Veterans for Peace

MANAGING CONFLICTS AT ARLINGTON WEST

The Arlington West project can evoke varying reactions in the public. Most commonly, AW evokes reflection, and sometimes sadness or grief. However, we have also had to deal with some members of the public (military, vet, and/or civilian) who respond with anger. Some have been verbally abusive and physically threatening. As an organization -- the L.A. chapter of Veterans for Peace -- we are in an ongoing discussion about the best ways to peacefully manage these few disruptive situations. Meanwhile, here are some tips for disarming and defusing aggressive reactions to the project.

Know yourself -- We all have "hot spots" and old wounds. Know beforehand the kinds of comments/situations that could trigger your own anger. This can help keep you from reacting to provocation.

Don't take it personally -- Just like us, people who visit AW will have histories. Angry reactions to the project most likely have their basis in other experiences and memories. It's not about you.

Listen -- Listen carefully to what people are saying, even when they're angry. Remember that underneath anger is sometimes pain. Underneath pain is sometimes anger.

Model calmness -- Let your facial expressions, gestures, words, and tone of voice be at ease and rational. This in turn stimulates rationality in others.

Exercise self-control -- the basic human inclination is to fight back verbally when challenged or insulted. Instead, try to deflect the aggression to ease the situation. In short, this sometimes means to "take crap with dignity and style."

Project empathy and respect -- Empathy means mentally stepping into another person's shoes to understand their point of view.

Reflect the person's words back to him/her --Take the person's words and paraphrase them respectfully, without sarcasm or anger. This can help a person to feel they have been "heard."

Use phrases that help de-escalate: Examples: "Here's what I heard you say�" "I appreciate that." "I see your point." "You're entitled to that view." "I hear ya." "That may well be." "I understand that."   etc.

Acknowledge that people have different ways of experiencing AW but look for points of agreement: Example: "We may have different ways of thinking about what's happening in Iraq. But we seem to agree that we want to honor the dead."

If things get heated, take control of the conversation: Example: "Whoa! Hold on. Wait a sec." Then empathize, and paraphrase. These are deflective techniques.

Ignore those who are non-aggressively disruptive: Turn your attention away from people who are disrupting without being aggressive. Turn your attention toward people you'd rather talk to. This discourages the disrupter from continuing.

Safety First - if you are attacked physically, get away from the attacker if possible.  Have a code for calling the police when
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The Guardian-UK

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1261747,00.html

15 July 2004

A Cloud Over Civilisation
   Corporate power is the driving force behind US foreign policy

   --and the slaughter in Iraq

       John Kenneth Galbraith

At the end of the second world war, I was the director for overall effects of
the United States strategic bombing survey - Usbus, as it was known. I led a
large professional economic staff in assessment of the industrial and military
effects of the bombing of Germany. The strategic bombing of German industry,
transportation and cities, was gravely disappointing. Attacks on factories
that made such seemingly crucial components as ball bearings, and even attacks
on aircraft plants, were sadly useless. With plant and machinery relocation and
more determined management, fighter aircraft production actually increased in
early 1944 after major bombing. In the cities, the random cruelty and death
inflicted from the sky had no appreciable effect on war production or the war.
These findings were vigorously resisted by the Allied armed services -
especially, needless to say, the air command, even though they were the work of the
most capable scholars and were supported by German industry officials and
impeccable German statistics, as well as by the director of German arms
production, Albert Speer. All our conclusions were cast aside. The air command's public
and academic allies united to arrest my appointment to a Harvard
professorship and succeeded in doing so for a year.

Nor is this all. The greatest military misadventure in American history
until Iraq was the war in Vietnam. When I was sent there on a fact-finding mission
in the early 60s, I had a full view of the military dominance of foreign
policy, a dominance that has now extended to the replacement of the presumed
civilian authority. In India, where I was ambassador, in Washington, where I had
access to President Kennedy, and in Saigon, I developed a strongly negative view
of the conflict. Later, I encouraged the anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy
in 1968. His candidacy was first announced in our house in Cambridge.

At this time the military establishment in Washington was in support of the
war. Indeed, it was taken for granted that both the armed services and the
weapons industries should accept and endorse hostilities - Dwight Eisenhower's
"military-industrial complex".

In 2003, close to half the total US government discretionary expenditure was
used for military purposes. A large part was for weapons procurement or
development. Nuclear-powered submarines run to billions of dollars, individual
planes to tens of millions each.

Such expenditure is not the result of detached analysis. From the relevant
industrial firms come proposed designs for new weapons, and to them are awarded
production and profit. In an impressive flow of influence and command, the
weapons industry accords valued employment, management pay and profit in its
political constituency, and indirectly it is a treasured source of political
funds. The gratitude and the promise of political help go to Washington and to the
defence budget. And to foreign policy or, as in Vietnam and Iraq, to war.
That the private sector moves to a dominant public-sector role is apparent.
None will doubt that the modern corporation is a dominant force in the
present-day economy. Once in the US there were capitalists. Steel by Carnegie, oil
by Rockefeller, tobacco by Duke, railroads variously and often incompetently
controlled by the moneyed few. In its market position and political influence,
modern corporate management, unlike the capitalist, has public acceptance. A
dominant role in the military establishment, in public finance and the
environment is assumed. Other public authority is also taken for granted. Adverse
social flaws and their effect do, however, require attention.

One, as just observed, is the way the corporate power has shaped the public
purpose to its own needs. It ordains that social success is more automobiles,
more television sets, a greater volume of all other consumer goods - and more
lethal weaponry. Negative social effects - pollution, destruction of the
landscape, the unprotected health of the citizenry, the threat of military action
and death - do not count as such.

The corporate appropriation of public initiative and authority is
unpleasantly visible in its effect on the environment, and dangerous as regards military
and foreign policy. Wars are a major threat to civilised existence, and a
corporate commitment to weapons procurement and use nurtures this threat. It
accords legitimacy, and even heroic virtue, to devastation and death.
Power in the modern great corporation belongs to the management. The board
of directors is an amiable entity, meeting with self-approval but fully
subordinate to the real power of the managers. The relationship resembles that of an
honorary degree recipient to a member of a university faculty.

