Our misjudgments of friend and foe alike reflected profound ignorance of the history, culture and politics of the people in the area and the personalities and habits of their leaders.

--We failed to recognize the limits of modern, high technology military equipment, forces and doctrine in confronting unconventional, highly motivated people's movements.

--We failed to adapt our military tactics to the task of winning the hearts and minds of the people from a totally different culture.

--We failed to draw Congress and the American people into a full and frank discussion and debate of the pros and cons of a large-scale military involvement before we initiated the action.

--After the action got underway and unanticipated events forces us off our planned course, we failed to retain popular support in part because we did not explain fully what was happening and why we were doing what we did. We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced and how to react constructively to the need for changes in course as the nation confronted uncharted seas and an alien environment.

--We did not recognize that neither our people nor its leaders are omniscient.

--We did not hold to the principle that US military action – other than in response to direct threats to our own security – should be carried out only in conjunction with multinational forces fully and not merely cosmetically, by the international community.

--We failed to understand that in international affairs, as in other aspects of life, there may be problems in which there is no immediate solution.

I am not the first to say this, but those who fail to study history are doomed to repeat it.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-03-08   17:03:44 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

After the action got underway and unanticipated events forces us off our planned course, we failed to retain popular support in part because we did not explain fully what was happening and why we were doing what we did. We had not prepared the public to understand the complex events we faced and how to react constructively to the need for changes in course as the nation confronted uncharted seas and an alien environment.

In other words- they lied, repeatedly - about everything- from troops increases (like they are doing now with the lies about "temporary surges") to body counts, to civilian casualties, to the nature of the insurgency itself (tried to paint it as merely a limited communist conspiracy among a tiny minority and not a broad popular nationalist movement to defeat a puppet regime and end foreign occupation- like they are doing now in regard to Iraq.) The lies added up and people got sick of it. As my father, who was almost sent over to Vietnam in 1969 after being called up in the reserves said at the time, by the late 60's- after years of lies from the government and Media - NO ONE believed anything that was said about that war any longer.

Burkeman1  posted on  2007-03-08   17:17:23 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

The American left (media and anti-war movement) are unable to acknowledge that they played a key role in that defeat....

Was your dad a piece of shit coward like you BAC? Was he a Vietnam war- mongerer that didn't have the guts to go over and put his money where his mouth is? Surly that yellow streak down your back is genetic.

Once more you show your true support for the troops. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a complete fabrication responsible for the deaths of more than 50k American men and yet you choose to focus your anger on the American left and their reporting of Tet? It was the American left that got us in that war you fucking moron, although being the socialist, big government loving republican you are, I can understand why you would make the mistake of thinking Kennedy and LBJ were conservatives.

anti-warriors

You'd know all about being an anti-warrior wouldn't you.

F.A. Hayek Fan  posted on  2007-03-08   17:54:48 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

The only stalwart resistance would come from the Unabomber.

laughing again.

christine  posted on  2007-03-08   18:06:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

although being the socialist, big government loving republican you are, I can understand why you would make the mistake of thinking Kennedy and LBJ were conservatives.

so true!

christine  posted on  2007-03-08   18:07:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Its fascinating that a "new left" had to be created to even opposse the Vietnam War. Resistance to that boondoggle of an evil war should have come from the Old Right in this country- and there were some peeps from that side against it- but for the most part the "Right" in this country had by then been totally co- opted by CIA fronts like Willian Buckley and "National Review" and real conservatives had long been purged. So we have, to this day, morons who think they are "Rightwing" thinking that the Vietnam war was some sort of noble crusade and not what it was- a disgusting civilian murdering spree of an elective war fought by and for the interests of Big DC Centralized Government and its parasite MIC.

Burkeman1  posted on  2007-03-08   18:24:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

The below site has the Wall Street Journal interview of Colonel Bui Tin on 3 August 1995. I think this is what you're referencing, since he's the guy who accepted the surrender. It's posted elsewhere also, this site was convenient. He doesn't say that they were ready to sue for terms, but it is an interesting interview.

http://www.viet- http://myths.net/buitin.htm

Pardon me, you are correct. It was General Giap, commander of the North's forces, who admitted in his memoirs that his army was shattered in Tet and that he was ready to sue for peace. He said he changed his mind after watching American news programs that proclaimed the Viet Cong the winners in the TET offensive and after watching the American antiwar protesters attack their president and attack the war effort.

*********

http://209.157.64.200/focus/f-news/1113369/posts

"Analysis: A mini-Tet offensive in Iraq?

by Arnaud de Borchgrave

WASHINGTON, April 6 (UPI)

... snip ...

Before plunging into an orgy of erroneous and invidious historical parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, a reminder about what led to the U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia is timely.

Iraq will only be another Vietnam if the home front collapses, as it did following the Tet offensive, which began on the eve of the Chinese New Year, Jan. 31, 1968. The surprise attack was designed to overwhelm some 70 cities and towns, and 30 other strategic objectives simultaneously. By breaking a previously agreed truce for Tet festivities, master strategist Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap in Hanoi calculated that South Vietnamese troops would be caught with defenses down.

After the first few hours of panic, the South Vietnamese troops reacted fiercely. They did the bulk of the fighting and took some 6,000 casualties. Vietcong units not only did not reach a single one of their objectives -- except when they arrived by taxi at the U.S. Embassy in Saigon, blew their way through the wall into the compound and guns blazing made it into the lobby before they were wiped out by U.S. Marines -- but they lost some 50,000 killed and at least that many wounded. Giap had thrown some 70,000 troops into a strategic gamble that was also designed to overwhelm 13 of the 16 provincial capitals and trigger a popular uprising. But Tet was an unmitigated military disaster for Hanoi and its Vietcong troops in South Vietnam. Yet that was not the way it was reported in U.S. and other media around the world. It was television's first war. And some 50 million Americans at home saw the carnage of dead bodies in the rubble, and dazed Americans running around.

As the late veteran war reporter Peter Braestrup documented in "Big Story" -- a massive, two-volume study of how Tet was covered by American reporters -- the Vietcong offensive was depicted as a military disaster for the United States. By the time the facts emerged a week or two later from RAND Corp. interrogations of prisoners and defectors, the damage had been done. Conventional media wisdom had been set in concrete. Public opinion perceptions in the United States changed accordingly.

