from VIETNAM to FALLUJAH

[G_j]

Thirty years ago tomorrow, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam --
and we're still recovering. In fact, we may be reliving it
as the Iraq War spirals further and further into chaos.
----------------------
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=6217

From Vietnam to Fallujah

. by Fran Schor September 13, 2004

The recent controversy surrounding the "Swift Boat Veterans" ad challenging John Kerry's Vietnam record and his later statements as a leader of Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVAW) have fallen into predictable partisan perspectives. Republicans and their media attack machine still insist that Kerry's medals are suspect and his VVAW activities were treasonous. Kerry and the Democrats, in turn, have found further documentary evidence and eye-witness accounts to support his version of the Vietnam incidents. As far as Kerry's 1971 testimony about US atrocities in Vietnam, Kerry has reiterated that he was just recounting reports from the Winter Soldier Investigations. In addition, he tried earlier to deflect criticism of his VVAW positions by claiming that some of his statements were overzealous and part of the heated rhetoric of the times. In effect, the Bush Administration and Republicans have tried to deny that atrocities took place while Kerry and the Democrats have tried to minimize or marginalize them.

For those who have studied the historical record of the US prosecution of the war in Southeast Asia, neither the Republicans nor Democrats have confronted the full measure of those atrocities and what their legacy is especially in the war on Iraq. While most studies of the war in Southeast Asia acknowledge that 4 times the tonnage of bombs was dropped on Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos than that used by the US in all theaters of operation during World War II, only a few, such as James William Gibson's The Perfect War: Technowar in Vietnam, analyze the full extent of such bombing. Not only were thousands of villages in Vietnam totally destroyed, but massive civilian deaths, numbering close to 3 million, resulted in large part from such indiscriminate bombing. Integral to the bombing strategy was the use of weapons that violated international law, such as napalm and anti-personnel fragmentation bombs. As a result of establishing free-fire zones where anything and everything could be attacked, including hospitals, US military operations led to the deliberate murder of mostly civilians.

While Rumsfeld and the Pentagon have touted the "clean" weapons used in Iraq, the fact is that aerial cluster bombs and free-fire zones have continued to be part of present day military operations. Villages throughout Iraq, from Hilla to Fallujah, have borne and are bearing US attacks that take a heavy civilian toll. Occasionally, criticisms of the type of ordnance used in Iraq found its way into the mainstream press, especially when left-over cluster bomblets looking like yellow food packages blow up in children's hands or depleted uranium weapons are dropped inadvertently on British soldiers. However, questions about the immorality of "shock and awe" bombing strategy have been buried deeper than any of the cluster bomblets.

In Vietnam, a primary ground war tactic was the "search and destroy" mission with its over-inflated body counts. As Christian Appy forcefully demonstrated in Working Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam, such tactics were guaranteed to produce atrocities. Any revealing personal account of the war in Vietnam, such as Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July, underscores how those atrocities took their toll on civilians and US soldiers, like Kovic. Of course, certain high-profile atrocities, such as My Lai, achieved prominent media coverage (almost, however, a year after the incident.) Nonetheless, My Lai was seen either as an aberration and not part of murderous campaigns such as the Phoenix program with its thousands of assassinations or a result of a few bad apples, like a Lt. Calley, who nonetheless received minor punishment for his command of the massacre of hundreds of women and children. Moreover, as reported in Tom Engelhardt's The End of Victory Culture, "65% of Americans claimed not to be upset by the massacre" (224). Is it, therefore, not surprising that Noam Chomsky asserted during this period that the US had to undergo some sort of de- nazification in order to regain some moral sensitivity to what US war policy had produced in Vietnam


..more..
------------------
NATIONAL DEFEAT DAY - NATIONAL LIBERATION DAY
Andrew Lam, AlterNet

April 30 became the birth date of an exile's culture, built
on defeatism and a sense of tragic ending. But through the
years, that date has come to symbolize something entirely
different to this Vietnamese American.
http://www.alternet.org/story/21896/

LESSONS OF VIETNAM LINGER

Brad Knickerbocker, Christian Science Monitor
Three decades after the last US troops left Vietnam, the
conflict remains at once a lesson, a caution, and for some,
a specter.
http://www.alternet.org/story/21894/

[democrank]

1. War isn`t peace like Bush says.

It`s hell. Easy to understand why Bush turned into a plastic Rambo shortly after he was installed in office. He has never been in combat and has never met face to face with sacrifice. That`s why it`s easy for him to role play on the world stage. Big macho hero. All talk and no action.