The myths of investor authority, the ritual meetings of directors and the
annual stockholder meeting persist, but no mentally viable observer of the
modern corporation can escape the reality. Corporate power lies with management - a
bureaucracy in control of its task and its compensation. Rewards can verge on
larceny. On frequent recent occasions, it has been referred to as the
corporate scandal.

As the corporate interest moves to power in what was the public sector, it
serves the corporate interest. It is most clearly evident in the largest such
movement, that of nominally private firms into the defence establishment. From
this comes a primary influence on the military budget, on foreign policy,
military commitment and, ultimately, military action. War. Although this is a
normal and expected use of money and its power, the full effect is disguised by
almost all conventional expression.

Given its authority in the modern corporation it was natural that management
would extend its role to politics and to government. Once there was the
public reach of capitalism; now it is that of corporate management. In the US,
corporate managers are in close alliance with the president, the vice-president
and the secretary of defence. Major corporate figures are also in senior
positions elsewhere in the federal government; one came from the bankrupt and
thieving Enron to preside over the army.

Defence and weapons development are motivating forces in foreign policy. For
some years, there has also been recognised corporate control of the Treasury.
And of environmental policy.

We cherish the progress in civilisation since biblical times and long
before. But there is a needed and, indeed, accepted qualification. The US and
Britain are in the bitter aftermath of a war in Iraq. We are accepting programmed
death for the young and random slaughter for men and women of all ages. So it
was in the first and second world wars, and is still so in Iraq. Civilised life,
as it is called, is a great white tower celebrating human achievements, but
at the top there is permanently a large black cloud. Human progress dominated
by unimaginable cruelty and death.

Civilisation has made great strides over the centuries in science,
healthcare, the arts and most, if not all, economic well-being. But it has also given a
privileged position to the development of weapons and the threat and reality
of war. Mass slaughter has become the ultimate civilised achievement.
The facts of war are inescapable - death and random cruelty, suspension of
civilised values, a disordered aftermath. Thus the human condition and prospect
as now supremely evident. The economic and social problems here described
can, with thought and action, be addressed. So they have already been. War
remains the decisive human failure.

This is an edited extract from The Economics of Innocent Fraud: Truth for
Our Time, by JK Galbraith, published by Allen Lane.
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Published in the August, 2004 issue of The Progressive

Dissent at the War Memorial

by Howard Zinn

As I write this, the sounds of the World War II Memorial celebration in Washington, D.C., are still in my head. I was invited by the Smithsonian Institution to be on one of the panels, and the person who called to invite me said that the theme would be "War Stories." I told him that I would come, but not to tell "war stories," rather to talk about World War II and its meaning for us today. Fine, he said.

I made my way into a scene that looked like a movie set for a Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza--huge tents pitched here and there, hawkers with souvenirs, thousands of visitors, many of them clearly World War II veterans, some in old uniforms, sporting military caps, wearing their medals. In the tent designated for my panel, I joined my fellow panelist, an African American woman who had served with the WACS (Women's Army Corps) in World War II, and who would speak about her personal experiences in a racially segregated army.

I was introduced as a veteran of the Army Air Corps, a bombardier who had flown combat missions over Europe in the last months of the war. I wasn't sure how this audience would react to what I had to say about the war, in that atmosphere of celebration, in the honoring of the dead, in the glow of a great victory accompanied by countless acts of military heroism.

This, roughly, is what I said: "I'm here to honor the two guys who were my closest buddies in the Air Corps--Joe Perry and Ed Plotkin, both of whom were killed in the last weeks of the war. And to honor all the others who died in that war. But I'm not here to honor war itself. I'm not here to honor the men in Washington who send the young to war. I'm certainly not here to honor those in authority who are now waging an immoral war in Iraq."

I went on: "World War II is not simply and purely a 'good war.' It was accompanied by too many atrocities on our side--too many bombings of civilian populations. There were too many betrayals of the principles for which the war was supposed to have been fought.

"Yes, World War II had a strong moral aspect to it--the defeat of fascism. But I deeply resent the way the so-called good war has been used to cast its glow over all the immoral wars we have fought in the past fifty years: in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan. I certainly don't want our government to use the triumphal excitement surrounding World War II to cover up the horrors now taking place in Iraq.

"I don't want to honor military heroism--that conceals too much death and suffering. I want to honor those who all these years have opposed the horror of war."

The audience applauded. But I wasn't sure what that meant. I knew I was going against the grain of orthodoxy, the romanticization of the war in movies and television and now in the war memorial celebrations in the nation's capital.

There was a question-and-answer period. The first person to walk up front was a veteran of World War II, wearing parts of his old uniform. He spoke into the microphone: "I was wounded in World War II and have a Purple Heart to show for it. If President Bush were here right now I would throw that medal in his face."

There was a moment of what I think was shock at the force of his statement. Then applause. I wondered if I was seeing a phenomenon that recurs often in society--when one voice speaks out against the conventional wisdom, and is recognized as speaking truth, people are drawn out of their previous silence.

I was encouraged by the thought that it is possible to challenge the standard glorification of the Second World War, and more important, to refuse to allow it to give war a good name. I did not want this celebration to make it easy for the American public to accept whatever monstrous adventure is cooked up by the establishment in Washington.

More and more, I am finding that I am not the only veteran of World War II who refuses to be corralled into justifying the wars of today, drawing on the emotional and moral capital of World War II. There are other veterans who do not want to overlook the moral complexity of World War II: the imperial intentions of the Allies even as they declared it a war against fascism, and for democracy; the deliberate bombing of civilian populations to destroy the morale of the enemy.

Paul Fussell was an infantry lieutenant who was badly wounded while a platoon leader in France in World War II.