RAND made copies of these POW interrogations available. But few reporters seemed interested. In fact, the room where they were on display was almost always empty. Many Vietnamese civilians who were fence sitters or leaning toward the Vietcong, especially in the region around Hue City, joined government ranks after they witnessed Vietcong atrocities. Several mass graves were found with some 4,000 unarmed civil servants and other civilians, stabbed or with skulls smashed by clubs. The number of communist defectors, known as "chieu hoi," increased fourfold. And the "popular uprising" anticipated by Giap, failed to materialize. The Tet offensive also neutralized much of the clandestine communist infrastructure.

As South Vietnamese troops fought Vietcong remnants in Cholon, the predominantly Chinese twin city of Saigon, reporters, sipping drinks in the rooftop bar of the Caravelle Hotel, watched the fireworks 2 miles away. America's most trusted newsman, CBS' Walter Cronkite, appeared for a standup piece with distant fires as a backdrop. Donning helmet, Cronkite declared the war lost. It was this now famous television news piece that persuaded President Johnson six weeks later, on March 31, not to run. His ratings had plummeted from 80 percent when he assumed the presidency upon Kennedy's death to 30 percent after Tet. His handling of the war dropped to 20 percent, his credibility shot to pieces.

Until Tet, a majority of Americans agreed with Presidents Kennedy and Johnson that failure was not an option. It was Kennedy who changed the status of U.S. military personnel from advisers to South Vietnamese troops to full-fledged fighting men. By the time of Kennedy's assassination in Nov. 22, 1963, 16,500 U.S. troops had been committed to the war. Johnson escalated all the way to 542,000. But defeat became an option when Johnson decided the war was unwinnable and that he would lose his bid for the presidency in November 1968. Hanoi thus turned military defeat into a priceless geopolitical victory.

With the Vietcong wiped out in the Tet offensive, North Vietnamese regulars moved south down the Ho Chi Minh trails through Laos and Cambodia to continue the war. Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.

Hanoi's Easter offensive in March 1972 was another disaster for the communists. Some 70,000 North Vietnamese troops were wiped out -- by the South Vietnamese who did all the fighting. The last American soldier left Vietnam in March 1973. And the chances of the South Vietnamese army being able to hack it on its own were reasonably good. With one proviso: Continued U.S. military assistance with weapons and hardware, including helicopters. But Congress balked, first by cutting off military assistance to Cambodia, which enabled Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge communists to take over, which, in turn, was followed by a similar Congressional rug pulling from under the South Vietnamese, that led to rapid collapse of morale in Saigon.

The unraveling, with Congress pulling the string, was so rapid that even Giap was caught by surprise. As he recounts in his memoirs, Hanoi had to improvise a general offensive -- and then rolled into Saigon two years before they had reckoned it might become possible.

That is the real lesson for the U.S. commitment to Iraq. Whatever one thought about the advisability of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the United States is there with 100,000 troops and a solid commitment to endow Iraq with a democratic system of government. While failure is not an option for Bush, it clearly is for Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who called Iraq the president's Vietnam. It is, of course, no such animal. But it could become so if Congressional resolve dissolves.

Bui Tin, who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese army, received South Vietnam's unconditional surrender on April 30, 1975. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal after his retirement, he made clear the anti-war movement in the United States, which led to the collapse of political will in Washington, was "essential to our strategy."

Visits to Hanoi by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and various church ministers "gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."

America lost the war, concluded Bui Tin, "because of its democracy. Through dissent and protest it lost the ability to mobilize a will to win." Kennedy should remember that Vietnam was the war of his brother who saw the conflict in the larger framework of the Cold War and Nikita Khrushchev's threats against West Berlin. It would behoove Kennedy to see Iraq in the larger context of the struggle to bring democracy, not only to Iraq, but the entire Middle East.

(Arnaud de Borchgrave covered Tet as Newsweek's chief foreign correspondent and had seven tours in Vietnam between 1951 under the French and 1972.)

*************

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   19:05:09 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

how comical is it to think that the Japs or the Germans were going to invade and "take over" an America of 180 million strong and the most industrialized land mass in the world in 1941

ROTFLOL! Priceless.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   19:07:15 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Its fascinating that a "new left" had to be created to even opposse the Vietnam War.

But was it a new left or was it the grassroots genuine left and the Old Right? It seems to me that, just as today, the two-party fraud and their butt-sniffing sychophants were all pro-war.

So we have, to this day, morons who think they are "Rightwing" thinking that the Vietnam war was some sort of noble crusade and not what it was- a disgusting civilian murdering spree of an elective war fought by and for the interests of Big DC Centralized Government and its parasite MIC.

I chaulk this up to an uneducated populace. My guess is that nine out of ten "conservatives" have never even heard of Russell Kirk, much less Edmund Burke. Their idea of a conservative is Rush Limbaugh and the modern day republican party.

Having said that, while I agree with much of Kirks comments on cultural conservatism, I much prefer Bastiat, John Stuart Mill (before he became a socialist), Hayek, Rothbard, and von Mises over that of Russell Kirk

F.A. Hayek Fan  posted on  2007-03-08   19:07:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

I believe he's telling his American benefactors what they want to hear when he gives the reason he does.

He doesn't appear to have said anything that isn't true. The NVA and Viet Cong forces were shattered in Tet. That's a documented fact. They didn't recover for years. Again fact. The American and South Vietnamese forces had successfully cut off access to the south through central Vietnam. Fact. Any effort by the North hinged on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Fact. Nothing would have prevented us from cutting Laos in two by building a system of forts to do the same thing as was done in Vietnam. Fact. Westmoreland had a plan to do so. Fact. Johnson prevented it. Fact. And bombing the North would have been the capstone. Fact. Plus, it wasn't just Bui Tin saying this, Giap himself admitted it in his memoirs. And the North Vietnamese still celebrate the anti-war movement and it's major figures ... like Kerry and Fonda. Sorry, I don't think what you *believe* has any basis in reality, scrapper.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   19:17:28 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

One thing I did note was that the good Colonel's words really didn't match what I'd read in books written by H. John Poole about how the Vietcong fought. With all the digging they did one would think they were in it for the long haul. And the Colonel's talk about wanting to not fight a guerrilla war jarred me too. One of the surest ways to ensure defeat is to try to fight us in the way that we're best at (just ask Hussein in 1991).