I`ve been following reports of what we did in Fallujah on Amy Goodman`s Democracy Now. Last night`s show, for example, included statements from an Iraqi doctor who said he was 100% sure the U.S. used banned weapons in Fallujah. Apparently, not many people give a damn.

The war in Iraq will continue day after day after day until American citizens forget being preoccupied with consumerism and start raising hell. That`s what turned things around during the Vietnam War and that`s what it will take now. I can not put into words how sickened I am over all this. We should be on the streets demanding an end to these war crimes.

[G_j]

2. my guess is that

as more & more US soldiers come home and begin to speak, American consciousness will begin to shift further.

[G_j]

3. concerning war crimes

Vietnam



-------------
http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0438/turse.php

From the National Archives: New proof of Vietnam War atrocities
Swift Boat Swill

by Nicholas Turse
September 21st, 2004 11:40 AM

John Kerry is being pilloried for his shocking Senate testimony 34 years ago that many U.S. soldiers—not just a few "rogues"—were committing atrocities against the Vietnamese. U.S. military records that were classified for decades but are now available in the National Archives back Kerry up and put the lie to his critics. Contrary to what those critics, including the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, have implied, Kerry was speaking on behalf of many soldiers when he testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on April 22, 1971, and said this:


They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in a fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam, in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.

The archives have hundreds of files of official U.S. military investigations of such atrocities committed by American soldiers. I've pored over those records—which were classified for decades—for my Columbia University dissertation and, now, this Voice article. The exact number of investigated allegations of atrocities is unknown, as is the number of such barbaric incidents that occurred but weren't investigated. Some war crimes, like the Tiger Force atrocities exposed last year by The Toledo Blade, have only come to light decades later. Others never will. But there are plentiful records to back up Kerry's 1971 testimony point by point. Following (with the names removed or abbreviated) are examples, directly from the archives:

..more..

-----------------

http://www.accuracy.org/press_releases/PR082404.htm

Did the U.S. Commit War Crimes in Vietnam?

DAVID MacMICHAEL, [email protected]

A disabled veteran of ten years active Marine Corps service in Korea, MacMichael was a Defense Department consultant from 1965 to 1969 in Southeast Asia. During most of that period he was attached to the office of the Special Assistant for Counter-Insurgency at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. In that capacity he reviewed classified reports from the U.S. mission in Vietnam. MacMichael said today: "Some Vietnam veterans are outraged that presidential candidate Kerry in his 1971 Senate testimony spoke of atrocities reportedly committed by U.S. military forces in Vietnam. There is more than a little substance to the charge. The Toledo Blade won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize by revealing that in 1967 the 101st Airborne Division created a 'Tiger Force' ordered to kill all Vietnamese males in Quang Ngi Province. According to official U.S. Army records unearthed by the Blade reporters, Tiger Force killed many hundreds of Vietnamese and, yes, soldiers of that force did proudly ware necklaces of the ears they cut from their victims. The Army did investigate and identified the perpetrators of the crimes but chose not to prosecute them." www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=SRTI... >

MacMichael added: "In 1968, Colonel George S. Patton III -- son of the World War II general -- then commanding a brigade in Vietnam, sent out Christmas cards showing dead Vietnamese stacked up Abu Ghraib-fashion with the message 'Peace on Earth' and signed by him and his wife.... And then, of course, there was My Lai. There, C Company of the 11th Brigade of the Americal Division in 1967 entered that village and methodically executed between 347 and 504 of its unarmed inhabitants, men, women and children. At least 100 of them were lined up in an irrigation ditch by Lt. William Calley and shot to death by his GIs. The slaughter only ended when the shocked crew of an Army helicopter gunship landed and forced C Company at gunpoint to cease and desist. My Lai was far from an exceptional case. In fact, it might never have come to light had not a troubled Americal Division mortarman, Tom Glen, who had not been present, heard about it and, after rotating out of Vietnam to the U.S., wrote to the U.S. commander in Vietnam, General Westmoreland. His letter only mentioned My Lai as 'part of the abusive pattern that had become routine in the Americal Division.'"


