Elected Insasnity

Illustration: The Decider and Putin have a chat. Did Putin put ‘im up to it?

This last item was so overwhelming in its absurdity that my first reaction was similar to that guy with the mustache in the old Laurel and Hardy movies: “DOOOOOOOOH!!” I mean, how crazy do things have to get?

The Decider gave a speech in Kansas City a few days ago, comparing Vietnam and Iraq. He said, essentially, that if we withdrew from Iraq, it would cause “Killing fields, Boat people, and the death of civilians.” I shit you not.

One wonders where he was during Viet Nam? Oh yeah, in the Texas National Guard? Hm.

Well, let us see. The Kymer Rouge’s coming to power was made possible by Nixon and Kissinger bombing the Hell out of Cambodia because they didn’t like Sianook. Pol Pot was a direct result of our intervention. Boat people? Iraq is virtually landlocked and the Decider would probably torpedo any Iraqis trying to get here. Civilians? During Clinton and the sanctions, it was estimated that over 500,000 innocent civilians, mostly children, were dying in Iraq as a result. Albright, Clinton’s Secretary of State was asked if it was worth it. She said “yes”. How many are being killed now? About four million are displaced or refugees so far.

And did we withdraw from Vietnam or were we chased out? Remember footage of helicopters evacuating U.S. soldiers, citizens, and journalists from the top of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon?

Do you remember the Decider saying over and over again that this is not a quagmire or like Vietnam and accusing those who made the comparison of treason?

Do you remember predictions that we would be chased out like dogs with our tails between our legs? Out of where? You decide.

No civil war in Iraq I seem to remember being said.

We gotta bomb Iran, yeah, that’ll fix things.

Well, I really can’t deal with this, but Amy Goodman had first headlines and then someone to set things straight and I’m reprinting the transcript here. The headlines themselves are flabbergasting enough as they stand.

Democracy Now! http://www.democracynow.org

Bush Invokes Vietnam to Argue Against U.S. Troop Withdrawal from Iraq

Thursday, August 23rd, 2007

President Bush warned Wednesday that a withdrawal of U.S. troops from

Iraq would lead to mass bloodshed similar to what happened in Southeast

Asia after the Vietnam War. He urged critics of the current war to

"learn something from history" and "resist the allure of retreat." We

speak with historian and investigative journalist, Gareth Porter.

[includes rush transcript]

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

President Bush has compared the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan to

earlier US wars against Japan, Korea, and Vietnam. He spoke Wednesday at

the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City. The president

warned that a US withdrawal from Iraq could result in a similar outcome

to what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia after the withdrawal of US troops.

* *President Bush*, speaking in Kansas City, August 22nd, 2007.

The president also pointed to Japan and Korea in his speech as examples

of past US military successes. He urged critics of the current war to

"learn something from history" and "resist the allure of retreat."

* *Gareth Porter*, a historian and investigative journalist. He is a

specialist in U.S. military and foreign policy and was the

director of the IndoChina resource center towards the end of the

Vietnam War. He now writes regularly on Iraq and Iran for Inter

Press Service and maintains a blog on The Huffington Post

. His most recent book is "Perils

of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam."

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

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *President Bush has compared the current wars in Iraq

and Afghanistan to earlier US wars against Japan, Korea and Vietnam. He

spoke Wednesday at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas

City. The President warned that a US withdrawal from Iraq could result

in a similar outcome to what happened in Vietnam and Cambodia after the

withdrawal of US troops.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *The Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule

in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation

and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United

States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen

were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished.

Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many

of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got

into the Vietnam War and how we left. There’s no debate in my mind

that the veterans from Vietnam deserve the high praise of the

United States of America. Whatever your position is on that

debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of

America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens

whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like ‘boat

people,’ ‘re-education camps’ and ‘killing fields.’

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *President Bush, comparing the costs of withdrawing US

troops from Iraq to the withdrawal from Vietnam over thirty years ago.