I think you've also hit on one of the easier ways to detect a war of choice. If the Vietnamese were willing to fight against subjugation for 1000 years, it's a guarantee that we weren't taking the long view like that. If it was a war of necessity, we would not have had to debate about continuing it. One can imagine that the North Vietnamese didn't have discussions like that about accepting foreign occupation.

The other interesting mental exercise is to answer the question: What discernable impact on US and world affairs did our failure in Vietnam have? I know that Pol Pot can be cited, but for us, what real impact was there after the failure?

Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

historian1944  posted on  2007-03-08   19:17:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Hayek Fan - Was your dad a piece of shit coward like you BAC?

Is this another example of that respectful debate you were talking about, HOUNDDAWG?

And say, Hayek, where'd you disappear to? We were having such a lovely debate about the collapse of the WTC towers and the John Hopkins Iraq mortality studies. Then you just disappeared. ROTFLOL!

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   19:22:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

What discernable impact on US and world affairs did our failure in Vietnam have?

Do a web browser search under the phrase "paper tiger".

For example:

http://www.jfednepa.org/mark%20silverberg/papertiger.html "Al Qaeda and its global Islamic terrorist affiliates came to the conclusion that America's weakness stemmed from a post-Vietnam conviction that required future wars to be short, antiseptic and casualty free. Bin Laden summed up his perception of Americans in an interview with ABC News reporter John Miller, published in Esquire in 1998: “After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle thinking that the Americans were like the Russians. The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized, more than before, that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows……would run in defeat.”

http://www.nationalreview.com/contributors/robbins111601.shtml "Bin Laden and his planners were inspired by prior examples of United States retreat, most notably the defeat in Vietnam, but more proximately the U.S. withdrawal from Somalia in 1994 following the disastrous attempt to capture Somali warlord Mohammed Farah Aidid, and the pullout from Lebanon after the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1984. The impression had grown that the U.S. was a paper tiger. American forces had a technological edge and massive firepower, but if a foe could inflict a bloody nose, the skittish American public would demand withdrawal, and politicians would hold hearings to place blame. As Syrian Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam said to American negotiators after the Beirut bombings, "The United States is short of breath. You can always wait them out."

http://www.weeklystandard.com/weblogs/TWSFP/2006/02/what_newly_released_al_qaeda_l_1.html "The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has posted on its web site several al Qaeda-related documents that have been "captured in the course of operations supporting the GWOT." Two letters, dated September 30, 1993 and May 24, 1994, relate directly to al Qaeda operations in Somalia. The letters are from "Hassan al-Tajiki" to the "African Corps." Assuming their authenticity, the letters are consistent with the propaganda of bin Laden in the 1990s that Mogadishu and other events showed that America was "a paper tiger" and "a weak horse." He and his followers would use such imagery as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda, "the strong horse" in bin Laden's words, throughout the 1990s."

Here's one of those two letters: http://www.ctc.usma.edu/aq_600053-3.asp "the Somali experience confirmed the spurious nature of American power and that it has not recovered from the Vietnam complex. It fears getting bogged down in a real war that would reveal its psychological collapse at the level of personnel and leadership. Since Vietnam America has been seeking easy battles that are completely guaranteed."

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   19:39:55 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Then you just disappeared. ROTFLOL

Liar. I didn't just disappear, nor did I debate you over the WTC towers. My only comment about the WTC towers was about how you refused to accept any information from anyone concerning the towers because they didn't meet your idea of expertise on the subject, while at the same time presenting me with the rants of unknown bloggers and telling me it's evidence of why the study was wrong.

I made it quite plain why I chose to end our conversation concerning the John Hopkins study. I chose to believe that the John Hoplins School of Public Health would not risk their worldwide reputation as the leader in public health in order to play gotcha with the Bush administration. I told you why I felt this way. You chose to believe differently. On top of that, you demand that I answer questions that I am not qualified to answer. There was nothing more to be gained from the conversation. It had turned into the equivalent of two children saying, "did not...did too...did not...did too." I've got better things to do with my time, even if you don't. ROTFLOL!

F.A. Hayek Fan  posted on  2007-03-08   19:41:31 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

So the US is a paper tiger because the American people are not willing to have their children die in far off countries in wars that mean absolutley nothing to anyone but those in Washington DC? I tell you what. You let a country invade the United States and then we'll talk about a paper tiger.

You are the paper tiger BAC. You revel in war as long as you are sitting safe behind your computer in Podunk, USA.

F.A. Hayek Fan  posted on  2007-03-08   19:53:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

One thing I did note was that the good Colonel's words really didn't match what I'd read in books written by H. John Poole about how the Vietcong fought. With all the digging they did one would think they were in it for the long haul. And the Colonel's talk about wanting to not fight a guerrilla war jarred me too. One of the surest ways to ensure defeat is to try to fight us in the way that we're best at (just ask Hussein in 1991).

I think you've also hit on one of the easier ways to detect a war of choice. If the Vietnamese were willing to fight against subjugation for 1000 years, it's a guarantee that we weren't taking the long view like that. If it was a war of necessity, we would not have had to debate about continuing it. One can imagine that the North Vietnamese didn't have discussions like that about accepting foreign occupation.

The other interesting mental exercise is to answer the question: What discernable impact on US and world affairs did our failure in Vietnam have? I know that Pol Pot can be cited, but for us, what real impact was there after the failure?

Thank you for your sustinct remarks and observations to explain better the ramifications of the glob of information I had included in my previous post. You tie up everything very nicely.