"For the past fifty years the Allied war has been sanitized and romanticized almost beyond recognition by the sentimental, the loony patriotic, the ignorant, and the bloodthirsty," he wrote in Wartime.

It was easier, after the end of World War II, to point to its stupidities and cruelties in fiction rather than in a direct onslaught on what was so universally acclaimed as "the good war." Thus, Joseph Heller in Catch-22 captured the idiocy of military life, the crass profiteering, the pointless bombings. And Kurt Vonnegut, in Slaughterhouse-Five, brought to a large readership the awful story of the bombing of Dresden.

My own delayed criticism of the war--I had volunteered and was an enthusiastic bombardier--began with reflecting about my participation in the bombing of Royan. This was a small town on the Atlantic coast of France, where several thousand German soldiers had been overrun and were waiting for the war to end. Twelve hundred heavy bombers flew over the vicinity of Royan and dropped napalm, killing German soldiers and French civilians, destroying what was once a beautiful little resort town.

Recently, a man wrote to me who had heard me speak on the radio about that bombing mission and said he was also on that mission. After the war, he became a fireman, then a carpenter, and is now a strong opponent of war. He told me of a friend of his who was also on that mission, and who has been arrested many times in anti-war actions. I was encouraged to hear that.

World War II veterans get in touch with me from time to time. One is Edward Wood Jr. of Denver, who upon hearing I was going to be at the Washington Memorial, wrote to me: He said, "If I were there, I would say: As a combat veteran of World War II, severely wounded in France in 1944, never the man I might have been because of that wound, I so wish that this memorial to World War II might have been made of more than stone or marble. I mourn my generation's failures since its victory in World War II . . . our legacy of incessant warfare in smaller nations far from our borders."

Another airman, Ken Norwood, was shot down on his tenth mission over Europe, and spent a year as a prisoner of war in Germany. He has written a memoir (unpublished, so far) which he says is "intentionally an anti-war war story." Packed first into a box car, and then forced to march for two weeks through Bavaria in the spring of 1945, Norwood saw the mangled corpses of the victims of Allied bombs, the working class neighborhoods destroyed. All his experiences, he says, "add to the harsh testimony about the futility and obscenity of war."

The glorification of the "good war" persists on our television and movie screens, in the press, in the pretentious speeches by politicians. The more ugly the stories that come out of Iraq--the bombing of civilians, the mutilation of children, the invasion of homes, and now the torture of prisoners--the more urgent it is for our government to try to crowd out all those images with the triumphant stories of D-Day and World War II.

Those who fought in that war are perhaps better able than anyone to insist that whatever moral standing can be attached to that war must not be used to turn our eyes away from Bush's atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Howard Zinn, the author of "A People's History of the United States," is a columnist for The Progressive.

Copyright 2004 The Progressive

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              Seymour Hersh on Abu Ghraib: B Minus

   Where�s Vietnam?

by Michael Uhl

In reading the three articles on Abu Ghraib written by Seymour
Hersh for the New Yorker between May 10-24, what struck me about the
revelation of Iraqi prisoners and detainees subjected to acts of abuse
and torture, was the similarity in detail to what I experienced in
Vietnam thirty-five years ago. The one major difference has been the
media�s willingness to embrace in 2004 a story that they shunned in 1970,
when returning veterans attempted to inform the American public of
widespread atrocities, including the routine killing and torture of
prisoners, by American forces in South East Asia.

   Only certain episodes of the widespread Vietnam veteran war
protest throughout 1970 and into1971 are easily accessible in the
historical record, like the April 1971 veteran encampment in Washington,
when scores of former combatants - with John Kerry in a visible position
of leadership - threw their service ribbons and medals of valor over a
barrier in the direction of the Capitol steps. But one has to dig far
deeper to recover and stitch into a coherent narrative an account of the
precise issue - U.S. war crimes in Indochina - that motivated much of
Vietnam veteran antiwar activism in those times. With the exception of
the My Lai massacre - made public in the U.S. under Seymour Hersh�s by-
line more than a year and a half (November 1969) after it had occurred
(March 1968)- the Vietnam war crimes issues, which often focused on
incidents of torture, never attained the level of media validation, and
therefore public recognition, afforded to the events at Abu Ghraib.

I�ve often wondered why Hersh never demonstrated more interest
during Vietnam in the larger war crimes issue, of which My Lai was only
the most dramatic component. Perhaps unfairly, I�ve concluded that, for
the investigative reporter, the scoop is at least as important as the
story. Had Hersh investigated the �systematic� nature of American war
crimes during the Vietnam War as thoroughly as he is investigating
the �systemic� presence of torture during interrogations in Iraq and
Afghanistan, he might have instructed his New Yorker readers, and the
media at-large with whom he enjoys some credibility, that, with American
forces in Iraq, the murder, torture and abuse of prisoners at least, is
military business as usual.

Some of the parallels between what I witnessed in Vietnam as
leader of a small military intelligence team, and the details reported by
Hersh about Abu Ghraib, reflect, in my view, disturbing patterns of
American military practice over decades that the American public at
large, accommodated by its government and media, would prefer not to
know about. As one of Hersh�s informants puts it, �The process is
unpleasant. It�s like making sausage. You like the results, but you
don�t want to know how it�s made.� The more serious of these wartime
parallels have grievous consequences for both victims - typically
civilian non-combatants - and for the instruments of their abuse - in
this case, American soldiers who in time re-enter the U.S. population as
damaged veterans.

But even certain of Abu Ghraib�s more atmospheric occurrences
are reported by Hersh as if they were without precedent. In two of his
three New Yorker articles, for example, Hersh, adds a shade of cloak and
dagger intrigue describing military intelligence (MI) personnel at Abu
Ghraib who appeared in �sterile� uniforms, unmarked by rank, or, when
entitled to wear military uniforms, were dressed in mufti. Some
interrogators, he writes, used �aliases.�

My first assignment in 1967, fresh from Army counterintelligence
school (preceded by Infantry Officer School), was as titular head of a
Corps level counterintelligence (CI) office at Fort Hood Texas. Provided
a snub-nosed .38 and a set of �boxtops� (badge and credentials), I was
styled a Special Agent, and wore civilian clothes on duty; even my small
motorcycle with its green civilian sticker was �undercover.�

The man who met me at the airstrip when I arrived at the 11th
Infantry Bde in Duc Pho, South Vietnam to become officer-in-charge of the
1st Military Intelligence Team (1st MIT) wore unmarked jungle fatigues,
a �U.S.� pinned to where the insignia of rank normally appeared, as did
all members of counterintelligence on the MI team, including myself.
Months later in Quang Ngai City, I ran into a fellow Georgetown
undergrad, also with Army military intelligence, dressed in khakis and a
bright button downed broad cloth shirt, my uniform in college, and his
still in Vietnam. Like the OSS operatives who preceded us in World War
II, certain members of the active duty military trained as special
agents - or �spooks� in the vernacular - routinely posed as civilians in
designated contexts, and some had occasion to operate under noms de
guerre. This practice was SOP, standard operating procedure. It was not
something exotic or irregular.

The 11th Bde became infamous as the Calley brigade, a reference
to Lt. William L. Calley, the platoon leader assigned to one of the
brigade�s infantry units who led the mayhem at My Lai, and was later
convicted by court-martial of murder. The My Lai massacre had taken
place eight months before I arrived at the 11th Bde in November �68.
And, it was my good fortune to never witness anything to compare with
such a horror, though, just over one year later as a veteran activist in
the antiwar movement I would have a hand in exposing massacres which
other Vietnam veterans had seen or participated in. What I witnessed
personally were many acts of abuse and torture while on patrol, or within
our own team�s IPW (Interrogation Prisoner of War) section located on the
brigade base camp; and, once, following the bizarre hunt for Viet Cong
cadres operating in a nearby hamlet, I stood alone in preventing the
murder of a prisoner captured in the field.

But, the one obvious parallel between Iraq and Vietnam that is
arguably a clear violation of the conventions of war, bears on the
treatment of civilian populations subjected to omnibus rounds-ups,
arbitrary incarceration under brutal conditions, severe deprivations and
acts of physical abuse, and, in some cases, interrogation under torture.
In his New Yorker article of May 10th, Hersh writes that a �lack of
proper screening also meant that many innocent Iraqis were wrongly being
detained - indefinitely... in some cases... [with] more than sixty
percent... deemed not to be a threat to society.� The modus operandi of
rounding-up resistance suspects and dumping them in prisons or otherwise
confining them, no doubt differs widely in Iraq from what occurred in
Vietnam. But the net effect on that majority considered innocent
civilians would be the same for either context, and it is this practice
of unjustified population removal, followed by a brutalizing period of
unlawful incarceration that may very likely constitute a crime of war in
Iraq, as well as Vietnam.

The 1st MIT interrogation section in Vietnam was often swamped
with Vietnamese rural villagers who were dragnetted by infantry units on
their sweeps of the countryside, and delivered to the brigade base camp
as �VC suspects.� Once in our custody, there was enormous pressure from
the intelligence command to classify detainees as �civil defendants
(CDs),� adjudged by American interrogators, despite our obvious lack of
competency, to have broken the laws of South Vietnam. As a CD,
the �suspect,� without the slightest evidence of being either a VC cadre
or a criminal, might then be turned over to the local South Vietnamese
police, whose methods of persuasion were even less gentle than ours.

The most prized classification aspired to by the IPW section was
that of PW, prisoner of war, but this required that the detainee be
captured with a weapon, an infrequent occurrence. The category CD,
therefore, became a functional substitute for the more prized PW
designation, in that the number of CDs also counted toward the MI teams�
performance and productivity in the manner of a �body count.� And,
whereas in Iraq, males who are indeed apparently of fighting age formed
a large percentage of the Abu Ghraib detainee population, the
demographics in Vietnam, differed greatly. There we were dealing
primarily with women of child bearing age, seniors, and late teens. It
was assumed that all the draft age male inhabitants of a given locale
were already fighting on one side or the other, or were off somewhere
hiding whenever American forces were operating in their area.
Ironically, it was only these latter military-aged males whom the South
Vietnamese government considered �draft dodgers,� and were most likely
local force guerrillas living outside the Saigon government�s control,
that the IPW interrogators might have legitimately designated �CDs� on
strictly legal grounds. And as I say, this was the one population we
rarely saw.

There were for Hersh in his writings on Abu Ghraib additional
lost opportunities to have drawn instructive comparisons between Iraq and
Vietnam. One is the defensive manner in which the sitting administration
in Washington responded to the battlefront atrocity. George W. Bush,
when finally forced to respond to an Abu Ghraib scandal that persisted in
the headlines of world news, said, according to Hersh, that �the action
of a few did not reflect on the conduct of the military as a whole.� The
media, for the most part, seemed to reject this wan excuse, and one
repeatedly would see or hear news accounts that referred to the ever-
widening exposure of abuse at Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere in the theater of
war, as �systemic.� At the same time, such expressions of scepticism
have by no means translated into any deeper criticism of the Iraq War
within the media mainstream For his part, Richard Nixon, following the
revelation of My Lai back in 1969, called the perpetrators �a few bad
apples,� and the massacre itself was termed an �aberration.� Antiwar
veterans had a different spin: My Lai was just the tip of the iceberg, we
claimed, and the torture of prisoners, �systematic.� When it came to
Vietnam, it was Nixon�s, not the veterans� message, that history has
recorded.

Hersh writes with justifiable outrage in his May 10th article
that the �wrong doing� at Abu Ghraib reflects a �failure of Army
leadership at the highest levels.� At the same time, one of his
anonymous sources reminds the reporter that, far from distributing real
responsibility up the chain of command, the �army is attempting to have
these six soldiers [American MP guards at Abu Ghraib prison] atone for
its sins.� And in his piece of May 24th, Hersh quotes another
unnamed �insider� that the operatives from elite intelligence units
are �vaccinated,� and that �the only people left to prosecute are those
who are undefended, the poor kids at the end of the food chain.� This
action of affixing primary responsibility for atrocities that are
arguably hard wired into modern wars of �counterinsurgency� onto the
shoulders of the lowest ranking soldiers, those tasked with carrying out
the dirty work, while limiting the culpability of the command, is yet
another echo from the My Lai massacre that resonates with Abu Ghraib�s
culture of abuse and torture.

Thirty-five years ago, antiwar Vietnam vets demanded that the
Pentagon not scapegoat a few low ranking GIs for atrocities whose
predicable occurrences could be traced to the nature of an aggressive war
conducted against an entire people, designed and carried out at the
highest levels of the American government and its military
establishment. A similar view was expressed by then Senator George
McGovern when commenting on the conviction of Lt. Calley in March
1971, �I think it�s a mistake to make one man the scapegoat for a mistake
in national policy. It�s policy that�s wrong.� To which antiwar vets
amended, �GIs in the field do not make policy.� As for �command
responsibility, � then as now, a few senior officers in direct positions
of command had their wrists slapped, ending or sidetracking their
military careers (with full pensions), but without the stigma of
conviction and prison time that their enlisted subordinates will carry
for life.

Notwithstanding the intrinsic value of his exposes on Abu Ghraib
in the context of the current war, Hersh provides unchallenged space for
his network of former spooks and military professionals to sanitize the
trail of amoral practices institutionalized in the intelligence community
from the Cold War to the present. We read that, at Abu
Ghraib, �fundamentally good soldiers - military intelligence guy - [were]
told that no rules apply,� because �since 9-11, we�ve [the government
apparatus responsible for intelligence oversight] changed the rules...
and created conditions where the ends justify the means.� And so, rather
than alerting us to the fact that the history of Vietnam is being
repeated in the Gulf War, Hersh allows his readers to conclude that
torture and abuse in Iraq are unique in the recent annals of American
warfare, or, as Nixon said when speaking of My Lai, �an aberration.�

Of course, one can�t be certain that Seymour Hersh�s disinterest
in drawing comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam is not deliberate,
perhaps seen as an unnecessary distraction from the urgency and gravity
of the subject at hand; why muddy the waters with historical analogies?
The reason history matters here, however, is because it is only with the
Iraq War that the valuable lessons of Vietnam, which have deterred the
U.S. from the unilateral application of major force over the past three
decades to achieve its hegemonic foreign policy objectives, have been
severely undermined, if not entirely discarded. And because it now
appears that Bush II may have succeeded where Bush I could only dream, in
finally putting the country�s Vietnam Syndrome, so intolerable to the war
party, behind us.

   -30-

(See bibliography below.)

   Bibliography

I�ve included here a hastily assembled selection of news
articles from 1970-71 which document the efforts of antiwar Vietnam
veterans to alert the American public to the �atrocity producing� nature
of the Vietnam War.

�Ex-Pilot Alleges Civilian Slayings,� Douglas Robinson, The New
York Times, April 7, 1970.

�U.S. Army Veteran Alleges Vietnamese Civilians Slain,� The
Springfield Union,� April 7, 1970.

�3 Viet Vets Charge �Routine� Use of Torture by U.S. Troops,�
Timothy Ferris, New York Post, April 13, 1970.

�They�d Probe Pentagon on �Atrocities�, New York Daily News,
April 14, 1970.

�Ex-GIs Charge Viet Prisoners Were Tortured,� Jim Stingley, Los
Angeles Times, April 15, 1970.

�Two ex-GIs say troops torture Vietnamese prisoners in
Vietnam,� Douglas Crocket, The Boston Globe, May 8, 1970.

�Ex-GIs Tell of Torturing Prisoners,� William Greider, The
Washington Post, July 19, 1970.

�LIer Charges U.S. Tortured Vietnamese,� Long Island Press, July
20, 1970.

�Torture of Viet Cong described by ex-GI,� The Detroit News,
August 19, 1970.

�Veterans Tell Of War Crimes,� St. Louis Post Dispatch, August
19, 1970.

�War Atrocities Termed Commonplace,� James Long, Oregon Journal,
October 28, 1970.

�War Foes Blame U.S. Commanders For Viet Atrocities, Robert C.
Maynard, The Washington Post, November 24, 1970.

�Vietnam Atrocities Told: Military intelligence involves
systematic use of electric torture and beatings,� Jerry Oppenheimer, The
Washington Daily News, December 1, 1970.

�Viet Veterans Tell of GI Atrocities: D.C. Forum Trying to �Get
Monkey Off Calley�s Back,� Powell Lindsay, The Pittsburgh Press, December
2, 1970.

�Yanks tortured Red prisoners, two GIs testify,� Chicago Daily
News, December 3, 1970.

�Torture was policy, Viet war vets say,� The Cleveland Press,
December 3, 1970.

�War Veterans at Inquiry Feel �Atrocities� Are Result of
Policy,� The New York Times, December 4, 1970.

�Veterans Ask Inquiry Into Alleged Atrocities: Meeting Charging
U.S. With War Crimes Ends With Ex-GIs Accounts of Torture,� Jules
Witcover, Los Angeles Times, December 4, 1970.

�New Vietnam Atrocity Charges Little Noticed,� Jules Witcover,
Los Angeles Times, December 8, 1970.

�Taylor Says by Nuremberg Rules Westmoreland May Be Guilty,�
Neil Sheehan, The New York Times, January 9, 1971.

�Five Officers Say They Seek Formal War Crimes Inquiry,� Neil
Sheehan, The New York Times, January 13, 1971.

�For a War Crimes Inquiry,� Editorial, Newsday, March 22, 1971.

�My Lai Verdict Is Denounced,� The Providence Journal, March 30,
1971.

�Most Feel Calley Was Scapegoat,� New York Post, March 30, 1971.

�House Panel To Hear Of Alleged Torture-Murder Policy in Viet,�
The Evening Sun (Baltimore), April 28, 1971.

