USA equipping a private army in preparation for an invasion of Venezuela
Someone is building and equipping a private Army in South America and we get to pay for it. Congress knows nothing about this. It looks like preparation for an invasion of Venezuela, if we had to take a guess.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=75673
Monday, September 03, 2007
Pentagon 'Three-Day Blitz' Plan For Iran
By Sarah Baxter
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18290.htm
The War Criminal in the Living Room
By Paul Craig Roberts
The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran. - US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18287.htm
Hillary Clinton Is Willing to Nuke Iran
1 Minute Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18285.htm
Are We 'Good Germans'?
By Ed Ciaccio
Bush wants our always-accommodating Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to declare a part of Iran's military as "terrorists." This will enable him to attack Iran without Congressional authorization.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18291.htm
U.S. Obsessed With Using Force
By Reason Wafawarova
SINCE the United States assumed global leadership from Britain at the end of the Second World War; when it emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the war, a development that saw it declare the era of "the American century", Washington has been obsessed with using force to thwart small countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18284.htm
By Sarah Baxter
THE Pentagon has drawn up plans for massive airstrikes against 1,200 targets in Iran, designed to annihilate the Iranians' military capability in three days, according to a national security expert.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18290.htm
The War Criminal in the Living Room
By Paul Craig Roberts
The media is silent, Congress is absent, and Americans are distracted as George W. Bush openly prepares aggression against Iran. - US war doctrine has been altered to permit first strike nuclear attack on Iran and other non-nuclear countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18287.htm
Hillary Clinton Is Willing to Nuke Iran
1 Minute Video
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18285.htm
Are We 'Good Germans'?
By Ed Ciaccio
Bush wants our always-accommodating Congress, Democrats and Republicans, to declare a part of Iran's military as "terrorists." This will enable him to attack Iran without Congressional authorization.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18291.htm
U.S. Obsessed With Using Force
By Reason Wafawarova
SINCE the United States assumed global leadership from Britain at the end of the Second World War; when it emerged as the biggest beneficiary of the war, a development that saw it declare the era of "the American century", Washington has been obsessed with using force to thwart small countries.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18284.htm
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Some useful Viet Nam sites worth a look
Cultural Profiles:
http://www.culturalprofiles.net/Viet_Nam/Directories/Vi_ACYAIw-7879_ADs-t_Nam_Cultural_Profile/-1497.html
Vietnam Pictorial:
http://vietnampictorial.vnanet.vn
Excellent maps & location info:
www.vinacarta.com
Cultural Profiles:
http://www.culturalprofiles.net/Viet_Nam/Directories/Vi_ACYAIw-7879_ADs-t_Nam_Cultural_Profile/-1497.html
Vietnam Pictorial:
http://vietnampictorial.vnanet.vn
Excellent maps & location info:
www.vinacarta.com
Citizens Arrest of Australian Attorney-General Philip Ruddock as a War Criminal.
"...as Philip Ruddock was about to address a symposium on Law & Liberty in the War on Terror, an anti-war activist confronted Ruddock with a formal Warrant, charging him with various war crimes.
Peter McGregor, a retired academic from Newcastle, was himself then arrested, & charged with 'unlawful entry on inclosed lands'.
McGregor also had criticized UNSW, the Law Faculty, & all present, for welcoming such a war criminal. "Ruddock's abandoning of Habeas Corpus, as both Minister for Immigration, & Attorney-General should make him a social pariah, & especially with academics & those who believe in the rule of law & human rights. In order for evil to triumph, it is enough for good people to do nothing."
Contact: Peter McGregor
Is the Empire's Economy Starting to Crumble?
The Vietnam war was basically financed by printing more dollars. The inflation that followed in the 1970s was exported around the world. The current war in Iraq is again being financed in a similar fashion. But it would seem that after 4 years of expenditure on the war that is now running at more than $US 12 billion per month that things may be starting to come apart.
Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now by Paul Craig Roberts
Iran steps up petro-dollar war with U.S. by J. R. Corsi
From:
Irregular Gippsland Peace Newsletter Summary
(No. 38 September 2007)
Price: free /Donation
Copyright: the Author.
Feel free to send / copy / proliferate all or in part
Peter Gardner (ed) c/-PO Swifts Creek Australia 3896
ngarak@bigpond.com to receive full newsletter by email
"...as Philip Ruddock was about to address a symposium on Law & Liberty in the War on Terror, an anti-war activist confronted Ruddock with a formal Warrant, charging him with various war crimes.
Peter McGregor, a retired academic from Newcastle, was himself then arrested, & charged with 'unlawful entry on inclosed lands'.
McGregor also had criticized UNSW, the Law Faculty, & all present, for welcoming such a war criminal. "Ruddock's abandoning of Habeas Corpus, as both Minister for Immigration, & Attorney-General should make him a social pariah, & especially with academics & those who believe in the rule of law & human rights. In order for evil to triumph, it is enough for good people to do nothing."
Contact: Peter McGregor
Is the Empire's Economy Starting to Crumble?
The Vietnam war was basically financed by printing more dollars. The inflation that followed in the 1970s was exported around the world. The current war in Iraq is again being financed in a similar fashion. But it would seem that after 4 years of expenditure on the war that is now running at more than $US 12 billion per month that things may be starting to come apart.
Uncle Sam, Your Banker Will See You Now by Paul Craig Roberts
Iran steps up petro-dollar war with U.S. by J. R. Corsi
From:
Irregular Gippsland Peace Newsletter Summary
(No. 38 September 2007)
Price: free /Donation
Copyright: the Author.
Feel free to send / copy / proliferate all or in part
Peter Gardner (ed) c/-PO Swifts Creek Australia 3896
ngarak@bigpond.com to receive full newsletter by email
Tomgram: Juan Cole, The Republic Militant at War, Then and Now
To send this to a friend, or to read more dispatches, go to tomdispatch.com
It was the highest-tech military of its moment and its invasion of the Arab land was overwhelming. Enemy forces were smashed, the oppressive ruling regime overthrown, the enemy capital occupied, and the country declared liberated… then the first acts of insurgency began…
George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003?
No, Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in June 1798. !!!!!!
There are times when the resonances of history are positively eerie. This happens to be one of them.
We all deserve a history lesson about the Napoleonic beginnings of our present catastrophe. (Too bad you-know-who didn't get one before ordering that March 2003 invasion.)
I got mine from a man whose blog, Informed Comment, I read every morning without fail and whose flow of commentary on Bush's war in Iraq has been invaluable. I'm talking, of course, about Juan Cole who (evidently in his spare moments) has completed a history of the Napoleonic moment of "spreading democracy" to Arab lands, just published as Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East.
Some of the parallels are enough to make you jump out of your chair (if not your skin). For instance, Napoleon wrote a letter to one of his generals, well into the occupation, forbidding the beating of insurgents to extract information: "It has been recognized at all times that this manner of interrogating human beings, of putting them under torture, produces nothing good." Okay, at least Napoleon could learn from experience, an ability our President seems to lack, but the issue, put that way, rings a terrible bell 200 years later.
Napoleon's Egyptian moment lasted a mere three years. We are already into our fifth year in devolving Iraq with no obvious end in sight.
Last Sunday, the New York Times printed a remarkable op-ed by an Army specialist, four sergeants, and two staff sergeants of the 82nd Airborne Division, now on duty in Iraq (one of whom was shot in the head while the piece was being prepared).
In it, they wrote, "Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal… [W]e are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day."
Of the military mission of which they are a part they wrote: "In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal."
Whether these soldiers know the history of Bonaparte in Egypt or not, they have grasped the essence of what lurks behind the fine liberatory words of the leaders of the republic militant.