As to your last observation you are especially on point - the whole domino theory and worry about what it represented, the main reason given for sending US forces to Vietnam, a nation several thousands of miles away from us was proven to be by and large empty war mongering rhetoric. As you say - our failure in Vietnam did not have any discernable negative impact either on the USA or on world affairs. Sean Hannity always beats his breast about those poor 3 Million Cambodians that our withdrawal from Vietnam caused but I've never heard Sean fret about the 5 Million Vietnamese casualties that were a direct result of the Vietnam War we waged on their soil. What a hypocritical Bot shill punk.

http://www.vietnam- war.info/casualties/

"Vietnam released figures on April 3, 1995 that a total of one million Vietnamese combatants and four million civilians were killed in the war. The accuracy of these figures has generally not been challenged."

scrapper2  posted on  2007-03-08   20:02:16 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

My only comment about the WTC towers was about how you refused to accept any information from anyone concerning the towers because they didn't meet your idea of expertise on the subject, while at the same time presenting me with the rants of unknown bloggers and telling me it's evidence of why the study was wrong.

Actually, what you said is this:

What boggles my mind is that in the WTC debate, BAC refuses to accept any information from a person with a doctorate in physics because he isn't a metallurgist.

And my response was this:

*******

"There is much more to my reason for not believing Steven Jones than his not being a metallurgist. Why try to misstate my views, Hayek? Ex-Professor Jones claims some expertise in the subjects of structures, demolition, steel, fire, concrete, impact, seismology and macro-world physics. Yet, ex-professor Jones spent his entire 30 year career studying sub-atomic particles and cold fusion. Not once in that career did he publish a paper that had anything remotely to do with any of the topics needed to speak authoratively on the WTC.

Furthermore, Professor Jones has been dishonest about a number of subjects. To give you just one example, in speaking about the molten material seen flowing out of the South Tower shortly before it collapsed, he said "In the videos of the molten metal falling from WTC2 just prior to its collapse, it appears consistently orange, not just orange in spots and certainly not silvery." This is untrue. If you watch this video,

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2991254740145858863&q=cameraplanet+9%2F11,

you will see silver color in the stream of material once it gets away from the window. This occurs from 12 seconds in the video to 33 seconds in the video. It is especially clear at about 32 seconds. You'll also see it from 57 seconds to a 67 seconds. And from 74 to 75 seconds, material can be seen pouring from the corner of the tower and that material is very clearly silver, not orange. So Steven Jones is demonstrably lying. Why would you trust such a liar, Hayek? For the same reason you trust Les Roberts?

***********

If you had no response to that perhaps that indicates something ...

I chose to believe that the John Hoplins School of Public Health would not risk their worldwide reputation as the leader in public health in order to play gotcha with the Bush administration. I told you why I felt this way. You chose to believe differently.

My aren't you trusting. Even when the authors virtually admitted that they published the report with a preconceived agenda. When they admitted that they did the interviews with a group of Iraqis who mostly HATE Americans. Even when they ignored clear warning signs that something was amiss in their methods. Even when one of the authors runs for Congress as a democRAT. Even when the authors and those who reviewed the study gave money to democRATS during the election. Even when the Lancet changes its opinion about mortality rates without even commenting on that change. Even when the Lancet rushes the peer review process in, again, an admitted effort to affect the election against the war.

There was nothing more to be gained from the conversation. It had turned into the equivalent of two children saying, "did not...did too...did not...did too."

No, one of those children posted numerous sources ... not just by unnamed bloggers ... that pointed out serious questions about the study. The other just repeated the mantra that John Hopkins surely wouldn't put its *good* reputation at risk by publishing a bogus study.

I've got better things to do with my time, even if you don't.

Like make that respectful remark in post #26?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   20:08:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

You are the paper tiger BAC. You revel in war as long as you are sitting safe behind your computer in Podunk, USA.

You know nothing about me, HF. But if you want to use this debating tactic in leiu of citing sourced facts, be my guest.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   20:10:38 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

So the idea began in Vietnam that if things got difficult we would just leave. I'm not tracking with that exactly because we did spend 10 years there, and 58K lives before we finally decided to leave. I think that Beirut and Mogadishu would be the object lessons for the paper tiger idea(which seems to be what the National Review and Weekly Standard articles imply. For al Qaida purposes, couldn't it be said that the Reagan and Clinton administrations did more to support the paper tiger idea than Vietnam? It had been nearly a decade after the fall of Saigon before the Marine barracks was attacked in Beirut. It was nearly twenty years after the last helicopter out of Saigon before Mogadishu. In either case, we had the opportunity to dispel the "paper tiger" idea, but we chose not to.

Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

historian1944  posted on  2007-03-08   20:11:19 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

the whole domino theory and worry about what it represented, the main reason given for sending US forces to Vietnam, a nation several thousands of miles away from us was proven to be by and large empty war mongering rhetoric.

http://www.januarymagazine.com/features/triumphexc.html "The domino theory was valid. The fear of falling dominoes in Asia was based not on simple-mindedness or paranoia, but rather on a sound understanding of the toppler countries and the domino countries. As Lyndon Johnson pondered whether to send U.S. troops into battle, the evidence overwhelmingly supported the conclusion that South Vietnam's defeat would lead to either a Communist takeover or the switching of allegiance to China in most of the region's countries. Information available since that time has reinforced this conclusion. Vietnam itself was not intrinsically vital to U.S. interests, but it was vital nevertheless because its fate strongly influenced events in other Asian countries that were intrinsically vital, most notably Indonesia and Japan. In 1965, China and North Vietnam were aggressively and resolutely trying to topple the dominoes, and the dominoes were very vulnerable to toppling. Throughout Asia, among those who paid attention to international affairs, the domino theory enjoyed a wide following. If the United States pulled out of Vietnam, Asia's leaders generally believed, the Americans would lose their credibility in Asia and most of Asia would have to bow before China or face destruction, with enormous global repercussions. Every country in Southeast Asia and the surrounding area, aside from the few that were already on China's side, advocated U.S. intervention in Vietnam, and most of them offered to assist the South Vietnamese war effort. The oft-maligned analogy to the Munich agreement of 1938 actually offered a sound prediction of how the dominoes would likely fall: Communist gains in one area would encourage the Communists to seek further conquests in other places, and after each Communist victory the aggressors would enjoy greater assets and the defenders fewer. Further evidence of the domino theory's validity can be found by examining the impact of America's Vietnam policy on other developments in the world between 1965 and the fall of South Vietnam in 1975, developments that would remove the danger of a tumbling of Asian dominoes. Among these were the widening of the Sino-Soviet split, the Chinese Cultural Revolution, and the civil war in Cambodia. America's willingness to hold firm in Vietnam did much to foster anti-Communism among the generals of Indonesia, which was the domino of greatest strategic importance in Southeast Asia. Had the Americans abandoned Vietnam in 1965, these generals most likely would not have seized power from the pro-Communist Sukarno and annihilated the Indonesian Communist Party later that year, as they ultimately did. Communism's ultimate failure to knock over the dominoes in Asia was not an inevitable outcome, independent of events in Vietnam, but was instead the result of obstacles that the United States threw in Communism's path by intervening in Vietnam."

