Escalations and excuses in Iraq

Regarding the development Sunday when US helicopters opened fire on (mainly or wholly civilian?) Iraqis in Baghdad, killing or injuring many of them, today Reuters’ Ed Cropley from Baghdad filed this:

    The U.S. military defended on Wednesday two helicopter pilots who fired seven rockets into a crowd of Iraqis in Baghdad this week, saying they had come under “well-aimed ground fire” and responded in self-defence.
    Initially, the military had said they opened fire on Sunday to destroy a crippled U.S. armoured vehicle to prevent looting.
    At least five people including a television journalist were killed in the incident… in central Baghdad’s Haifa Street, a bastion for anti-American insurgents.
    Colonel Jim McConville, head of the U.S. First Cavalry Division’s aviation brigade, said two helicopters armed with heavy machineguns and a total of 21 rockets had swooped over the burning vehicle and the crowd of Iraqis.
    “While he (the lead pilot) was overflying the target he received well-aimed ground fire so close that he could hear it over his intercom system,” McConville told a news conference…

One of those killed was Al-Arabiyya producer Mazen Tomeizi, who was filiming the scene around the crippled vehicle when the first of the seven rockets struck behind him.
Cropley writes:

    Reuters cameraman Seif Fouad was wounded in one of the subsequent rocket strikes.
    Witnesses in Haifa Street dispute the U.S. military’s version of events, saying they saw no one firing at the helicopters before the aerial attack.
    Fouad’s footage of the crowd around the Bradley in the moments before the helicopter strike also showed no evidence any one in the crowd around the vehicle was armed or firing.
    The footage shows a crowd of men and teenage boys milling around the vehicle, as Tomeizi speaks in the foreground. The journalist is then cut down and his blood spatters on the lens…

    The U.S. military said that on a second pass over the burning vehicle and the crowd, which had scattered after the first missile hit, the helicopters fired a further six missiles.
    The military said that on a third pass the lead helicopter fired 30 .50 calibre rounds from its heavy machinegun.
    McConville said the pilots had chosen the option of a “close combat attack” because they were concerned about the risk of hitting civilians if they fired from further away.

How’s that again? “Concerned about the risk of hitting civilians”???
Well for starters there’s the testimony of eye-witnesses, some of them employees of reputable international news organizations, about the noncombatant status of the people killed and injured in the attack.
And then, there’s the fact that the US military essentially changed its story along the way there. Their first story– that they wanted to “destroy the crippled Bradley” to prevent it being “looted”– couldn’t fly for very long because in many of the photos of the aftermath of the scene, there’s the Bradley in the background, still smoking away but substantially whole. That includes in some of Ghaith’s pix that I linked to in yesterday’s post here.
Clearly, when someone switches their story so rapidly and so radically, you have to wonder about their overall veracity??? Do they take us for fools?
I just want to note a final few things about the Bushites’ apparent commitment to continue escalating the violence levels in Iraq:
(1) Like everyone else who takes such a decision, the Bushites claim–at the broad strategic level as at the more ‘micro’ level evidenced in the above story– that they are merely “responding” or “reacting” to escalations of violence started by the “other” side.
Hence Col. McConville, saying the three choppers had fired only in response to the alleged “well-aimed ground fire” launched their way by the “other” side.
And that’s how cycles of violence work. Each participant in a cycle of violence says–and quite possibly at some level even believes–that he is “compelled” to act in the way he does to “respond” in the most effective way possible to the violence of the other side.
But then what happens? The folks on the other side will feel almost exactly the same compulsion! (That’s called, in strategic studies, “the security dilemma.”)
And so you end up with a continually turning cycle of violence… Just like you have between Israelis and Palestinians … or between any two pugnacious and immature little kids in a schoolyard…
The thing is, though, that the decisionmaker who is actually inside this cycle, generally feels him/herself to be trapped inside it. He gets to the point where he can’t see that there’s any alternative but to “respond” to every enactment of violence from others with his own (preferably even stronger) acts of violence.
Oh and then there’s the old canard of “credibility” kicks in… Whether at the level of “not wanting to lose face” in response to the “other” guy’s violence, or at the more bullying level of “if we just hit them hard hard enough they’ll stop confronting us–and that will surely end all the violence round here!”
Either way, an emphasis on credibility and demonstrative uses of force just further escalates the level of the violence.
(2) Iraq is not the only place where this is happening. In fact, today I just wrote a column for Al-Hayat about Afghanistan, where the US seems to have taken a similar decision to sustain/escalate the violence level in the lead-up to their election. And their election is now less than one month away! (October 9.)
So it seems there’s a broader pattern of the Bushies really not “getting it” about what’s needed to ensure “free and fair” elections. (Or perhaps, “getting it” all too well, and then deciding against it.)
(3) … This is the pathetic product of my intention to post something meaningful here about the influence of Amb. Negroponte:
It seems clear to me that though he’s made a real effort to stay much more discreet than that swaggering little cock-a-hoop Paul Bremer, Negroponte’s influence or actual decisions must be playing a much bigger role in determining the general US stance in Iraq than most people are really aware of.
While I was doing some online research about the role Negroponte played when he was US Ambassador to Honduras, 1981-85, I came upon this article, published in the New York Review of Books in September 2001.
I don’t have time to do any analysis of the piece right now. But it told me a lot more about the man in question than I’d previously known– big booster for Reagan’s illegal support for the Nicaraguan Contras, participant in the (also quite illegal) Iran-contra affair, etc etc.
This paragraph particularly caught my eye:

    The diplomat who presided over that embassy from 1981 to 1985, John Dimitri Negroponte, was a great fabulist. He saw, or professed to see, a Honduras almost Scandinavian in its tranquillity, a place where there were no murderous generals, no death squads, no political prisoners, no clandestine jails or cemeteries. Now that President Bush has nominated Negroponte to be United States ambassador to the United Nations, his record in Honduras is coming under new scrutiny…

So I guess that’s another thing to hold against the Dems in the senate. They never managed to block the guy’s appointment to be US Ambassador, even knowing his past in Honduras?
Anyway, I still really need to deal with this topic at appropriate length: Negroponte: Iraq’s ‘black bridge’ to the future.

