Psyched-Out
Don't know about you, but I'm with George W. Bush when he says that the war in Iraq just might be "straining the psyche" of Americans.
Listening to his Monday hour-long press conference certainly strained the heck out of my psyche. I don't fault the guy for being inarticulate. But irrational -- and mendacious-- are two other things.
The Prez just couldn't manage to keep his story straight. He wasn't happy about the news from Iraq except for the times he was. He was frustrated but not surprised. Saddam didn't have any WMD's but maybe he sorta did. Iraq didn't "order" the attacks on 9/11 but the killing of 3,000 Americans on that day had something or another to do with why we invaded. People who criticize the government's war policies aren't disloyal but they are aiding and abetting Osama Bin Laden.
If the lives of so many people weren't in play, the whole sorry performance would have been a hoot, a biting self-cariacture. In reality, it was just one more tragic day in this bottomless adventure known as the war in Iraq. I give ample credit to my Nation colleague David Corn who, unlike yours truly, was actually able to track and deconstruct Bush's zig-zagging rhetoric. Make sure you read all of David's account.
Kudos also to regular commenter and fellow blogger Randy Paul who pointed out that the lapse between Pearl Harbor and VJ Day was 1347 days and if the Iraq war continues until this coming November 27 it will have lasted one day longer than WWII. That fact alone about snaps the psyche.
So where do we stand five years after 9/11 and deep into the 4th year of the Iraqi war?
The Bush administration has united our enemies and divided our allies.
Over the last month, we watched the administration green light the massive bombardment of one of the few Arab governments that wasn't hostile to the U.S.
Arab moderates and liberals found themselves forced to side with the radical Hezbollah as the U.S. abandoned any pretense of neutrality in the Lebanese war.
The number of civilian killings in Iraq was greater in July than any time during the course of the war.
The number of roadside bombs set off in Iraq in the month of July was greater than any time during the course of the war.
The number of wounded U.S. soldiers has skyrocketed.
The much ballyhooed national unity government in Baghdad is plummeting.
The heightened security plan to make Baghdad safer gave way to an orgy of death squad killings.
And now we face a defiant, fundamentalist Iran -- emboldened by its rising influence in Iraq and by the recent performance of its client Hezbollah. As the mullahs moves brazenly forward in their nuclear program, don't you feel great that its the Bushies who are in power to manage the crisis? Will they do as masterful a job as they have in Iraq?
August 21st, 2006 at 9:56 pm
Thanks Marc, for finally delivering your readers from that last comment thread.
Oh yeah. Great post…although I was actually hoping for your take on Talladega Nights.
August 21st, 2006 at 10:04 pm
Oh, and lifting a Bush quote that also made my head hurt when I was listening this morning: “You know, I’ve heard this theory about everything was just fine until we arrived…”
That’s funny, because I’ve never heard this theory that everything was just fine until we arrived. What the hell is this moron talking about ?
I understand the “we’ve stirred up the hornets’ nest” argument, i.e. made things worse in terms of our strategic goals, which is demonstrably true. But to counterpose that argument to a theory that “everything in Iraq” – or the Middle East for that matter – was “just fine” is the height of (to borrow Marc’s adjective) mendacious rhetorical strategies. What crap. What an asshole.
August 21st, 2006 at 10:36 pm
If Arab moderates and liberals have been forced to side with Hezbollah, than why is the prime minister of Lebanon now talking about an opportunity for peace with Israel?
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=752253&contrassID=1&subContrassID=1
I don’t remember Lebanon talking about peace with Israel before.
The Arab League is also now talking about a new peace process.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3293639,00.html
The war has also knocked heads in Israel, and gotten people to talk about peace.
War has a reality beyond our moral conception of it. It is a tragedy, but also a historical force. The sad truth is that, in the middle east, at least, it is war that gives birth to peace (or more war). Many see Egypt’s relative success against Israel in the 1973 war as paving the way to the peace treaty between those two countries. Maybe the same can now happen with Lebanon, taking Siniora at his word.
August 21st, 2006 at 11:18 pm
I’m sure the people of Europe and Asia will be comforted to know that World War II started when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:47 am
Kevin, obviously Marc is talking about our active war involvment, but then you knew that.
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:09 am
I think that we are at a historic point where the responsibility of individual Americans themselves, and not just Bush and other leaders, is now engaged. There are no longer any excuses for people to claim that they are misled or that they spend too much time watching Fox news to know what is going on. Ignorance has now become a matter of choice, a matter of willful ignorance, as a few commentators here demonstrate on an almost daily basis. And political leadership will from here on in consist of encouraging Americans to follow their better instincts rather than pandering to their ignorance and prejudices, whether it be leadership by Democrats or Republicans.
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:20 am
The length of U.S. involvement in WW II and the length of the current involvement in Iraq is an apples vs. oranges. As Bush himself more or less said in a speech that virtually inaugurated the GWOT, people don’t saturation-bomb countries into submission anymore. Those days are over. (And it wouldn’t work in this case anyway, moral qualms–if he had any–aside.)
WW II was total war. This is not total war. In some sense, neither was the Vietnam war, even though it was mind-boggling intense at certain points.
The British were in Malaya (now Malaysia) for 12 years. (And arguably succeeded). We were in Vietnam for longer, depending on how you count.
There was never much question in my mind that this would be a long one. And if you parse Rumsfeld carefully, I think you’ll find he often hedged his pelted-with-flowers prognostications.
This is what fighting insurgencies is like. It can go on for 20 years, or more. (Doesn’t some Guatemalan guerrilla force hold the record?) You can view Gulf War I as the real beginning, and the sanctions period as merely a low-intensity continuation. That was, after all, how the administration argued that it already had the permission of Congress: the U.S. was already basically at war with Iraq. And if you look at it that way, we’ve been in there, to varying degrees, since January 1991. For all we know, there’s some kid in Iraq right now who lied about his age when he signed up, who was born around the time Iraq invaded Kuwait. Now *that’s* long.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:19 am
MarkC:
Why is the Lebanese PM seeking peace? The question presupposes that he wasn’t seeking peace before…
“The war has also knocked heads in Israel…”
I hope so! The IDF for the first time in 4 decades tangled with a formidable opponent – and got thier butt handed to them militarily and in the court of public opinion.
Hopefully, Israel may try peaceful recourses to future border incidents (and ceas ethier own border provocations).
Re: War as an historical force beyond our moral conception of it.
The example you cite, Egypt – early 1970s, probably more accurately demonstrates the coercive force of $3 Billion in US foriegn aid annually.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:19 am
So what?
The time to have made your voices heard about going into Iraq was during the years that Hussein thumbed his nose at the U.N. and blocked inspections, sent assassins after former President Bush, and continued as a destablizing factor in the mideast–oh, and not to mention his torture chambers and mass murders. Everyone heard the arguments for “just one more chance,” but time ran out–and the “just one more chance” crowd was getting laughed out-mainly by Hussein.
So, any discussion about why we are in Iraq is just griping and not helpful in any way about how we should resolve the problem there today. So, you can cut it out.
Quit complaining about the past where you had your chance and lost–if, in fact, you actually were vocal back over all of thsoe years, which few of you were. Just tell us what you think is the best way to get out now. If you say, just pull out and fast, then Bush is right about your side–it’s wrong. You don’t understand the consequence of that.
In the meantime, you’re giving hope to the enemy and encouraging the terrorists to hang on until Democrats get elected and promise to cut-and-run. Those who don’t back our president and unite behind our cause share responsibility for deaths that occur from a drawn-out conflict. Hey, didn’t we see this in Viet Nam? Yeah, and Kerry was in the fore-front there, too.
Oh, I checked, and the Korean Conflict has been going on for fifty-six years, and Iraq will never pass that–not even if it gets on steroids like Bonds passing Aaron. Of course, if we want to compare this to WWII, then we can end it quickly–the same way. Maybe comparisons of past wars aren’t valid after all.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:23 am
Can we talk about art films?
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:28 am
Sorry, one last comment. Michael Turner, I actually agree with you above. It’s a good analysis.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:44 am
Today, I would say, is the day to IW. (Ignore Woody).
The post’s comparisons of Iraq and WWII are valid, and of course the qualifiers pointed out by turner make senses. Or as Halberstam said of comparing Iraq to Vietnam “at some point the apples start to look like oranges.” We should note, Turner, that Bush did ask for “all out war” just a novel way to appoach it (go shopping, cut taxes).
I would also give Bush this, it is fair to say Americans who oppose the war are not disloyal and are also aiding Bin Laden. It also betrays, I think, another deep lacking in the man, he understands very little about what he’s fighting.
David Halberstam also did a salon interview right after 9-11 in which he said the unilateral appoach was dead; Bush would have to rethink his appoach. Never happened. As far as I can see, damn little note of this was taken in the media. Here, I think, is where the loyalty stuff comes into play; here is where people didn’t question the invasion because they were bullied or scared, or registered half harted desents by route.
