[Update]
New excerpt from Memorial Day column by Jay Bookman, below in comments.
Cynthia Tucker, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
First, there was Jessica Lynch — re-created as the brave blonde heroine who emptied her rifle firing at the enemy. It turned out she never fired a shot.
Later, there was Pat Tillman, who walked away from a lucrative professional football career to join the U.S. Army Rangers. Tillman’s death last year was reinvented as a breathtaking tale of a soldier gunned down by enemy fire while leading a charge to protect his men. In fact, he was killed in an episode of friendly fire, mistakenly shot by members of his own platoon.
So why does the Pentagon do this? Here is Tucker’s theory:
So, this time around, the hawks have worked assiduously to conceal any inconvenient facts from a public they believe has no stomach for war’s grim realities. The result has been manufactured tales of heroism, concealment of soldiers’ caskets and a relentless drumbeat against the news media for an alleged refusal to portray “all the good things going on in Iraq.”
The set-up and the money quote:
So let’s not use our brave men and women in uniform as props in made-up bedtime stories. And, for heaven’s sake, let’s not hide our dead and wounded. That dishonors their sacrifice.
Go read the whole column. And, if you agree, send her an email.
CNN co-founder Reese Schoenfeld said it was OK for the Pentagon to lie to protect National Security. They lie themselves when they say they’re America’s most-watched news network.
Another outrageous enabler is Dean’s World (NOT Howard!). He is still angry and bitter over Watergate. He wishes the media would just STFU over all the inconvenient stuff. But the problem is, trying to wish stuff away, like our poor performance in Iraq, will not make it go away. It will only make it worse.
she’s a good reporter. She’s dead-on with this.
The military thinks we lost the Vietnam war to San Francisco, not the NVA. And they’ve developed an elaborate strategy to make sure San Francisco never threatens them again.
So far, it’s working like a charm.
was first put into place in Panama (near as I recollect). Executed to perfection in Gulf I.
Jay Bookman
The primary document is an internal summary of a meeting held on July 23, 2002, by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and a handful of his top foreign policy, intelligence and military advisers. At that point, most Americans had no idea that a war with Iraq was even being considered, but apparently, Blair and President Bush had agreed to invade Iraq as far back as an April 2002 meeting in Crawford, Texas.
In the July meeting, Blair and his aides discussed the Americans’ plan to create an international crisis around Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction. The idea was to set the stage for war by demanding that Saddam Hussein re-admit U.N. weapons inspectors; when Saddam refused, that would be the excuse to invade.
However, as British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw told Blair in that July meeting, “The case is thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.”
Blair was also told that the “most likely timing in U.S. minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the U.S. congressional elections.”
That description is damning, indicating that the Bush administration cynically manipulated its war plans to create maximum political advantage for Republican congressional candidates.
The document’s most devastating paragraph, however, summarizes a report by the head of British intelligence, known as “C.” “C” has just returned from meetings in Washington, and he’s telling Blair what he learned there:
“Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD,” “C” tells Blair. “But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy. . . . There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.”
The intelligence was being fixed . . . Little discussion of the aftermath. Amazing.
So yes, a nation can be fooled into war by its own leaders. We’ve learned that much. But unless that war is short and successful, there’s a price to be paid.
In this case, what began as an optional war has morphed into a war of great importance. But now, when our leaders tell us that, fewer Americans believe them, and fewer still are willing to die for it.
This is how we end it: Here’s the lesson from Vietnam: Don’t lie.. When sending our youth to die: don’t ever lie. Ever. It’s not the images (or lack of) that changes hearts and minds. It’s whether the public believes that the deaths were justified.
Whatever the source, the truth of the war is being publicized. The list is long so, let’s just agree that in the last year we have seen the balance reach the tipping point where those opposed far outnumber those in support.
Give it time. It’s only been five months since the election, and there has been a sea change in the coverage. Not enough to satisfy the anti-war movement, too much bad news for the hard right. But the coverage is there.
we (the troops) did’nt loose the war, Politicians, and the Oil Corps did.
we, lost our lives, mostly the ones who came home.
History, DOES repeat
More Bookman
A few years ago, on the night that U.S. soldiers invaded Afghanistan, I got a phone call from a friend who as a younger man had fought and killed for this country. By modern standards if not by his, he was a hero.
But on this night, the prospect of American troops returning to war had suddenly brought back troubling memories of all he had done and seen in defense of his country. In our long and rambling conversation, he would alternate, sometimes within the same sentence, between great pride and painful anguish at what he had done in war.
Most of all, though, he was torn apart by the knowledge that a new generation of Americans was about to experience what he had, not just in the war itself but for years afterward.
When we hung up that night, I remember being struck by the fact that my friend knew very deep in his heart that what he had done in his war was right and necessary; he also knew — deep in his heart — that what he had done was wrong.
I left out this paragraph: