James Bradley is the only one of the flag-raisers to make it back to the States and have a normal life. None of the others did--I only specifically remember the Pima indian, who succumbed to alcoholism within 10 years.
Marines were pinned on the landing beach by mortar and small field artillery fire from Mount Suribachi, along with machine gun and rifle fire from pillboxes just beyond the beach.
There's color film of the second wave of boats finally making it up the beach. The men are crippled by the clinging sand. Dead and dismembered bodies are everywhere as the marines frantically try to dig foxholes with heavy navy artillery screaming overhead.
Hundreds of men cracked on that beach and were useless within 2 hours. 2648 were finally listed as "combat fatigue," meaning their minds were gone.
How I wish I hade never seen that footage. I can't imagine what that beach was like, and what those men went through makes my heart ache.
This is why Helen Thomas calls Bush the worst President ever. Bush wanted war with Iraq. He didn't know or didn't care what he'd do to our young men by lying the country into war.
War is failure. Utter, complete failure. We had many more options for sacrificing our men and women in Iraq, but the President thought is was better to lie to us instead.
For the life of I cannot understand how "patriotic" Republicans still support--even like--Bush. The evil little shit killed our soldiers for lies! How is it possible he still has his job, let alone all this admiration?
I don't know. Words like "denial" and "groupthink" simply don't work. It's incredibly discouraging and leaves me pretty down some days. If 40% of voters are willing to accept this then they'd accept anything--I mean anything. Martial law, suspension of elections, abandonement of the Bill of Rights--the Republicans would happily do them all to keep Bush is power.
Sure they would. They accept killing of our men for lies while earing those incredibly assinine flag lapel pins. They've already stolen an election and wer're at war for pure lies. All this hand-wringing about the future fate of the country may be totally in vain--it's quite possible that with the 2 factors above that the country as already gone, we're offcially not a democracy anymore, and we're at the start of a long slide onto oblivion. We just can't see it as it happens.
Posted by paradox at December 1, 2003 05:47 AMPessimist- greed should be a war crime in this case. Point taken.
Paradox- I (sadly) agree with you. I think our experiment in democracy ended in November 2000.
We are in desparate and interesting times.
Can we gain it back? I don't know. I vacilate one day to the next. Most days I am discouraged and not hopeful. I gain hope (some measure at least) knowing that there are people like you and others who know what they know and speak the truth and that I am not alone. And I thank you for that.
I had a visit with a relative who is a staunch GOP'er over the holiday. I asked where the WMD was, the reason we went to war. The relative answered that it was a mistake in judgement, "just like the one Clinton made when he lied about having sex". I pointed out the 400 + American lives lost because of this recent "mistake in judgement", but I was speaking to uninterested ears. I was so sad. How did we get like this? How did this hate get so deep?
Posted by T2 at December 1, 2003 07:22 AMSome words from Abraham Lincoln that he DID say: "That we remain dedicated to that Great Task: that a gov't of, by, and for the people shall not perish from the earth."
Also: That we should meet "with malice towards none and charity for all."
And Benjamin Franklin: God helps those who help themselves.
And Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.: Sometimes, just by being there, you're making a point.
...despair is the search for hope.
--ventura county, ca
This may be the single best post I've ever read anywhere. Pessimist, you have done a tremendous public service and demonstrated why the art of blogging may yet save democracy. May God bless America and patriots like you.
Posted by Ed Thibodeau at December 1, 2003 11:26 AM"In cases like this, greed should be a war crime."
Cause, you know, we're making so much money off of Iraq, and stuff. The war on terrorism is, like, a veritable cash cow.
Posted by Apoxy at December 1, 2003 11:33 AMApoxy, read the news before you show up here.
Halliburton and Bechtel got multi-billion contracts to rebuild Iraq in a closed process.
Cheney used to be the CEO of Halliburton and still gets paid by them. Almost all of those idiots in Bush's cabinet were from the oil industry--there's billions to be made with complete control of Iraqi oil fields.
Iraq is a cash cow--for Cheney and Halliburton. What, you never knew?