As for Bush obvious inability to think criticly, to reason beyond slogans; well, that was all there in the debates. You can site endless mitagating factors in 2000; but in 2004 the American people failed to act with nominal responsability. That’s the way big D Democracy works; it’s a bill we’ll be paying for a long time.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:44 am
Woody,
The advice I just gave my 8 year old daughter seems relevant to you also this morning:
“When you’re passing alot of gas and your stomachs grumbling like that, it’s best to go sit on the toilet for a while,,,”
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:07 am
This may have gone on longer than (America’s run in) world war 2, but no historian will call it world war 3.
I appreciate what Marc is saying, but he still seems to accept the premise of American power, blinding him to alternatives that exist precisely because of the weakness and ineptitude of current regime in DC.
To describe Hezbollah as a client of Iran is like describing, say, the Bosnian military as a tool of the Americans in the 90s. Yes, Iran and America had interests, but Hezbollah has a lot of autonomy. They were very publicly angry with Syria for Assad’s insults towards “Anti-Syrian” forces in Lebanon. I would assume similar responses from them towards Iran.
It is in no country – Latin America, Europe’s interests – to let the Mideast get worse. As America is inept, it can be seen like North Korea = and lets hope that countries can manipulate the US as well as they can Noko.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:01 am
Hello Mr Cooper — your post and the link to Corn where very good.
Your comments made me think about a warning George Packer made in Assassins Gate way back in ’05. Observing the GOP’s style of scorched earth politics, he argued that this practice was inevitably going to backfire. I think this is finally going to manifest this year. As a supporter of the intervention in Iraq, I think the only way to ensure a decent chance of a decent outcome is to fire Rumsfeld find a leadership at the Pentagon not saddled with all the mistakes of the past. 2 months ago, I would have said there’s no way the Democrats take more than one half of Congress. Now it just might happen. I see the GOP losing ‘security moms’ in places like Virginia and Ohio. Hopefully the threat of a Democratic controlled Congress coming after the Administration with endless hearing on the conduct of the war might be enough to have the President toss Rumsfeld overboard.
If only the lapdogs Hastert and Frist could be sacked as well.
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:31 am
David Corn concludes: “Bush remains lost in Iraq, with the rest of the country (and the world) held hostage by the mistakes and miscalculations he will not concede.”
This is, of course, assuming that Bush and his braintrust are as stupid as Bush sounds when he’s making statements for public consumption. For all we know, we’re at a point that was predicted quite early on as one of several possible midpoint predicaments. If they had a credible prediction of it before they even embarked on the adventure, there’s no reason they’d come out and tell us, is there?
Quick quiz for you all. You’re a politician. You’re down to two choices: you can
1. Sound stupid, but sincere,
or
2. be honest about how scheming and manipulative you have been.
Sounding intelligent and sincere is not an option, if it ever was. If you value your political skin, it’s a no-brainer — you choose (1). That choice doesn’t even hurt you very much if there are a lot of voters who already believe you, or who want to believe you.
Why are we really in Iraq? We’re in there for reasons Colin Powell briefly made very clear, before muddying it again by parroting the administration line about freedom and democracy. We need a stable Middle East oil supplier.
9/11, with the vast majority of the hijackers being Saudi nationals, was an early warning signal (for which this administration must be appreciative) that we might not be able to count on oil from the Arabian peninsula for too many more years. (Maybe 30% of the world’s proven reserves, if you count all Gulf oil reserves, maybe more.) What does that leave in the Middle East in the category of “candidates for stable oil supplier”? Well, maybe all of Iraq, if it can toppled and then stabilized again. And if we can’t stabilize Iraq? The Pesh Merga, with U.S. air support if necessary, could probably stabilize the Kirkuk region–which has something like 10 times as much oil as the Alaskan north slope, and more cheaply extractible. And the Pesh Merga defend something like a democratic, stable part of Iraq, a part that could perhaps even continue to be called Iraq if that fiction turns out to be more convenient than a recognition of a sovereign Kurdistan.
It’s called raking coals out of the fire. And it’s not the stuff of presidential press conferences. It’s the kind of thing you find out about 20 or 30 years later, unless you get really lucky and somebody leaks. And that’s assuming that it’s documented, even though there’s no reason to document it, nor even any reason to record it all, except in the minds of a dozen or so trusted people around the president. Actually, trust isn’t all that important after a certain point of commitment. Those people will keep their lips zipped and their legal asses covered, because, after all, who in their right minds would ever want to be backed into a corner where they have to admit, “It wasn’t *primarily* ‘blood for oil’–that was just our backup plan”? I mean, with Vietnam, it was almost credible that destroy-to-save (from Communism) was a moral position. Not so in this case.
So when Bush talks about going into Iraq being proactive about future threats, he’s probably telling something like 25% of the truth. It’s just that the “threat” isn’t really from terrorism. It’s economic: the threat of Premature, Steep Downslope from Peak Oil. Any American politician with a sense of self-preservation (which would be all of them, last I checked) will see that eventuality as a roller-coaster ride in a thunderstorm without seatbelts, regardless of which side of the aisle they sit on now. If there are Democrats who have sussed all this out, they’ll prefer to campaign against WalMart rather than Bush’s Iraq strategy. They’d rather that the war cry in 2008 be “The GOP fumbled Iraq!” (response: “No, we saved what was possible to save!” — probably a tie in terms of votes gained or lost on either side.) It’ll be a kind of bipartisan agreement on what to disagree about, without addressing the real issue: how did both parties lull us into such complacency over the years about out economic dependence on despotic petrostates in the first place?
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:53 am
Woody, if you’re truly pissed off at people who are responsible for deaths that occur from a drawn out conflict, you need look no farther than the President and his war cabinet who have willfully and recklessly done everything wrong at every step – from the decision to unilaterally end UN inspections, draw essential forces out of Afghanistan and launch an assault on Baghdad, to ignoring existing plans for force levels in the event of a Iraq war, to an occupation strategy based on little more than hubris and false hope.
Since you probably won’t read a book by someone who’s followed this disaster closely as it’s unfolded, here’s a book review.
http://tinyurl.com/nd5uc
“Uniting behind our President” when he’s demonstrated arrogance, dishonesty and incompetence at every step along the way is a recipe for more disaster, assuming that’s possible.
Of course, it’s pretty obvious from the tone of your comments that you aren’t actually concerned about the actions of those responsible for a drawn out tragedy of deaths in Iraq. You’re just trying to shut up critics because Bush’s policies stand exposed and have fallen apart. Since you’ve been shilling for this hubristic little jerk since day one, it’s an embarrassment and leaves your own shallow, absurdly partisan flank exposed. Incidentally, your prescription of just uniting behind the President – when his record of failure has become so obvious even many on the Right are losing faith – fits nearly perfectly Benjamin Franklin’s classic definition of insanity – keep doing the same thing over and over, expecting a different outcome.
Three years ago critics of the war were warning that there were not enough troops to sustain a successful occupation or counter-insurgency. It’s a documented fact that Rumsfeld personally cut the number of troops for the invasion and occupation in half against the strategic planning that was already in place in the event of war with Iraq. I doubt that the neo-con notion of imposing “democracy” or “liberation” externally on a quasi-nation with the deep divisions within Iraq could have worked under the best of circumstances but I do know precisely who to blame for this entire mess – a war of choice against a weakened country that was clearly not a threat to our own national security – going this far south, and it’s sure as hell not the people who’ve been trying to tell GOPer Zombies such as yourself that Bush doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing and that his policies and his trusted inner circle have been consistently misguided, at best, if not delusional.
Michael – your absolutely right, in that any scenario that assumes access to Middle East oil supplies isn’t what drives any meta-strategy for the region is preposterous. But I can’t for the life of me figure out two things – one is why not just cut a deal with Saddam, from a purely Machiavellian perspective ? And two, why if one is going to essentialy take over the country and try to reshape it in our image, why do such a predictably piss-poor job of it and persistently deny the scope of the problem ? The Iraq war is one of those episodes which I think is rather wildly overdetermined: the most obvious or underlying reason for our presence there doesn’t explain much about the particular situation we find ourselves in or what has passed as “strategy” along the way.
Your last question has a simple answer: It was politically convenient and enormously profitable for all concerned.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:25 am
As conservative pundits join the chorus of voices proclaiming our Iraq adventure is a failure or on the verge, it’s very important not to let them pin our failures entirely on the incompetence of the Bush administration and, more specifically, Donald Rumsfeld. As Rick Perlstein says, “Conservatism never fails. It is only failed.†Certainly the backers of failed policy love scapegoats and, this time, the bullseye is on the insufferable Donald Rumsfeld and the unpopular Bush administration. While I don’t doubt that the incompetence of the current crew spoiled any possibility of success in our Mid-East adventures, the initial premise gave little chance for success. The policy of military-induced instability promotion must be demolished.
Anti-war progressives have maintained that while democracy promotion is great policy, using large-scale military force is neither effective nor cost-appropriate (both in dollars and human lives). This conviction separates us from those who believe that all American intervention is flawed and dangerous and those who believe that American intervention is uniformly just and wise. It is a message that the American public is very prepared to hear. Americans are certainly tired of this war and its costs, but they haven’t, I hope, soured on the ideals twisted to support it. Iraq is a debacle, but it’s a good time to be articulating a foreign policy for the future. I’d like to hear more Democrats giving it a try.
