Nov. 1, 2006
On The Road To Saigon
Nation: Bush, Emulating LBJ, Advances Into Drawn Out Struggle
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Play CBS Video Video Bush: We're On The Right Track U.S. military officials announced the death of five more American soldiers today, bringing October's total to 96. But Bill Plante reports that President Bush says the war is being won.
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Video Bush 'Not Satisfied' On Iraq President Bush repeated his announcement that the Iraqi government had agreed to set a timetable for political progress, but Iraq's prime minister criticized the plan. Jim Axelrod reports.
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President Bush said that mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq are a "serious concern," but again refused to set a timetable for pulling out American troops during a news conference in the White House East Room, Wed., Oct. 25, 2006. (CBS)
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Interactive Battle For Iraq The government, the insurgency, key players, background and photos.
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Interactive The Fall of Saigon Revisit the final chapter of America's struggle in a decade-long war through pictures, maps, video and stories.
Every time I hear President Bush railing against those who would "cut and run" in Iraq instead of pursuing "victory," as he does almost daily, I think back to similar claims being made for the Vietnam debacle when I reported from Saigon in the mid-'60s. Back then, the US troop presence was lower and casualties fewer than now in Iraq, but the carnage, on all sides, would escalate for the next decade, as we waited miserably for the corner to be turned.
Then, as now, calls for setting a timetable for an orderly withdrawal were rejected as emboldening our enemy to attack America. Instead of a dignified withdrawal, we plunged ever deeper into the quagmire, leaving 59,000 US troops and 3.4 million Indochinese dead as tribute to our stupidity. Finally, there was nothing to do but "cut and run" in the most ignominious fashion. With our US personnel being lifted by helicopter from roofs near our embassy, it seemed like a low point for US influence, and there were dire predictions of communism's global dominance — just as there is today for the "Islamo-fascist" bogeyman the president has seized upon.
Those predictions, however, proved dead wrong. Communism did not advance as a worldwide force after our defeat in Vietnam. On the contrary, a victorious communist-run Vietnam soon went to war with the China-backed communists of Cambodia — overthrowing Pol Pot's evil Khmer Rouge — and with communist China itself, in a bloody border war.
Today communist Vietnam is still battling communist China — but now it is for shelf space in Wal-Mart and Costco. The United States, meanwhile, spending itself silly under the haplessly irresponsible President Bush, is now dependent on China both to carry its debt and contain communist North Korea's nuclear threat.
So why accept the president's shrill insistence that a US withdrawal from Iraq would be a disaster? Surely our departure would compel Iraq's neighbors in Iran, Syria and Jordan to get serious about quelling the civil war that they have abetted and which, in the absence of the US occupation, would threaten to breach Iraq's borders. Why not assume, as turned out to be the case with Vietnam, that the Iraqis are best qualified to make their own history?
The astounding arrogance that underwrites Bush's smug determination to keep killing and maiming tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of people is no different than that of Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Both knew the war was a failure but determined to "stay the course" for a decade out of a misguided belief in protecting an image of American infallibility that was paired with shameful political motives.
Now, as in Vietnam, our arrogance has created disaster in Iraq. Our soldiers continue to kill and die, at enormous cost to the US taxpayers and in international influence and moral standing, but the cause is already lost, doomed by the ignorance, lies and bad faith that launched it.
Astonishingly, considering our history and the stakes, our leaders show not the slightest interest in understanding the fierce nationalism and deep religious divisions that have marked the Mideast since long before the United States existed as a nation. And thus we have repeated the decisive folly of Vietnam, where our "experts" ignored a thousand-year history of Chinese occupation in assuming that the fierce nationalist Ho Chi Minh was a puppet of masters in Red Beijing.
This time, we are led by a false warrior who insists on playing the simpleton, ignoring his prestigious education at Andover and Yale in favor of what he presumes are the prejudices of Middle America. Or is this giving Bush, the son of a president, too much credit? After all, we know from the various insider memoirs that Bush was unaware that Islam is roughly divided into two rival sects, Sunni and Shiite, while just last week he bizarrely announced that our Iraq policy had never been "stay the course — as if he was unaware of the invention of video-recording equipment that had captured him saying just that countless times.
Whatever you call it, his approach is a sham and a disaster. It is long past time to let pragmatic realpolitik find a patchwork solution that the region and Iraqis can accept, peacefully. That is the expected advice from Bush family consigliere and troubleshooter James Baker and his Iraq Study Group, which is to report soon after the election. Truly frightening on this Day of the Dead, though, is that Bush probably won't listen to reason, unless the voters first soundly repudiate him in next week's election.
By Robert Scheer
Reprinted with permission from The Nation.
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All this whining by the wingers about "liberal" media is a result of the Kool-Aid binges they have been indulging in.
VOTE to clean house!
The %u201CCenter for Media and Public Affairs%u201D did an accounting of the network newscasts from September 5 thru October 22 and found an overwhelming liberal bias.
On the "Big Three%u201D" network newscasts, the audit showed a clear jihad against the Republican Party. Only 12 percent of election stories that aired on NBC, ABC, or CBS could be regarded as remotely "favorable" to Republicans.
"Democrats basked in glory." The study showed that 77 percent of news accounts in the six-week period offered favorable evaluations of Democratic candidates and lawmakers.
77% to 12% isn%u2019t what most Americans would say was %u201Cfair-n-balanced%u201D. Does anyone one out there think that any of the networks engaged in this propaganda will carrying this story?............. sad and shameful that Americans can%u2019t trust the news anymore%u2026%u2026%u2026%u2026..
Looks like we need %u201Caffirmative action%u201D programs at CBS, NBC, and ABC %u2026%u2026%u2026.. just for starters%u2026
some how I dont think you would fight for very much...
Dude you have to have more that that you are so jacked in the head
WT^
The only "conspiracy theory" is the official story we've been told. "When money talks, the truth is silent."-- Russian proverb.
FOLLOW THE MONEY.
On the other hand, the Republicans aren't any solution either. Do you get the impression that Government transcends Parties and the people are mere pawns to staff imperialist wars? Have we finally become the willing chattels of the elites? I think so.
- by jpesot November 1, 2006 8:31 PM EST
- I think this captures the situation as well as anyone could. Nothing else needs to be said.
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