Posted by paradox at December 1, 2003 12:37 PMWhen I read posts like this I wish I believed in Hell, so I would know that Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, et al would suffer some punishment approximating their crimes.
Posted by caduceus at December 1, 2003 01:38 PMSteve, I beleive their is a pox y on your house...
Posted by John B. at December 1, 2003 01:59 PMFantastic post, and many of the comments as well.
Thanks to all.
We can take back our democracy. It takes one step at a time.
It takes risks made out of love.
from love.
love for the heros.
love for true democracy
love for those less fortunate
today, this writing is a step toward peace and democracy. I've read it. And its words resound within me.
I would dearly love to see that war crimes trial for Mr. Bush. What will it take to get there? I think it is closer than some believe.
Posted by Sealsinger at December 1, 2003 05:39 PMI'd like to point out that the USA is unlikely to make money off of Iraq. However, Halliburton is paid a certain percentage of money above its expenses (and Betchtel too, I believe).
In other words, they are guaranteed to make money, whether or not the oil fields of Iraq ever make any money for anyone else.
Posted by M. at December 1, 2003 07:56 PMThis is one of the best posts I have read, and Paradox, thank you very much for your comment. War is hell. I do not understand what is 'noble' is killing others, in seeing your friends being injured, and killed.
Posted by Carole at December 1, 2003 07:57 PMM. points out, with what I see as a fair amount of contempt, that the government contractors in Iraq are the only ones guaranteed to make money off their work there. Why, again, is this bad? Why would a contractor ever come in to work if their employer told them "Well, you're gonna have to take a loss on this one. Hope that's okay!" Perhaps I read the tone of the comment wrong, but that strikes me as, well, not very bright.
And paradox, we "patriotic" (God how I hate scare quotes) Republicans support Bush because we believe that what we're doing in Iraq is right. It is, in fact, one of the greatest things this country has ever undertaken. History will remember our current actions as one of the greatest blows against tyranny and oppression to date, and those who died in its execution will be hailed as heroes, just as they are now by any of us with a shred of decency.
Posted by Apoxy at December 2, 2003 07:30 AMApoxy,
Only carrion grow fat off war.
How many Iraqi civilians' lives are you willing to spend in the effort to "impose" democracy (an oxymoron if ever there was one)? Asked another way, how many 9-11's are you willing to have committed in your name in Iraq? What kind of god do you believe in that permits you to employ such a calculus, when Iraq and Saddam had NO connection to 9-11? How does enraging new generations of Islamic peoples improve our security? Why do you not support at least a fraction of the investigatorial effort into the machinations of the Bush administration (both pre- and post- 9/11), when many thousands of deaths are at issue, as you no doubt supported into Whitewater/travelgate/filegate? Why do you support an administration that is erecting unprecented walls of secrecy around its doings, while it makes a mockery of individual constitutional protections? Where are all the WMD's that the administration "knew" were there, which served as the justification for the US turning into an international vigilante? Where's Osama? Where's the budget surplus? As recently as the Gingrich 90's, Republicans thought of the struggle against budget deficits as a moral imperative.
No points earned for removing "tyranny and oppression" that the US helped establish and maintain, and that is only an after-the-fact justification offered when the WMDs didn't pan out.
Bush is an inarticulate, willfully ignorant, cowardly poster-child for the evils of nepotism. (Great to see Neil Bush upholding the sanctity of marriage, too. Gee, if only he'd had a portable 10 Commandments monument - can't expect people to carry it around in their hearts, after all.)
I'll grant your possession of a shred of decency. Shame you won't do the same, but that's SOP for Republicans these days. Just ask Max Cleland.
Posted by OkieByAccident at December 2, 2003 09:55 AMIt's bad, Apoxy, because a percentage of that money will go into the GOP's coffers to fund Bush's campaign for 2004.
Enron and other well-connected energy companies funneled the ill-gotten gains they looted from California energy consumers into Bush's first presidential campaign. You can see how terribly they've been punished for doing so.