And regards Iraq ...

http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=4867 "I've pointed to quotes from Osama bin Laden and others which have characterized the US as a 'paper tiger', and all anyone has to do is commit to a "long war" and we'll eventually quit. I've attempted to argue that is dangerous perception to leave out there because it gives our enemies hope as well as an expectation of victory. And that translates into less hesitancy to take on the US. To those who found this argument wanting, some special guests to talk about that theory: Muhammad Saadi, a senior leader of Islamic Jihad in the northern West Bank town of Jenin, said the Democrats' talk of withdrawal from Iraq makes him feel "proud." ... snip ... Abu Ayman, an Islamic Jihad leader in Jenin, said he is "emboldened" by those in America who compare the war in Iraq to Vietnam. "[The mujahedeen fighters] brought the Americans to speak for the first time seriously and sincerely that Iraq is becoming a new Vietnam and that they should fix a schedule for their withdrawal from Iraq," boasted Abu Ayman. ... snip ... Islamic Jihad's Saadi, laughing, stated, "There is no chance that the resistance will stop." He said an American withdrawal from Iraq would "prove the resistance is the most important tool and that this tool works. The victory of the Iraqi revolution will mark an important step in the history of the region and in the attitude regarding the United States." Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire (America)." "Therefore, a victory in Iraq would be a greater defeat for America than in Vietnam." ... snip ... There are some serious issues here which those who wave-off the "paper tiger" meme will be content to ignore. But to those quoted above, it's not a non-issue or an academic exercise. It's reality as they see it. And it is their reality which will drive their future actions whether we agree or not. Don't believe me? Check out the new location of the goal posts: Saadi stated, "Unfortunately I think those who are speaking about a withdrawal will not do so when they are in power and these promises will remain electoral slogans. It is not enough to withdraw from Iraq. They must withdraw from Afghanistan and from every Arab and Muslim land they occupy or have bases."

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   20:16:06 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

I'm not tracking with that exactly because we did spend 10 years there, and 58K lives before we finally decided to leave.

The decision to leave was made even before Nixon took office. But to spin the situation, like the democRATS are now trying to spin it, everyone said we would leave with *honor*. And yes, that took many years and many lives. And maybe did delay the spread of Communism somewhat. But ultimately the effort was wasted because then the democRATS didn't follow through with the support they'd promised the South Vietnamese. Just as they may not follow through with any support promised the Iraqi government. The very act of running ultimately shattered the morale of the South. Just as running may shatter the good people of Iraq's morale. The lesson of Vietnam learned by our enemies is that they now think we aren't willing to fight a long war, bloody war and win. But the only thing that will prove that false is to do so. Anything less will just embolden them further. We may lose Iraq but the WOT will not be over. We will just have lost a critical battle in that war.

For al Qaida purposes, couldn't it be said that the Reagan and Clinton administrations did more to support the paper tiger idea than Vietnam?

Certainly, but then that was at a time when this new enemy (terrorism) hadn't really been recognized for the serious threat it could be or become. The seriousness of that threat is only going to grow as more fearsome WMD enter the scene. And ultimately, it was the failure in Vietnam that set the stage for the behavior of Reagan (to a small extent) and more so, Clinton. I wouldn't necessarily include Reagan because he was willing to put it on the line to win. Clinton was not.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   20:31:16 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

If the domino theory was valid, and the fall of Vietnam would lead to Chinese hegemony in Southeast Asia, why weren't we more concerned that Cuba was becoming Communist, which would lead to all of South America becoming Communist? Why should we be willing to send soldiers to prevent a country thousands of miles away from becoming Communist, but we shouldn't have a problem with a Communist country 90 miles away?

Did lack of media coverage and internal outrage make the Soviets successful in Afghanistan? Did the resistance in Afghanistan need press coverage or discussion in the Russian media to maintain motivation to continue? Where does the belief that all will be well if no one knows what's going on come from?

From the http://WND.com article referenced in the previous post: ""We warned the Americans that this will be their end in Iraq," said Abu Abdullah, considered one of the most important operational members of Hamas' Izzedine al-Qassam Martyrs Brigades, Hamas' declared "resistance" department. "They did not succeed in stealing Iraq's oil, at least not at a level that covers their huge expenses. They did not bring stability. Their agents in the [Iraqi] regime seem to have no chance to survive if the Americans withdraw." "

Does what he's saying hinge upon positive media coverage? Is it any less true because the media is providing information that it's true? The only difference if there was a better media blackout than currently exists is that the American people would think him a crackpot since the USAID website doesn't track with what he's saying. Would it make the situation on the ground different? Would it change that when I was there in late 2003/early 2004, there were on average 15 attacks on coaliton forces when the insurgency was in its death throes, and now there are 10 times more attacks against coalition forces? Does media coverage make General Petraeus' comments about needing a political solution less true?

Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

historian1944  posted on  2007-03-08   20:35:32 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Just as running may shatter the good people of Iraq's morale.

I have more faith in the people of Iraq. By their actions, they are telling us that they feel they can govern themselves. If they were serious about wanting us there, more would be helping us. There are only a few percent working against us, and if only a few percent helped us there would be no insurgency. Since Iraq is awash with weapons, there is no shortage of equipment they could use to defend themselves. That they are choosing not to seems to indicate that they are lukewarm at best with our presence.

After living under Hussein, and then under twelve years of sanctions, and now four years of ever worsening conditions, I don't see how their morale could sink any lower. Our leaving would just mean one less group of people shooting at them and blowing things up.

Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

historian1944  posted on  2007-03-08   20:40:22 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Just as they may not follow through with any support promised the Iraqi government.

What more support could we possibly offer the Iraqi government? They have the US Army essentially at their disposal, and we have spent billions of dollars on their government. To support them any more, we'd have to become their government.

Rivers of blood were spilled out over land that, in normal times, not even the poorest Arab would have worried his head over." Field Marshal Erwin Rommel

historian1944  posted on  2007-03-08   20:41:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

What boggles my mind is that in the WTC debate, BAC refuses to accept any information from a person with a doctorate in physics because he isn't a metallurgist.

Fine. Excuse me for not remembering word for word what I said. Still, that's a far cry from having a debate about the WTC.

No, one of those children posted numerous sources ... not just by unnamed bloggers ... that pointed out serious questions about the study.

Oh yeah, you also posted newspaper articles by no-nothing journalists, and op- ed pieces from no-nothing neocons. Oh yeah, and a UN report. Sorry. I don't accept anything from the UN. It doesn't surprise me that a socialist, big government republican such as yourself does.

And I'll tell you now what I said then; if all the shit you wrote were true, then it would have been challenged in a professional, peer reviewed journal. That's how it's done. Not ramblings in unknown blogs. Not newspaper articles written by no-nothing journalists. Not op-ed peices by neo-cons. Professional epidemiologists would have provided a research paper on how and why the original study was flawed. Guess what BAC. This has not been done!

Why is that? It is inconceivable that every single epidemiologist in the whole United States and Great Britan is a Bush-hating liberal. Do you not think that a conservative, pro-Bush epidemiologist would jump on the chance to debunk this report.

But here we go again. We've been through all this before. Once again, I've had my say and you've had yours. I reject your sources in the same way that you reject the WTC sources. When you can provide a professional, peer reviewed journal with a research paper indicating the flaws, then come see me. Until then, you're wasting my time.

Like make that respectful remark in post #26?

You are a war-mongering coward that doesn't have the courage of his convictions. You deserve no respect whatsoever. What you and your ilk deserve is to be drafted so that the good men and women over there for their 3rd and 4th tours can have a break. Then we'll see how gung-ho you are about war.

F.A. Hayek Fan  posted on  2007-03-08   20:43:25 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

http://www.januarymagazine.com/features/triumphexc.html "

Regarding the author you quote per the January magazine - Mark Moyar - "At present, he is Associate Professor and Course Director at the U.S. Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia."

Enough said.

As for the QandO Blog - what is it and who the heck is Bruce "McQ" McQuain? I saw some references on Google to QandO being a right wing blog, which doesn't surprise me, and that McQ participated in a "conference call" with Senator Mitch McConnell...Ha!

http://blogometer.nationaljournal.com/archives/2006/09/915_wheres_the.html

http://cayankee.bl ogs.com/cayankee/congress/index.html

It sounds like McQ is a reichwing spokes person so I could care less about his research or his interviews or his observations about the Vietnam War. He has an agenda.

scrapper2  posted on  2007-03-08   20:48:04 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

If the domino theory was valid, and the fall of Vietnam would lead to Chinese hegemony in Southeast Asia, why weren't we more concerned that Cuba was becoming Communist, which would lead to all of South America becoming Communist?

Actually we were. Remember Nicaragua and the Sandinistas?

You might find this interesting ...

http://www.enterstageright.com/archive/articles/0902/0902domino.htm

Why should we be willing to send soldiers to prevent a country thousands of miles away from becoming Communist, but we shouldn't have a problem with a Communist country 90 miles away?

Actually, only the democRAT party has no problem with Cuba being communist.

Did lack of media coverage and internal outrage make the Soviets successful in Afghanistan? Did the resistance in Afghanistan need press coverage or discussion in the Russian media to maintain motivation to continue? Where does the belief that all will be well if no one knows what's going on come from?

Not sure where this is coming from. I haven't suggested all will be well if no one knows what's going on. What I said is that things can go wrong when the media DISTORTS what's going on to fit their own agenda. That's what they did in Vietnam and that is what they are doing now.

Does what he's saying hinge upon positive media coverage?

Such people use our media to spread their propaganda ... for free. That's not the way to fight an information war ... and this is as much an information war as anything else. It's a war of WILL, and anything that can bolster or weaken will is a weapon. Our enemies are using our media against us.

Is it any less true because the media is providing information that it's true?

But it isn't true. It's propaganda and our media helping making American's believe it (as they clearly have done) is the only way our enemies will win.

Would it make the situation on the ground different?

The situation on the ground for terrorists has been dire in Iraq. The media in this country didn't tell the public how effective the campaign against terrorists has been the last several years and the progress made on multiple fronts. Instead, it concentrated on every bad event it could find or anything that potentially could be interpreted as bad. Iraq has been a killing ground for terrorists and has led to numerous intelligence coups that have significantly hurt terrorist plots. But that's not what the media has told the public. So the situation on the ground is definitely affected by what impact terrorists think their actions will have on OUR WILL and that of the Iraqis. Until recently morale in Iraq has been good but the weakening of will in America (as a direct result of media reporting) is now taking its toll. And don't think for one second that our enemies aren't watching that with interest.

Let me ask you a question. Why do you think during WW2 the media was prevented from telling the public how dire the situation was initially? Would we have won that war if the media had done then what they've been doing now? Now be honest...

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   21:04:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

I have more faith in the people of Iraq. By their actions, they are telling us that they feel they can govern themselves.

They are governing themselves.

If they were serious about wanting us there, more would be helping us.

No, they are like people everywhere. Watching out for number one. Focused on day to day life. Not very literate when it comes to some things. Not willing to stick their neck out if they can avoid it. Willing to live off the government dole.

There are only a few percent working against us, and if only a few percent helped us there would be no insurgency.

Actually, there are a few percent helping us. What you forget is that the source of the insurgencies strength is not inside Iraq. Iran and Syria are definitely promoting trouble. But unfortunately, we again have leaders who aren't willing to draw a line in the sand but think they can negotiate a solution. That has NEVER worked.

That they are choosing not to seems to indicate that they are lukewarm at best with our presence.