24 thoughts on “Escalations and excuses in Iraq”

  1. In the US, or virtually anywhere else, authorities would forcibly disperse a mob that converges on a crime scene.
    Where can one actually see Seif Fouad’s footage of the events? Was Mazen Tomeizi able to tell the story of the destruction of the Bradely vehicle from before the explosion? What other sort of reports had he filed for Al-Arabiyya? It’s troubling to hear of all this third hand. The http://www.alarabiya.tv site appears to be Arabic only, and provides no evident video, only lots of pictures of unhappy Arab crowds and sinister Israelis. Didn’t Powell allege that Al-Arabiya able to use advance tips from terrorists to send its crews to site to capture juicy footage of American deaths? What is its editorial line?
    Whatever the specifics, you win nothing by hounding the copter pilots who fired rockets and bullets. Helicopters are continous targets and have indeed been shot down.
    Visceral efforts to discredit US troops and pilots will be fodder for a Bush victory. Bush leads Kerry in the polls precisely on the matter of “Who do you trust more?” about Iraq.
    Honduras is a poor country with many problems that preceeded and followed Negroponte’s stint as US ambassador. I doubt he deserves much blame for its faults or credit for its virtues. His job was mainly to contain and roll back the Sandinista government in Nicaragua and the Farabundo Marti insurgency in El Salvador. The US won, the Marxists lost or greatly changed. Today there is pluri-party democracy in El Salvador. Locals merit most of the credit, but US aid was also pivotal. Were Negroponte, in any modest way, to help pull off a similar turnaround in Iraq, would it really be such a bad thing?
    Too bad the Democrats didn’t recruit and co-op Negroponte. He’d have been a great asset. Kerry could use several like him, plus a Rove or two.

  2. “In the US, or virtually anywhere else, authorities would forcibly disperse a mob that converges on a crime scene.”
    With rockets fired from assault helicopters, John?

  3. By the way, John, Mazen Tomeizi, the journalist who was killed, was standing about 150 yards from the burning vehicle when the rocket that killed him landed just behind him.

  5. Seems like you don’t know much abt Negroponte in Honduras, John.
    You might take a look at:
    1. chicago sun times [william o

  6. This incident, as its evolving justifications reveal, is another example of the US not reading and using its own doctrine. Restraint is one of the principles of Peace Operations, Field Manual (FM) 100-23. Restraint on the use of violence, tactics and weapons is critcal to prevailing in a peace operation. http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/100-23/fm100-23.htm This recent gunning down of civilians, as have countless others, exhibited little to no restraint as the US has bombed “suspected” sites of rebels or fired unobserved fires – often killing or injuring innocents. We are doing the rebels recruiting by not exercising restraint. Earlier, the Brits did not resort to Lynx helicopter gunship fires against protesting crowds in Belfast during the IRA troubles, nor did the Brits use Harriers or Tornados to bomb or stafe “suspected” IRA houses in the heart of Londonderry. Restraint in peaceops works.
    But the larger reason why this Iraq mission is and continues to be a failure is found in the doctrinal tenet of legitimacy. Legitimacy must be found in the international community, the US public, US military, and of the Iraqis. As Helena wrote, “it’s the politics, stupid.” The US actions lack legitimacy from international to local levels. First, the intervention was illegitimate in the eyes of the world community, its representative body -the UN, in the Arab world, virtually all sans the Crawford cowboys and their corporate friends in and out of the US media. (Getting rid of Saddam may have had legitimate resonance – but we will never know since that was never used as a pretext for intervention until after the fact.) Second, one form of illegitimate government (that not being representative nor accountable to the Iraqi people) was substituted for another. Instead of quickly turning over self-determination and accountable governance to the Iraqis, the model promoted by LTG(Ret) Garner; the US imposed its civilian emporer – Bremmer. Now Iraqis are being subjected to their second puppet government under the US occupation – this time led by a Quisling (in the eyes of many Iraqis). None of these governments or their representatives are legitimate (accountable) to the followers of the rebels or fence sitters. None of the rebels legitimate concerns are addressed by these puppet governments. These Iraqi governments are thus, unrepresentative – illegitimate (and unaccountable) in the eyes of the rebels.
    January elections would be a step to establishing legitimate, representative, accountable Iraqi governance. National elections may very well be required now because the occupier and the puppet government put their word on holding them. But national elections are not the only road to establishing legitimate governance. The US did not have a national election until well after the Brits quit their US colonies. Meanwhile the citizens’ grievances were represented through locally legitimately chosen and accountable representatives. Representatives met numerous times, locally, regionally, and nationally, prior to and during the revolution to air and attempt to resolve the concerns and grievances of their constituents. In Iraq there is little such political process to represent the concerns of the rebels and fence-sitters, so no wonder that they view the present Iraqi government as illegitmate.
    If one is still unsold on the principle of legitimacy to resolve a conflict or peace operation, try this. Suppose King George III, after hearing of the terrorists threw British tea in the harbor and later had a demonstration in Boston Commons which killed a few Redcoats, then said that the rebels had a point. Thereafter suppose George III decided that taxation without representation was unjust and stopped it. Further suppose George III allocated the colonies seats in parlament and local election of their British governors. This example can illuminate the how and why conflicts, small wars or peace operations are resolved, as Helena observed, through political means. Later the Brits used political means to resolve the IRA troubles by ensuring the grievances of the IRA politcal wing would be heard. The military tool, like the economic tool, is merely an enabler to the policy and politics. Military, like economic tools can be used to advance or retard political progress and conflict resolution. Unfortunately in Iraq, both military and economic tools are far from being optimized to resolve the conflict – rather their misuse often exacerbates the conflict.
    In hindsight it is oddly logical that this adminstration ignores the nation’s peaceops doctrine. The president claims that he does not read. The defense secretary attempted to disband the academic and operational offices for peaceops. Neither understands the military role, (or for that matter the political role). Their war party oft argue that the military does not do nation building. Excuse me, then just what was General George Washington trying for years to do? And what was Lincoln trying to do with the military concerning the visionary reconstruction of which he spoke at his second inauguration? And what were Generals Marshall and MacArthur trying to do in Europe and the Far East in late 1945? The miitary does have an important role in peaceops and nation building. But the military is not useful in peaceops conflict resolution unless it exercises restraint and is supporting a preeminent, legitimate body politic. Since both restraint and legitimacy are AWOL in Iraq the perpetual war grinds on.