Replace "Enron" with Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. and "California energy consumers" with the US Treasury and it's the same scam.
Is it the only reason for invading Iraq? Probably not. But don't be a child and think that it didn't factor into the decision to go to war. I gave Bush the benefit of the doubt for a couple of years. No more. I'll choose to believe the worst of him and his motives until I see some evidence of improvement. He is bad for America.
I've seen the US government pull too much crap to be swayed by hollow appeals to kill for "freedom," and given Bush's incompetence and conniving, I don't expect him to pull off grandiose schemes of remaking the middle east.
Posted by citizen Able at December 2, 2003 10:05 AMOkie, I wish I had time to write down all the various and sundry refutations to your laundry list of dogmatic cliches, but I'm sure you've seen them all before and can easily shunt them aside with equivocation and rhetorical slieght of hand, so I'm not going to bother.
I would, however, like to point out that you're making some pretty big assumptions about me based on your own image of the stereotypical right-winger. In fact, I didn't care one iota about Whitewater or any of that other crap that Clinton did. I do care that be blatantly lied to the American people, under oath, but I really only bash Clinton when it helps to reveal the hypocracy of Bush bashers.
Also, I fully support close accounting scrutiny of every major government contracting information. In fact, the GOA is conducting an ongoing investigation into the Iraq activites of Haliburton and other contractors just to make sure they're on the up-and-up.
By the way, I suggest reading this article for more information on why Haliburton got the contract to work in Iraq. The gist of it is this: The Pentagon sometimes needs contractual logistical help from civilian companies. However, battlefield situations sometimes call for rapid deployment of logisical support, so there is not always time for competitive bidding for every contract. (The example given is the fear that the Iraqi military would set fire to its oil wells as it did in Kuwait. Imagine if that had happened and the Pentagon had to go through the whole process of finding the lowest bidder before actually letting someone in to put out the fires!) To deal with this problem, the Pentagon awards a kind of super-contract, good for a number of years (around 5 as far as I can tell,) to companies via a competitive process. Haliburton won the contract in 2001, as well as in previous years under Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. They were, in fact, somewhat favored by the Clinton administration; they lost their super-contract bid in 1997, but were given special rights to continue their work in Kosovo, because they were doing a good job and knew the situation better than would a new contractor.
Whether or not the charges that they are overcharging the government for fuel shipments to Iraq is, as far as I can tell, still being evaluated. The accusations may very well turn out to be true, in which case Haliburton should be fined, penalized, and generally made to pay back the damages. However, in light of the fact that Haliburton has been awarded large government contracts under all of the past several administrations, the argument that they're in Iraq simply because they have friends high up in the administration becomes very flimsy.
I'm no friend of big, corrupt businesses. I'm just as outraged about Enron and Worldcom as anybody else. Hell, I got interviewed by Enron in college; they could've screwed me over bigtime. (I got screwed over bigtime by a different company, but at least I didn't have to move all the way to Houston for it.) However, I am no anti-globo reactionary, either. I believe that business is the backbone of our country, and the most successful ones are not guilty of corruption by default. They do deserve close scrutiny to be sure they don't abuse their power, but until they do, you shouldn't just automatically revile them.
Posted by Apoxy at December 2, 2003 01:11 PMApoxy,
Appreciate the response. I'm glad to know you are not a lockstep Republican. Such calcification on both sides is part of the problem. Can you understand that your "shred of decency" comment was not exactly an invitation to civil debate? In addition, I would say that we on the left do consider the troops to be heroic - it is the policy that sent them there that is our target.
I'm sorry that you consider concern for human life to be a cliche. I foresee no benefit gained from invading Iraq that justifies such cost.
Are you satisfied that Bush pursued Osama with due diligence, especially in light of his "dead or alive" bluster? I am not. Are you content with the level of attention paid to Afghanistan to prevent it from becoming a fundamentalist stronghold once again? I am not. You consider such questions to be "dogmatic"? I do not.
Most of the equivocation I see these days is performed by Iraq war supporters as the claims made beforehand turn up empty, one by one.
