Is Iraq the new Vietnam?
Contrary to what you might be hearing from the mainstream media, things continue to get worse in Iraq, and it is looking more and more like another Vietnam for the USA. From this article:
Military commanders in the field in Iraq admit in private reports to the Pentagon the war “is lost” and that the U.S. military is unable to stem the mounting violence killing 1,000 Iraqi civilians a month.
Even worse, they report the massacre of Iraqi civilians at Haditha is “just the tip of the iceberg” with overstressed, out-of-control Americans soldiers pushed beyond the breaking point both physically and mentally.
“We are in trouble in Iraq,” says retired army general Barry McCaffrey. “Our forces can’t sustain this pace, and I’m afraid the American people are walking away from this war.”
Marine Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has clamped a tight security lid on the increasingly pessimistic reports coming out of field commanders in Iraq, threatening swift action against any military personnel who leak details to the press or public.
Yes, what do you do when things continue to get worse? You prevent people getting that information to the rest of the population, so they can continue to remain uninformed. And if that’s not enough to convince you of how much worse things are getting, here’s a quote from this article:
The horror of Haditha, where U.S. Marines are accused of killing Iraqi civilians and then trying to cover up their crime, is just one more manifestation of the fascistic trends of the Bush crew at home and overseas. Writer Robert Parry, on the Web at consortiumnews.com, calls the Haditha killings “Bush’s My Lai,” in reference to the hundreds of civilians killed by Army soldiers at a Vietnamese village in 1968.
“Though the number of dead at Haditha is less than one tenth the victims of My Lai,” writes Parry, “the scenarios are eerily similar: U.S. troops – fighting a confusing conflict against a shadowy enemy – lash out at a civilian population, killing unarmed men, women and children. If the Marines at Haditha are found guilty of committing the atrocity, they can be expected to receive severe punishment for murder … Yet, while these Marines may face severe punishment for violating the rules of war, the political leadership back home – up to and including George W. Bush – remains immune from any meaningful accountability.”
Just as they did when the massacre at My Lai came to light, militarists in America will continue to make excuses for the war crimes and authoritarian trends of the Bush/Cheney Republican Reich. It was almost laughable on Memorial Day when President Bush told an audience at Arlington National Cemetery that “America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war.”
This is a classic example of saying something and doing the opposite of what you say. Bush would have us believe that he and his corporate friends went to war because there was no other option and they really didn’t want war because it just costs so much. The truth is the exact opposite. They willingly went to war because they know the costs of war. War means big money for Bush’s friends at Halliburton, Carlyle Group and Lockheed Martin. Just look at which corporations provide the weapons and other means of going to war. Look at the corporations doing the “rebuilding” in Iraq. Look at who is getting the big deals and contracts. Follow the money. And they want us to believe they went to war reluctantly?
And meanwhile, due to the lack of good coverage in the mainstream press, not enough people in the USA realize what is being done and what is going on in Iraq. In a previous post, I had already mentioned the role of the mainstream media in the USA right now. What I described in that post, is mentioned in this article:
The only reason Americans can look themselves in the mirror is that they are clueless and have little idea of what is being done in their name. One-third of the US population actually believes that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that Bush found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Apparently, a large percentage of the US population believes that Iran has nuclear weapons and that America is in danger of being attacked by Iran. No democracy can work when people take their responsibility as citizen so lightly as to be totally ignorant.
The mainstream media isn’t going to tell us how bad things are in Iraq, and they’re not going to report what is really going on. Nope, instead, they’re going to keep everyone busy with stupid and much less important “issues” like gay marriage, which are constantly brought up again after a while when they need to distract the public from more important issues. From this article:
While the Iraq war takes its deadly toll in blood and treasure, and freedom is in danger here at home, Bush tries to rally his benighted and bucolic base with calls for constitutional amendments to combat the non-problems of gay marriage and flag burning. Bush’s latest ploy might play with the rubes, reactionaries and religious right-wingers in his hard-core political base, but it proves once again that philosopher Bertrand Russell was right when he said that fascist movements everywhere seek “to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.”
I think that last part of the quote explains exactly what’s going on. And it’s interesting to know what is happening and to witness people falling for it every time. Not only is it interesting, it is also very painful to watch and realize that there seems to be so very little you can do about it. Apart from the fact that most people don’t realize and don’t know they’re being fooled, some even refuse and don’t want to consider it when you try to tell them what’s going on. And then all you can do is just stand back and helplessly watch them being manipulated, and watch them help to make things worse, not only for themselves, but also for you.
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