�Ex-GI Alleges 30 Slayings Near Mylai,� Richard Halloran, The
New York Times, April 29, 1971.

�5 S. Viets Back Ex-GI on Atrocity,� Chicago Tribune, May 8,
1971.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Johnny We Hardly Knew You

John Kerry: War Hero or Warrior for Peace?

by Sharleen Leahey

This past Sunday night (7/25/04) MSNBC broadcast a phenomenal program entitled John Kerry: Bringing the War Home. It told the story of young Kerry after he returned home from Vietnam, disillusioned and outraged by a war he called criminal. One of the most memorable images from that documentary was John Kerry leading a long line of anti-war veterans through the streets of Washington D.C., raising not a fisted hand, but two fingers for peace. I took a deep breath when I saw that moving image. Imagine . . . a man leading a peace march through the streets of DC is now running for President of the United States! The same man who challenged many of his peers, elders and the hostile, vicious administration of Richard Nixon and bravely, without apologies, and at great personal risk, spoke truth to power is now within reach of becoming our next President. I began to dream that perhaps that same man could just maybe lead us out of a "war without end." Dare we dream that perhaps that same man could lead us toward peace?

In April 1971 John Kerry became a spokesman for a week-long action by over one thousand Vietnam veterans who were determined to shut down the U.S. war machine which was destroying not only hundreds of thousands of American lives but was committing genocide against a small nation inhabited by millions of peasant farmers who posed no threat to the United States of America. As the Nixon Administration vilified the protesters as being unpatriotic and not representative of the vast majority of the nation's proud veterans, John Kerry's eloquence and passionate defense of their rebellion gained the attention of the national press corps and led to his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chaired by Senator Fulbright. On that day John Kerry declared not only his anger and pain but also his love for America . . . he spoke from his heart that somehow we had the power to be a truly great nation if we could muster the courage to face the horrible truth about what we were doing, not only to the Vietnamese people . . . but to ourselves. He emphasized the urgent need to change direction to ensure a decent future for our children and for the world. In calm measured tones but with an emotional honesty that was palpable, he explained why our policies and actions in Vietnam were not only a mistake, but constituted a crime against humanity. He described rapes, tortures, mutilations and the destruction of villages which he compared to the ravages of Ghengis Khan. He also specifically identified the military's use of "free-fire zones" as a violation of the Geneva Convention and a war crime which led to the deaths of innocent noncombatants including women, children and elders. He talked about U.S. carpet bombing of vast regions of a country which had no chance to defend itself. He also told of the awful cost being paid in the wasted lives of American soldiers who were being killed, maimed and traumatized for "the biggest nothing in history." There is one statement John Kerry made that day which I hope will always be etched in our collective national memory:

"How do you ask a man to be the last to die for a mistake?"

As an insane, brutal slaughter of millions of innocent people 10,000 miles overseas was raging John Kerry's willingness to publicly speak the ugly truth about a war he had not only witnessed, but had participated in, galvanized this nation. Despite being personally attacked by pro-war veterans groups and politicians who accused him of being "ambitious" and "a traitor", John Kerry went on to tour the country, speaking out passionately against the war wherever he could get a hearing. Senator Ted Kennedy, looking back on those days, expressed his sincere conviction that John Kerry's extraordinary anti-war activism in 1971 made a great contribution to convincing Americans that our country must change course and leave Vietnam. Four years later, our country finally did leave Vietnam . . . but dreams of empire die hard.

Our latest imperial misadventure has led us into another quagmire thousands of miles away in a tortured country called Iraq. As a young man still in his early twenties, John Kerry seized a rare opportunity to reach millions with an alternative message for peace and he rose to the occasion brilliantly. Now over thirty-three years I sit in my living room and watch a vastly different scenario being played out as John Kerry is presented to the American people as a candidate for the Presidency of the United States. But just how is he being presented?

On Monday, July 26, 2004, the first evening of the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, Massachusetts I sit listening to a speech by a middle-aged African American man who served on a swift boat under John Kerry during the Vietnam War. As the eminent Democratic nominee for the highest office in the land, John Kerry's courage and strength are being extolled before a nation hungry for leadership. But wait, it's not about the courage he showed that day in front of Senator Fulbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee. It's not about the strength he showed under fire from the Nixon White House as he steadfastly spoke out against his government's war policy despite being continually slandered and smeared in the press. No, the "courage" being referred to on the floor of the Democratic National Convention is his courage as commander of a combat unit fighting the Vietnamese who are described several times as "the enemy." Is this the same war that John Kerry himself turned against with such vehemence over three decades ago? No doubt, it took a great deal of courage and strength to survive the awful firefights and life and death encounters Kerry and his crew endured during those awful four months in Vietnam. But after coming home Kerry spent a great deal more time fighting against the war than fighting in it. Why is his history as a peacemaker and war critic being downplayed and replaced by the tired, archaic and extremely dangerous rhetoric of war-heroism? After enduring three years of George Bush's "war without end", why is Kerry's most magnificent shining moments of glory as a warrior for peace not presented to the eyes of a war-weary nation sick of endless lies and violence?

Surely the brutality and blatant disceptions perpetrated by the Bush Administration in its illegal war against Iraq is obvious to the vast majority of Americans as well as to most people in nations throughout the world. Why is the establishment of the Democratic Party losing this great opportunity to declare its commitment to peacemaking and a real change in direction for our beleaguered nation? Why, in the words of young John Kerry, should the Democratic Party follow in the footsteps of the Republican Party in asking a young man or woman to be the last to die for a mistake?