Is it "sleight of hand" to observe the hypocrisy of Republicans meekly swallowing record deficits?
Clinton was an embarrassment to me. If he'd kept his pants zipped, Gore would have won in a landslide. I'm uninterested in hearing about his "lie" concerning a private matter until such time as Congress plows $70M or so into a no-holds-barred investigation of Bush and he comes out squeaky-clean. As it is, the 9-11 investigation has received a scant percentage of that level of financial support. If, as you say, you are not an ideologue, and given the care with which you wrote your response, how can you look at and listen to Bush and think he is competent to be president (much less CINC)? Without his name, he would dwell in total obscurity. He's noblesse without the oblige. Clinton was at least a self-made moral conundrum.
The argument about Halliburton and timing only holds water if the Iraq war was sudden. We know it was planned far in advance. I grant their expertise, but they are not the only company with such expertise. These ID/IQ contracts are a necessity for the reasons you describe, but they are normally accompanied by sufficient administrative oversight (scope of work, purchasing, subcontracts) to minimize abuses. And one cannot deny that numerous firms with close ties to key Administration figures, and heavy campaign donors to boot, are doing awfully well. I can imagine the howls from the rightwing media if Hillary had had such close ties to a company who prospered from Clinton's intervention in Bosnia or Kosovo. Hell, they got pilloried for LOSING money.
I know Republicans didn't invent hypocrisy - but they are busy perfecting it.
I guess if Max Cleland had not been a secret Saddam/Osama lover, he'd have sacrificed that fourth limb. Don't mean to dwell on this, but IMO this is the single slimiest thing the Republicans did.
P.S. Iraq Contracts
From Business Week (no link - subscription required)
...In late 2002, the Pentagon asked KBR to grapple with a question complicating U.S. plans for invading Iraq: What to do if Saddam torches his own oil fields, as he did Kuwait's during the last Gulf War? KBR drew up a classified contingency plan to deal with this nightmare scenario. The work was done under LOGCAP, but to help implement the plan, the Army Corps of Engineers signed KBR to a separate contract capped at $7 billion. General Robert Flowers, the Corps' commander, said the contract was awarded to KBR because the Army had complete confidence in the company and there wasn't time to put it out to bid -- an explanation that inflamed suspicions that the political fix was in.Posted by OkieByAccident at December 2, 2003 03:30 PM...In coining the term "military-industrial complex" in his farewell address to the nation in 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower -- retired four-star general and war hero Eisenhower -- warned of the incestuous ties that had formed between the Defense Dept. and the "permanent armaments industry" birthed by World War II. Eisenhower worried that the Pentagon's pursuit of its bureaucratic imperatives could combine with arms makers' pursuit of profit to thrust the U.S. into a war the country did not need and perhaps could not win.
The big weapons manufacturers that alarmed Eisenhower have shrunk in number and size since the Cold War ended. But the emergence of the private military company has extended the relationship that so worried Eisenhower, pushing it beyond the executive suite and factory floor onto the battlefield itself. The PMCs'(private military companies) adaptability is politically as well as militarily useful to the government. Why take the heat of calling up reservists when you can summon civilians-for-hire? Why try to persuade Congress to sanction the use of U.S. troops in Colombia's war on narco-guerrillas when you can send in contractors to spray coca fields and train paramilitary groups -- as both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have done?
The new military-industrial complex seems to pose at least as much danger to itself as it does to society. Contractor no-shows in Iraq have jolted U.S. military planners who expected a repeat of Brown & Root's yeomanlike performance in the Balkans. Says Brooking Institution's Singer: "Now that the Army's eyes have been opened up on this, they are thinking through other scenarios, with war in Korea being not only the most likely but the most worrisome possibility."
If conditions in Iraq continue to deteriorate, plenty of other people will be focused on whether the policy of replacing soldiers with private contractors, even in support roles, can be taken too far. The ultimate fear, of course, is that contractors under extreme duress will flee en masse, exposing U.S. soldiers to catastrophic risk -- a disastrous outcome that not even Eisenhower foresaw.