Iraq War Now A Real Vietnam Mess Driven By Same Lies

Posting Date: April 10, 2006


Iraq War Now A Real Vietnam Mess Driven By Same Lies
Just as other leaders once lied about Vietnam, and lost, President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have been lying about Iraq, and you can bet we’re going to lose there, too.

It’s a certainty that many Americans realize but so many refuse to see.

Why? Because in America, we have been conditioned to embrace the “happy lies” and denounce the “ugly truths” as unpatriotic, traitorous and unAmerican.

Where did we learn that? From Hollywood movies, of course, which have conditioned us to accept the fantasy of victory over the reality of war.

This week, we recall the images of the statue of Saddam Hussein being pulled down by Iraqi citizens who were celebrating joyously at our invasion of their country.

They were throwing rose petals and flowers in front of our victorious troops as we rolled into Baghdad, unchallenged, the way we did after our soldiers defeated the Nazis in World War II.

Not.

It’s all a lie, of course.

The truth is that the Iraqi people never pulled down the statue at all. American soldiers pulled the statue down using their military trucks and chains. And then they orchestrated a little celebration.

The cameras were not allowed to show the American soldiers in uniform scrambling to “create a Hollywood image” that would somehow miraculously lead the illegal invasion of Iraq into a righteous celebration of freedom and an American-Arab concoction of Apple Pie mixed with Hummus, a popular Middle East food dip.

And the Iraqi people never really welcomed us. Sure, many hated Saddam Hussein, but far more hate us, today, as deeply as they hated him. Because the reality is that three years after destroying the country of Iraq – a destruction that we rarely write about – the people-led insurgency is making mincemeat out of our soldiers.

We have lost 2,348 American lives in Iraq, which is about what we also lost during the first three years of the Vietnam War.

The only Iraqis who are welcoming us are the handpicked puppets who have done little to lead their people. Yet, they live in a luxury of services and comfort provided at the expense of the American taxpayers.

Why should they live any different than the bosses of Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company?
Instead of throwing rose petals on the streets in front of our military humvees, the Iraqi people, just like the embittered Vietnamese people did 35 years ago, are throwing IEDs in front of our vehicles killing an average of one soldier or more every day.

And the charges of torture, human rights violations and even out-right murder by American soldiers continues.

It is nothing we should be proud about.

We can excuse it. We can turn our eyes away. We can pretend it is not happening.

But the truth always does return. And one day we will have to face the world and explain what our soldiers did in Iraq.

I know the difference between an illegal war and a just war. We all do. My father and uncle served in World War II. My brother was a Marine and I served in a Vietnam support unit servicing F-111 fighter aircraft stateside during the end of the Vietnam War.

We know the truth.

We knew the truth even before all of the Bush lies were exposed in memos, leaks and reluctant news reports from an embedded news media that continues to not do its job. Weapons of Mass Destruction. Lies. Nuclear weapons threats. Lies. Ties to al-Qaeda. Lies. We had to invade Iraq. Lies.

Just read the memos Bush and Cheney wrote about how they would pull the wool over the eyes of the American people by provoking Saddam Hussein into doing something so they could invade Iraq.

President Lyndon Baines Johnson did the exact same thing at the Gulf of Tonkin to justify the war in Vietnam.

More sickening than the deaths in Iraq is the depravity of our leadership. The lack of morals or principles driving this administration.

Bush should be impeached for the memos, for leaking national security secrets to benefit his lies and for poor leadership.

But many Americans who never served and who do not want their children to serve in fighting this illegal war in Iraq are eager to jump up and down and denounce people like me as being traitors. Yet they NEVER served. They won’t allow their children to serve. And they are happy to have those unlucky enlistees during the pre-Iraq peacetime who were in active duty or in the reserves or national guard do all the dirty work.

If the American people really supported this war and if the cheerleaders for this war who sit back in the comfort of their homes writing about how we are liberating freedom in Iraq really want this war, then let them fight it. Let them send their children. Let them support a nationwide draft so we can raise the fighting force we need to finish the job.

But they won’t, because this illegal war is exactly about how the poor are exploited, the elite and rich are allowed to prance above the morality of the rest of us and lecture us about what the rest of us should be doing.

This war is about money, politics, oil, and power.

It has nothing to do with freedom for anyone. Not freedom for the Iraqi people. Not freedom for the world. Not freedom for our children.

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