Let's hope it's not too late to learn the lesson of Napoleon and slip out of "Egypt," while it's still possible. Though it hardly scatches the surface of his new book, here is a little taste from the Napoleonic lesson plan of Juan Cole.
Tom
Pitching the Imperial Republic
Bonaparte and Bush on Deck
By Juan Cole
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
To send this to a friend, or to read more dispatches, go to tomdispatch.com
It was the highest-tech military of its moment and its invasion of the Arab land was overwhelming. Enemy forces were smashed, the oppressive ruling regime overthrown, the enemy capital occupied, and the country declared liberated… then the first acts of insurgency began…
George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq in 2003?
No, Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Egypt in June 1798. !!!!!!
There are times when the resonances of history are positively eerie. This happens to be one of them.
We all deserve a history lesson about the Napoleonic beginnings of our present catastrophe. (Too bad you-know-who didn't get one before ordering that March 2003 invasion.)
I got mine from a man whose blog, Informed Comment, I read every morning without fail and whose flow of commentary on Bush's war in Iraq has been invaluable. I'm talking, of course, about Juan Cole who (evidently in his spare moments) has completed a history of the Napoleonic moment of "spreading democracy" to Arab lands, just published as Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East.
Some of the parallels are enough to make you jump out of your chair (if not your skin). For instance, Napoleon wrote a letter to one of his generals, well into the occupation, forbidding the beating of insurgents to extract information: "It has been recognized at all times that this manner of interrogating human beings, of putting them under torture, produces nothing good." Okay, at least Napoleon could learn from experience, an ability our President seems to lack, but the issue, put that way, rings a terrible bell 200 years later.
Napoleon's Egyptian moment lasted a mere three years. We are already into our fifth year in devolving Iraq with no obvious end in sight.
Last Sunday, the New York Times printed a remarkable op-ed by an Army specialist, four sergeants, and two staff sergeants of the 82nd Airborne Division, now on duty in Iraq (one of whom was shot in the head while the piece was being prepared).
In it, they wrote, "Viewed from Iraq at the tail end of a 15-month deployment, the political debate in Washington is indeed surreal… [W]e are skeptical of recent press coverage portraying the conflict as increasingly manageable and feel it has neglected the mounting civil, political and social unrest we see every day."
Of the military mission of which they are a part they wrote: "In the end, we need to recognize that our presence may have released Iraqis from the grip of a tyrant, but that it has also robbed them of their self-respect. They will soon realize that the best way to regain dignity is to call us what we are -- an army of occupation -- and force our withdrawal."
Whether these soldiers know the history of Bonaparte in Egypt or not, they have grasped the essence of what lurks behind the fine liberatory words of the leaders of the republic militant.
Let's hope it's not too late to learn the lesson of Napoleon and slip out of "Egypt," while it's still possible. Though it hardly scatches the surface of his new book, here is a little taste from the Napoleonic lesson plan of Juan Cole.
Tom
Pitching the Imperial Republic
Bonaparte and Bush on Deck
By Juan Cole
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
NEED SOME TRUTH?
CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER
Telling the truth - about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington - is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance - whether it's in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you've read, we hope that you'll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers.
http://www.traveling-soldier.org/
And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! www.ivaw.org/
CHECK OUT TRAVELING SOLDIER
Telling the truth - about the occupation or the criminals running the government in Washington - is the first reason for Traveling Soldier. But we want to do more than tell the truth; we want to report on the resistance - whether it's in the streets of Baghdad, New York, or inside the armed forces. Our goal is for Traveling Soldier to become the thread that ties working-class people inside the armed services together. We want this newsletter to be a weapon to help you organize resistance within the armed forces. If you like what you've read, we hope that you'll join with us in building a network of active duty organizers.
http://www.traveling-soldier.org/
And join with Iraq War vets in the call to end the occupation and bring our troops home now! www.ivaw.org/
Saturday, August 25, 2007
IWT - International World Television
The Real News is an alternative to the corporate mainstream television
Dear Supporters,
We just hit 101,000 views of The Promise on YouTube!
We want to thank you for helping us reach this milestone by viewing the video, sending it to friends and spreading the word about The Real News vision.
Now help us promote a new video with Eric Margolis.
This video is the first test of a new program called, The Real Story.
Eric Margolis, contributor to The Real News, says television news is misleading people about the responsibility of the U.S. in fueling the Iraq civil war.
Click on the link, rate it and send it to your friends.
Together we are making The Real News a reality.
The Real News is an alternative to the corporate mainstream television
Dear Supporters,
We just hit 101,000 views of The Promise on YouTube!
We want to thank you for helping us reach this milestone by viewing the video, sending it to friends and spreading the word about The Real News vision.
Now help us promote a new video with Eric Margolis.
This video is the first test of a new program called, The Real Story.
Eric Margolis, contributor to The Real News, says television news is misleading people about the responsibility of the U.S. in fueling the Iraq civil war.
Click on the link, rate it and send it to your friends.
Together we are making The Real News a reality.
..........................................................................
Join us at www.therealnews.com as we begin our "Think" programming, presenting a seven-part interview with legendary author Gore Vidal. Hear tales of grotesque adventures, the end of empires, the demise of democracy and much more.
Says Vidal, "I was born 80 years ago in a country called the United States of America and now I live in a Homeland - an expression we haven't heard since Hitler."
After watching the Gore Vidal interview, return to the homepage and click on "Join the Conversation" to talk with us at The Real News Junkies. The Real News Junkies is where The Real News community can discuss political topics of interest with each other, and learn more about our development as a network.
Part 1 of our interview with Gore Vidal is posted today. We look forward to knowing what you think!
Thanks again,
Paul Jay
CEO & Senior Editor IWT/The Real News
Monday, July 23, 2007
Democratic or Republican ... the U.S. has no intention to really withdraw from Iraq!
From TomDispatch.com
a project of the Nation Institute
To send this to a friend, or to read more dispatches, go to tomdispatch.com
Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Democratic Doublespeak on Iraq
Start with the simplest, most basic fudge. Newspapers and the TV news constantly report on various plans for the "withdrawal of American troops" from Iraq, when what's being proposed is the withdrawal of American "combat troops" or "combat brigades."
This isn't a matter of splitting hairs; it's the difference between a plan for full-scale withdrawal and a plan to remain in Iraq in a different military form for the long term.
American combat brigades only add up to perhaps half of the troops we presently have in that country.
There is, in fact, quite a gap between withdrawal from that embattled land and the withdrawal of some American troops, while many of the rest hunker down on the enormous, all-but-permanent military bases the Pentagon has built there over the last four years -- while defending the largest embassy on the planet, now nearing completion (amid the normal woes that seem to go with American construction and "reconstruction") in Baghdad's heavily fortified but distinctly insecure Green Zone.
And yet, thanks to the carefully worded statements of leading Democratic (and Republican) politicians now criticizing the Bush administration, as well as generally terrible reporting in the mainstream media, most Americans who don't make it to the fine print or who don't wander widely on the political Internet, would have no way of knowing that withdrawal isn't withdrawal at all.
Ira Chernus, Tomdispatch regular and author of Monsters To Destroy, takes a careful look at the leading Democratic candidates for president and raises a few crucial, if largely unasked, questions about the nature of the positions they are taking on the Iraq War. - Tom
The Democrats' Iraqi Dilemma
Questions Unasked, Answers Never Volunteered
By Ira Chernus
Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops from Iraq. Most who will vote in the Democratic primaries concluded long ago that we must leave Iraq, and they are unlikely to let anyone who disagrees with them have the party's nomination in 2008.
But what does it mean to "leave Iraq"? Here's where most of the Democratic candidates come smack up against that hard place. There is a longstanding bipartisan consensus in the foreign-policy establishment that the U.S. must control every strategically valuable region of the world -- and none more so than the oil heartlands of the planet. That's been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades now. No matter how hard the task may be, they demand that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.