DAVID CLINE, [email protected], www.veteransforpeace.org, www.vvaw.org, www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html
Currently national president of Veterans for Peace and a longtime coordinator of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Cline is a disabled combat veteran. He said today: "After 30 years, some people are trying to whitewash what happened in Vietnam."


S. BRIAN WILLSON, [email protected], www.brianwillson.com
Willson is a former Air Force captain who served in Vietnam. He said today: "As head of a 40-man USAF combat security unit in Vietnam, I was separately tasked to assess 'success' of targeted bombings. I discovered egregious war crimes -- daylight terror bombings of undefended fishing and rice farming villages resulting in mass murders and maimings of hundreds of residents. Subsequently, in conversations with members of the 9th Infantry Division, I heard bravado about slaughter of 11,000 'enemy' from ground operations, though the vast majority proved to be unarmed civilians."

....more....


------------------------------------------------------

http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Tiger_force_120803.htm

Tiger Force (Vietnam) Uncovered and Exposed

Witness to Vietnam atrocities never knew about investigation

THE NEW YORKER, NOVEMBER 10, 2003
Talk of the Town, p.41

<snip>
At the height of the rampage, the Tiger Force platoon was operating a few dozen miles from a Quang Ngai hamlet that the Army called My Lai 4, and where, in March, 1968, more than five hundred Vietnamese civilians were massacred by a task force whose platoon leaders included William L. Calley, Jr. The Blade quoted a law professor as stating that My Lai might have been avoided if the senior officer corps had acted on complaints of military brutality in Quang Ngai that had been filed by at least two soldiers. The Blade further reported that in the early nineteen-seventies, after Calley's conviction for the murder of twenty-two Vietnamese civilians, in March, 1971, and while the Army was publicly insisting that My Lai was an isolated incident, senior officials in the White House and the Pentagon were provided with periodic reports on the Tiger Force inquiry.

In fact, while the Army was conducting its internal investigation of My Lai, it discovered that a second large massacre had taken place on the same day in the same area, in a hamlet known as My Khe 4, but Lieutenant General William R. Peers, who had served for more than two years in Vietnam and who led the investigation, publicly denied that there were any other incidents. "It was not brought out to me in the evidence," Peers told reporters at the close of the inquiry, and he was not challenged on that assertion, even though two Army officers who had been present at My Khe had already been charged with war crimes. Twenty years later, the Army declassified an April, 1970, memorandum to the General responding to an article I had written about My Lai. It noted that I did not appear to "possess any substantive information concerning the suppression or cover-up aspects of the incident," but that I was being aided in my reporting by someone with access to the official records. It concluded, "The need to terminate such assistance to Mr. Hersh becomes increasingly important when consideration is given to the use Mr. Hersh would make of any information he obtained concerning command reaction and efforts of suppression."

John Dean, the former White House counsel to President Nixon, acknowledged that he had received a series of reports from the Army on the status of pending war-crimes investigations, including My Lai, but that they gave no hint of the extent of the crimes. "It doesn't get to the top unless there's a problem," he told me last month. "I had no knowledge of My Lai"-that is, its full horror--"until it hit the press."

In war-crimes investigations, the disparity between the facts and the military's official versions of them has repeatedly been exposed, often with bruising consequences, by an independent press. The Blade's extraordinary investigation of Tiger Force, however, remains all but invisible. None of the four major television networks have picked it up (although CBS and NBC have been in touch with the Blade), and most major newspapers have either ignored the story or limited themselves to publishing an Associated Press summary. In a column published on the first day of the series, Ron Royhab, the Blade's executive editor, pointedly wrote that the decision to run the Vietnam stories now had "nothing to do" with the current military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. As he told me, "We can't have this kind of information and sit on it, because then we'd be a party to a coverup." There is, of course, a hesitancy in time of war--and, in particular, during an increasingly unpopular war against an entrenched guerrilla enemy, to publish stories that could be interpreted as undermining military morale. And news organizations instinctively debunk scoops nom their competitors, especially those in smaller markets. It may be that others in the media are planning to do their own Tiger Force investigations. Let's hope so. Terrible things always happen in war, and the responsibility of the press is to do exactly what the Blade has done-to find, verify, and publish the truth.

-Seymour M Hersh

----------------------------

===========================
Fallujah



----------
http://www.thisisrumorcontrol.org/node/1887

Forgotten Fallujah - An Interview With Dahr Jamail
Iraq | The News Today

Posted by Newt on March 22, 2005 - 1:50pm

Five months since the second U.S. attack on Fallujah, code named “Phantom Fury,” and timed to begin after the presidential election, it is still difficult to get good information on what exactly happened there.

Blogger and independent journalist Dahr Jamail has just returned from Iraq and tells “This is Rumor Control” that there is evidence that American forces used illegal weapons in Fallujah, including napalm. Britain’s Sunday Mirror carried a similar report. And al Jazeera quoted eyewitnesses who said "poisonous gases have been used in Fallujah. They used everything -- tanks, artillery, infantry, and poisonous gas. Fallujah has been bombed to the ground."

Even a researcher from the Iraqi Health ministry, Dr.Khalid ash-Shaykhli suggested reports of chemical weapons’ use are true, citing the deaths “of dozens, if not hundreds, of stray dogs, cats, and birds that had perished as a result of those gasses.”

<snip>

----------

The Head of the Compensation Committee reveals in numbers the Fallujah Tragedy

Dr. Hafidh al-Dulaimi, the head of “the Commission for the Compensation of Fallujah citizens” has reported the following destruction that has been inflicted on Fallujah as a result of the American attack on it:
- 7000 totally destroyed, or nearly totally destroyed, homes in all districts of Fallujah.
- 8400 stores, workshops, clinics, warehouses, etc.. destroyed.
- 65 mosques and religious sanctuaries have been either totally demolished and leveled with the ground or whose minarets and inner halls have been demolished.
- 59 kindergartens, primary schools, secondary schools and technical colleges have been destroyed.
- 13 government buildings have been leveled.
- Destruction of the two electricity substations, the three water purification plants, the two railroad stations and heavy damages to the sewage and rain drainage subsystems throughout the city.
- The total destruction of a bridge to the West of the city.
- The death of 100,000 domestic and wild animals due to chemical and/or gaseous munitions.
- The burning and destruction of four libraries that housed hundreds perhaps thousands of ancient Islamic manuscripts and books.
- The targeted destruction (which appears to be intentional) of the historical nearby site at Saqlawia and the castle of Abu al-Abbas al-Safah.
Dr. al-Dulaimi has asked all relevant international organization to visit and document the destruction to Fallujah.........

The Head of the Compensation Committee reveals in numbers the Fallujah Tragedy March 21, 2005 (< http://www.islammemo.cc/news/one_news.asp?IDNews=59994 >Islam Memo news item in Arbic)

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m10630

[G_j]

7. Slow Progress in Battered Falluja (April 19, 2005)

Slow Progress in Battered Falluja (April 19, 2005)

Five months after the second US attack on Falluja, students attend classes in tents, more than 100,000 residents still live in refugee camps, and a curfew lasting nearly half the day remains in place. US and Iraqi forces use undamaged schools as bases. Meanwhile, NGOs "are finding it difficult to help Falluja residents because of restrictions on entering the city." (Institute for War & Peace Reporting)
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2005/0419falluja.htm

[G_j]

9. This is our Guernica

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1471169,00.html

This is our Guernica
Ruined, cordoned Falluja is emerging as the decade's monument to brutality

Jonathan Steele and Dahr Jamail
Wednesday April 27, 2005

Guardian

<snip>
Two US attempts were made to destroy this symbol of defiance last year. The first, in April, fizzled out after Iraqi politicians, including many who supported the invasion of their country, condemned the use of air strikes to terrorise an entire city. The Americans called off the attack, but not before hundreds of families had fled and more than 600 people had been killed.

<snip>
Three weeks after the (second) attack was launched last November, the Americans claimed victory. They say they killed about 1,300 people; one week into the siege, a BBC reporter put the unofficial death toll at 2,000. But details of what happened and who the dead were remain obscure. Were many unarmed civilians, as Baghdad-based human rights groups report? Even if they were trying to defend their homes by fighting the Americans, does that make them "terrorists"?

Journalists "embedded" with US forces filmed atrocities, including the killing of a wounded prisoner, but no reporter could get anything like a full picture. Since the siege ended, tight US restric tions - as well as the danger of hostage-taking that prevents reporters from travelling in most parts of Iraq - have put the devastated city virtually off limits.