The partner argument is that large-scale military force is a bad way to fight Islamic extremists and terrorism. Certainly, the near-uniform belief that the invasion of Afghanistan was necessary problematizes this position, but we can point to Afghanistan as the exception, note that the military effort pales in comparison to Iraq, and be sure that the current troubles there make it difficult for hawks to claim that military effort as an outright success. Again, the progressive anti-war position that was so mocked in the run up to the Iraq war and the headier days of the occupation, that police and intelligence action are superior to large-scale military force, is gaining traction. As the war continues to drag on and the failures of our adventure become more pronounced, the public grows more susceptible to a different strategy for fighting terrorists. No longer does favoring police action mean one “isn’t serious†about stopping terrorism. A shrewd Democrat could even use this latest British terror plot to show how police and intelligence work are superior to military intervention.
Marc’s always carping on Democrats to come forward with some alternate ideas and articulate a positive vision, and many on this blog respond “they do†or “they will.†Well, to me, right now seems like a damn good time.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:39 am
“Again, the progressive anti-war position that was so mocked in the run up to the Iraq war and the headier days of the occupation, that police and intelligence action are superior to large-scale military force, is gaining traction.”
George Will, a few days ago:
In a candidates’ debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), (John) Kerry said that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.”
Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a “senior administration official,” insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:
“The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren’t for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It’s like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn’t work.”
This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike “the law enforcement approach,” does “work.”
The official is correct that it is wrong “to think that somehow we are responsible — that the actions of the jihadists are justified by U.S. policies.” But few outside the fog of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that. It is more dismaying that someone at the center of government considers it clever to talk like that. It is the language of foreign policy — and domestic politics — unrealism.
Foreign policy “realists” considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists’ critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:58 am
reg wrote:
“But I can’t for the life of me figure out two things – one is why not just cut a deal with Saddam, from a purely Machiavellian perspective ? And two, why if one is going to essentialy take over the country and try to reshape it in our image, why do such a predictably piss-poor job of it and persistently deny the scope of the problem ? The Iraq war is one of those episodes which I think is rather wildly overdetermined: the most obvious or underlying reason for our presence there doesn’t explain much about the particular situation we find ourselves in or what has passed as “strategy†along the way.”
Reg, try reading the latest Greg Palast book, Armed Madhouse. He details some of the highlevel, and needless to say known to but a few, pre-911 studies concluding that a military occupation of Iraq had become necessary.
Essentially, the argument was that Iraq had become a global swing producer of oil. Global supply and demand are now very tight and there is little spare production capacity, so Iraq could in effect swing the price of Oil by unpredictably increasing or decreasing sales under the Oil for Food program. That gave Saddam and Iraq too much power in oil markets.
As for the execution of the military occupation, Greg Palast describes what we all suspect of the existence of a State Dept plan that called for a short invasion/coup with installment of a new strongman and continued national oil company in Iraq. The Pentagon had the full scale occupation and privatization of the oil fields plan, and they won the backing of Cheney.
The book gives author names, dates, and titles of the competing plans and studies.
Curious to know how much, if any, weight is given to Greg Palast and his arguments by Marc and his readers.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:20 am
I may have oversimplified the “Iraq as swing producer” argument. OPEC plays a role in production levels, obviously. I would have to reference the book at home to spell it out more clearly.
I’m still interested in everyone’s take, though.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:37 am
This is what happens as wars drag on and psyches get strained
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vietnam6aug06,0,6350517
.story
Los Angeles Times August 6, 2006
Vietnam: The war crimes files
Civilian killings went unpunished
Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai.
By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson
Special to The Times
The men of B Company were in a dangerous state of mind. They had lost five
men in a firefight the day before. The morning of Feb. 8, 1968, brought
unwelcome orders to resume their sweep of the countryside, a green patchwork
of rice paddies along Vietnam’s central coast.
They met no resistance as they entered a nondescript settlement in Quang Nam
province. So Jamie Henry, a 20-year-old medic, set his rifle down in a hut,
unfastened his bandoliers and lighted a cigarette.
Just then, the voice of a lieutenant crackled across the radio. He reported
that he had rounded up 19 civilians, and wanted to know what to do with
them. Henry later recalled the company commander’s response:
Kill anything that moves.
Henry stepped outside the hut and saw a small crowd of women and children.
Then the shooting began.
Moments later, the 19 villagers lay dead or dying.
Back home in California, Henry published an account of the slaughter and
held a news conference to air his allegations. Yet he and other Vietnam
veterans who spoke out about war crimes were branded traitors and
fabricators. No one was ever prosecuted for the massacre.
Now, nearly 40 years later, declassified Army files show that Henry was
telling the truth ? about the Feb. 8 killings and a series of other
atrocities by the men of B Company.
The files are part of a once-secret archive, assembled by a Pentagon task
force in the early 1970s, that shows that confirmed atrocities by U.S.
forces in Vietnam were more extensive than was previously known.
The documents detail 320 alleged incidents that were substantiated by Army
investigators ? not including the most notorious U.S. atrocity, the 1968 My
Lai massacre.
Though not a complete accounting of Vietnam war crimes, the archive is the
largest such collection to surface to date. About 9,000 pages, it includes
investigative files, sworn statements by witnesses and status reports for
top military brass.
The records describe recurrent attacks on ordinary Vietnamese ? families in
their homes, farmers in rice paddies, teenagers out fishing. Hundreds of
soldiers, in interviews with investigators and letters to commanders,
described a violent minority who murdered, raped and tortured with impunity.
Abuses were not confined to a few rogue units, a Times review of the files
found. They were uncovered in every Army division that operated in Vietnam.
Retired Brig. Gen. John H. Johns, a Vietnam veteran who served on the task
force, says he once supported keeping the records secret but now believes
they deserve wide attention in light of alleged attacks on civilians and
abuse of prisoners in Iraq.
“We can’t change current practices unless we acknowledge the past,” says
Johns, 78.
Among the substantiated cases in the archive:
? Seven massacres from 1967 through 1971 in which at least 137 civilians
died.
? Seventy-eight other attacks on noncombatants in which at least 57 were
killed, 56 wounded and 15 sexually assaulted.
? One hundred forty-one instances in which U.S. soldiers tortured civilian
detainees or prisoners of war with fists, sticks, bats, water or electric
shock.
Investigators determined that evidence against 203 soldiers accused of
harming Vietnamese civilians or prisoners was strong enough to warrant
formal charges. These “founded” cases were referred to the soldiers’
superiors for action.
Ultimately, 57 of them were court-martialed and just 23 convicted, the
records show.
Fourteen received prison sentences ranging from six months to 20 years, but
most won significant reductions on appeal. The stiffest sentence went to a
military intelligence interrogator convicted of committing indecent acts on
a 13-year-old girl in an interrogation hut in 1967.
He served seven months of a 20-year term, the records show.
Many substantiated cases were closed with a letter of reprimand, a fine or,
in more than half the cases, no action at all.
There was little interest in prosecuting Vietnam war crimes, says Steven
Chucala, who in the early 1970s was legal advisor to the commanding officer
of the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. He says he disagreed with the
attitude but understood it.
“Everyone wanted Vietnam to go away,” says Chucala, now a civilian attorney
for the Army at Ft. Belvoir in Virginia.
In many cases, suspects had left the service. The Army did not attempt to
pursue them, despite a written opinion in 1969 by Robert E. Jordan III, then
the Army’s general counsel, that ex-soldiers could be prosecuted through
courts-martial, military commissions or tribunals.
“I don’t remember why it didn’t go anywhere,” says Jordan, now a lawyer in
Washington.
Top Army brass should have demanded a tougher response, says retired Lt.
Gen. Robert G. Gard, who oversaw the task force as a brigadier general at
the Pentagon in the early 1970s.
“We could have court-martialed them but didn’t,” Gard says of soldiers
accused of war crimes. “The whole thing is terribly disturbing.”
Early-Warning System
In March 1968, members of the 23rd Infantry Division slaughtered about 500
Vietnamese civilians in the hamlet of My Lai. Reporter Seymour Hersh exposed
the massacre the following year.
By then, Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam
at the time of My Lai, had become Army chief of staff. A task force was
assembled from members of his staff to monitor war crimes allegations and
serve as an early-warning system.
Over the next few years, members of the Vietnam War Crimes Working Group
reviewed Army investigations and wrote reports and summaries for military
brass and the White House.
The records were declassified in 1994, after 20 years as required by law,
and moved to the National Archives in College Park, Md., where they went
largely unnoticed.
The Times examined most of the files and obtained copies of about 3,000
pages ? about a third of the total ? before government officials removed
them from the public shelves, saying they contained personal information
that was exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.
In addition to the 320 substantiated incidents, the records contain material
related to more than 500 alleged atrocities that Army investigators could
not prove or that they discounted.
Johns says many war crimes did not make it into the archive. Some were
prosecuted without being identified as war crimes, as required by military
regulations. Others were never reported.
In a letter to Westmoreland in 1970, an anonymous sergeant described
widespread, unreported killings of civilians by members of the 9th Infantry
Division in the Mekong Delta ? and blamed pressure from superiors to
generate high body counts.