So whatever "leave Iraq" might mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January 20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis determine their own national policies or fate.
The powers that be just wouldn't stand for that.
They see themselves as the guardians of world "order." They feel a sacred obligation to maintain "stability" throughout the imperial domains, which now means most of planet Earth -- regardless of what voters may think.
The Democratic front-runners know that "order" and "stability" are code words for American hegemony. They also know that voters, especially Democratic ones, see the price of hegemony in Iraq and just don't want to pay it anymore.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
From TomDispatch.com
a project of the Nation Institute
To send this to a friend, or to read more dispatches, go to tomdispatch.com
Tomgram: Ira Chernus, Democratic Doublespeak on Iraq
Start with the simplest, most basic fudge. Newspapers and the TV news constantly report on various plans for the "withdrawal of American troops" from Iraq, when what's being proposed is the withdrawal of American "combat troops" or "combat brigades."
This isn't a matter of splitting hairs; it's the difference between a plan for full-scale withdrawal and a plan to remain in Iraq in a different military form for the long term.
American combat brigades only add up to perhaps half of the troops we presently have in that country.
There is, in fact, quite a gap between withdrawal from that embattled land and the withdrawal of some American troops, while many of the rest hunker down on the enormous, all-but-permanent military bases the Pentagon has built there over the last four years -- while defending the largest embassy on the planet, now nearing completion (amid the normal woes that seem to go with American construction and "reconstruction") in Baghdad's heavily fortified but distinctly insecure Green Zone.
And yet, thanks to the carefully worded statements of leading Democratic (and Republican) politicians now criticizing the Bush administration, as well as generally terrible reporting in the mainstream media, most Americans who don't make it to the fine print or who don't wander widely on the political Internet, would have no way of knowing that withdrawal isn't withdrawal at all.
Ira Chernus, Tomdispatch regular and author of Monsters To Destroy, takes a careful look at the leading Democratic candidates for president and raises a few crucial, if largely unasked, questions about the nature of the positions they are taking on the Iraq War. - Tom
The Democrats' Iraqi Dilemma
Questions Unasked, Answers Never Volunteered
By Ira Chernus
Pity the poor Democratic candidates for president, caught between Iraq and a hard place. Every day, more and more voters decide that we must end the war and set a date to start withdrawing our troops from Iraq. Most who will vote in the Democratic primaries concluded long ago that we must leave Iraq, and they are unlikely to let anyone who disagrees with them have the party's nomination in 2008.
But what does it mean to "leave Iraq"? Here's where most of the Democratic candidates come smack up against that hard place. There is a longstanding bipartisan consensus in the foreign-policy establishment that the U.S. must control every strategically valuable region of the world -- and none more so than the oil heartlands of the planet. That's been a hard-and-fast rule of the elite for some six decades now. No matter how hard the task may be, they demand that presidents be rock-hard enough to get the job done.
So whatever "leave Iraq" might mean, no candidate of either party likely to enter the White House on January 20, 2009 can think it means letting Iraqis determine their own national policies or fate.
The powers that be just wouldn't stand for that.
They see themselves as the guardians of world "order." They feel a sacred obligation to maintain "stability" throughout the imperial domains, which now means most of planet Earth -- regardless of what voters may think.
The Democratic front-runners know that "order" and "stability" are code words for American hegemony. They also know that voters, especially Democratic ones, see the price of hegemony in Iraq and just don't want to pay it anymore.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
Malcolm Fraser, former Prime Minister of Australia,
speaks for withdrawal from Iraq
"The situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate with more loss of lives, with even more hardship to Iraqi civilians.
The serious divisions within Iraq, unleashed by the war itself, have not been reduced. The Iraqi government has made no significant steps towards reconciliation and accommodation between the warring parties.
This is a situation that cannot be controlled by military force.
The troop surge, such as it was, failed.
There were over half a million Americans in Vietnam. They failed. With only a fraction of that number in Iraq it should be no surprise that continued reliance on military means is not succeeding.
More and more Americans are coming to accept that withdrawal must take place.
Senior and highly respected Republican Senators are deserting President Bush on this issue. The original objectives are almost entirely forgotten. There is no talk of Iraq establishing a benign, American style democracy that will spread to the rest of the Middle East.
Our withdrawal must be carefully planned, as a precipitous withdrawal in a week or a month would add to the chaos. And as the Baker-Hamilton Committee reported to Congress, all regional players, including Iran and Syria, must be drawn into discussions before we leave. Diplomacy now offers the only chance of a withdrawal accompanied by relative calm and peace.
One of the things we should say to the Americans, quite simply, is that if the United States is not prepared to involve itself in high level diplomacy concerning Iraq and other Middle East questions, our forces will be withdrawn before Christmas.
I encourage you to support GetUp's campaign for a change in policy.
Add your voice below to the thousands who have spoken already.
If enough speak, the Government has to listen."
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/OurOwnPlanForIraq
Malcolm Fraser AC CH
Former Prime Minister of Australia
speaks for withdrawal from Iraq
"The situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate with more loss of lives, with even more hardship to Iraqi civilians.
The serious divisions within Iraq, unleashed by the war itself, have not been reduced. The Iraqi government has made no significant steps towards reconciliation and accommodation between the warring parties.
This is a situation that cannot be controlled by military force.
The troop surge, such as it was, failed.
There were over half a million Americans in Vietnam. They failed. With only a fraction of that number in Iraq it should be no surprise that continued reliance on military means is not succeeding.
More and more Americans are coming to accept that withdrawal must take place.
Senior and highly respected Republican Senators are deserting President Bush on this issue. The original objectives are almost entirely forgotten. There is no talk of Iraq establishing a benign, American style democracy that will spread to the rest of the Middle East.
Our withdrawal must be carefully planned, as a precipitous withdrawal in a week or a month would add to the chaos. And as the Baker-Hamilton Committee reported to Congress, all regional players, including Iran and Syria, must be drawn into discussions before we leave. Diplomacy now offers the only chance of a withdrawal accompanied by relative calm and peace.
One of the things we should say to the Americans, quite simply, is that if the United States is not prepared to involve itself in high level diplomacy concerning Iraq and other Middle East questions, our forces will be withdrawn before Christmas.
I encourage you to support GetUp's campaign for a change in policy.
Add your voice below to the thousands who have spoken already.
If enough speak, the Government has to listen."
https://www.getup.org.au/campaign/OurOwnPlanForIraq
Malcolm Fraser AC CH
Former Prime Minister of Australia
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
'AGENT ORANGE' VIDEO
An urgent appeal from Len Aldis!
An urgent appeal from Len Aldis!
Seeking Justice for the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange !
The worst chemical warfare in history!
Millions of innocent people still affected, into the 3rd generation already!
Dear Friends,
Recently I was videoed on the issue of Agent Orange.
You can view the video by going to:
Although short, it is an important video and part of our campaign seeking Justice for the Victims of Agent Orange. When you have finished viewing there are a few actions I would like you to take.
1/ Please make a comment on what you have seen, this is very easy to do and due to the issue of Agent Orange extremely important. The more comments people make, the longer the video will be on view.
2/ Please circulate the site’s address to all your friends and contacts asking them to view it. If you or your friends have a website, please ask them to put a link to the Video.
3/ Please sign and again ask your friends to sign the online petition:
Finally, let’s get the message on the Video across to people all over the world. We can, with your help, win Justice for the Victims of Agent Orange.
Regards,
Len Aldis
PS. Now, as they say, a word from the director of the video Jeremy Smith:
“I want to thank each and every one of you who does make a comment, as we really want this video to get noticed and they way that happens on our site is when people comment.” - Jeremy.