  7. helena, as for your comments about “returning fire” in the cycle of violence, they remind me very much of a quote from the IDF soldier who set up the exhibit about hebron that caused quite a ruckus (as it was very critical of the israeli presence in hebron). he said something like “you only shoot after you are shot at, but then eventually you figure they’ll start shooting at 6 when it gets dark, so why should you wait until 6 and you start shooting at 5″… etc. sad stuff.

  8. I can’t believe this shit, Koch. You are now implying that Mazen al-Tomeizi may have deserved to die because he reported for a sinister TV network whose web site is not in English.
    FYI – “Powell” didn’t “allege that Al-Arabiya able to use advance tips from terrorists”. Rumsfeld alleged that about Al-Jazeera. I guess that’s close enough for you. As for al-Tomeizi’s presence at the scene, here’s a description of how he got there:
    Mr Tomaisi was killed after rushing down from his apartment in Haifa Street to give a report to a Reuters camera on clashes between US troops and insurgents. . .
    You also say:
    In the US, or virtually anywhere else, authorities would forcibly disperse a mob that converges on a crime scene.
    According to eyewitness testimony and the video it was a peaceful crowd, not a “mob”. But at least this time you’re not suggesting that they were “mutilating infidel corpses”.
    Too bad the Democrats didn’t recruit and co-op Negroponte. He’d have been a great asset.
    I see. “Death Squad” Koch. Negroponte as a Democrat? Koch as a Republican is more like it.

  10. Surprised, Helena, that you were unaware of Negroponte’s tawdry Central American record, and how his twisted Weltenachuang might predict his role in Iraq.
    Someone has listed a few good posts. Democracy Now has covered this well, and I’m sure a search of their archives will yield much useful background, but especially this one with Noam Chomsky analyzing the Viceroy’s past and present:
    http://tinyurl.com/4ltvv or
    http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/24/1423212&mode=thread&tid=25
    (They both lead to the same page)
    As for John Koch’s suggestion that the Democracts should embrace Negroponte or others of his ilk…it is beneath contempt.
    Mike

  11. AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL I
    Dear Senator Kerry,
    Can you use the support of a confessed flip-flopper?
    Since I wrote to you in February 2004, offering you my full support because I am sure that your combat experience will make the shrapnel under your scar hurt should you think of sending America’s volunteer soldiers to combat, causing you to think twice– unlike the multi-deferment and reservist combat evaders who have brought so much misery to so many American families with their Iraq War– I have often “flip-flopped” in my support. Most of that flip- flopping was because of the rage of the Viet Vets with whom I started Vietnam Veterans for A Just Peace in order to debate your charge that all Americans in Vietnam combat were war criminals. I flip-flopped back to you when it seemed that you were regretting the harsh words expressed in an embittered youth upon your return from Vietnam. And so I wrote to you, asking you to apologize for your charge against all Viet Vets so that we may all move on to more current issues. However, when you did not respond, instead expressing pride in what you did in Vietnam– though on the Dick Cavett Show in 1972 you said that you committed war crimes– I again flip-flopped away from you.
    Perhaps if we use the words of a famous Republican, John Foster Dulles, “agonizing reappraisal,” it might be clear that flip-flopping is not indecisiveness, but more likely, given the consequences, courage to re-evaluate where one stands, something one is often forced to do in international affairs; indeed, something that was the salient element in our defeat of Communism in the Cold War without a nuclear conflagration.
    Still, I condemn both what you said in the 1970s and your refusal to apologize to your fellow Viet Vets. The other night I saw a documentary about Maj. Kelly, the “dust-off” chopper squadron leader who, long before we had troops in Vietnam, along with his pilots, courageously risked their lives to pick up wounded ARVNs. In 1964, as VC were firing on his chopper, the US adviser on the ground radioed him, “Get the hell out of here, Kelly, the VC have a bead on you.” To this Kelly responded:” I will, after I pick up my patient.” Seconds later, a VC bullet pierced his heart. So, I broke down in tears and pleaded with my 85 years old mother: what can I do, I knew many Kellys over ten years in and out of Vietnam; so how can I be expected to support a man calling them all criminals?
    But that night I saw Cheney, the man who got five deferments without ever finishing school, call you unfit, and all the safe-at-the-home-front heroes like Juliani declare that they know who is best to lead us in war. I certainly could not have supported their sordid arguments. I was in a weeping quandary. I could no longer flip-flop; I just flipped into a moment of utter madness. Despaired I fell onto my bed. And then, God must have led my hand to pick up the TV remote, aim it at the TV, and order a C-Span station. There you were, giving your speech to the American Legion. THAT WAS IT…EUREKA, my flip-flopping days are over!
    Yes, I’m mad as hell at you and disgusted with your smug mug before Congress in 1972. But if I join with my VVJP friends in condemning you now, I may help bring about, finally, justified revenge for a bunch of old fart like me, but then I am betraying my son’s generation. For, were there still a draft, my son would now be in combat now, in Iraq, making far worst mistakes and doing far more terrible things, as a result of bad policies, than our generation ever did in Vietnam.
    None of the old Viet Vets I know are happy with the Iraq War. For them it is also an outrageous deja vu. Once again, a Sec. of Defense usurps presidential power and, while Congress approves one war, cannibalizes it to start another so that he may present Congress with a fait accompli that they must fund.
    I loved George Bush. I thought he was a simple, honest man who knew what it’s like to hit bottom and consequently knew limitless deep compassion. But domestically he was not a compassionate conservative; he was the puppet of the robber barons of finance. In his speech at the Republican Convention he spoke of all the things, “I would do in my new term”– only in the future tense. Sounds revolutionary (though in no details) but he is not the challenger, he is the incumbent. Yet, he spoke of his career as president over the last four years far less than you spoke of your career as senator. Why? Because he gave America away. He robbed the Congressionally approved Afghanistan War to start a fraudulent Iraq War, which is a quagmire with no end in sight; which has become a factory for suicide-killers who live only to revenge the thousands of innocent civilian victims of our firepower. And we used that firepower because Rumsfeld, like McNamara, believed that he could go in thin and win on the cheap. Concequently, so thin devoid of even body armor and proper vehicles, unless you kill almost indiscriminately, you lose far, far more of your own. We are killing Iraqis defensively, but pointlessly. That is the real issue. I need not make the case, which I well could, for you made it so well before the American Legion. You are not alone. A special issue of the New Republic, one time mouthpiece for expeditionary war in the Middle East, entitled: WERE WE WRONG?– is replete with articles by leading one-time Bush hawks describing the criminal negligence that resulted in our Iraq quagmire. I say to you, Senator: one Democrat Senator, who voted for the war, and umpteen ex-hawks, who cheered it on in writing, can’t be all wrong in their postmortem– Bush must have made a hell of a mess in Iraq. We must show our troops that never again will we let stay on the job a Commander-and-Chief who makes such a mess. We must give them confidence by firing him as soon as we can– November 4th!
    I would not blame Bush personally. I still think that deep down he is a good man like his father. I know that the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neocons axis usurped the presidency, much as they practiced doing regularly as unelected and unaccountable “alternative presidents” during the Reagan Administration in exercises for takeover of the nation in case the Soviets kill the President and Vice President in a first strike. But the President did not die in 9/11, thanks to the brave passengers who crashed their hijacked plane to the ground in Pennsylvania. Therefore, the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neocon cabal had no right to usurp the Presidency after 9/11. No matter how dumb-founded President Bush looked when he got the bad news, Cheney had no right to take over as President, the representative of the robber barons of finance that brought us the ENRON, WORLDCOM and others Wall Street scandals.
    I pleaded with President Bush to dump the Cheney- Rumsfeld-neocon cabal. I would be willing to give him another chance if he showed the courage to do that. After all, it was he who appointed Gen. Powell as Sec. of State, the only sane voice in the Cabinet (along with Paul O’Neill). But though Rumsfeld is clearly out next term and the neocons are persona non grata in his administration, Bush never had the courage to get rid of evil Cheney.
    This is what makes Bush re-election intolerable. Combining my medical knowledge prognosticating with actuarial calculations, there is no chance that Cheney would outlive Bush. So, clearly he was not taken as a real vice-president to replace Bush in case he falls. Cheney is there as the ventriloquist, making Bush the dummy. That is what makes his “compassionate conservative” promise a lie. For Cheney may be a conservative of sorts (the me and mine type who sends other to die while his Halliburton rakes in the doe) but he never was, is not now, nor ever will be compassionate. He is the Darth Vader of Republican avarice, always reminding Bush of his debt to “his base. He emptied the treasury bare with tax cuts only for the rich, burdening the middle class out of existence, encouraging outsourcing and lavishing on oil-wells wars. When Paul O’Neill, the Sec. of the Treasury warned Bush of the recklessness of such looting of the Treasury, Cheney proved to be the power behind the throne, and Cheney fired him, not Bush.
    I am a Nixon Republican. I believe that America should be a power but a global power that learns from interacting with its friends, not by bullying them. I believe that wealthy should be encouraged to invest, but the middle class must also be supported and the poor must be helped up onto the American dreamboat, not left to drown in its wake. Nixon, together with Moynahan, had proposed many novel ideas. Then, also being compassionate conservatives, the neocons supported him. But now, like sharks, they smell blood in the water and are out in a feeding frenzy. Looting the treasury to compensate themselves for the burst of their Wall Street bubble is no way for the rich to courageously invest the old-fashioned way, living with the consequences of one’s own choices. They are therefore not brave entrepreneurs but robber baron financiers that suck the life blood out of the American Middle Class through their agent, the evil Dick Cheney. Bush sold his soul to that Devil for campaign cash. He thus forfeited my support. You are the only other choice and not so bad at that, so long as I look forward not back to the Vietnam days.
    Your American Legion speech has brought peace to my soul. My flip-flop days are over. I feel that I can trust you to lead us domestically and abroad, though I am pissed as hell at your unwillingness to apologize for calling your fellow Viet Vets war criminals. Perhaps, God willing, you may be as tall in your heart as in your stature to some day do that. But until then, I cannot stay fixated on the injustices of my time. I must recognize the injustices foisted on my son’s time and his generation.
    Thus, so long as I have breath in me, I must work to leave a real American Dream for my children and grand-children. It is, therefore, for them, not for me (as I’m still fuming) that I promise to walk through fire for you, doing everything I can to help get you elected President of these United States on November 4, 2004. Whatever it costs me in friends, life and assets, I want to devote myself to making your case for you– not, as a life-long Democrat but as a Bush supporter who cannot accept a Bush Administration taken over through stealth-coup by the evil Cheney-Rumsfeld and necon cabal. We are now comrades in yet another war, a political war, to bring America home so it can mend the future of its children rather than destroy the future of the children of others through criminal negligence and blind avarice.
    So, a flip flopper no longer, I Daniel E. Teodoru, am reporting for duty to you, Senator Kerry, on your side of the political divide, in your effort to save America from destroying its own future.
    Daniel E. Teodoru
    AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL II
    I left neurobiology– which I loved all my adult life–and the medical field to study and write about the Vietnam War academically. My obsession was, since 1992, to be fair and complete in my analysis of the Vietnam War– at least as fair and complete as I can be. Every time I went to write something, I would remind myself that, “the dead are reading over your shoulder.” By that I mean that the entire effort is an attempt to do justice to the many Americans, Vietnamese and many, many others who died in that war.
    On 9/11, I was on crutches going to the World Trade Center’s Borders Bookstore to pick up two books that I had ordered and was notified had come in. Suddenly, the first airliner hit and I scrambled out on my crutches, sure that what the voice on the loudspeaker was saying was not true.
    When I got home, I asked my mother who had seen it all on TV, what was happening. Enraged at the event (because ever since then I blame the airlines for making it all possible), from that day forward, as with my beloved neuroscience, I lay ed aside my Vietnam studies and focused on our war on terror. I could get well informed, because the old Vietnam hands in government were now working on 9/11 and they introduced me to many operatives in current Mideast and War on Terror policies. Since that day I have not once read a thing on Vietnam and just once glanced at the abstract of a neuroscience paper.
    Why am I telling this story?
    Firstly, I want to make it clear that I do not consider any veteran more obsessed with Vietnam than me. For all of us it was extremely personal and, especially for those of us involved with it existentially for a decade, a nightmare that will not let us free or to feel peace until we fully understand it. To be sure, to understand Vietnam, one must fully grasp the Cold War, for Vietnam was totally a manifest aspect of that war. Too many Americans and Vietnamese with whom I was very, very close died hopelessly in that war for me to simply be polemical. Furthermore, the horrors of events in which I partook make it utterly mandatory for me that I understand why things had to be as they were.
    IT IS ALSO INEVITABLE, THEREFORE, THAT I AM– AS I ALWAYS WAS– AS OBSESSED WITH JOHN KERRY’S BETRAYAL OF OUR NATION’S VIETNAM WAR AS IS JOHN O’NEILL. IN FACT, VIETNAM VETERANS FOR A JUST PEACE (VVJP) WAS SOMETHING O’NEILL WALKED INTO, NOT CREATED, AS HE DID THE SWIFT BOATS VETERANS FOR TRUTH. WHEN NIXON BETRAYED VVJP AND CAUSED IT TO COLLAPSE WITH COLSON’S LIE THAT HE HAD CREATED VVJP, ALL THE VIET VETS LEADING VVJP WERE MARKED “NIXON STOOGES.” BECAUSE NONE WERE IN ANY WAY PROFESSIONALLY ASSOCIATED WITH VVJP, AND IT WAS TOTALLY A DEDICATION OF THE HEART FOR ALL INVOLVED, THE NIXON BETRAYAL WAS A PERSONAL PAIN ALL SUFFERED HELPLESSLY– INCLUDING, I AM TOLD JOHN O’NEILL. NOW, I, LIKE MANY OF THE OTHERS, TOOK O’NEILL AT HIS WORD, AND TO THIS DAY DEFENDED HIM AGAINST DEMOCRATIC PARTY CHARGES THAT HE IS NOW AN AGENT OF BUSH AS HE WAS AN AGENT OF NIXON. PERSONALLY, I DEFENDED HIM, POINTING OUT THAT THE ONLY REASON HE GOT TO THE WHITE HOUSE’S ATTENTION IS BECAUSE THE LEADERS OF VVJP CHOSE HIM TO FACE-OFF WITH KERRY, SINCE THEY HAD BEEN IN THE SAME UNIT, IN THE SAME PLACE, ONE AFTER THE OTHER. THEREFORE, WHEN O’NEILL WAS LATER CO-OPTED BY THE WHITE HOUSE, WE EITHER COULD ASK WHY HE DOESN’T DENOUNCE COLSON’S LIE FROM INSIDE, IN LOYALTY TO HIS GROUP, OR, WE COULD HAVE SAID THAT, WHATEVER JOHN IS DOING, IT IS FOR THE BEST AND IN NO WAY REFLECTS ON HIM OPPORTUNISTICALLY. WE ALL CHOSE TO DO THE LATTER.
    Now I bought and read O’Neill’s book UNFIT TO COMMAND. And I must say that if the tables were turned, not only could Kerry write a similar book about O’Neill being an opportunist and unfit to command, based on his later relationship with Nixon, but then O’Neill could retort back, much as the Democrats retorted for Kerry. It is all like some kind of depressing macabre insider talk. Too much is: he said, she said, and too much in unintended smear of others by implication, others who are in no way involved with the relationship between these two Swifties and Kerry’s medals.
    Yes, one could easily ONCE AGAIN get ten thousands of Viet Vets to denounce what Kerry had said back then, thirty years ago. And yes, personally I am still in deep pain and rage over that. So I full understand and commensurate with the Swifties’ feelings.
    BUT, the real issue now is not whether we should stop re-living and trying to understand the Vietnam War, but whether we can afford to focus on the Vietnam War in the middle of the Iraq War. In none of the Swifties material have I ever seen the word “Iraq” once. So why are they attacking Kerry? Is it because they deem him unfit to command in Iraq, or STILL, just unfit to command in Vietnam?
    The two questions are mutually exclusive because the human brain cannot in the 60 days left before the election, completely process enough data to competently answer both questions:(1) WAS KERRY FIT TO COMMAND IN VIETNAM? and (2) IS KERRY BETTER FIT TO COMMAND IN THE WAR IN TERROR AND NOW IN IRAQ THAN BUSH?
    If you answer one, there’s not enough time to properly answer the other. Therefore, in view of the fact that the only two choices available to us voters this November will be Bush and Kerry, we must focus on: which of them is most competent to command for the next four years our war in Iraq and our war on terror?
    For the Swifties, the MAIN focus is on the four months of Kerry’s Vietnam experience, arguing through their book and ad– not that we condemn Kerry’s charge on his return that our soldiers in Vietnam were war criminals– but that we should denigrate his medals. Also, the Swifties, instead of arguing whether Bush (who managed to evade the very Vietnam service that Kerry volunteered for) is the more qualified to lead us in the present war in Iraq and the war on terror, they distract us voters away from the life and death question we now face, drawing us instead, into a question so far behind us that it can only remain an obsession of victims and dilettantes.
    I respect the Viet Vets’ obsession with Vietnam– after all, I totally share it. But to make that the basis on which Bush gets re-elected is utterly irresponsible.
    I DID NOT COME EASILY BY THIS POSITION. IT IS MY SECOND “AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL,” RIGHT AFTER MY DECISION TO SUPPORT JOHN KERRY AS FAR BETTER THAN BUSH AT SAVING US FROM THE ***PRESENT***– NOT FROM THE LONG, LONG PASSED VIETNAM WAR– IRAQ QUAGMIRE AND TO RESET OUR COURSE IN THE WAR ON TERROR.
    BUT, JUST AS I ABANDONED MY VIETNAM STUDIES TO FOCUS ON THE WAR ON TERROR, I FEEL I MUST ASK O’NEILL AND THE SWIFTIES TO EITHER ALTER THEIR ADS TO MAKE THE CASE WHY KERRY IS NOT FIT TO COMMAND RELEVANT TO IRAQ OR ELSE FACE UP TO THE FACT THAT THEIR VIETNAM THEME IS MERE OBFUSCATION OF THE REAL ISSUES BEFORE THE VOTING PUBLIC.
    In fact, if one chooses not to give O’Neill the benefit of the doubt about his post-VVJP days with the Nixon White House, one could– with equal legitimacy– attack him for opportunistically using the Vietnam War for his advantage as now, using the Vietnam War to muddle the Iraq War, also for his advantage.
    BUT WHAT BENEFIT IS THERE IN ASSUMING ALWAYS THAT THOSE WHO ARE ACTIVE ARE OPPORTUNISTS?
    NONE.
    IT ONLY SERVES TO OBFUSCATE THE ISSUES AND DE-ROUTE THE KIND OF CAREFUL DELIBERATION THE FOUNDING FATHERS SOUGHT FROM ALL VOTING CITIZENS. SO WHY ASSUME “OPPORTUNISM” ON ANYONE’S PART? LET’S LAY THAT AWAY FOR LATER, WHEN WE CAN FACE-OFF VVAW AND VVJP IN DEBATE BEFORE THE COURT OF AMERICAN HISTORY.
    RIGHT NOW, WHY DON’T THE SWIFTIES JUST ARGUE THAT KERRY IS LESS FIT TO COMMAND IN THE WAR ON TERROR THAN GEORGE BUSH?
    LET THEIR ADS MAKE THAT CASE AND LET THEM DEMAND DEBATE WITH ANYONE WHO SPEAKS FOR KERRY OR SUPPORTS HIM. THEN– AND ONLY THEN– WILL THEY BE LEGITIMATE PARTICIPANTS IN THIS ELECTION CAMPAIGN.
    The issue is not that their charges against Kerry are not legitimate, but whether these charges are MORE legitimate than the question of which would best lead us through the war on terror, Bush or Kerry?
    IF JOHN O’NEILL WANTS TO DEBATE WHETHER KERRY OR BUSH IS MORE FIT TO LEAD US THROUGH THE WAR ON TERROR, GIVEN THE CURRENT RECORD OF WHAT BOTH DID AND SAID, I WOULD BE VERY HAPPY TO DEBATE HIM, IN FACT I WOULD BE HONORED. FOR I ASSUME THAT, LIKE ME, HE MUST HAVE LAYED ASIDE THE VIETNAM WAR IN A TOTAL EFFORT THE UNDERSTAND THE ***PRESENT*** WAR BEFORE US.
    ALL THE RATHER EXPENSIVE PAGES OF O’NEILL’S BOOK ARE WORTHLESS AND TOTALLY IRRELEVANT, UNLESS HE IS IN A POSITION TO ARGUE THAT GEORGE W. BUSH IS THE BETTER MAN TO SERVE AS COMMANDER AND CHIEF, LEADING US IN THE WAR ON TERROR. UNLESS HE CAN ARGUE THIS CASE, ALL HIS ARGUMENTS ABOUT HOW KERRY EARNED HIS MEDALS THIRTY YEARS AGO ARE NOTHING MORE THAN OBFUSCATIONS AND A MALICIOUS ATTACK AGAINST KERRY THAT MUDDLES THE REAL ISSUE. IT ONLY REMINDS ME OF THE ATTACK ON JUDGE THOMAS AT HIS CONFIRMATION HEARINGS….OUTRAGE OVER THE ALLEGED CRIMES AND CHARACTER OF ANOTHER, AS A RULE, LOSE THEIR STEAM AFTER THIRTY YEARS OF SILENCE– UNLESS YOU CAN MAKE THEM RELEVANT TO TODAY. AND, AS FOR TODAY, I TRULY BELIEVE THAT THIS S.O.B. JOHN KERRY, WHO TO THIS DAY SO ENRAGES ME AS I REMEMBER THE TERRIBLE LIES HE SAID IN 1971, WOULD BE THE BEST OF THE TWO CANDIDATES AVAILABLE TO SERVE US AS COMMANDER AND CHIEF THROUGH THE WAR ON TERROR.
    NO, I COULD NEVER DEBATE AGAINST O’NEILL’S OR THE SWIFTIES’ ANGER AT KERRY FOR HIS 1971 TESTIMONY ON VIETNAM BEFORE CONGRESS BECAUSE I FULLY SHARE THAT RAGE. BUT I COULD NEVER BELIEVE THAT GEORGE BUSH WOULD MAKE A GOOD COMMANDER AND CHIEF TO LEAD US THROUGH THE WAR ON TERROR OVER THE NEXT FOUR YEARS BECAUSE, JUST AS O’NEILL CLAIMS TO HAVE SEARED IN HIS MEMORY HOW KERRY GOT HIS MEDALS IN VIETNAM, I HAVE SEARED IN MY MEMORY HOW BUSH GOT US INTO IRAQ AND FAILED IN THE WAR ON TERROR.
    NOW, JOHN O’NEIL, WHICH IS MORE RELEVANT TO THIS ELECTION AND WHY?
    That is where I stand, obliged to be as honest and as logical and as empirical as reality allows. I cannot let old emotions rule my mind because to do so, is to say to the generation that suffers so much grief today that remembering the grief of our youth is more important than stopping the grief of your.
    Daniel E. Teodoru
    AGONIZING REAPPRAISAL III
    In the Walt Disney cartoon film, “Pinnoccio,” bad boys
    are taken to a town where they are allowed to wreck
    everything, fully expressing their disinhibited bad
    side. But as they do, slowly, they turn into asses
    (here, I can’t say donkeys for political reasons).
    Then, the bad man who runs the whole kidnap operation
    sold these asses on the free market of glue factories.
    Please keep that image in your mind as you reconstruct
    Mr. Bush’s life into his last term as president.
    George had realized long ago that he was a
    disappoitment to his “Poppy,” because poppy told him
    so– over and over again. So George was going to make
    his Poppy proud, not by changing, but by proving how
    much a bad boy could get away with.
    So far, George hasn’t had much success, for it was
    Poppy who had to repeatedly intervene with influence
    peddling to save George from the concequences of his
    behavior and from the real world everyone else must
    face. But along came the evil merchant, “Ass-salesman,
    Richard Cheney, who told George: I’ll make you
    President of the USA so that you can make your dad
    proud, and at the same time you’ll be able to be as
    bad a boy as you want to be, wrecking everything in my
    “bad boys’ town,” Washington DC.
    Of course, Dick was really hoping to get George to be
    so bad as to turn himself into an ass, whom Dick could
    then sell out to the robber barons and financiers who
    are investing in the George presidency that Dick runs;
    they hope to recoup all their dumb investmentent
    losses in the 1990s Wall Street bubble, turning poor
    George the ass into glue . You all saw what the few
    who stole early and often could do in the ENRON and
    WORLDCOM cases, amongst others. But you ain’t seen
    nothing yet. There’s this idea that begins with
    letting three million illegal workers in through
    Arizona– who can’t challenge wages or hours– while
    outsourcing to cheap Third World wages whatever
    requires high-tech education. Then, cheaply made
    things can be sold cheaply to a gradually
    impoverishing America. By the time the nation
    collapses, these robber barons are invested elsewhere
    as “global citizens.”
    Of course too, there has got to be an army remade by
    the Defense Dept…quick and high tech, which, in the
    name of “democratization,” can kick the crap out of
    any nation into which the robber barrons confront
    barriers.
    As for “resonable” individuals, our State Dept. can
    always greace their palm– after they get rid of that
    uppedy Secretary of State!
    This is Cheney’s America. But Cheney is not a fighter.
    He, afterall, has a bad ticker with an ejection