“A batalion [sic] would kill maybe 15 to 20 [civilians] a day. With 4
batalions in the brigade that would be maybe 40 to 50 a day or 1200 to 1500
a month, easy,” the unnamed sergeant wrote. “If I am only 10% right, and
believe me it’s lots more, then I am trying to tell you about 120-150
murders, or a My Lay [sic] each month for over a year.”
A high-level Army review of the letter cited its “forcefulness,” “sincerity”
and “inescapable logic,” and urged then-Secretary of the Army Stanley R.
Resor to make sure the push for verifiable body counts did not “encourage
the human tendency to inflate the count by violating established rules of
engagement.”
Investigators tried to find the letter writer and “prevent his complaints
from reaching” then-Rep. Ronald V. Dellums (D-Oakland), according to an
August 1971 memo to Westmoreland.
The records do not say whether the writer was located, and there is no
evidence in the files that his complaint was investigated further.
Pvt. Henry
James D. “Jamie” Henry was 19 in March 1967, when the Army shaved his hippie
locks and packed him off to boot camp.
He had been living with his mother in Sonoma County, working as a hospital
aide and moonlighting as a flower child in Haight-Ashbury, when he received
a letter from his draft board. As thousands of hippies poured into San
Francisco for the upcoming “Summer of Love,” Henry headed for Ft. Polk, La.
Soon he was on his way to Vietnam, part of a 100,000-man influx that brought
U.S. troop strength to 485,000 by the end of 1967. They entered a conflict
growing ever bloodier for Americans ? 9,378 U.S. troops would die in combat
in 1967, 87% more than the year before.
Henry was a medic with B Company of the 1st Battalion, 35th Infantry, 4th
Infantry Division. He described his experiences in a sworn statement to Army
investigators several years later and in recent interviews with The Times.
In the fall of 1967, he was on his first patrol, marching along the edge of
a rice paddy in Quang Nam province, when the soldiers encountered a teenage
girl.
“The guy in the lead immediately stops her and puts his hand down her
pants,” Henry said. “I just thought, ‘My God, what’s going on?’ ”
A day or two later, he saw soldiers senselessly stabbing a pig.
“I talked to them about it, and they told me if I wanted to live very long,
I should shut my mouth,” he told Army investigators.
Henry may have kept his mouth shut, but he kept his eyes and ears open.
On Oct. 8, 1967, after a firefight near Chu Lai, members of his company
spotted a 12-year-old boy out in a rainstorm. He was unarmed and clad only
in shorts.
“Somebody caught him up on a hill, and they brought him down and the
lieutenant asked who wanted to kill him,” Henry told investigators.
Two volunteers stepped forward. One kicked the boy in the stomach. The
other took him behind a rock and shot him, according to Henry’s statement.
They tossed his body in a river and reported him as an enemy combatant
killed in action.
Three days later, B Company detained and beat an elderly man suspected of
supporting the enemy. He had trouble keeping pace as the soldiers marched
him up a steep hill.
“When I turned around, two men had him, one guy had his arms, one guy had
his legs and they threw him off the hill onto a bunch of rocks,” Henry’s
statement said.
On Oct. 15, some of the men took a break during a large-scale
“search-and-destroy” operation. Henry said he overheard a lieutenant on the
radio requesting permission to test-fire his weapon, and went to see what
was happening.
He found two soldiers using a Vietnamese man for target practice, Henry
said. They had discovered the victim sleeping in a hut and decided to kill
him for sport.
“Everybody was taking pot shots at him, seeing how accurate they were,”
Henry said in his statement.
Back at base camp on Oct. 23, he said, members of the 1st Platoon told him
they had ambushed five unarmed women and reported them as enemies killed in
action. Later, members of another platoon told him they had seen the bodies.
Tet Offensive
Capt. Donald C. Reh, a 1964 graduate of West Point, took command of B
Company in November 1967. Two months later, enemy forces launched a major
offensive during Tet, the Vietnamese lunar New Year.
In the midst of the fighting, on Feb. 7, the commander of the 1st Battalion,
Lt. Col. William W. Taylor Jr., ordered an assault on snipers hidden in a
line of trees in a rural area of Quang Nam province. Five U.S. soldiers were
killed. The troops complained bitterly about the order and the deaths,
Henry said.
The next morning, the men packed up their gear and continued their sweep of
the countryside. Soldiers discovered an unarmed man hiding in a hole and
suspected that he had supported the enemy the previous day. A soldier pushed
the man in front of an armored personnel carrier, Henry said in his
statement.
“They drove over him forward which didn’t kill him because he was squirming
around, so the APC backed over him again,” Henry’s statement said.
Then B Company entered a hamlet to question residents and search for
weapons. That’s where Henry set down his weapon and lighted a cigarette in
the shelter of a hut.
A radio operator sat down next to him, and Henry was listening to the
chatter. He heard the leader of the 3rd Platoon ask Reh for instructions on
what to do with 19 civilians.
“The lieutenant asked the captain what should be done with them. The captain
asked the lieutenant if he remembered the op order (operation order) that
came down that morning and he repeated the order which was ‘kill anything
that moves,’ ” Henry said in his statement. “I was a little shook ? because
I thought the lieutenant might do it.”
Henry said he left the hut and walked toward Reh. He saw the captain pick up
the phone again, and thought he might rescind the order.
Then soldiers pulled a naked woman of about 19 from a dwelling and brought
her to where the other civilians were huddled, Henry said.
“She was thrown to the ground,” he said in his statement. “The men around
the civilians opened fire and all on automatic or at least it seemed all on
automatic. It was over in a few seconds. There was a lot of blood and flesh
and stuff flying around?.
“I looked around at some of my friends and they all just had blank looks on
their faces?. The captain made an announcement to all the company, I forget
exactly what it was, but it didn’t concern the people who had just been
killed. We picked up our stuff and moved on.”
Henry didn’t forget, however. “Thirty seconds after the shooting stopped,”
he said, “I knew that I was going to do something about it.”
Homecoming
For his combat service, Henry earned a Bronze Star with a V for valor, and
a Combat Medical Badge, among other awards. A fellow member of his unit said
in a sworn statement that Henry regularly disregarded his own safety to save
soldiers’ lives, and showed “compassion and decency” toward enemy prisoners.
When Henry finished his tour and arrived at Ft. Hood, Texas, in September
1968, he went to see an Army legal officer to report the atrocities he’d
witnessed.
The officer advised him to keep quiet until he got out of the Army, “because
of the million and one charges you can be brought up on for blinking your
eye,” Henry says. Still, the legal officer sent him to see a Criminal
Investigation Division agent.
The agent was not receptive, Henry recalls.
“He wanted to know what I was trying to pull, what I was trying to put over
on people, and so I was just quiet. I told him I wouldn’t tell him anything
and I wouldn’t say anything until I got out of the Army, and I left,” Henry
says.
Honorably discharged in March 1969, Henry moved to Canoga Park, enrolled in
community college and helped organize a campus chapter of Vietnam Veterans
Against the War.
Then he ended his silence: He published his account of the massacre in the
debut issue of Scanlan’s Monthly, a short-lived muckraking magazine, which
hit the newsstands on Feb. 27, 1970. Henry held a news conference the same
day at the Los Angeles Press Club.
Records show that an Army operative attended incognito, took notes and
reported back to the Pentagon.
A faded copy of Henry’s brief statement, retrieved from the Army’s files,
begins:
“On February 8, 1968, nineteen (19) women and children were murdered in
Viet-Nam by members of 3rd Platoon, ‘B’ Company, 1st Battalion, 35th
Infantry?.
“Incidents similar to those I have described occur on a daily basis and
differ one from the other only in terms of numbers killed,” he told
reporters. A brief article about his remarks appeared inside the Los Angeles
Times the next day.
Army investigators interviewed Henry the day after the news conference. His
sworn statement filled 10 single-spaced typed pages. Henry did not expect
anything to come of it: “I never got the impression they were ever doing
anything.”
In 1971, Henry joined more than 100 other veterans at the Winter Soldier
Investigation, a forum on war crimes sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against
the War.
The FBI put the three-day gathering at a Detroit hotel under surveillance,
records show, and Nixon administration officials worked behind the scenes to
discredit the speakers as impostors and fabricators.
Although the administration never publicly identified any fakers, one of the
organization’s leaders admitted exaggerating his rank and role during the
war, and a cloud descended on the entire gathering.
“We tried to get as much publicity as we could, and it just never went
anywhere,” Henry says. “Nothing ever happened.”
After years of dwelling on the war, he says, he “finally put it in a closet
and shut the door.”
The Investigation
Unknown to Henry, Army investigators pursued his allegations, tracking down
members of his old unit over the next 3 1/2 years.
Witnesses described the killing of the young boy, the old man tossed over
the cliff, the man used for target practice, the five unarmed women, the man
thrown beneath the armored personnel carrier and other atrocities.
Their statements also provided vivid corroboration of the Feb. 8, 1968,
massacre from men who had observed the day’s events from various vantage
points.
Staff Sgt. Wilson Bullock told an investigator at Ft. Carson, Colo., that
his platoon had captured 19 “women, children, babies and two or three very
old men” during the Tet offensive.
“All of these people were lined up and killed,” he said in a sworn
statement. “When it, the shooting, stopped, I began to return to the site
when I observed a naked Vietnamese female run from the house to the huddle
of people, saw that her baby had been shot. She picked the baby up and was
then shot and the baby shot again.”
Gregory Newman, another veteran of B Company, told an investigator at Ft.
Myer, Va., that Capt. Reh had issued an order “to search and destroy and
kill anything in the village that moved.”
Newman said he was carrying out orders to kill the villagers’ livestock when
he saw a naked girl head toward a group of civilians.
“I saw them begging before they were shot,” he recalled in a sworn
statement.
Donald R. Richardson said he was at a command post outside the hamlet when
he heard a platoon leader on the radio ask what to do with 19 civilians.
“The cpt said something about kill anything that moves and the lt on the
other end said ‘Their [sic] moving,’ ” according to Richardson’s sworn
account. “Just then the gunfire was heard.”
William J. Nieset, a rifle squad leader, told investigators that he was
standing next to a radio operator and heard Reh say: “My instructions from
higher are to kill everything that moves.”
Robert D. Miller said he was the radio operator for Lt. Johnny Mack Carter,
commander of the 3rd Platoon. Miller said that when Carter asked Reh what to
do with the 19 civilians, the captain instructed him to follow the
“operation order.”
Carter immediately sought two volunteers to shoot the civilians, Miller said
under oath.
“I believe everyone knew what was going to happen,” he said, “so no one
volunteered except one guy known only to me as ‘Crazy.’ ”
“A few minutes later, while the Vietnamese were huddled around in a circle
Lt Carter and ‘Crazy’ started shooting them with their M-16′s on automatic,”
Miller’s statement says.
Carter had just left active duty when an investigator questioned him under
oath in Palmetto, Fla., in March 1970.
“I do not recall any civilians being picked up and categorically stated that
I did not order the killing of any civilians, nor do I know of any being
killed,” his statement said.
An Army investigator called Reh at Ft. Myer. Reh’s attorney called back. The
investigator made notes of their conversation: “If the interview of Reh
concerns atrocities in Vietnam ? then he had already advised Reh not to make
any statement.”
As for Lt. Col. Taylor, two soldiers described his actions that day.
Myran Ambeau, a rifleman, said he was standing five feet from the captain
and heard him contact the battalion commander, who was in a helicopter
overhead. (Ambeau did not identify Reh or Taylor by name.)
“The battalion commander told the captain, ‘If they move, shoot them,’ ”
according to a sworn statement that Ambeau gave an investigator in Little
Rock, Ark. “The captain verified that he had heard the command, he then
transmitted the instruction to Lt Carter.
“Approximately three minutes later, there was automatic weapons fire from
the direction where the prisoners were being held.”
Gary A. Bennett, one of Reh’s radio operators, offered a somewhat different
account. He said the captain asked what he should do with the detainees, and
the battalion commander replied that it was a “search and destroy mission,”
according to an investigator’s summary of an interview with Bennett.
Bennett said he did not believe the order authorized killing civilians and
that, although he heard shooting, he knew nothing about a massacre, the
summary says. Bennett refused to provide a sworn statement.
An Army investigator sat down with Taylor at the Army War College in
Carlisle, Pa. Taylor said he had never issued an order to kill civilians and
had heard nothing about a massacre on the date in question. But the
investigator had asked Taylor about events occurring on Feb. 9, 1968 ? a
day after the incident.
Three and a half years later, an agent tracked Taylor down at Ft. Myer and
asked him about Feb. 8. Taylor said he had no memory of the day and did not
have time to provide a sworn statement. He said he had a “pressing
engagement” with “an unidentified general officer,” the agent wrote.
Investigators wrote they could not find Pvt. Frank Bonilla, the man known as
“Crazy.” The Times reached him at his home on Oahu in March.
Bonilla, now 58 and a hotel worker, says he recalls an order to kill the
civilians, but says he does not remember who issued it. “Somebody had a
radio, handed it to someone, maybe a lieutenant, said the man don’t want to
see nobody standing,” he said.
Bonilla says he answered a call for volunteers but never pulled the trigger.
“I couldn’t do it. There were women and kids,” he says. “A lot of guys
thought that I had something to do with it because they saw me going up
there?. Nope ? I just turned the other way. It was like, ‘This ain’t
happening.’ ”
Afterward, he says, “I remember sitting down with my head between my knees.
Is that for real? Someone said, ‘Keep your mouth shut or you’re not going
home.’ ”
He says he does not know who did the shooting.
The Outcome
The Criminal Investigation Division assigned Warrant Officer Jonathan P.
Coulson in Los Angeles to complete the investigation and write a final
report on the “Henry Allegation.” He sent his findings to headquarters in
Washington in January 1974.
Evidence showed that the massacre did occur, the report said. The
investigation also confirmed all but one of the other killings that Henry
had described. The one exception was the elderly man thrown off a cliff.
Coulson said it could not be determined whether the victim was alive when
soldiers tossed him.
The evidence supported murder charges in five incidents against nine
“subjects,” including Carter and Bonilla, Coulson wrote. Those two carried
out the Feb. 8 massacre, along with “other unidentified members of their
element,” the report said.
Investigators determined that there was not enough evidence to charge Reh
with murder, because of conflicting accounts “as to the actual language” he
used.
But Reh could be charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate
the killings, the report said.
Coulson conferred with an Army legal advisor, Capt. Robert S. Briney, about
whether the evidence supported charges against Taylor.
They decided it did not. Even if Taylor gave an order to kill the Vietnamese
if they moved, the two concluded, “it does not constitute an order to kill
the prisoners in the manner in which they were executed.”
The War Crimes Working Group records give no indication that action was
taken against any of the men named in the report.
Briney, now an attorney in Phoenix, says he has forgotten details of the
case but recalls a reluctance within the Army to pursue such charges.
“They thought the war, if not over, was pretty much over. Why bring this
stuff up again?” he says.
Years Later
Taylor retired in 1977 with the rank of colonel. In a recent interview
outside his home in northern Virginia, he said, “I would not have given an
order to kill civilians. It’s not in my makeup. I’ve been in enough wars to
know that it’s not the right thing to do.”
Reh, who left active duty in 1978 and now lives in Northern California,
declined to be interviewed by The Times.
Carter, a retired postal worker living in Florida, says he has no memory of
his combat experiences. “I guess I’ve wiped Vietnam and all that out of my
mind. I don’t remember shooting anyone or ordering anyone to shoot,” he
says.
He says he does not dispute that a massacre took place. “I don’t doubt it,
but I don’t remember?. Sometimes people just snap.”
Henry was re-interviewed by an Army investigator in 1972, and was never
contacted again. He drifted away from the antiwar movement, moved north and
became a logger in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills. He says he had no
idea he had been vindicated ? until The Times contacted him in 2005.
Last fall, he read the case file over a pot of coffee at his dining room
table in a comfortably worn house, where he lives with his wife, Patty.
“I was a wreck for a couple days,” Henry, now 59, wrote later in an e-mail.
“It was like a time warp that put me right back in the middle of that mess.
Some things long forgotten came back to life. Some of them were good and
some were not.
“Now that whole stinking war is back. After you left, I just sat in my
chair and shook for a couple hours. A slight emotional stress fracture??
Don’t know, but it soon passed and I decided to just keep going with this
business. If it was right then, then it still is.”
Times researcher Janet Lundblad contributed to this report.
*About this report
Nick Turse is a freelance journalist living in New Jersey. Deborah Nelson is
a staff writer in The Times’ Washington bureau.
This report is based in part on records of the Vietnam War Crimes Working
Group filed at the National Archives in College Park, Md. The collection
includes 241 case summaries that chronicle more than 300 substantiated
atrocities by U.S. forces and 500 unconfirmed allegations.
The archive includes reports of war crimes by the 101st Airborne Division’s
Tiger Force that the Army listed as unconfirmed. The Toledo Blade documented
the atrocities in a 2003 newspaper series.
Turse came across the collection in 2002 while researching his doctoral
dissertation for the Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health at
Columbia University.
Turse and Nelson also reviewed Army inspector general records in the
National Archives; FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division records;
documents shared by military veterans; and case files and related records in
the Col. Henry Tufts Archive at the University of Michigan.
A selection of documents used in preparing this report can be found at
http://www.latimes.com/vietnam.
August 22nd, 2006 at 11:41 am
“Oh, I checked, and the Korean Conflict has been going on for fifty-six years,”
Yeah, but how many American GI’s are dying every day or losing legs, minds, eyes, because of it?
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:14 pm
Just links please, not endlessly long articles.
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:16 pm
Which “antiwar progressives” believe in the notion (as the phrase is used, i.e. US government supported) “democracy promotion?”
Any progressive worth his salt knows that the US government is opposed to democracy, in actuality, and would never promote it.
August 22nd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
“Any progressive worth his salt knows that the US government is opposed to democracy, in actuality, and would never promote it.”
JC, good point, how do you account for so many liberal left types missing that?