The President also pointed to Japan and Korea in the speech as examples

of past US military successes. He urged critics of the current war to

‘learn something from history’ and ‘resist the allure of retreat.’

*AMY GOODMAN: *Gareth Porter is a historian and investigative

journalist. He’s a specialist in US military and foreign policy and was

the director of the Indochina Resource Center towards the end of the

Vietnam War. He now writes regularly on Iraq and Iran for Inter Press

Service and maintains a blog on the Huffington Post

. His most recent book is /Perils of

Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam/. Gareth

Porter joins us from Washington, D.C.

Gareth, welcome to /Democracy Now!/ Your response to President Bush's

speech’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, you know, it reminds me very much of the way in

which, of course, Richard Nixon used the threat of a bloodbath in

Vietnam as the primary argument for continuing that war for four more

years after he came to power in 1969. And really, it seems to me, the

lesson of the Vietnam War that should be now debated and discussed is

really the way in which Nixon could have ended that war when he came to

power, negotiated a settlement and avoided the extension of that war

into Cambodia, which happened because Nixon did not do that.

Had Nixon listened to the antiwar movement and the American people by

1969 and ended that war, there would not have been the overthrow of

Norodom Sihanouk in 1970. There would not have been the extension of the

war into Cambodia. There would not have been the rise of the Khmer

Rouge. When Sihanouk was overthrown, we tend to forget that the Khmer

Rouge was really an insignificant movement. They were about 2,500 or

3,000 very poorly armed soldiers or guerillas. And it was really the

extension of the Vietnam War into Cambodia which made the Khmer Rouge

the powerful movement that they were.

So really, you know, the lesson of Vietnam that we should be hearing,

which we should have heard for the last three decades, but we haven’t,

is that government officials in the White House simply do not pay

attention to the real consequences of the wars that they wage. They seem

to be totally unable to take account of the destabilizing ways that the

wars that they wage affect not only the country in which the war is

being waged, but then the neighboring countries, as well.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *Gareth Porter, Senator Kerry, in reacting to the

President's words yesterday -- John Kerry -- said that they were as

irresponsible as it is ignorant of the realities of both of those wars.

And he noted that half the soldiers whose names are on the Vietnam

Memorial died after the politicians knew our strategy would not work.

Your reaction to Kerry's words’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, you know, the problem, of course, with that view

is that we -- I mean, it’s ambiguous -- essentially ambiguous whether

Nixon and Kissinger believed that they could salvage something in

Vietnam and Southeast Asia and in the world or not. I mean, it depends

on how you look at it. I think that it’s true that Kissinger and Nixon

did not believe that they could really produce a stable, long-lasting

South Vietnamese anti-communist regime. That’s pretty clear on the record.

The problem, of course, is that the real reason that those leaders

continued that war for four years had very little, if anything, to do

with Vietnam itself. They were more concerned with, really, their own

credibility, the credibility of the US military machine, the credibility

of the United States as the world's preeminent superpower, and that's

why they continued that war. And I think that’s another parallel,

really, that needs to be discussed between Vietnam and Iraq, because I

think the same thing is true now of George Bush and the Bush

administration, that they really -- that their concern is not about

Iraq, /per se/. They cry crocodile tears about the Iraqi people, as Bush

did about the Cambodian people, but they really don't care about the

people. What they care about is the ‘credibility,’ quote/unquote, of the

United States.

And if you look at the Op-Ed piece by Peter Rodman in the /New York

Times/ last June, which Bush quoted yesterday -- and Rodman, by the way

is the direct link between Henry Kissinger, who he worked for during the

Vietnam War, and George Bush, who he worked for during the Iraq war --

Rodman and William Shawcross really were more concerned --

*AMY GOODMAN: *Shawcross, who wrote /Sideshow/ --

*GARETH PORTER: *That’s right.

*AMY GOODMAN: *-- about Cambodia.