Dreams die hard. I'm still dreaming that whatever was in John Kerry that made him risk all for the chance to end war and make peace is still in him. The Democratic Party does not belong to the corporate deal makers. It belongs to you and me . . . and the working people who built this country and keep it going each and every day. Millions upon millions of Americans are yearning for peace. Millions upon millions of American citizens who want peace will be voting for president this coming November. Let us take a lesson from young John Kerry . . . let us raise our voices for peace loudly, clearly and without fear. Hopefully the older John Kerry will take a lesson from the younger and re-connect with the wisdom and depth of character he showed all those years ago. As Dennis Kucinich has repeatedly reminded us, peace is more than a space between wars . . . peace is our birthright and is a necessary component for the secure future we have a responsibility to build for future generations yet to come. Surely too many innocent people have already died for the lies and mistakes of those who have called themselves our leaders.
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Sharleen Leahey is a songwriter, performer and peace activist. She is a member of Somerset Voices for Peace and Justice in Central New Jersey. Contact: songs4peace@earthlink.net--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Learning the Lessons of Our Own History

When General Sir William Howe attacked George Washington�s continental army during the American revolutionary war, Howe had superior numbers and the support of the world�s most powerful navy. His men were trained, disciplined and courageous, his commanders skilled and experienced. Washington�s army was smaller, less experienced, less well trained. But Washington had surprise, superior intelligence, greater speed, and the corresponding ability to hit hard against a single weak outpost and then run. On Christmas day in 1776, Washington pulled off a surprise attack at Trenton and a week later another at Princeton, New Jersey. These successes caught the eyes of the world. Public opinion began to turn toward support of the rebels. When, in addition, the Hessians who fought with Howe then conducted a policy of "shrecklichkeiten," or "atrocities," to be intentionally committed against American prisoners, a revolution occurred in the minds of the colonials and independence was only a matter of time.

Similar factors are at play in the current war in Iraq. Today, however, the shoe is on the other foot and Americans are in the awkward position of the English in 1776.

Militarily speaking, the locals in Iraq have the advantage of surprise. They, more than we, are able to move their attackers quickly and silently in the night. They, more than we, are able to approach an American post or an Iraqi police station without being seen. They more than we can attack a convoy and melt into the country side.

They also have the advantage of intelligence. They, more than we, know what their enemy is doing. They have sources in and about the American and Iraqi armies. Their sources can tell them where our troops are, when we are in garrison, when we are on the move. Our army is stronger but it is not quieter or more invisible. Iraqi insurgents know who we are; where we are; how many we are. We know none of these things about them.

They also have the advantage of speed. They can move a few attackers, a d ozen or half a dozen, far quicker than we can move a platoon, or a company of armored infantry. The larger our unit, the longer it takes to get on the road and so the US military is forever slower than the locals. The rebels can also mass significant power against some weak link in the American front, like a car bomb at a police station. Today, neither Americans nor Iraqis have enough troops to adequately protect all these outposts of authority and one car bomb can blow a government stronghold to smithereens.

Surprise, intelligence, speed of movement, the ability to mass overwhelming power at one small location and then to evaporate were all features of George Washington�s generalship in 1776. Still today they are features of combat that every commander studies at war college. It is no wonder therefore that when, in May, 2002, George W. Bush first proposed to his commanders that they invade Iraq the Joint Chiefs resisted his request. They knew then what the American public is coming to know now; superior force by itself is not enough to quell a local, publicly-supported rebellion.

The president might have foreseen the quagmire had he paid more attention to our own history. He might also have looked to 1588, when the Spanish Armada was defeated by a smaller British fleet acting with speed and surprise and superior intelligence. He might have looked to Napoleon�s experience when he marched 600,000 men into Russia and left 500,000 behind, in the ground. Not even Napoleon could overcome Russian irregulars who attacked and melted away into the night. Mr. Bush might have remembered Vietnam when the same factors defeated a superior American force only 40 years ago.

In America in 1776, Washington�s small victories began slowly to leverage public opinion to support the rebellion. The movement spread when these were combined with atrocities committed by British and Hessians against the rebels� families and prisoners. It is ironic that in Iraq the small victories of the local insurgents combined with the atrocities at Abu Ghraib have played a similar role, gradually swinging public opinion against the American invaders. Now this week coalition forces have mounted a new campaign, hitting Shiite sections of Baghdad, Basra, Nasiriyah, Najaf, killing civilians and insurgents wherever they go. The flaw in the plan, as it was for General Howe in 1776, is that while we count killed insurgents the locals are counting killed civilians and in the battle for public opinion theirs is the count that matters.

Craig S. Barnes August 4, 2004

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JKNJVETJimFallon; JKNJVETGrgTannenbaum; JKNJVETGordon Sell; JKNJVET-DaveParano; JKNJVETCrgLivingston+; JKNJVET-CongStevBrozak; JKNJVETBarrySussman+
Cc: WinVetPeteBronson; XD-1/5JerryHubert; WinVetMikeGold; VietVetJWebb; VFPMikeHoffman/Iraqvet+; VFPJosephABello; vfp-chaptercontacts@yahoogroups.com; JKNJVET-WinVetJoeAtta; JKNJVET-VFPGene; JKNJVET-ScottKisch; JKNJVETSBillSteimel+; JKNJVET-PrestonTaylorBG; JKNJVETLesLimitles; 'Erik Gustafson'; CAG-4/MT-1IvanFateSuar; CAP/CAG4*:Marciniak; CAP/CUVA-TimDuffie; CAG-4/MT-1:* Frank Fraser; CAP-D1*: THarvey*; Barry, Jan
Subject: [vfp-chaptercontacts] Tnx to one & all for the Vigil/apology for well-intentioned but over-emotional reading//cc-fyi of text:" why we have gathered on this day...September 2nd., 2004"

Dear VFP/Dave Cline-IVAW-MFSO-VVAW-VAIW-VFK, friends & fellow co-conspirators,

First off, just a few post-Vigil words to thank Dave and each and everyone of you for all your hard and righteous individual and collective work to make the Vigil of Sept .2nd happen. It was a truly moving and memorable day, and I feel honored to have been part of it with you. Furthermore and regardless of whatever media coverage the Vigil may have gotten, I think that it touched many hundreds of the people who came by, paused and went on their ways. Hopefully, the went on their ways to think a bit and to speak to others about what they had seen and heard, and to become motivated or re-committed, to doing anything and everything possible to insure that Bush and his clique of neo-con zealots will be out of our White House in November.