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:13 pm
Wishful thinking….false belief in “Success” in the still-nuts Balkans, intrinsic “American Creed” values derived from John Ford, etc.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:15 pm
Read “America Right or Wrong” by Anatol Lieven, “New American Militarism” by Andrew Bacevich and especially “The Endgame of Globalization” by Neil Smith.
August 22nd, 2006 at 1:49 pm
“intrinsic ‘American Creed’ values derived from John Ford, etc.”
Uh, JC, I know you’re Canadian, but there’s actually a fairly diverse set of “foundational” American values involving democratic ideology that aren’t even remotely dependent on the cinematic contributions of John Ford for their legitimacy. That’s sort of like saying that the values of Soviet communism were derived from Eisenstein and Shostakovich. We should be so lucky.
Also, if you want to find a cinematic expression of traditional, mid-20th century “American values”, Frank Capra arguably more important than John Ford. (His “Why We Fight” series was great anti-fascist propaganda.) Further, which John Ford are you talking about ? Surely not the guy who made essentially revisionist Westerns like The Searchers, Liberty Valance and Cheyenne Autumn – or for that matter, Fort Apache.
When you write stuff like that you’re not doing your own expressed politics any favors…
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:43 pm
From Turner, reg, Beacon, Alcatholic (and a couple others I’m probably missing) I think rather interestingly all cite positions on oil being the prime motive driving the Iraq war. And all good points. As I read the above comments, I thought of the following (to various degrees of certainity): The oil is worth fighting for. Is worth the loss of life. Is worth protecting. Is worth ensuring that the Iraqis can put as much of it on the global market to help their economy. It was the cause belli of the conflict. Those that make war on Iraq’s oil production make war on the Iraqi people.
August 22nd, 2006 at 2:53 pm
reg, there’s too much Monday morning quarterbacking going on, if you’ll excuse a football analogy (which our troops like.) Where were all these brilliant people years ago and just how successful were their plans? Everyone who said nothing three years ago is jumping on the bandwagon.
What’s happened has happened, and it means little except for historical analysis. What’s important is where we go.
It doesn’t help the team if the quarterback calls a sweep to the right and half the team runs left–after telling the opposition what play has been called. We need to have a united front to win the war.
You have to admit, at least to yourself, that our enemies in the mideast have been encouraged to hold on and maybe step up their attacks in hope that the Democrats get elected. That’s a heck of a note when our enemies support Democrats–and, they do. Bin Laden did as much with Kerry. Who suffers in that case? Our troops and our nation.
Take the rest of the day off and go watch “Snakes on a Plane.”
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:19 pm
Michael Balter’s comment that this is a time when we all are tested, and that we all become accountable, for the future of Iraq and foreign policy (to paraphrase and perhaps extend the analysis) is important. Any time that a vast number of people decide that a certain political fact is true–here, that we made a mistake going into Iraq–the critical question is “something else.” Could be “Why did we do that?” and of course “So what do we do now?” In this case the “why” question is not seriously disputed, either. I think accountability attaches when we address the politically volatile question: how much “truth” about why we are in Iraq can the progressives and Democrats suggest before the center decides we have gone “too far” and votes Republican in 2006 and 2008?
If the Democrats go no further than “we can do better,” the party has failed and the activists have failed. Perhaps one could say the slippery center has failed as well, but that is a sort of “last resort” analysis in a republican democracy. But is there hope that we really can do better, and we can get the Democrats to weigh in on the “why” question, and even better, the “what do we do now” question?
I think yes. Much has been made of Hillary RC confronting Rumsfeld and making him deal with some uncomfortable issues. Yesterday our senator Dianne Feinstein, a conservative-minded Democrat addressed the San Diego Chamber of Commerce, and reportedly discussed the president’s misleading us into war. I think we can consider these tactics, perhaps not coincidentally engaged in by women with a rep for toughness, as test balloons checking out the atmosphere for a new, harder line, probably including a call for timely withdrawal (or redeployment) of troops from Iraq. It seems to be going over well…perhaps well enough to embolden the Democrats to actually stake out a position in favor of withdrawal. If they do so, I think they have a chance to take over both houses of Congress. People do want boldness, esp from the Dems.
But back to “accountability…” If Hillary RC or D Feinstein or the others are going to argue that Americans were misled, there has to be some personal mea culpa from such leaders that they were so uninformed or gullible or willing to triangulate the issue that they permitted themselves and their constituents to be misled. They owe it to us to pledge never to allow expedience to overcome that which they know to be true (I know this assumes a lot about what Hillary RC knows and believes).
Perhaps in the long run one of the best lessons to come out of the Iraq adventure is the budding understanding that “it matters” that we make wise, grown-up decisions in the Middle East and elsewhere, not to mention decisions about our environment and economy and such. It is not enough to just make decisions that make us feel “pumped up”…like by invading Iraq and flying flags from our Hummers to revel in the troops’ manliness by proxy.
Maybe we become accountable when we really believe and live like “it matters”…no matter who we are.
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:26 pm
Dear footballer Woody, although you addressed your comments to reg — who will no doubt have a strong rejoiner — I feel compelled to chime in. I played high school football for a powerhouse catholic school and my school used to pound people’s heads in every Friday night. I used to admire a couple of underdogs who, even when overwhelmed, would nevertheless, attempt a strong effort against us. You sometimes remind me of those opponents when you fire away with your charges here. But for the past couple days, you aint that undersized fullback trying in vain to block the linebacker. Lately, you’re more like the staggered opponent who who keeps getting whistled for false starts and personal fouls.
Like you, I supported the President when we invaded Iraq and still think the mission is too important to lose. But I didn’t support the President’s war because he was a Republican. I thought it was the right thing that needed to be done. (Perhaps I drank too much from the cups of the Hitchens and the Bermans…and perhaps I was wrong to have believed in this war in the first place.) But my point, Mr. Woody, is that there is a growing avalanche of arguments and critiques from all sides of the political spectrum about the conduct of this war, and its not all just a bandwagon thing, and they can’t all be wrong. I feel bad for you that you’re missing it.
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:32 pm
This is totally off topic, but since the perspectives of the “Dissent Left” get ragged on here periodically (and I myself differ with some of them) here’s a terrific, fairly audacious presentation on what the Chinese have yet to learn from Marx that Marshall Berman gave at a university conference in Hangzhou, PRC.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=439
August 22nd, 2006 at 3:44 pm
In WoodyWorld, a failed strategy in Iraq will mean it was the American people’s fault, not the architects of the war. Nothing like belonging to the party of “responsibility”. As I believe Wall wrote, quoting Thomas Frank, “conservatism never fails, it is only failed.” Get ready for the “stabbed in the back” argument, which Woody is already floating here. And, of course, the notion that our enemies don’t love having an incompetent, dime-store cowboy wanker like Bush in charge of U.S. strategy is laughable.
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:25 pm
Rob – I didn’t support the invasion because it was pretty obvious to me even than that the threat was being hyped and the “Clean Break” crowd struck me as delusional and dangerous. I also thought we had unfinished business in Afghanistan – which I supported and which I firmly believe was screwed up at least partly because a second war of opportunity was being prepared and the focus wasn’t really on bin Laden. Once we went in, I supported the effort and hoped for the best because I thought that at least Iraqis could benefit from what struck me as senseless from the perspective of our own national security. As soon as it was clear we weren’t serious about securing Baghdad – which was fairly soon – I suspected that we were in for a rough ride.
At this point, had I been a fervent supporter of the war I’d be at least as furious at Bush, if not more. Truth is, I still think that a precipitous withdrawal will have some potentially very negative consequences and that, short of a miracle, we are going to be weakened by this war – seriously weakened in terms of both perceptions and in terms of having coalesced our worst enemies with a mix of lesser enemies and some middle elements.
We’ve also, as I’ve been claiming since at least 2004, handed the long-term strategic victory in Iraq to the Iranians. I just don’t see a damn thing good coming of this – Saddam is gone, but the level of chaos we’ve visited on Iraq isn’t worth it, unless you are a member of the Iraqi political class attempting to grab a brass ring as things fall apart. It was an act of sheer hubris by BushCo. But I can’t justify this occupation at all anymore because our presence seems to generate more instability rather than less. There’s an argument on the other side, but unless one can make it and honestly state that they’d be willing to send their own kid to die to prolong what it’s now obvious was a misadventure, I think it’s just an attempt at delay and denial of massive failure – and at a level of willful negligence and recklessness on the part of this administration that I consider criminal. Larry Diamond, who worked for Paul Bremer and saw the thing first-hand, has said as much and, unlike any of us, actually knows what he’s talking about.
There is no good option. I think that something like Peter Galbraith’s option is probably the best, where we draw significant forces back into Kurdistan where they still have some capacity to assist Iraqi moderates as necessary. I doubt that we can get a regional or UN force to play any role at this late date, and they’d probably be ineffective. This is a very bad outcome, and anyone on either side of the debate who claims it’s not is a dangerous loon. But when even the soldiers, who have a tremendous emotional investment and incentive to frame their mission in the best possible light, are – at least according to the recent Zogby poll I’ve seen – declaring in large numbers that they don’t think their mission is clear and that it’s time to begin to draw down, I think it’s just plain wrong to ask them to continue to sacrifice.