<snip>
In the 1930s the Spanish city of Guernica became a symbol of wanton murder and destruction. In the 1990s Grozny was cruelly flattened by the Russians; it still lies in ruins. This decade's unforgettable monument to brutality and overkill is Falluja, a text-book case of how not to handle an insurgency, and a reminder that unpopular occupations will always degenerate into desperation and atrocity.

· Jonathan Steele is the Guardian's senior foreign correspondent; Dahr Jamail is a freelance American journalist.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2005

[seemslikeadream]

4. "There Was A Man"

Pearls Before Swine Balaklava
young girl at a Vietnam era peace rally

There was a man came to our town
He wore a suit of red
He memorized with secret eyes
That he hid away in his head

He had a scar upon his head
Where there used to be a crown
But he sold his robes at the five and ten
And lived on the edge of town
That fall he showed us a magic leaf
That he could change to snow
He bought it partly with his grief
And partly with his soul
He scattered seeds in the alley way
He never seemed to rest
And when you went to ask him why
All he ever said was yes
He made a swan from waving grass
Beside a crystal shore
And a sunrise spun from broken glass
And many things wondrous more
But then his hands began to burn
When he heard the news from the war
When we cannot find each other he said
Then we can't run away any more
Next day with tears along his face
He passed us on the hill
No one thought to ask him to stay
And he knows that we never will
There was a man came to our town
He wore a suit of red
He memorized with secret eyes
That he hid away in his head

Tom Rapp



Pearls Before Swine
Balaklava

[G_j]

6. Brueghel: Triumph of Death

all too appropriate :-(

[understandinglife]

5. MNA May 2 2005 -- Stop the atrocities; stop the lies

www.missionnotaccomplished.us

[G_j]

8. 30 yr kick..........

[seemslikeadream]

10. The Hmong

Jack Austin Smith, a Vietnam Veteran and a retired career soldier

Writing to an American who was confused about the Hmong people, Jack Austin Smith, a Vietnam Veteran and a retired career soldier, wrote the following in 1996 (quoted from his e-mail to me, with permission):

The war in Vietnam was fought on several fronts and I served in two them. The main American battle ground was in the Southern end of South Vietnam. In order for the North Vietnamese forces to fight us there, it was necessary for their supplies and troops to go through Laos and Cambodia on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and Laos was controlled by a Pro-Communist Government at that time. Therefore America was not allowed to have any forces on the ground, although we were allowed to bomb and attack North Vietnamese troops with our aerial forces. About 99% of the combat forces on the ground were Hmong irregulars who were persuaded by Americans to forget about being neutral, and to fight the N. Vietnamese regulars (not relatively poorly trained Viet Cong guerrilla forces). We supplied air cover, but every combat trooper knows aircraft can't take and hold ground. We depended on the Hmongs to do this. Without modern arms, without medical help.
After the fall of Saigon we pulled out of Southeast Asia and left the Hmongs to continue the fight without air support. When we left, the Hmong had to fight both the Laotians and the N. Vietnamese. They could not fight tanks, heavy artillery and aircraft with rifles. A great many Hmongs were slaughtered in their villages. Many were slaughtered at airfields where they waited for evacuation planes that never came. A few were able to fight every foot of the way across Laos and cross the Mekong River into refugee camps in Thailand where they were further mistreated by rather corrupt UN and Thai officials. Out of a estimated 3,000,000 prewar Hmong population less than 200,000 made it to safety. One other ill informed or stupid writer said "they were all gone" meaning, I guess, that the combat Hmongs were all dead, they are wrong. Most of the survivors are in Australia, France and here among us.

Now I don't know about those heroes who have never heard a shot fired in anger, but I am embarrassed that my country so mislead these people. The Hmongs gave up literally everything for us: their country, their homes, their peaceful way of life, most of their families, everything that we would cherish. We promised them our continued support and then we bugged out.

You mentioned having relatives who fought in Vietnam and I hope they all survived. However their chances would have been much less if the Hmongs hadn't intercepted over 50% of the N. Vietnamese troops and supplies. If you truly loved your relatives, you should be grateful for the Hmongs' sacrifices.
http://www.jefflindsay.com/hmong.shtml

[seemslikeadream]

12. 500,000 people in Laos fled and became international political refugees

2001 Hmong Population and Education in
the United States and the World
August 24, 2001
Researched and Collected by Dr. Vang Pobzeb

From 1975 to 1991, more than 500,000 people in Laos fled and became international political refugees in the world because of the legacy of the Vietnam War in Southeast Asia.