Secondly, I want to apologize to anyone that I may have disconcerted or offended by loosing my cool (not to mention my well-nurtured Marine hard-ass image) during both of the readings that I was allowed to make during the Vigil. Please know that no one was more surprised by my unexpected surge of emotions than I was. I only hope that my thoughts and words were not lost amid my sudden flood of feelings, and that some of these words and thoughts were found to be worth hearing and considering. So, my apologies again - along with my thanks for your indulgence. Who knows, maybe Arnold Schwarznegger's on to something: somewhere inside every ex-Marine, there's a "Girlie-Man" just waiting to come out and ambush him.

And lastly, since quite a number of people asked me for more copies of my statement than the dozen or so that I had available for possible distribution, I am taking the liberty of attaching the following/below copy of my "Why we have gathered on this day" statement, for people's individual and/or organizational interest and/or use. Sadly, I fear that our Vigil of September 2nd. will not be the last - nor do I think that it should be so long as the current madness in the White House continues to play out in Iraq, and to poison our international affairs virtually everywhere else. Consequently, if anyone finds a need or desire to use any of the thoughts or words of my statement in the context of any Vigils yet to come, please feel free to edit, adapt and use what I've written in whatever way you deem may be fitting and proper.

That said, and with deep regards and sincere respect to one and all, bye until next time & Semper Fi - Igor Bobrowsky-973-571-9671

************text follow below************************************************************************

***Why We Have Gathered On This Day -

          in Support, in Sorrow and in Shame.***

Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,

Today, on September 2nd., 2004, the RNC will re-annoint George W. Bush as its candidate for President. Today, on September 2nd., 2004 in Iraq, a few more of our soldiers and Marines will be killed, or maimed forever. And so, today - on September 2nd. , 2004 we gather here together, in support, in sorrow and in shame for our humble Veterans Vigil For The Fallen.

In these times of Dire Distress for our people and our nation, when lapel-pin-patriotism and fear are fostered and embraced as expedient substitutes for thoughtfullness and policy, when questioning and dissent are treated with self-serving condescension and contempt and when our nation's wealth, good name and ideals are being needlessly squandered, the daily dead and wounded from this Administration's obsessive crusade in Iraq keep drifting back to our nation's shores, in a growing legion of broken bodies, minds and spirits, mostly unseen and unknown except to their God and those who loved them once, and still and always.

As veterans of our nation's service in its many conflicts, we feel that it is both fitting and proper to honor the service and sacrifice of the brave men and women of our armed forces, and to encourage public reflection on the reasons contrived for sending them on their current thankless mission to Iraq. Consequently, as a sign of truly patriotic public duty, of Support For Our Troops, of shared Sorrow At Their Sacrifices, and of Shame For The Ideological Policies that have so recklessly and needlessly placed them in harm's way and keep them there, we ask that you consider joining us in mourning at this Veterans Vigil For The Fallen.

Yellow ribbons fade, fray and all too soon and easily turn to dust; the ruffles, flourishes and photo-ops of missions declared accomplished all too quickly give way to other news; new scandals and press-conferences, followed by ever new and breathless revelations and lame explanations, all meld seamlessly into a cacophany of sounds - even as the dead and wounded and their sorrows and their sacrifices remain, to confront us with their silent questions, to ask us for our honest answers and to demand that we provide them with a due accounting.

It is these dead, and wounded and their questions that we ask you to recall and respond to by joining us in this VETERANS VIGIL FOR THE FALLEN, and to remember that these dead and wounded are of our flesh, and of our blood and of our spirit.

Thankyou. Igor Bobrowsky - Purple Heart Veteran/USMarines (Vietnam)
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The Independent-UK

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=557746&host=3&dir=70

3 September 2004

Bush by numbers: Four years of double standards
   By Graydon Carter

1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa'ida.

104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.

101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.

65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.

73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.

83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.

$1m Estimated value of a painting the Bush Presidential Library in College Station, Texas, received from Prince Bandar, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States and Bush family friend.

0 Number of times Bush mentioned Saudi Arabia in his three State of the Union addresses.

1,700 Percentage increase between 2001 and 2002 of Saudi Arabian spending on public relations in the United States.

79 Percentage of the 11 September hijackers who came from Saudi Arabia.

3 Number of 11 September hijackers whose entry visas came through special US-Saudi "Visa Express" programme.

140 Number of Saudis, including members of the Bin Laden family, evacuated from United States almost immediately after 11 September.

14 Number of Immigration and Naturalisation Service (INS) agents assigned to track down 1,200 known illegal immigrants in the United States from countries where al-Qa'ida is active.

$3m Amount the White House was willing to grant the 9/11 Commission to investigate the 11 September attacks.

$0 Amount approved by George Bush to hire more INS special agents.

$10m Amount Bush cut from the INS's existing terrorism budget.

$50m Amount granted to the commission that looked into the Columbia space shuttle crash.

$5m Amount a 1996 federal commission was given to study legalised gambling.

7 Number of Arabic linguists fired by the US army between mid-August and mid-October 2002 for being gay.

George Bush: Military man

1972 Year that Bush walked away from his pilot duties in the Texas National Guard, Nearly two years before his six-year obligation was up.

$3,500 Reward a group of veterans offered in 2000 for anyone who could confirm Bush's Alabama guard service.

600-700 Number of guardsmen who were in Bush's unit during that period.

0 Number of guardsmen from that period who came forward with information about Bush's guard service.

0 Number of minutes that President Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney, the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, the assistant Defence Secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, the former chairman of the Defence Policy Board, Richard Perle, and the White House Chief of Staff, Karl Rove - the main proponents of the war in Iraq -served in combat (combined).

0 Number of principal civilian or Pentagon staff members who planned the war who have immediate family members serving in uniform in Iraq.

8 Number of members of the US Senate and H