If you look at how this has gone down so far, the main voices that have been denying that this was a potentially disastrous policy or that the situation has clearly been deteriorating have been the pro-Bush elements. I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit still while they rationalize their failures by blaming their critics. It’s one of the most disgusting, craven and cowardly performances I’ve ever witnessed.
August 22nd, 2006 at 4:40 pm
I’m going to go watch Rudy
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:01 pm
To review the problems with the invasion would take a book; “fasico” seems good for a start. Here’s a few things that might be worth considering, though few seem interested:
Cummings is wrong that no Americans are interested in spreading demcracy. There’s nothing wrong with spreading the elements of elightement that an open society offers. Thing is, to put it bluntly, you can’t force these things down people’s throats with the barrel of a gun; led by people who are at least as intested in lining their pockets as spreading enlightenment. To them, lining their pockets IS enlightenment; they are stupid, they
are greedy, they are going to f@ck everything up.
One might have respectfully disagreed with the Hitchens posisition if he had said, “look, the nature of this fundamentalism is so terrible and dangerous that viturally anything we do is worth it, we must do it and own up to the compromises as best we can.” But his arguements were basicly the White House’s with window dressing. He voched for Haliburton. He wrote of the special measures that were being taken to protect Iraqi life; when the attrocities rolled in
he rolled out the “bad apples” and “war is Hell” cliches. He wrote things that are simply evil, evil to an extent Bill Clinton never was on the worst day of his life. Those who disagreed were libeled and insulted; shortly before he called for an end to the jeering.
Have we forgotten the early years of our first “embedded” war already? How will we explain this wreched concept to future generations? How every news report of the dead and injured had to be “balanced” by the story of some soldier who lost a foot but couldn’t wait to go back and finish the mission.
Corn finally takes note of a strange phenomon that generally passes unnoticed; how Bush has deferred his responsability to those “generals in the field” for setting the policy that is clearly his responsability. Well, first of all the generals have not done too great a job; but they are probably cowed into being yes men by the White House bully boys. But this comes out of that crowd pleasing “the politicans lost Vietnam” stuff that conservaties used to tell each other; but only the dumbest of the dumb really believed.
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:08 pm
One more thing, Rob. If oil was in fact the casus belli and it was worth fighting for, what’s up with the steady stream of accusations from BushCo et. al. that any such suggestion is false, slanderous, as far as one could possibly be from the truth, etc. etc. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but if you’re gonna send people “in harms way”, maybe they deserve to be treated with a reasonable degree of honesty. I know Hitchens has made this argument, along with the claim that he’s a more persuasive proponent of the war than Bush (an opinion he’s welcome to, in that it could stand as the very definition of “faint praise”.)
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:29 pm
Its slippery to claim I said no Americans believe in spreading democracy. I meant the American government and political class.
As much as I agree with Reg about these revisionist Westerns, I believe The Searchers is the best film ever made about American tragic naivete. If you’ll stop listening to Neil Young and John Roberts on CNN, then stop listening to me. Otherwise Canadians have always had the right to comment on American politics.
So Reg, who do you think has the best shot of leading the Canadian Liberal party? I’m for Bob Rae myself.
August 22nd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Marshall Berman is in my opinion, an exception to the rule at Dissent. He’s quite brilliant, and his politics are far more radical and AntiImperialist then the Walze-natti.
August 22nd, 2006 at 6:05 pm
A sure sign of desperation is the use of gridiron football cliches in place of intelligent discussion.
Oh, I checked, and the Korean Conflict has been going on for fifty-six years,
Ignoring the fact there is a truce, which works in fits and starts, I don’t recall Eisenhower strapping on a flight suit and parading around on an aircraft carrier deck under a banner proclaiming “Mission Accomplished.”
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:20 pm
JC – I was being unfairly sarcastic and about the only thing I know about current Liberal Party Canadian politics is that they are quite welcome to Michael Ignatieff.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:26 pm
Also, you nailed The Searchers. It’s my favorite western and one of my favorite films.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:31 pm
The Canadian Invasion…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-oBavlNfAKM
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:33 pm
Reg,
I love The Searchers, but Once Upon a Time in the West is the apotheosis of the western IMHO.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:43 pm
So, now thoughts worth writing down on Greg Palast?
Pity. I thought his book’s contributions are at least noteworthy because of the administration’s innerworkings and debates he apparently documents.
August 22nd, 2006 at 7:44 pm
oops… now=no
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:18 pm
Randy, I think I’d rate mine as Searchers, Wild Bunch and Once Upon A Time. Although Once Upon A Time actually pre-dates The Wild Bunch, I sort of need to work my way to Leone’s extravagance. Maybe that does make it “first”. Also, I love the Wild Bunch ensemble.
August 22nd, 2006 at 8:54 pm
Ever see “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence”? It’s not a particularly westerny western, but it’s one of my favorite. Not a big Searchers fan. Neither is Slate’s Stephen Metcalf – http://www.slate.com/id/2145142/
August 22nd, 2006 at 9:39 pm
Ignatieff supporters are like New Republic/Scoop Jackson/Lieberman, they are a loud minority and they don’t stand a chance…I’m not a Liberal but the best choice I see is Bob Rae, who has been sharply critical of Ignatieff’s pro-American positions, and much more traditionally Liberal in his even-handed position on Israel/Palestine.
I don’t love the Searchers, rather I think it – like many of John Ford’s films – are idealistic – and sometimes “tempered” -more Wilson, Keenan and Neibuhr than Joe McCarthy – allegories of American exceptionalism and idealism. My favorite Ford is The Quiet Man, which created a very unhealthy archetype.
The best Westerns are often second rate Spaghettis – though the most satisfying is Pat Garret and Billy the Kid, The Wild Bunch and 3:10 to Yuma.
August 22nd, 2006 at 10:37 pm
Rob writes: “The oil is worth fighting for. Is worth the loss of life. Is worth protecting. Is worth ensuring that the Iraqis can put as much of it on the global market to help their economy. It was the cause belli of the conflict. Those that make war on Iraq’s oil production make war on the Iraqi people.”
William Buckley went out on that limb. There’s no doubt that the sanctions were killing Iraqis. There’s also little doubt that a new oil shock and the economic fallout would result in a surge of “social violence” in the West that might end up being more lethal than fighting in Iraq has been, though it would be a relatively silent killer–higher rates of suicide, domestic abuse, alcoholism and drug abuse, criminal behavior, etc.
(More recently, Buckley has suggested that “Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven’t proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.” So sad. And so true.)
reg responds to Rob: “If oil was in fact the casus belli and it was worth fighting for, what’s up with the steady stream of accusations from BushCo et. al. that any such suggestion is false, slanderous, as far as one could possibly be from the truth, etc. etc.”
Maybe because once you start talking about social violence from economic fallout caused by oil price shocks, you start sounding like some kind of welfare statist, and that confuses your conservative base? And worse, because you’re then, at least tacitly, a welfare statist who talks about how some must die in order to save a great many others from the kinds of destructive behavior about which a conservative would prefer to say “these are matters of personal responsibility rather than a legitimate function of the state”?
BushCo can’t talk about that, even if it’s a major sub rosa component of their internal casus belli argument. Just as they can’t fend off criticisms of the war bill so far ($300b and climbing) by pointing out that most of the money goes to pay Americans, and is spent in America, so it’s Keynesian stimulus at a time when we need it. Did FDR ever say in a speech, “Hurray!–Pearl Harbor gives us the green light for an economic stimulus of the right order of magnitude, and probably the right length, to have the countercyclic economic effects Keynes predicts”? Of course not–because it sounds like it puts the value of prosperity above the value of human life.
August 23rd, 2006 at 6:35 am
Michael Turner:
Re: Buckley quote – “so sad and so true”.
Fair enough but how much has the US contributed to the hardening of those hearts that wield the grenades etc. I doubt Buckley sees any US culpability.
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:22 am
Randy, the “Mission Accomplished” banner was appropriate and honored those fighters who had accomplished their mission. What happened since then represented different challenges and missions.
I’m sure that the sailors on that ship were proud of what they did, even though you would have been the first one up there trying to cut down the sign.
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:31 am
Oh, one more thing…the fourth quarter is ours.
August 23rd, 2006 at 8:02 am
Sometimes the little lies clarify character…
*Attention turned Tuesday to a giant “Mission Accomplished” sign that stood behind Bush aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln when he gave the speech May 1.
The president told reporters the sign was put up by the Navy, not the White House.
“I know it was attributed somehow to some ingenious advance man from my staff — they weren’t that ingenious, by the way,” the president said Tuesday. CNN Oct. 2003 (in the context of continued, extensive combat and casualties in Iraq after W declared “major combat” had ended.)
*For months, the Bush administration denied that it was responsible for the banner, blaming the aircraft carrier crew itself. Since then, White House officials have acknowledged it was their idea.
“We put it up. We made the sign,” Fleischer said.
CBS News – April, 2004
Most Memorable Commentary on “Mission Accomplished”:
ANN COULTER on Hardball: “It’s stunning. It’s amazing. I think it’s huge. I mean, he’s landing on a boat at 150 miles per hour. It’s tremendous. It’s hard to imagine any Democrat being able to do that.”
Yes, she really said that. Sounds kinda like the stuff Woody throws up here.
August 23rd, 2006 at 10:17 am
Rob, that Catholic Powerhouse wouldn’t happen to be Oakland Catholic, Dan Marino’s old school, in Pittsburgh, would it?
August 23rd, 2006 at 11:20 am
reg, the President is not responsible for knowing who puts up different signs throughout the Navy. The sailors saw that sign and properly accepted it as recognition of a job well done, which it was. It doesn’t matter who put it up, but since the White House did it, I give them credit for that rather than attack them.
The Democrats, who couldn’t stand Bush’s photo op after our forces swept through Iraq in contradiction to their predictions, sought out anything that they could, which it turned out to be this sign, to try to keep Bush from using that in his campaign ads. They tried the same with the pictures of Bush at the WTC ruins.
It’s not about that sign and it’s not about Bush. It’s about those sleezy Democrats who try to put down postive things about the administration and, yes, our nation. They can’t get back into power if things are going well, so they will try to mess up our nation and send false impressions to the public. That’s a much bigger disgrace than a sign congratulating our fighting men. Maybe we need a sign to tell everyone that.
P.S. I also thought that the carrier landing was pretty neat–a lot better than Dukakis’s tank ride and John Kerry’s reporting for duty salute.
August 23rd, 2006 at 12:26 pm
He’s a bald-faced liar Woody. His press secretary says as much. That’s the point. But keep babbling if it relieves the pressure in your head.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Woody, the fourth quarter is “yours” because we have a massive league and are playing our “Rudies” now. Don’t beat up on us too badly, we might just get a sack on the final play.
August 23rd, 2006 at 1:57 pm
The Democrats still harped on the sign and misrepresented it soley to take those carrier photos out of campaign ads. I noticed that you didn’t dispute that.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:32 pm
I’m sure that the sailors on that ship were proud of what they did, even though you would have been the first one up there trying to cut down the sign.
Woodrow, you are such a little boy sometimes.
For the umpteenth time, I grew up among the military, I worked for the military, my best friends growing up were the sons and daughters of career military people.
What I resent is a president who believes it feels good to send people into combat for bullshit reasons and the fellatio choir that playskin flute along with him. You’re first chair, Woody.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:44 pm
Folks, I had to catch a train out of DC to Maryland last night and couldn’t keep up with the conversation. A few notes:
to reg @ 4:25pm — I appreciate and respect your geneolgy of positions on Afghanistan & Iraq. Very good. Unfortunately I would have all the readers bored & hitting the scroll down button if I were to try to state mine. I will say only, that I wanted to be on Kanan Makiya’s side. Who didn’t? Who doesn’t now? And yes, I am quite pissed that the Administration has botched a noble cause and, like everyone else, I am hoping the next car bomb or suicide murderer kills and harms as few Iraqis as possible.
reg @ 5:08 pm & M.Turner @ 10:37pm — About the oil. Well, what I wrote, I thought I qualified it a bit. But yeah, the oil is the underlying motive. Let’s just remember what Wolfowitz said right before the invasion. No question. Criminal that the Iraqis can’t get this on the market while it’s $70+ a barrel. Plus we end up getting by far the worst for wear — blood for no oil! My musings were certainly my Marxism crutch kicking in. I don’t expect GWB to start humming the Internationale, but this is fairly basic stuff and it’s dumbfounding that the Administration can’t articulate this.
Wall @ 5:01 — you certainly noticed my notes about C Hitchens and your points are well noted. I can only say, honestly, that I’m a fan of his writing ability (but disagree with his lastest piece on Grass — simply too harsh) but I do try to do my own thinking. Your comment, “look, the nature of the fundamentalism is so terrible…” was especially good.
Bob P @ 10:07am — No, sorry not in PA. Saginaw, MI. St. Peter & Paul Crusaders ’79-’83. No wonder I have so few muslim friends. Fortunately the school has been renamed.
Lastly, a westernish trivia question: Name the actor who dies in John Wayne’s arms in two different films.
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:54 pm
“….and the fellatio choir that play skin flute along with him. You’re first chair…..”
Damn you’re good…..uh, I mean bad, when you’re mad Randy. I’m saving this one for future strategic use….if you don’t mind. Let me know if you want credits when I do. What is fellatio?
August 23rd, 2006 at 4:58 pm
An all male choir?
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:08 pm
“Name the actor who dies in John Wayne’s arms in two different films.”
Not sure, but in the interest of trivial pursuits I’ll take a guess that it’s Harry Carey Jr.
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:13 pm
Harry Carey Jr. — good answer, you’re so close. Actually Dennis Hopper gets whacked as “Dave Hastings” in The Sons of Katie Elder, and then again as “Moon” in True Grit.
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:31 pm
That’s totally unexpected. I’m not really an aficiando of the later “ouevre”.
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:35 pm
“I wanted to be on Kanan Makiya’s side.”
I’m going to be totally fucking snarky and suggest that “on Kanan Makiya’s side” would be, in the real world, a TA’s position at some or another university.
August 23rd, 2006 at 5:37 pm
Also, Alcatholic, sorry. The Palast stuff looks interesting and I’ll check out his website, but I’ve not read it and I’m not really familiar with him so I can’t comment. (I know, I know…that’s never stopped me before.)
August 23rd, 2006 at 7:04 pm
I’ll try to get some useful info from his book into this thread tomorrow.
I won’t try a book review, but he has a nifty chronology I could post.
August 23rd, 2006 at 9:15 pm
I’m still confused, the war is important, it’s critical in the “war” on “terror”, but none of the Bush youth are signing up for this important “war” in Iraq on “terrorism”?
August 24th, 2006 at 11:11 am
Fellatio choir…skin flute?? (I’ve never hear that name.)
Randy Paul, you’re projecting again. And, you repeat a reference to the male organ that you’ve made many times over, which reveals something about your mind. You don’t fantasize about me, do you? Please don’t.
August 24th, 2006 at 6:50 pm
Kanan Makiya is onside and shoulder to shoulder with Ahmed Chalabi. I wouldn’t want to be on side with that fraud who made money off of his dad’s Saddam-contracting architecture firm while feighning dissidence. He was and is full of shit.
August 25th, 2006 at 6:26 am
Your spin is amazing Marc. Comparing the length of WW II to Iraq is not a fair comparison. If Hilter used terrorists we would still be fighting them today unless more aggressive measures would have been used. Your comment about uniting our enemies is also bull, we have taken their terrorists activities well before Pres. Bush took some long over due action. And then you come in with the comment about the green light on the bombardment, give me a break, like we have total control of a state defending itself. Then you close with more bitching, but again no suggestions or advise on what to do. Keep up the good work, you are well on your way to insure a Republican wins the next Pres. election.
August 26th, 2006 at 11:55 am
JCummings — Your shot is not on net. Should the son suffer the inequaties of the father? Would you shun the author of The Republic of Fear because one found a crack in which to survive under a madman? And to further attempt a tarring by associating Makiya with Chalabi? C’mon now. I wouldn’t boo Naslaund for skating with Bertuzzi.
August 27th, 2006 at 9:26 am
Makiya and Chalabi are both openly associated with the Iraqi National Congress. Makiya called bombs over baghdad “music to my ears.” Makiya said kind things about Chalabi. This is all documented.
August 27th, 2006 at 9:27 am
Trivia guess…Ward Bond?
August 27th, 2006 at 9:27 am
my bad…scratch that on Ward Bond.
August 27th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
Sure, JC, Makiya said the bombs where music to his ears — a lot of Iraqis did. A lot of Iraqis were pro-invasion and especially so on the left. Yes, he has said complimentary about and Chalabi and has done so for the right reasons. Chalabi may be a flawed person worthy of sharp criticisms. But he is a legitimate player in the game of (very young and messy) Iraqi politics. Some room for missteps and errors? No?
Perhaps you could offer which Iraqis you’d like to place your bets with?
August 27th, 2006 at 10:02 pm
I reject the pretext of your question – as if the dichotomy you pose is worth discussing.. I’ll say its up to the Iraqis in terms of who to deal with…I hope the legitimate left….but.
But you take the cake in terms of humor as to after criticizing me for pointing out Makiya’s association with Chalabi, then DEFENDING MR. “heroes in error” guy who bragged about duping neocons/Judy Miller etc. with false information about wmds, was probably an Iranian double agent,etc, Jordanian fraudmeister Ahmed Chalabi is beyond belief. Its like someone saying “well that Savimbi is a flawed fellow.” Flawed? A fucking international scumbag.
August 28th, 2006 at 4:15 pm
I offer you the chalk, you reject the blackboard. But, if, as you say, its up to the Iraqis, then I agree and let us note that the Iraqi process of democratic national government has placed Mr. Chalabi in a ministry.
Take a slice of the cake, JCummings. I’ll give you the last word on this one. See you a few threads up…
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April 24th, 2011 at 11:57 pm
Grande blog! è il vostro tema personalizzato fatto o hai scaricarlo da qualche parte? A motivo come la vostra con pochi e semplici regolazioni tweeks sarebbe davvero fare il mio blog saltare . Per favore fatemi sapere dove avete preso il vostro disegno tema. Con un grazie