Len Aldis.
Secretary Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society
Flat 2, 26 Tomlins Grove
London E3 4NX
Tel & Fax: 0208 980 7146
Please help the victims of Agent Orange by signing the petition at:
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Donald Rumsfeld's Long March
"The Undertaker's Tally"
By Roger Morris
At a press conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels in June 2002, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said:
"Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no 'knowns.' There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
Strangely enough, Rumsfeld's own career, which catches so much of the political history that has led us into our present catastrophe, qualifies -- or at least did until today -- as either a "known unknown" or even one of those mystifying "unknown unknowns."
Every now and then, we need a little history to make sense of our world....
Roger Morris, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon (he resigned in protest over the invasion of Cambodia) and bestselling author of biographies of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Clintons, explores both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of Donald Rumsfeld's emblematic history and legacy, of his long march to power, and what he did with that power once it was in his hands.
Morris' two-parter on Rumsfeld's legacy, long as it is, is actually a miracle of historical compression, packing into a relatively modest space an epic history none of us should avoid. Call it a necessary reckoning with disaster.
Donald Rumsfeld himself may be front and center, but the supporting cast of rogues -- Dick Cheney, George Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Robert Gates, and so many others -- makes this a summary meditation on some of the most costly lessons of our times.
As a prophet, Rumsfeld may not have been exactly Delphic, "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months," he said in an interview on November 14, 2002, "but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." Nonetheless, he remains an emblematic figure of our age.
If you don't understand Rumsfeld, you can't fully grasp the unprecedented ruin which is American foreign policy today....
(Tom)
The Undertaker's Tally (Part 1)
Sharp Elbows
By Roger Morris
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
The Undertaker's Tally (Part 2)
The Power and the Glory
By Roger Morris
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
From Tomgram:
a project of the Nation Institute
to read more dispatches, go to tomdispatch.com
"The Undertaker's Tally"
By Roger Morris
At a press conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels in June 2002, then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said:
"Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no 'knowns.' There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
Strangely enough, Rumsfeld's own career, which catches so much of the political history that has led us into our present catastrophe, qualifies -- or at least did until today -- as either a "known unknown" or even one of those mystifying "unknown unknowns."
Every now and then, we need a little history to make sense of our world....
Roger Morris, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon (he resigned in protest over the invasion of Cambodia) and bestselling author of biographies of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Clintons, explores both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of Donald Rumsfeld's emblematic history and legacy, of his long march to power, and what he did with that power once it was in his hands.
Morris' two-parter on Rumsfeld's legacy, long as it is, is actually a miracle of historical compression, packing into a relatively modest space an epic history none of us should avoid. Call it a necessary reckoning with disaster.
Donald Rumsfeld himself may be front and center, but the supporting cast of rogues -- Dick Cheney, George Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Robert Gates, and so many others -- makes this a summary meditation on some of the most costly lessons of our times.
As a prophet, Rumsfeld may not have been exactly Delphic, "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months," he said in an interview on November 14, 2002, "but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." Nonetheless, he remains an emblematic figure of our age.
If you don't understand Rumsfeld, you can't fully grasp the unprecedented ruin which is American foreign policy today....
(Tom)
The Undertaker's Tally (Part 1)
Sharp Elbows
By Roger Morris
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
The Undertaker's Tally (Part 2)
The Power and the Glory
By Roger Morris
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
From Tomgram:
a project of the Nation Institute
to read more dispatches, go to tomdispatch.com
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
"FRAGGING" - US soldiers in Viet Nam killed their own commanders rather than fight the American War.
From: GI Special
December 19, 2006
Email: thomasfbarton@earthlink.net
“Most Fraggings Were Aimed At Eliminating The Abusive Practices Of Individual Commanders” -
SOLDIERS IN REVOLT: THE QUASI-MUTINY
The majority of grunts in Vietnam had but one aim, to return home safely, and few were willing to risk their lives for a hopeless cause.
As violent and ruthless as it may have been, fragging was an essential tool of soldier democracy, the means by which men thrust into Vietnam against their wills were able to resist military authority.
It was the final manifestation of a breakdown in the U.S. mission in Vietnam and signaled an Army at war with itself.
On April 20, 1971, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield began the proceedings of Congress by dramatically introducing his colleagues and the nation to the most macabre development of the Vietnam War: fragging.
In a trembling voice, Mansfield grimly told of a young first lieutenant, a West Point graduate from Montana, who was murdered by his own men at Bien Hoa on March 15, just four weeks before his scheduled return to the States.
In the brief comments following Mansfield’s disclosure, Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland captured the shock and dismay of those present:
“In every war a new vocabulary springs up . . . but in all the lexicon of war there is not a more tragic word than ‘fragging’ with all that it implies of total failure of discipline and depression of morale, the complete sense of frustration and confusion and the loss of goals and hope itself.”
The Army began keeping records on assaults with explosive devices in 1969.
Through the end of 1970, over three hundred incidents had taken place, resulting in seventy-three deaths and injury to nearly five hundred people.
By July of 1972, as the last American troops were leaving Vietnam, the total number of incidents had reached 551, with eighty-six soldiers dead and over seven hundred injured.
In effect, these are the casualty figures for the Army’s “other war” in Vietnam, its battle with the insurgents in its own ranks.
As startling as these totals may be, fraggings were in fact more frequent than the Pentagon’s figures imply.
One quite obvious deficiency is that the statistics include only assaults with explosive devices and omit the vast number of shootings with firearms, which, given greater availability, probably occurred more often.
David Addlestone reports that Army lawyers with the 173rd Airborne told of periods during ,1970 and 1971 when violent attacks were almost a daily occurrence.
In fact, assaults against commanders during the Vietnam War probably reached into the thousands.
The Pentagon figures do indicate a sharp rise in the rate of fragging, with the number of incidents increasing each year from 1969 to 1971, despite troop withdrawals:
Calendar Year / Number of Assaults / Deaths
1969 / 96 / 39
1970 / 209 / 34
1971 (first 11 months only) / 215 / 12
Military spokesmen sometimes claim that many of these incidents involved attacks among low-ranking enlisted men, particularly blacks against whites, but the Pentagon’s own figures show that the great majority of fraggings were aimed at those in positions of authority.
Statistics supplied to the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee for the period January 1969 to August 1971 show that, of 43 identified fragging victims, approximately 80 per cent were officers and NCOs.
Fragging was the Gl’s ultimate means of resistance, a deadly and effective weapon against military authority and dangerous or oppressive policies.
A few examples will show the powerful impact of fragging.
In 1970, former Marine Sergeant Robert Parkinson of Sunland, California, appeared before a Congressional Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. A crippled man, the sergeant told how two years earlier, in Vietnam, he had attempted to crack down on widespread drug use within his unit; how he began to receive threats and eventually had to arm himself; and how on September 23, 1968, a fragmentation grenade exploded under his bunk, shattering his foot and causing severe internal injuries.
The sergeant’s tragic experience was not unique, even at this early stage of the war.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Herbert told interviewers for Playboy magazine of similar attacks within his battalion of the 173rd Airborne before he took command in early 1969:
“There had been two attempts on the previous commander’s life. There had been quite a few fraggings in that battalion, of both officers and senior enlisted men.
“One man had both legs blown off; seven people had been wounded by a grenade, and a Claymore mine had been thrown right at the tactical-operations center—a mine to kill the staff, for Christ’s sake.”
Most fraggings were aimed at eliminating the abusive practices of individual commanders.
On November 9, 1970, an incendiary grenade was thrown into the quarters of several notoriously rigid NCOs of the 2nd Battalion/l7th Artillery at Nha Trang. The sergeants escaped unhurt, but presumably they got the message from the grunts to ease up.