*GARETH PORTER: *About Cambodia. And it’s bizarre that Shawcross is

associating himself now with Henry Kissinger’s viewpoint on Cambodia and

Vietnam. But what Shawcross and Rodman expressed in that Op-Ed piece was

really mostly concern about ‘credibility,’ quote/unquote. It’s as

though, you know, we’re in a time warp, and we’re still living in a

world with two superpowers, and the United States has to impress the

Soviet Union with its military prowess. You know, it’s really bizarre,

because, you know, Rodman and Shawcross really sort of expressed the

kind of worldview that was prevalent during the Cold War and which today

we should understand is really irrelevant. I mean, the idea that we can

impress the Muslim world by defeating people in Iraq and that that’s

going to make us more secure, the American people don't even believe

that anymore.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Gareth Porter, I want to play an excerpt from the new

documentary by Norman Solomon and the Media Education Foundation. It’s

called /War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to

Death/. This clip features Presidents George W. Bush, Lyndon Johnson and

Richard Nixon.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *Withdrawal of all American forces from

Vietnam would be a disaster.

*PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: *Let no one think for a moment that

retreat from Vietnam would bring an end to conflict.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *We're not leaving, so long as I’m the

President. That would be a huge mistake.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *Our allies would lose confidence in

America.

*PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: *To yield to force in Vietnam would

weaken that confidence.

*PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: *Any sign that says we're going to

leave before the job is done simply emboldens terrorists.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *A retreat of the United States from

Vietnam would be a communist victory, a victory of massive

proportions and would lead to World War III.

*PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: *If this little nation goes down the

drain and can't maintain independence, ask yourself what's going

to happen to all the other little nations.

*PRESIDENT RICHARD NIXON: *It would not bring peace. It would

bring more war.

*AMY GOODMAN: *An excerpt of /War Made Easy/. Gareth Porter, final

comment, and could you include what you’ve been writing about, which is

your belief that the US might well attack Iran’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, I mean, that’s right exactly. The linkage between

Bush's speech, the Rodman article in the /New York Times/ and the

current situation regarding policy toward Iran is precisely that Rodman

argues very specifically in his piece -- again, Rodman being a former

Bush administration official, as well as a former assistant to Kissinger

-- that we have to prevail in Iraq so that we can impress Iran with our

determination and strength, our credibility. He says, in fact, that the

United States cannot be strong against Iran or anywhere, if we accept

defeat in Iraq. So these people are really girding for the potential war

with Iran. I think that Rodman probably is part of that group that would

like to have a war with Iran, as well. And so, I think that this is

another indicator that Bush is certainly preparing for a potential war

against Iran. I think that’s a very grave danger at this moment.

*JUAN GONZALEZ: *And this new ad campaign, once again attempting to link

the attack on the World Trade Center to the war on Iraq in the minds of

the American people, your reaction’

*GARETH PORTER: *Well, that, of course, has been completely discredited,

you know, by the facts as we now understand them. Documentation makes it

very clear that there was no relationship between going into Iraq and

the rationale for Iraq and 9/11, except that it was a convenient moment

for the neoconservatives in the administration to press their advantage,

which, you know, they chose the target that they had already wanted to

bring down -- Saddam Hussein -- before -- long before 9/11, as we now

know. So this is simply a continuation of the now-proven lie that the

Bush administration has been giving the American people now for three

years.

*AMY GOODMAN: *We just have ten seconds, but Cheney's role in pushing

for attacking Iran, Gareth Porter’

*GARETH PORTER: *Dick Cheney, we know, is determined to use the excuse

of alleged Iranian training camps -- that’s camps supposedly in Iran,

where Hezbollah is training the troops of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army

-- as an excuse to attack Iran, with the hope that the Iranians would

then retaliate and make possible then a strategic attack against Iran's

-- not only the nuclear fatalities, but against economic and military

targets. The aim of the Bush administration is to weaken Iran as a power

in the Middle East.

*AMY GOODMAN: *Gareth Porter, we want to thank you very much for being

with us, investigative journalist and historian, writes a blog on the

Huffington Post . His book is /Perils of

Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam/.

www.democracynow.org