No, they are just like people everywhere. They will let someone else stick their neck out. Now mind you, I'm not against putting a greater burden on them. They need to take the reigns now. But they also need to know that we will stand behind them no matter how bloody it gets or what it takes to win on their part. Unfortunately, that's not the message they are getting from the US media and those holding the keys to the Senate and House.

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-08   21:12:11 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

They are governing themselves.

May you be so fortunate.

If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost

Dakmar  posted on  2007-03-08   21:13:31 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

I have to say there is one positive thing about BAC, he never cusses and is never vulgar.

(hey you have to give people credit for something!)

Diana  posted on  2007-03-08   21:19:52 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Did lack of media coverage and internal outrage make the Soviets successful in Afghanistan? Did the resistance in Afghanistan need press coverage or discussion in the Russian media to maintain motivation to continue? Where does the belief that all will be well if no one knows what's going on come from?

One of the best little quotes to come out of this discussion.

The hawks and their keyboard warrior allies want us all to believe that if we oppose this war, we will be held responsible for the outcome. That in the wrack and ruin of premature withdrawal caused by an army of simpering leftist fifth columnists at home waiving little Hezbollah flags our troops will come home in defeat and the Dolchstosslegende will be born anew. The antiwar crowd will be branded as the defeatists that cost us victory.

If we had just stuck it out. Two more years or three more years, and we would have worn the insurgency out. I can hear them already. I can hear them on this forum.

The truth is that Iraq was sick to start with. The truth is we had a lot to do with its pathology. (Want facts Beech? Try me.) Then we went in like an unqualified surgeon and made an unholy mess of things.

When I say "we" made a mess of things, I mean George Bush and all of the other idiots we've seen fit to elect to office and to represent us in the world. George has been singing, "I Did It My Way" for the last five years. He didn't listen to reasonable advice and allowed bad policies and incompetence to prevail. We're in a stinkin' mess in Iraq. It stinks if we stay and sticks if we go. And you can't blame it on the "fifth column" at home. Bush and Rummy screwed this all up by themselves.

The insurgency will continue. They've got lots and lots of ammo courtesy of Uncle Sam and his friends. And they have nowhere to go. Like the Soviet Union in Afghanistan where the only debate of significance took place behind locked doors in the Kremlin, the present and future costs of this war are beginning to be felt in earnest. It costs a fearful amount of treasure to send an army abroad on a crusade. And it's the money that will break the back of this venture, not the blood shed abroad or the tears shed at home.

Money trumps . . . uh . . . . peace . . sometimes. - GW Bush

randge  posted on  2007-03-08   21:23:08 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

He is vulgar because he insults the intelligence of everyone he views as his enemy. Wrong on so many levels...

I, on the other hand, just like Saxon words. :)

If you look carefully at my lips, you'll realize that I'm actually saying something else. I'm not actually telling you about the several ways I'm gradually murdering Joan. - Tom Frost

Dakmar  posted on  2007-03-08   21:23:42 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

I have to say there is one positive thing about BAC, he never cusses and is never vulgar.

(hey you have to give people credit for something!)

Right, you are.

I don't have to worry about 'handlers.' Not so BAC.

{:-))

SKYDRIFTER  posted on  2007-03-08   23:06:58 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Oh yeah, you also posted newspaper articles by no-nothing journalists, and op- ed pieces from no-nothing neocons. Oh yeah, and a UN report.

Again, you are mischaracterizing. But that's ok. Visitors to FD4UM will read the threads on the John Hopkins' studies and see that.

And I'll tell you now what I said then; if all the shit you wrote were true, then it would have been challenged in a professional, peer reviewed journal. That's how it's done.

Just out of curiosity, wouldn't that also be true of your WTC allegations? Where are the peer reviewed articles challenging the government's scenario for the collapse of the towers? And don't try to suggest that a journal started by Steven Jones can be credibly called *peer reviewed*.

But in any case, the difference between the WTC case and this case is that I and many others are more than willing to argue the facts. And we have. Providing DETAILED explanations why the John Hopkins studies are bogus. Your side's response has mostly been to ignore those detailed criticisms and repeat your mantra. And many of those criticism have come from scientists and experts in statistics. Named ones. That should tell readers something.

Professional epidemiologists would have provided a research paper on how and why the original study was flawed. Guess what BAC. This has not been done!

Maybe that says something about epidemiologists. They do tend to be a liberal group. Or maybe it says something about your research abilities.

You shouldn't simply dismiss the UN report. It was peer reviewed. It was performed by folks who know how to conduct good surveys. One of those is Dr Jon Pedersen. He's actually got very good credentials. And ironically, you dismiss him because he works for the UN ... yet some of the authors of the John Hopkins' reports also have at one time or another worked on UN projects and UN reports. Richard Garfield is one of those. He worked for UNICEF and came up with a pre-war mortality for children in Iraq that is much different than the one Les Roberts now claims. Of course, now Mr Garfield has nothing to say about that difference. In fact, Mr Garfield is the one who put Roberts in contact with Riyadh Lafta, the researcher at Al-Mustansiriya University, who recruited the interviewers to do the John Hopkins survey ... the ones that mostly HATE the Americans. Do we detect an agenda?

Let's see who else you simply ignore or dismiss (just to start a list).

I believe I mentioned a named statistician who it turns out works for the Yukon State Bureau of Statistics in Canada. What would he know about statistics ...

How about Debarati Guha-Sapir, director of the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters in Brussels? You think she's woefully unqualified?

Or how about Madelyn Hicks, a psychiatrist and public health researcher at King's College London in the U.K.. Dr Hicks published her concerns in a paper titled "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: Were valid and ethical field methods used in this survey?", which concluded that, "In view of the significant questions that remain unanswered about the feasibility of their study’s methods as practiced at the level of field interviews,it is necessary that Burnham and his co-authors provide detailed, data-based evidence that all reported interviews were indeed carried out, and how this was done in a valid manner. In addition, they need to explain and to demonstrate to what degree their published methodology was adhered to or departed from across interviews, and to demonstrate convincingly that interviews were done in accordance with the standards of ethical research. If the authors choose not to provide this further analysis of their data, they should provide their raw data so that these aspects can be examined by others. Even in surveys on the sensitive and potentially risky subject of community violence, adequately anonymized data are expected to be sufficient for subsequent reanalysis and to be available for review. In the case of studies accepted for publication by the Lancet, all studies are expected to be able to provide their raw data." But so far Burnham and company have refused to do so ... or perhaps they can't because the data never existed or they kept such *bad* records.