A similar incident occurred several months later within the 538th Transportation Company at Long Binh. The unit seethed with discontent over the policies of the first sergeant, and talk of fagging was blatant. In April of 1971 the sergeant finally fell victim to an attack, later blamed on Sp/4’s Richard Buckingham, a member of VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against The War], and Richard Strain.
Fraggings also took place under combat conditions.
In his January 1972 article in Saturday Review, Eugene Linden recounted an episode in an armored cavalry unit near Khe San in the spring of 1971.
After four months in the bush, the company was scheduled to return to Khe San, when the commander, at the last minute, volunteered his men to stay out on patrol. That night, three Claymore mines were stolen and placed under what was thought to be the commander’s armored track vehicle. The captain was elsewhere, though, and the explosion injured (apparently accidentally) four enlisted men sleeping nearby.
Linden also reported on a fragging involving black radicals at Camp Eagle during the Laotian invasion in March of 1971. The commander of a supply unit at the camp had attempted to discipline several militants for drug use, but after jailing one of the blacks, the captain was wounded in his sleep by a Claymore mine slipped under his bunk.
Similarly, in a 1972 article for Life magazine, John Saar wrote of a fragging in the fall of 1971 in which grunts attempted to blow up their overly zealous commander but accidentally killed the wrong officer. In an unannounced urinalysis test immediately after the slaying, 25 per cent of the men were detected as heroin users and removed from the unit.
The ultimate impact of fragging lay not with any one particular incident but with its general effect on the functioning of the Army. For every one of the more than five hundred reported assaults, there were many instances of intimidation and threats of fragging which often produced the same result.
The unexpected appearance of a grenade pin or the detonation of a harmless smoke grenade frequently convinced commanders to abandon expected military standards.
Once a commander was threatened by or became the actual target of a fragging, his effectiveness and that of the unit involved were severely hampered.
Indeed, as internal defiance spread within many units, no order could be issued without first considering the possibility of fragging.The ardent young West Point graduate, eager to succeed in combat and push his men to medal-winning heroics, was a doomed figure.
The majority of grunts in Vietnam had but one aim, to return home safely, and few were willing to risk their lives for a hopeless cause. As violent and ruthless as it may have been, fragging was an essential tool of soldier democracy, the means by which men thrust into Vietnam against their wills were able to resist military authority.
It was the final manifestation of a breakdown in the U.S. mission in Vietnam and signaled an Army at war with itself.
The plague of disaffection and defiance within the ranks, most dramatically evidenced in fragging, crippled the infantry and left the once-proud American Army helpless, more a liability than an asset to U.S. purposes.
This was perhaps best illustrated by the Army’s attempted solution to the problem of fragging.
By 1970, many commanders in Vietnam apparently felt that enlisted men could no longer be trusted with weapons and began a policy of restricting access to explosive devices and rifles.
Information from various separate sources and conversations with Vietnam veterans confirm that in many units grenades and firearms were taken from all but those on guard duty and on combat patrol.
Sp/5 William Fischer, then of the 440th Signal Battalion in Mannheim, related in June 1970 (at an anti-war gathering in London’s Lyceum Ballroom) how several months earlier in Vietnam a colonel refused to arm the men in his camp, despite an NLF attack, because he was “afraid of incidents.”
Similarly, in 1971, members of “Better Blacks United,” an anti-racist organization centered in Tuy Hoa, disclosed that commanders restricted the possession of arms among blacks and white radicals.
Correspondents for Time, the Washington Post, and other journals likewise observed instances of troops being denied access to weapons. Thus soldiers were stripped of the very weapons with which they had been sent to fight.
Limiting possession of weapons may have prevented some fraggings, but it also undermined the U.S. role in Vietnam.
An Army so utterly demoralized clearly was incapable of functioning as a credible military force.
Military officials and some journalists have asserted that the Army did not seriously fall apart until after extensive withdrawals began; that troops grew restless because they were taken out of combat and thus became bored.
Such arguments raise a “chicken and egg” dilemma: did resistance force the Pentagon to withdraw, or did withdrawal create dissent and unrest?
The actual process was no doubt a dialectic combination of the two, each process playing on the other to produce constantly deteriorating troop morale and an ever- increasing rate of withdrawal.
Nonetheless, too little attention has been directed to the question of just what influence the Army’s collapse in Vietnam had on Nixon-administration disengagement policies.
It’s hard to pinpoint a date when turbulence within the infantry reached a critical state, but my own guess would be that by early 1970 morale problems were already beginning to create grave difficulties.
Several combat refusals had already been reported, drug-use levels were approaching 50 per cent, and fraggings were spreading rapidly; black and whitetroops throughout the services were loudly clamoring for an end to the war and greater personal freedoms.
David Hackworth’s description of the 173rd Brigade at An Khe, even as early as 1969, suggests an Army rapidly approaching collapse:
“Pound for pound, the Brigade was garbage. Discipline was lax; the troops were slovenly, mentally as well as physically. It was obvious that in An Khe at least they were no match for either the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese regulars. As the sergeant had said, they preferred pot, two to one. But marijuana was only an expression of a deeper, more serious failure. . . .They called the hierarchy ‘motherfuckers’ and printed ‘fuck the Green Machine’ on their jackets and hats.”
There seems little doubt that troop withdrawals were in fact speeded up because of the GI revolt. Military officials were compelled to act in order to preserve the Army as an institution and prevent even further internal disintegration.
This was done not only because of fragging and mutiny in Vietnam itself but because of the generalized crisis throughout the armed forces at the time: the plummeting reenlistment rates, soaring desertions, and rising dissent which threatened to destroy the American military apparatus.
Against such a background, it’s not surprising that voices were raised to submit to the pressures for withdrawal. Stewart Alsop, a veteran journalist with reputed close connections to Pentagon officials, penned an extraordinary Newsweek editorial, in December 1970, reporting a “growing feeling among the Administration’s policymakers that it might be a good idea to accelerate the rate of withdrawal.”
The main reason cited for this view, according to Alsop, was “that discipline and morale in the American Army in Vietnam are deteriorating very seriously.”
Similar sentiments were attributed to Pentagon officials a few weeks later in a Time magazine article on Gl dissent:
“Officers from Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland on clown are known to be arguing that they are not being pulled out fast enough.”
Washington Post reporters also found appeals for accelerated withdrawal rates among many leading officers who “believe that a continued presence provides little help for the Vietnamese but exacerbates the problems of drugs and disaffection.”
There were also reports in early 1971 that then Secretary of Defense Laird returned from an inspection tour of Vietnam “shocked and distressed by the high level of marijuana use and the low level of morale” and urged a more rapid reduction in ground troops.
The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the Army from Vietnam, but in fact it was the rebellion of lowranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless and suicidal policy.
Vietnam GIs: They Helped Stop An Imperial War
From: GI Special
December 19, 2006
Email: thomasfbarton@earthlink.net
“Most Fraggings Were Aimed At Eliminating The Abusive Practices Of Individual Commanders” -
SOLDIERS IN REVOLT: THE QUASI-MUTINY
The majority of grunts in Vietnam had but one aim, to return home safely, and few were willing to risk their lives for a hopeless cause.
As violent and ruthless as it may have been, fragging was an essential tool of soldier democracy, the means by which men thrust into Vietnam against their wills were able to resist military authority.
It was the final manifestation of a breakdown in the U.S. mission in Vietnam and signaled an Army at war with itself.
On April 20, 1971, Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield began the proceedings of Congress by dramatically introducing his colleagues and the nation to the most macabre development of the Vietnam War: fragging.
In a trembling voice, Mansfield grimly told of a young first lieutenant, a West Point graduate from Montana, who was murdered by his own men at Bien Hoa on March 15, just four weeks before his scheduled return to the States.