    fraction of 38%. So he pushes George up front. But bit
    by bit, as George comes to realize that thanks to Dick
    he can be both a bad boy and President at the same
    time, he is making more and more of an ass of himself.
    In the next four years, George will not go down in
    history as a great president, instead he will go to
    the glue factory, sold as a spent ass!
    But what about the America that hundreds of millions
    of Americans work so hard to build and a prescious
    million voluntarily fight to protect?
    Ah, that the the beauty of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neocon
    run town of bad boys, Washington DC. No matter how
    much George and his bad boys chums wreck, old bad boy
    Karl Rove and bad girl Karen Hughes will go on making
    asses of themselves covering up for George. George,
    therefore, invariably comes to think that indeed, YOU
    CAN GET AWAY WITH BEING A BAD BOY HAVING FUN WRECKING
    WASHINGTON DC AND BE PRESIDENT AT THE SAME TIME– NOT
    REALIZIN WHAT AN ASS HE IS MAKING OF HIMSELF– BECAUSE
    BEING A BAD BOY IS SOMETHING YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH AS
    PRESIDENT, THANKS TO MR. DICK– SO LONG AS YOU LET HIM
    BE VICE PRESIDENT AND RUN BAD BOYS’ TOWN!
    Now, along comes John Kerry and he is made to face the
    flip-flops of his own judgemental turning over and
    over again of issues. Karl and Karen are putting the
    words into George’s mouth: I’M DECISIVE, THIS
    FLIP-FLOPPER IS INDECISIVE….AND IT IS A DECISIVE BAD
    BOY LIKE ME THAT YOU NEED TO LEAD YOU IN THE WAR ON
    TERRORISM. But George is “decisive” only about trying
    to be a bad boy and get away with it as president.
    George wasn’t always so decisive. Do you all remember
    how when George used to make his speeches a few moths
    ago he had beeds of sweat on his brow and would puff
    his cheeks and blow out when he finished because he
    was really scared that no one would believe him–
    realizing instead, as former Sec. of Treasury O’Neill
    told us– that he is nothing but an irresponsible bad
    boy?
    I am told that he even had to take anxiolytics and
    anti-depressants because in the real world where his
    Poppy lives you couldn’t get away with such crap. But
    soon Karl and Karen convinced him that the evil ass
    merchant, Mr. Dick, was right: if you stick to Mr.
    Dick, you’re gonna do just fine.
    NOW GEORGE BELLOWS OUT AT YOU WITH A GIGGLE! He
    believes that he has gotten away with it; and
    therefore, he concludes, there’s no limit to what he
    can get away with.
    WHY IS THIS SO?
    It is so because the Democrat Party is divided between
    those obsessed with 2004 and those obsessed with 2008.
    These two groups are working against eachother. I’ll
    spare you the gory details. But, I do want to tell you
    what all this means. It means that unless each and
    every one of us takes this election into each and
    everyone of our hands as if it were a presonal war
    against the evil ass-merchant, Mr. Dick and George,
    the developing ass, in order to say: STOP, we can’t
    stop you from becoming an ass, George, but we can stop
    you from thinking that you can get away with it by
    giving America to Mr. Dick and his evil robber barons.
    Sure, sure, you can write letters to the editor and
    put Kerry-Edwards bumper stickers on your fenders. BUT
    THAT WILL NEVER BE ENOUGH!
    Mr. John Zogby, America’s premier polster, told me
    that IF WE GET AMERICA’S YOUTH TO VOTE, KERRY WILL
    WIN!
    And that’s as it should be. Afterall, by the time
    George turns into an ass completely and the evil
    ass-merchant Mr. Dick delivers the coup de grace to
    the last of America’s wealth, stealing it for his
    masters, the robber barons, many of us oldies will be
    gone. The Americans who will suffer from a devastated
    America ARE THE YOUNG VOTERS.
    So, do you fear evil Mr. Dick so much… do you refuse
    to let him turn all our youths from bad boys into
    asses… then, go and tell some young person why he or
    she should not be fooled by evil Mr. Dick’s town for
    bad boys, Washington DC, and that they must clean out
    our nation’s capital with their vote now. Each vote
    for John Kerry is one more sweep of the broom. Enough
    votes to elect Kerry will tell George that you can’t
    get away with being a bad boy and president at the
    same time. It’s time to clean the streets of
    Washington DC of all the poop from all the asses the
    evil ass-merchant Mr. Dick has created from bad boys
    and is now dragging to sell to the glue factory.
    Go to every young person in your neighborhood and say:
    JOHN KERRY AND JOHN EDWARDS COULDN’T COME TO YOUR
    HOUSE TODAY, SO I’M GOING TO TELL YOU WHY YOU SHOULD
    GO AND VOTE FOR THEM INSTEAD– BEFORE EVIL MR. DICK
    AND GEORGE THE ASS TURNS ALL YOU SWEET PINOCCIOS INTO
    ASSES TOO…Then, tell them what Kerry and Edwards
    can’t tell them because two men can’t be everywhere at
    once. Do it for the boys and girls in Iraq and
    Afghanistan; do it for the victims of 9/11; do it for
    the millions who toiled and other millions who
    sacrificed their lives to make America great. Don’t
    let it be known after Nov. 4th that America is the one
    place where you can be a bad boy (while turning
    totally into an ass) and think you can get away with
    it– ALL THE WAY TO THE PRESIDENCY, so long as you
    follow evil Mr. Dick.
    When he first became president, George would brag–
    even at the Yale Commencements– that he’s proof that
    a mediocre “C” student can become president. If now
    you let him be re-elected, then you can’t say a word
    when at the next Yale Commencement he is sure to brag
    that he’s proof that a bad boy can be president all
    the while turning into an ass.
    SAVE AMERICA BY SAVING A YOUTH FROM APATHY…GET
    HIM/HER TO VOTE!!!
    Daniel E. Teodoru

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