You dismiss Beth Daponte, senior research scholar at Yale University's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. She seems to be qualified. And after reading the Lancet article she told Fred Kaplan "It attests to the difficulty of doing this sort of survey work during a war. … No one can come up with any credible estimates yet, at least not through the sorts of methods used here." She expressed her concerns here, http://webdiary.com.au/cms/?q=node/1818, "So the pre-war CDR that the two Lancet studies yield seems too low. It may not be wrong, but the authors should provide a credible explanation of why their pre-war CDR is nearly half that of the UN Population Division. If the pre-war mortality rate was too low and/or if the population estimates were too high – because, for example, they ignored outflows of refugees from Iraq – the resulting estimates of the number of Iraqi "excess deaths" would be inflated."

And of course you would dismiss, Steven E. Moore, who conducted survey research in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority. He's got to be biased. Right?

But what about Professor Michael Spagat of Royal Holloway's Economics Department, and physicists Professor Neil Johnson and Sean Gourley of Oxford University? They published a highly detailed paper (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/Research/conflict-analysis/iraq-mortality/BiasPaper.html ). They claim (http://www.rhul.ac.uk/messages/press/message.asp?ref_no=367 ) the John Hopkin "study’s methodology is fundamentally flawed and will result in an over-estimation of the death toll in Iraq. The study suffers from "main street bias" by only surveying houses that are located on cross streets next to main roads or on the main road itself. However many Iraqi households do not satisfy this strict criterion and had no chance of being surveyed. Main street bias inflates casualty estimates since conflict events such as car bombs, drive-by shootings, artillery strikes on insurgent positions, and market place explosions gravitate toward the same neighbourhood types that the researchers surveyed." That sounds like a pretty serious complaint. And more on their work can be found here: http://www.rhul.ac.uk/Economics/Research/conflict-analysis/iraq-mortality/index.html. Now that work may be peer reviewed? I don't know. But to simply dismiss it out of hand is a mistake on your part.

And then there's an article in Science magazine by John Bohannon which describes some of the above professors criticisms, as well as the response from Gilbert Burnham. Burnham claimed that such streets were included and that the methods section of the published paper is oversimplified. Bohannon says that Burnham told Science that he does not know exactly how the Iraqi team conducted its survey; and that the details about neighborhoods surveyed were destroyed "in case they fell into the wrong hands and could increase the risks to residents." Michael Spagat says the scientific community should call for an in-depth investigation into the researchers' procedures. "It is almost a crime to let it go unchallenged," says Johnson. In a letter to Science, the John Hopkins authors claim that Bohannon misquoted Burnham. Bohannon defended his comments as accurate, citing Burnham saying, in response to questions about why details of selecting "residential streets that that did not cross the main avenues" that "in trying to shorten the paper from its original very large size, this bit got chopped, unfortunately." Apparently, the details which were destroyed refer to the "scraps" of paper on which streets and addresses were written to "randomly" choose households". The John Hopkins effort was such a well conducted survey. (sarcasm)

And how about some of the members of Iraq Body Count? How about John Sloboda or Joshua Dougherty (AKA joshd)? They've made pretty strong criticisms of the John Hopkins' work. I posted some of them earlier on this thread. Yet you just dismiss them out of hand?

You know what I think, Halek? Somebody is hiding.

Once again, I've had my say and you've had yours.

Actually, you haven't even listened to most of what I had to say.

I reject your sources in the same way that you reject the WTC sources.

On the contrary. My sources actually do have expertise in the subject at hand. NONE of your sources have expertise in structures, demolition, fire, impact, steel, concrete, buckling or macro-world physics. And unlike you, I don't run from the detailed accusations. I take them apart with sourced facts point by point.

You are a war-mongering coward that doesn't have the courage of his convictions.

Ah ... more respectful debate. ROTFLOL!

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-09   0:53:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Regarding the author you quote per the January magazine - Mark Moyar - "At present, he is Associate Professor and Course Director at the U.S. Marine Corps University in Quantico, Virginia."

Enough said.

Such respect for our military. You sure are on their side.

It sounds like McQ is a reichwing spokes person so I could care less about his research or his interviews or his observations about the Vietnam War. He has an agenda.

Muhammad Saadi's views were mentioned in the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen during debate of the Iraq resolution: http://www.internationalrelations.house.gov/minority/news021307.htm . You think he's lying about that?

BeAChooser  posted on  2007-03-09   1:01:57 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

a. Such respect for our military. You sure are on their side

b. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen

a. You bet I'm on the side of the military. I want what the troops want - to leave Iraq post haste and come home. What you and your neocon compadres want for the US military is anyone's guess.

Btw, did you and your internet imaginery friends realize that according to a recent Military Times poll 72% our military in Iraq don't know what they're doing there and that they want to be re-deployed asap?

b. "Muhammad Saadi's views were mentioned in the House Foreign Affairs Committee by Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen during debate of the Iraq resolution"...

Uh huh...I am sure Ms. Ros-Lehtinen, like your McQ reichwing blogger from QandA would have loved, loved, loved anything that could be used as a faux reason to invade Iraq, including Mr. Saadi's views. In fact, I'm sure Ariel Sharon and Bibi Netanyahu would have also thought that Mr. Saadi's views rocked!

scrapper2  posted on  2007-03-09   1:16:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

I believe I mentioned a named statistician who it turns out works for the Yukon State Bureau of Statistics in Canada. What would he know about statistics ...

Err...BAC - Yukon is not a state. And your Yukon state statistician is working in the Siberian boondock territories of Canada because he did not make the cut for Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, or Vancouver, so I guess he's not such a notable statistician after all. Also - pssst - to BAC's imaginery internet pals lurking out there - this Yukon statistician was a holy roller christonutter...

But BAC - I didn't mean to interrupt. Carry on...

scrapper2  posted on  2007-03-09   1:40:26 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

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