In the brief comments following Mansfield’s disclosure, Senator Charles Mathias of Maryland captured the shock and dismay of those present:
“In every war a new vocabulary springs up . . . but in all the lexicon of war there is not a more tragic word than ‘fragging’ with all that it implies of total failure of discipline and depression of morale, the complete sense of frustration and confusion and the loss of goals and hope itself.”
The Army began keeping records on assaults with explosive devices in 1969.
Through the end of 1970, over three hundred incidents had taken place, resulting in seventy-three deaths and injury to nearly five hundred people.
By July of 1972, as the last American troops were leaving Vietnam, the total number of incidents had reached 551, with eighty-six soldiers dead and over seven hundred injured.
In effect, these are the casualty figures for the Army’s “other war” in Vietnam, its battle with the insurgents in its own ranks.
As startling as these totals may be, fraggings were in fact more frequent than the Pentagon’s figures imply.
One quite obvious deficiency is that the statistics include only assaults with explosive devices and omit the vast number of shootings with firearms, which, given greater availability, probably occurred more often.
David Addlestone reports that Army lawyers with the 173rd Airborne told of periods during ,1970 and 1971 when violent attacks were almost a daily occurrence.
In fact, assaults against commanders during the Vietnam War probably reached into the thousands.
The Pentagon figures do indicate a sharp rise in the rate of fragging, with the number of incidents increasing each year from 1969 to 1971, despite troop withdrawals:
Calendar Year / Number of Assaults / Deaths
1969 / 96 / 39
1970 / 209 / 34
1971 (first 11 months only) / 215 / 12
Military spokesmen sometimes claim that many of these incidents involved attacks among low-ranking enlisted men, particularly blacks against whites, but the Pentagon’s own figures show that the great majority of fraggings were aimed at those in positions of authority.
Statistics supplied to the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee for the period January 1969 to August 1971 show that, of 43 identified fragging victims, approximately 80 per cent were officers and NCOs.
Fragging was the Gl’s ultimate means of resistance, a deadly and effective weapon against military authority and dangerous or oppressive policies.
A few examples will show the powerful impact of fragging.
In 1970, former Marine Sergeant Robert Parkinson of Sunland, California, appeared before a Congressional Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. A crippled man, the sergeant told how two years earlier, in Vietnam, he had attempted to crack down on widespread drug use within his unit; how he began to receive threats and eventually had to arm himself; and how on September 23, 1968, a fragmentation grenade exploded under his bunk, shattering his foot and causing severe internal injuries.
The sergeant’s tragic experience was not unique, even at this early stage of the war.
Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Herbert told interviewers for Playboy magazine of similar attacks within his battalion of the 173rd Airborne before he took command in early 1969:
“There had been two attempts on the previous commander’s life. There had been quite a few fraggings in that battalion, of both officers and senior enlisted men.
“One man had both legs blown off; seven people had been wounded by a grenade, and a Claymore mine had been thrown right at the tactical-operations center—a mine to kill the staff, for Christ’s sake.”
Most fraggings were aimed at eliminating the abusive practices of individual commanders.
On November 9, 1970, an incendiary grenade was thrown into the quarters of several notoriously rigid NCOs of the 2nd Battalion/l7th Artillery at Nha Trang. The sergeants escaped unhurt, but presumably they got the message from the grunts to ease up.
A similar incident occurred several months later within the 538th Transportation Company at Long Binh. The unit seethed with discontent over the policies of the first sergeant, and talk of fagging was blatant. In April of 1971 the sergeant finally fell victim to an attack, later blamed on Sp/4’s Richard Buckingham, a member of VVAW [Vietnam Veterans Against The War], and Richard Strain.
Fraggings also took place under combat conditions.
In his January 1972 article in Saturday Review, Eugene Linden recounted an episode in an armored cavalry unit near Khe San in the spring of 1971.
After four months in the bush, the company was scheduled to return to Khe San, when the commander, at the last minute, volunteered his men to stay out on patrol. That night, three Claymore mines were stolen and placed under what was thought to be the commander’s armored track vehicle. The captain was elsewhere, though, and the explosion injured (apparently accidentally) four enlisted men sleeping nearby.
Linden also reported on a fragging involving black radicals at Camp Eagle during the Laotian invasion in March of 1971. The commander of a supply unit at the camp had attempted to discipline several militants for drug use, but after jailing one of the blacks, the captain was wounded in his sleep by a Claymore mine slipped under his bunk.
Similarly, in a 1972 article for Life magazine, John Saar wrote of a fragging in the fall of 1971 in which grunts attempted to blow up their overly zealous commander but accidentally killed the wrong officer. In an unannounced urinalysis test immediately after the slaying, 25 per cent of the men were detected as heroin users and removed from the unit.
The ultimate impact of fragging lay not with any one particular incident but with its general effect on the functioning of the Army. For every one of the more than five hundred reported assaults, there were many instances of intimidation and threats of fragging which often produced the same result.
The unexpected appearance of a grenade pin or the detonation of a harmless smoke grenade frequently convinced commanders to abandon expected military standards.
Once a commander was threatened by or became the actual target of a fragging, his effectiveness and that of the unit involved were severely hampered.
Indeed, as internal defiance spread within many units, no order could be issued without first considering the possibility of fragging.The ardent young West Point graduate, eager to succeed in combat and push his men to medal-winning heroics, was a doomed figure.
The majority of grunts in Vietnam had but one aim, to return home safely, and few were willing to risk their lives for a hopeless cause. As violent and ruthless as it may have been, fragging was an essential tool of soldier democracy, the means by which men thrust into Vietnam against their wills were able to resist military authority.
It was the final manifestation of a breakdown in the U.S. mission in Vietnam and signaled an Army at war with itself.
The plague of disaffection and defiance within the ranks, most dramatically evidenced in fragging, crippled the infantry and left the once-proud American Army helpless, more a liability than an asset to U.S. purposes.
This was perhaps best illustrated by the Army’s attempted solution to the problem of fragging.
By 1970, many commanders in Vietnam apparently felt that enlisted men could no longer be trusted with weapons and began a policy of restricting access to explosive devices and rifles.
Information from various separate sources and conversations with Vietnam veterans confirm that in many units grenades and firearms were taken from all but those on guard duty and on combat patrol.
Sp/5 William Fischer, then of the 440th Signal Battalion in Mannheim, related in June 1970 (at an anti-war gathering in London’s Lyceum Ballroom) how several months earlier in Vietnam a colonel refused to arm the men in his camp, despite an NLF attack, because he was “afraid of incidents.”
Similarly, in 1971, members of “Better Blacks United,” an anti-racist organization centered in Tuy Hoa, disclosed that commanders restricted the possession of arms among blacks and white radicals.
Correspondents for Time, the Washington Post, and other journals likewise observed instances of troops being denied access to weapons. Thus soldiers were stripped of the very weapons with which they had been sent to fight.
Limiting possession of weapons may have prevented some fraggings, but it also undermined the U.S. role in Vietnam.
An Army so utterly demoralized clearly was incapable of functioning as a credible military force.
Military officials and some journalists have asserted that the Army did not seriously fall apart until after extensive withdrawals began; that troops grew restless because they were taken out of combat and thus became bored.
Such arguments raise a “chicken and egg” dilemma: did resistance force the Pentagon to withdraw, or did withdrawal create dissent and unrest?
The actual process was no doubt a dialectic combination of the two, each process playing on the other to produce constantly deteriorating troop morale and an ever- increasing rate of withdrawal.
Nonetheless, too little attention has been directed to the question of just what influence the Army’s collapse in Vietnam had on Nixon-administration disengagement policies.
