Liars, otherwise known as the government

I went to college as a Political Science Major in 1974. I had returning Viet Nam Vets in my classes. We studied Halberstams Best and the Brightest and Fitzgerald's Fire in the Lake. It was clear that our government lied repeatedly to us about the war. it was clear, clear that we were not going to 'win' this war, just as it is clear now in Iraq. How many more boys and girls must die? Where is our sense of outrage. I talked with a friend yesterday, where are the rallies, the protest songs? Well, there's a big difference now, there is no draft. This war costs the average American nothing. I mean no disrespect to our current military families, quite the contrary, I have great admiration and respect for them. I pray regularly for some friends' family members in Iraq. That said, it we had a draft, we'd have huge rallies demanding withdrawal. When it starts to cost us with no clear goal, then people will speak out.
PEACE NOW.

As much as I now hate this war, the idea that Congressional hearings-the dupes who voted for this war and now snipe about the particulars without defunding it-will be some great event is laughable.Read Bacevich's piece again-THEY ARE ALL WHORES. We now have a broken government, a dog&pony Congress only too happy to whack the incompetent president, but not willing to end this war. And that doesn't get us anywhere or do anything positive; it's a tv show.
The truly scary part is this country is as ripe as it will ever be for drastic and possible violent change. I'm not even sure what that means.

Dreher: "the Bush administration has made trusting our leadership extremely difficult." Rod, this is an understatement, every bit as worthy as the famous one putatively uttered by General Custer at the Little Big Horn: "There are sure a lot of Indians here". Whenever I see Dubya talking on television, I can't stand to listen and just flip the channel; the man has absolutely zero credibility with me.

One problem with a focus on Islam is that even if you eliminate such a threat, someone else is right behind them to take their place -- we just don't know who yet. The problem is the destructive power that technology can place in one person's hands (or backpack). Wouldn't it be best to spend at least as much effort learning to live together as is going into the military and 'intelligence'? I know many see this a pie-in-the-sky thinking, but shouldn't we at try to find something other than bomb-in-the-sky solutions? Seriously.

Kaplan talks about the warrior class in American life, and how perilous it is to have an Army that is asked to fight for a society that no longer believes in itself This is my biggest concern about the Iraq campaign its demoralizing effect on America s great military families, the ones that have been sending sons from ancestral generations down to the present.
It s not society s belief in itself that is the only problem, but the soldier s belief in his own mission. Just this past Monday there was a story of US soldiers who killed an insurgent planting an IED. When they searched his body, they found papers indicating that he was an officer in the Iraqi Army. Thus our guys are being killed by Iraqis at night, who pretend to be our allies during the day. They are fighting for a chimera, a stable democratic Iraqi government that exists only in George Bush s mind.

There is a vast difference between an order to look for evidence to support the notion, held universally by Western intelligence agencies, that Saddam had WMD, and an order to invent or cherry-pick intelligence. Despite the addition of apparently bogus quotation marks, this second-hand account is simply too imprecise to show that Foley made the second order rather than the first.
If Foley did order cherry-picking, it's his fault, not the White House's. Policymakers routinely seek intelligence to support a preconceived view; the job of the intelligence service is to tell them not what they want to hear, but the truth.

It's quite possible to admire the troops but think they're on a hopeless mission; on their third deployment, many in Delta Company don't believe in the mission themselves.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/world/middleeast/28delta.html No doubt the blind recklessness of this administration, overseas and in regard to global warming, will lead to a decline in American authority at home, as it has already around the world. How could it be otherwise?
But I would like to think we could could learn from our mistakes. For example, instead of crazy attempts to turn back the clock and "deauthorize" the war, which have been discussed by leading Democrats, why not strengthen the War Powers Act, so that war-mongering presidents in the future, be they LBJs or Bush Jr.s, must budget for wars they want to fight and nations they want to reconstruct before launching an invasion? Could save us billions of dollars, and thousands of lives.

Starrs: "It is the among the most oleaginous and disingenuous ideas that 'we can hate the war but love the troops.' "
Well, that's the way so many on this board and elsewhere say we can love the gay but hate his sin. You can say it, even rationalize it, but it just doesn't work.
The way we love the troops but hate this war is, contra Vietnam, we do not call them babykillers and make them ashamed when they return. Soldiers return to a society in which they don't have to hide where they've been and what they've done.

Sorry Mark, I meant no disrespect, in fact just the opposite. I apologize for my choice of words, and best regards to your son. In my partial defense, over the years there have been lots of references to our 'boys overseas' when I was a kid, 'boys in Vietnam, and as a father of a 19 year old, he so often still seems like a boy to me. Still, they are doing men's work and should get the respect of that language. All respect to our son. blessings
bill

Rod, this is an understatement, every bit as worthy as the famous one putatively uttered by General Custer at the Little Big Horn: "There are sure a lot of Indians here". Hah! Or, as my father likes to say, "That's the biggest understatement since Noah said, 'It looks like rain!'"

Starrs: You may love your brother-in-law, granted; but how do you express love towards the troops-at-large if you have nothing but contempt and hatred for their mission?! You can say it, even rationalize it, but it just doesn't work. I don't see the rational connection there. I don't have the slightest disregard for our troops -- in fact, I pray morning and night for their safety -- but I no longer believe in their mission. They're not the ones who made the decision to go on, or to stay there. They're simply being good soldiers, and faithful to their country. When they come home, they should be welcomed back with love and respect.

Hmm. Wel, EVERYBODY thought that Saddam had the WMD; the U.N. did, Iran did, our Congress did. In fact, Saddam bragged that he had WMD. And he did gas the Kurds, as we all know. There is some evidence to suggest that he might have removed the WMD on the runup to the war. Furthermore, he wrote $20,000 checks to the families of suicide bombers, which no doubt added incentive for the crazies. Having said the above, I marched against the war. It was ill conceived, and poorly executed. Bush Sr. refers to the problems that one would encounter in an Iraq invasion(in his autobiography) and the CIA also warned the administration that it would be hard to secure Iraq after a takeover. You can't really blame it all on Bush. the Congress went along, the MSM went along, hell, most of the populace was fighting mad after 9/11 and out for blood. Hindsight is 20/20. I think that Bush is not the sharpest guy around, but I'm not convinced that he is evil. It took a LOT of cooperation from a LOT of people to get into this war. All along, it seems to me, there could have been stronger objections, but even Colin Powell caved in. I'm saying that Bush is no rocket scientist; Wolfowitz and Pearle and maybe the V.P. engineered this mess. And the awful truth is that those guys probably thought it was a good idea at the time. The idea of a democracy in the middle east is very appealing. We didn't fail Iraq alone; Iraq failed us as well.

The argument that "everyone" thought Saddam had WMD is plausible but not sufficient. We don't invade countries solely for that reason. Otherwise we would not be occupying Pyongyang. We allow tinhorn dictators around the world to oppress their people all the time. Why Saddam and not many others? There had to be more, and I think Bush has still not leveled with us. I have a personal experience with lies about Iraq. The story is too long to relate here but it's on my own blog. Here is the link. http://drivingoutthesnakes.blogspot.com/2007/05/truth-lies-war.html

Well, remember what H.L. Mencken said: "Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."