Ted Koppel just slammed the Iraq turnover and brought up Viet Nam...

[Gloria]

He reflected on how in S. VietNam, the US had a huge embassy, whose staff worked behind walls. While there was all the lip service about only assisting the S. Vietnamese government, in actuality, the ambassador ran the country like "a Roman proconsul."

Regarding all this talk about reconstructing Germany and Japan....he said, just like in Viet Nam, we are trying to build Iraq WHILE THE FIGHTING IS STILL GOING ON. Unlike Germany and Japan, where the fighting had stopped.

He was pretty scathing

[rumguy]

1. that sounds like a dead-on analysis

we're building all this military bases there, and like the biggest embassy in the world......what a joke....

[Bozita]

2. Thanks, Gloria. ... Switched over to Tavis Smiley with Michael Moore

Missed the final comments which are usually promos.

Good take on Koppell's take.

[Eric J in MN]

3. Bush said in 2000 he believed in a HUMBLE foreign policy.

We should be turning Saddam's palaces into museums and libraries for the Iraqi people.

Instead, Bush is turning a lavish Saddam palace into the new US embassy.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. In addition . . .

Rebuilding Germany and Japan was a genuine effort at reconstruction for the benefit of the peoples of those nations. It wasn't entirely selfless, insofar as President Truman and his braintrust believed, rightly, that a prosperous and democratic Germany and Japan would be peaceful.

On the other hand, the occupation of Iraq is a corrupt enterprise for the benefit of US transnational corporations at the expense of the Iraqi people.

[Senior citizen]

5. Koppel's a man who reads the box office figures. (n/t)

[ronabop]

6. Huh? The fighting in Germany had stopped?

That's about as inaccurate as saying (as Condi once did) that Iraq and Germany have a similar post-war resistance.

The germans continued fighting for 3 more years, but in most cases, it was totally ineffectual, and *much* smaller in scale than Iraq. Maybe a total of 40 americans died at the hands of the "werewolves"...over 4 years. However, if your own child was one of the soldiers, there's a big difference between your son coming home and a wooden box.

Anyways, all overgeneralizations are bad.

-Bop