It’s hard to pinpoint a date when turbulence within the infantry reached a critical state, but my own guess would be that by early 1970 morale problems were already beginning to create grave difficulties.
Several combat refusals had already been reported, drug-use levels were approaching 50 per cent, and fraggings were spreading rapidly; black and whitetroops throughout the services were loudly clamoring for an end to the war and greater personal freedoms.
David Hackworth’s description of the 173rd Brigade at An Khe, even as early as 1969, suggests an Army rapidly approaching collapse:
“Pound for pound, the Brigade was garbage. Discipline was lax; the troops were slovenly, mentally as well as physically. It was obvious that in An Khe at least they were no match for either the Viet Cong or the North Vietnamese regulars. As the sergeant had said, they preferred pot, two to one. But marijuana was only an expression of a deeper, more serious failure. . . .They called the hierarchy ‘motherfuckers’ and printed ‘fuck the Green Machine’ on their jackets and hats.”
There seems little doubt that troop withdrawals were in fact speeded up because of the GI revolt. Military officials were compelled to act in order to preserve the Army as an institution and prevent even further internal disintegration.
This was done not only because of fragging and mutiny in Vietnam itself but because of the generalized crisis throughout the armed forces at the time: the plummeting reenlistment rates, soaring desertions, and rising dissent which threatened to destroy the American military apparatus.
Against such a background, it’s not surprising that voices were raised to submit to the pressures for withdrawal. Stewart Alsop, a veteran journalist with reputed close connections to Pentagon officials, penned an extraordinary Newsweek editorial, in December 1970, reporting a “growing feeling among the Administration’s policymakers that it might be a good idea to accelerate the rate of withdrawal.”
The main reason cited for this view, according to Alsop, was “that discipline and morale in the American Army in Vietnam are deteriorating very seriously.”
Similar sentiments were attributed to Pentagon officials a few weeks later in a Time magazine article on Gl dissent:
“Officers from Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland on clown are known to be arguing that they are not being pulled out fast enough.”
Washington Post reporters also found appeals for accelerated withdrawal rates among many leading officers who “believe that a continued presence provides little help for the Vietnamese but exacerbates the problems of drugs and disaffection.”
There were also reports in early 1971 that then Secretary of Defense Laird returned from an inspection tour of Vietnam “shocked and distressed by the high level of marijuana use and the low level of morale” and urged a more rapid reduction in ground troops.
The Nixon administration claimed and received great credit for withdrawing the Army from Vietnam, but in fact it was the rebellion of lowranking GIs that forced the government to abandon a hopeless and suicidal policy.
Vietnam GIs: They Helped Stop An Imperial War
The best daily digest of what's really happening in the occupation of Iraq, and the opposition to it (emailed free to your inbox every day!):
GI SPECIAL
thomasfbarton@earthlink.net
From GI SPECIAL 4L16:
12.19.06
[Thanks to Katherine GY, Military Project, who sent this in.]
“Iraq Is Not Undergoing A Civil War”
“80% Of Attacks Are Against The Occupation Forces, Not Civilian Targets”
“The Country Is In The Throes Of An Anti-Occupation Struggle”
December 8, 2006 by Sarah Shields, CommonDreams. Sarah Shields teaches the history of the Middle East at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Calling the tragedy in Iraq a "civil war" is not only inaccurate. It is morally indefensible, laying the blame for the horrific violence and the destruction of a country and a society upon the victims of an illegal, aggressive war.
It allows pundits like Thomas Friedman to claim that the country has been dysfunctional for a millenium, ignoring a long historical context of international support for Iraq's brutal dictator, debilitating and murderous sanctions by the United Nations, and a catastrophic and unprovoked US-led invasion of a sovereign state.
More important, if Americans believe that Iraq is in "civil war," liberals would argue that the United States must remain in order to prevent an even worse outbreak of violence.
Iraq is not undergoing a civil war.
The country is in the throes of an anti-occupation struggle.
Having declared, with the installation of the current government, that Iraq is no longer occupied, the US government and media can hardly frame the current violence as a struggle against a continuing occupation.
Nonetheless, what is being cast as civil war is the latest example in a long line of peoples' fighting against occupation, struggles in which those groups who collaborate with an occupier are themselves targeted by those seeking to end an occupation.
Algerians fighting the French also attacked those indigenous forces who had allied themselves with France.
Moroccans targeted the goumiers, local troops who worked with the French in suppressing a rebellion against foreign control.
The Vietcong fought not only Americans, but also the Vietnamese who collaborated with the occupation.
Zulu Inkatha were targeted for working on behalf of South Africa's white government. Irish nationalists linked Protestants with the British occupiers.
The occupiers tried to present each as an example of the intrinsic and intractable violence of these societies, which provided yet another example of their continuing need for the benevolent protection of the occupation.
Framing the Iraq tragedy as civil war forces the US media to ignore the clear inconsistencies.
Shi'ite forces under Muqtada al-Sadr attack the forces of a Shi'ite-led government.
News reports day after day describe terrible attacks against civilian populations, with no coverage at all of violence against American forces.
Where are our mounting casualties coming from?
The BBC writes that eighty percent of attacks are against the occupation forces, not against civilian targets.
Iraqi targets are often people either directly collaborating or trying to collaborate with the occupation (local police and military recruits), and people whose continuing work allows the current government to function.
The apparent contradiction in which Iraqis would attack those who allow the hospitals, schools, and services to continue is comprehensible only in the context of an anti-occupation struggle where an insurgency tries to prevent the functioning of a government installed by an occupation army.
The United States exacerbated ethnic conflict in Iraq in order to refocus a growing anti-occupation insurgency, beginning with our arming Shi'ites to help us attack Sunni forces in Fallujah. Even then, some Shi'ites came to the aid of the Sunnis in a clear rejection of US efforts to divide the country.
The militias introduced into the Iraqi Interior Ministry during the era of John Negroponte (accused of eliciting the same behavior in 1980s Honduras) have unquestionably engaged in sectarian killings. It is impossible to argue that sectarian violence has no history in Iraq; nonetheless, despite Saddam Hussein's efforts to expel some Shi'ites during the 1980s, Sunnis and Shi'is continued to marry each other, to be members of the same tribes, and to live in the same neighborhoods.
Sectarian violence has increased dramatically during the United States occupation of Iraq. The occupation has only exacerbated the violence.
The reasons are consistent with countless historical examples.
Occupiers try to divide the country in order to keep their opposition weak.
And those who would resist occupation invariably attack those who would collaborate with the occupation.
Iraqis will only become more and more divided the longer the United States remains in their country. The notion that we could stabilize Iraq and leave a viable government is absurd when looked at historically.
Governments in power during occupation, collaborators with occupation forces, are most often overthrown when the occupiers leave.
Whenever US forces leave, Iraqis will have to struggle to create their own state. The sooner we leave, the fewer people will have been compromised by their connection with our occupation.
Had we ended our occupation at the end of 2003 before the siege of Fallujah, or had we left Iraq in February 2006 before the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, Iraqis could have begun to reconstruct their own government and infrastructure without the horrific inter-communal violence that is now escalating daily.
Our occupation has hardly prevented chaos and civil war, and leaving today would not miraculously end the violence that has been building over the past three years.
But our immediate departure would allow Iraqis to get on with reconstruction without the polarizing presence of a continuing occupation.
If we insist on staying, we will preside over the remainder of the annihilation of the state we have worked, for decades, to destroy.
MORE:
Attacks On Occupation Forces Up Sharply To 959 A Week
Dec 18 AP
According to the Pentagon report sent to Congress on Monday, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops jumped sharply in recent months to the highest level since June 2004.
From mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks increased 22 percent from the previous three months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and in the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents, the report said.