The Communist Lao and Vietnamese governments have been exterminating Hmong people in Laos since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975 and are still doing so today, because of Hmong people cooperated with the U.S. government during the Vietnam War. In 2001, witnesses in Laos have reported that many thousands of Communist Vietnamese soldiers are cooperating with the Communist Lao government of the Lao People's Democratic Republic (LPDR) to conduct an ethnic cleansing war, genocide and human rights violations against Hmong people in Laos. Therefore, we appeal to and call upon Hmong American intellectuals, educators and the general public to unify our leadership strategies and efforts in order to save the lives of Hmong people in Laos. We call upon all Hmong people to unify and work together to save the lives of Hmong people. Power politics in the world and global actors are remaining silent on the genocide against Hmong people in Laos because they are concerned with economics and commercial goods for themselves. They do not really care about human rights violations and genocide in Laos and in other parts of the world.

There are about 300,000 Hmong American people in the United States in 2001.


In 2001, there are approximately 80,000 Hmong American people in Minnesota; and 80,000 Hmong Americans in Wisconsin.


About 40,000 Hmong Americans moved from California to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and other states between 1996 and 2001.


About 70,000 Hmong Americans still live in California in 2001.


Many Hmong Americans moved from California to Minnesota and Wisconsin and other states because of the problems of welfare reforms and unemployment problems

http://www.laohumrights.org/2001data.html

[G_j]

14. they certainly deserve remembering

and so many others plowed beneath our memory and knowledge.

[DistressedAmerican]

11. Great Post! Nominating!

[democrank]

13. Glad to see this made it to the Greatest Page.

It`s mind-blowing. The corporate media STILL refuses to take a serious look at what we`re doing in Iraq. What do we get instead? Occasional brief "War in Iraq" graphics followed by umpteen stories on Michael Jackson, the horrors of high-Carb eating and a few monologues on America`s Favorite Sunscreen products.

Thank you so much for posting this. The information here should give any reader a solid reason for an instant reality check.

[leftchick]

15. From the last link....

~snip~

Still, this public uneasiness about Iraq -- where insurgents have stepped up attacks in recent days -- is not reflected in any official disinclination to make use of the U.S. military abroad. "The U.S. has become increasingly uninhibited about the use of force," says John Pike, a national security analyst with GlobalSecurity.org. "Ever since we stopped worrying about the Fulda Gap , we have become quite creative in finding problems that have military solutions."

"Our legions have been on the march almost continuously since 1989, with no end in sight," says Mr. Pike, referring to such places as Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, Liberia, Iraq, and Kosovo.

Projecting such post-cold-war U.S. military actions into the future -- particularly on the scale of Vietnam or Iraq -- is another matter. Absent North Korea invading South Korea, or a terrorist attack in the U.S. on the scale of Sept. 11, "U.S. public opinion will not accept an Indochina-size war under any circumstances I can think of," says Fred Branfman. "This is the enduring legacy of Vietnam in the 21st century as I see it," he says.

:scared:

[G_j]

16. "U.S. public opinion will not accept an Indochina-size war.."

I wish I shared his optimism. Even if public opinion were against it, I'm not so sure the PNAC crew is ready to let a little thing like public opinion interfere with it's goals.

[BeFree]

17. Mission accomplished?

Oh Yeah? What mission was that?
----------------

After reading this thread, my heart heavy with the weight of it tugging at it's very core, all I can do is ask WHY?

I am old enough to have lived, vicariously, the Viet Nam war. I read the news, saw the pictures on TV. Saw the draft come close to my family and end just before I would have been sucked in. Have since been a willing ear for those Vets returned who were willing to talk. I have heard some awful stories.

I still don't know WHY. There are a hundred different explanations for WHY the US murdered so many, but from that singular fact grows the one answer that best explains the WHY: There be far too many people who desire murder, and too many others willing to share that desire.

Have Peace, or be pieced out.

[G_j]

18. *****if you think about Vietnam at all today, PLEASE CONSIDER

listening to (or reading) this....(pretty please)....it will shake the cobwebs out!!

-peace
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Source: King, Martin Luther Jr. Beyond Vietnam and Casualties of the War in Vietnam. New York: Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam, 1986.

BEYOND VIETNAM
April 4, 1967, Riverside Church, NYC

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilence.htm