A bar chart in the Pentagon's report to Congress gave no exact numbers but indicated the weekly average had approached 1,000 in the latest period, compared with about 800 per week from the May-to-August period.
Statistics provided separately by the Pentagon said weekly attacks had averaged 959 in the latest period.
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GI SPECIAL
thomasfbarton@earthlink.net
From GI SPECIAL 4L16:
12.19.06
[Thanks to Katherine GY, Military Project, who sent this in.]
“Iraq Is Not Undergoing A Civil War”
“80% Of Attacks Are Against The Occupation Forces, Not Civilian Targets”
“The Country Is In The Throes Of An Anti-Occupation Struggle”
December 8, 2006 by Sarah Shields, CommonDreams. Sarah Shields teaches the history of the Middle East at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Calling the tragedy in Iraq a "civil war" is not only inaccurate. It is morally indefensible, laying the blame for the horrific violence and the destruction of a country and a society upon the victims of an illegal, aggressive war.
It allows pundits like Thomas Friedman to claim that the country has been dysfunctional for a millenium, ignoring a long historical context of international support for Iraq's brutal dictator, debilitating and murderous sanctions by the United Nations, and a catastrophic and unprovoked US-led invasion of a sovereign state.
More important, if Americans believe that Iraq is in "civil war," liberals would argue that the United States must remain in order to prevent an even worse outbreak of violence.
Iraq is not undergoing a civil war.
The country is in the throes of an anti-occupation struggle.
Having declared, with the installation of the current government, that Iraq is no longer occupied, the US government and media can hardly frame the current violence as a struggle against a continuing occupation.
Nonetheless, what is being cast as civil war is the latest example in a long line of peoples' fighting against occupation, struggles in which those groups who collaborate with an occupier are themselves targeted by those seeking to end an occupation.
Algerians fighting the French also attacked those indigenous forces who had allied themselves with France.
Moroccans targeted the goumiers, local troops who worked with the French in suppressing a rebellion against foreign control.
The Vietcong fought not only Americans, but also the Vietnamese who collaborated with the occupation.
Zulu Inkatha were targeted for working on behalf of South Africa's white government. Irish nationalists linked Protestants with the British occupiers.
The occupiers tried to present each as an example of the intrinsic and intractable violence of these societies, which provided yet another example of their continuing need for the benevolent protection of the occupation.
Framing the Iraq tragedy as civil war forces the US media to ignore the clear inconsistencies.
Shi'ite forces under Muqtada al-Sadr attack the forces of a Shi'ite-led government.
News reports day after day describe terrible attacks against civilian populations, with no coverage at all of violence against American forces.
Where are our mounting casualties coming from?
The BBC writes that eighty percent of attacks are against the occupation forces, not against civilian targets.
Iraqi targets are often people either directly collaborating or trying to collaborate with the occupation (local police and military recruits), and people whose continuing work allows the current government to function.
The apparent contradiction in which Iraqis would attack those who allow the hospitals, schools, and services to continue is comprehensible only in the context of an anti-occupation struggle where an insurgency tries to prevent the functioning of a government installed by an occupation army.
The United States exacerbated ethnic conflict in Iraq in order to refocus a growing anti-occupation insurgency, beginning with our arming Shi'ites to help us attack Sunni forces in Fallujah. Even then, some Shi'ites came to the aid of the Sunnis in a clear rejection of US efforts to divide the country.
The militias introduced into the Iraqi Interior Ministry during the era of John Negroponte (accused of eliciting the same behavior in 1980s Honduras) have unquestionably engaged in sectarian killings. It is impossible to argue that sectarian violence has no history in Iraq; nonetheless, despite Saddam Hussein's efforts to expel some Shi'ites during the 1980s, Sunnis and Shi'is continued to marry each other, to be members of the same tribes, and to live in the same neighborhoods.
Sectarian violence has increased dramatically during the United States occupation of Iraq. The occupation has only exacerbated the violence.
The reasons are consistent with countless historical examples.
Occupiers try to divide the country in order to keep their opposition weak.
And those who would resist occupation invariably attack those who would collaborate with the occupation.
Iraqis will only become more and more divided the longer the United States remains in their country. The notion that we could stabilize Iraq and leave a viable government is absurd when looked at historically.
Governments in power during occupation, collaborators with occupation forces, are most often overthrown when the occupiers leave.
Whenever US forces leave, Iraqis will have to struggle to create their own state. The sooner we leave, the fewer people will have been compromised by their connection with our occupation.
Had we ended our occupation at the end of 2003 before the siege of Fallujah, or had we left Iraq in February 2006 before the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, Iraqis could have begun to reconstruct their own government and infrastructure without the horrific inter-communal violence that is now escalating daily.
Our occupation has hardly prevented chaos and civil war, and leaving today would not miraculously end the violence that has been building over the past three years.
But our immediate departure would allow Iraqis to get on with reconstruction without the polarizing presence of a continuing occupation.
If we insist on staying, we will preside over the remainder of the annihilation of the state we have worked, for decades, to destroy.
MORE:
Attacks On Occupation Forces Up Sharply To 959 A Week
Dec 18 AP
According to the Pentagon report sent to Congress on Monday, attacks on U.S. and Iraqi troops jumped sharply in recent months to the highest level since June 2004.
From mid-August to mid-November, the weekly average number of attacks increased 22 percent from the previous three months. The worst violence was in Baghdad and in the western province of Anbar, long the focus of activity by Sunni insurgents, the report said.
A bar chart in the Pentagon's report to Congress gave no exact numbers but indicated the weekly average had approached 1,000 in the latest period, compared with about 800 per week from the May-to-August period.
Statistics provided separately by the Pentagon said weekly attacks had averaged 959 in the latest period.
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A Tomdispatch
Christmas Travel Guide
By Nick ("Tongue Firmly in Cheek") Turse
Back in 2003, Tomdispatch offered you a list of "Hot as Depleted Uranium Toys for a New Imperial Age."
In 2004, we gave you the inside scoop on how to "Make It a Merry Military-Corporate Christmas."
And last year, it was all about timeless holiday values like militarism, jingoism, and barbarism, as Tomdispatch wished you an "All-American Christmas."
This year --instead of offering a buyers guide to Christmas favorites like the instantly classic T-shirt with Santa brandishing an automatic rifle, or the mouse pad featuring a B-52 bomber festooned with Christmas decorations, or even the children's "Peacekeepers" play set in which nearly all 100 accessories appear to be bazookas, rifles, pistols, mortars, grenades, mines, and other accoutrements we regularly associate with peace on Earth -- Tomdispatch will provide you with your own special holiday travel guide (with all the tips you need for that quick seasonal getaway).
So find your passport, pack your bags, and let us transport you with a holiday travel guide so complete it can't be beat.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
Christmas Travel Guide
By Nick ("Tongue Firmly in Cheek") Turse
Back in 2003, Tomdispatch offered you a list of "Hot as Depleted Uranium Toys for a New Imperial Age."
In 2004, we gave you the inside scoop on how to "Make It a Merry Military-Corporate Christmas."
And last year, it was all about timeless holiday values like militarism, jingoism, and barbarism, as Tomdispatch wished you an "All-American Christmas."
This year --instead of offering a buyers guide to Christmas favorites like the instantly classic T-shirt with Santa brandishing an automatic rifle, or the mouse pad featuring a B-52 bomber festooned with Christmas decorations, or even the children's "Peacekeepers" play set in which nearly all 100 accessories appear to be bazookas, rifles, pistols, mortars, grenades, mines, and other accoutrements we regularly associate with peace on Earth -- Tomdispatch will provide you with your own special holiday travel guide (with all the tips you need for that quick seasonal getaway).
So find your passport, pack your bags, and let us transport you with a holiday travel guide so complete it can't be beat.
Click here to read more of this dispatch.
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