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Tuesday, December 19. 2006
That Old Feeling Once Again
Is this what we’ve come to in the president’s war in Iraq? We lock up our own citizens without due process, without the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, without the very basic humanitarian standards for prisoners?
Donald Vance, a 29 year old veteran of the Navy and a one-time private security contractor in Iraq, was swept up in a raid on an unscrupulous security firm in Baghdad and held for 97 days, interrogated, deprived of sleep, kept from obtaining a lawyer, wasn’t allowed to contact his family until 30 days into the ordeal and otherwise treated like an enemy of the U.S.
Here’s the irony of the story, which would be funny if it wasn’t so … real …
The raid on the Baghdad-based security firm, which was getting paid to provide security for Iraq’s government, was set in motion by Vance, who, after being hired by the firm, found irregularities that turned out to be illegalities. Vance was, in fact, an informant for the F.B.I. Why the F.B.I.? Because it was our tax dollars being used to fund illegal arms sales to militias and insurgent groups.
It gets more interesting. Even after the F.B.I. confirmed to the Pentagon and the command structure in Iraq that Vance was one of the good guys, three weeks after he was detained, Army officials in Iraq decided he was still “a threat” and detained him for another two months.
We’ve broken more than Iraq with this war. Our basic freedoms, those found in the Bill of Rights — Habeas Corpus — and in the First Amendment are dangerously close to being eliminated, all while this president claims we are fighting for freedom. It begs the question, what “freedom” is he talking about?
Iraq is the one defining issue of our day as Vietnam was 35 years ago. On Iraq rests the careers of nearly every politico come 2008. There will be those who said “stay the course” with the president even after the 2006 mid-term elections, and then all the others. And when you break down the others, there will be those who opposed this tragedy from the beginning and those who came late to that opinion.
You will have all the Republicans trying to explain why they supported the war so long, why they thought deposing Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do, why they think the number of U.S. soldiers killed and severely maimed, which by 2008 could number 40,000 or more if the troops stay in Iraq until then, was worth it just to see Saddam hanged; they will try to explain that all to an American electorate looking to hold someone accountable.
Then there are the Democrats, like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John Kerry. They will be explaining why they voted “yea” to authorize the president’s war and why they supported it, especially Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. I like Senator Biden (D-DE), but he has to take responsibility for what he did to facilitate the start of this war.
That leaves Senator Barack Obama (D-IL), Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) and Governor Tom Vilsack (D-IA) who have absolutely clean records on Iraq. Unlike the other two, Obama isn’t a baby-boomer. His message is shaped by far different circumstances than Kucinich and Vilsack and the people are responding to his vision of hope. Circumstances far more 
significant than his race and the tilt of his name. Let’s see if he’s still leading the pack 18 months from now.
As I read in the Washington Post today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are reacting against a short-term “surge” of U.S. troops because it will have no permanent effect on the situation in Iraq. The president, after three years of doing nothing, is asking around for advice on what to do, while young men and women die every day in Iraq. Just a couple weeks ago Marine Major Megan McClung, a respected officer and world-class triathelete became the highest-ranking woman officer to die in Iraq.
She was just one of many, but since she was the head of the public affairs office for the Marines in Al Anbar province, her death touched a lot of journalists who had nothing but glowing words to say about her service to this Nation and her respect for what the journalists — and bloggers it turns out — were doing in Iraq; from Oliver North to the writer from Newsweek who is so low on the totem pole, we don’t know his name. But he was in the convoy that was hit by the roadside bomb that killed McClung, Army Captain Travis Patriquin and Army specialist Vincent J. Pomante III in Ramadi.
The big news from the Commander-in-Chief? His Secretary of State will meet with him in Crawford, Texas after Christmas. Young men and women are dying everyday in Iraq, but what passes for “action” on the part of the people who started this war is more talk?
Eight months ago the Iraq Study Group was going to be the way out of Iraq. Today, it’s all but forgotten, barely a footnote in this bloody outrage, talked about only as daddy’s failed attempt to bail you out once again, Mr. President.
As Keith Olbermann said in one of his Special messages right before the elections, you have been making it up as you went along and now your lies, your stubbornness, your inability to focus on policies — your constant demonizing of everyone who doesn’t agree with you — it has all come to this point where we find no good plans, only some plans with less severe consequences than others.
You started this war Mr. President, and now someone else is going to have to finish it. That makes you a loser. Worse still, we broke it when we let you start this war which means for all time we will owe the Iraqi people for the horror we unleashed, first by invading Iraq and then by treating Iraq like a second-rate colonial possession.
That sick feeling I had in the pit of my stomach as a young Marine on April 30, 1975 is back and with each passing day it grows as the reality of where this war had led us becomes more and more unavoidable. Six months from now, a year from now, two years — god help us if it’s five years or more as Rummy predicted earlier this year — another young Marine will watch as the colors are lowered from the embassy for the last time, feeling he, or she, is one of the losers. We failed to accomplish the mission.
It wasn’t the troops, as several key politicians like Condi Rice tried to insinuate. It was the policy makers, from the president right on down to the rubber stamp Congress that endorsed this policy. But that reality won’t make the sense of being a loser go away, not quickly anyway. I just hope these policy makers have the decency to fund the Veterans Administration enough to care for all the casualties it has created.
Tune in Thursday for the rest of this rant, which, initially, was about the most dangerous man in America.
Donald Vance, a 29 year old veteran of the Navy and a one-time private security contractor in Iraq, was swept up in a raid on an unscrupulous security firm in Baghdad and held for 97 days, interrogated, deprived of sleep, kept from obtaining a lawyer, wasn’t allowed to contact his family until 30 days into the ordeal and otherwise treated like an enemy of the U.S.
Here’s the irony of the story, which would be funny if it wasn’t so … real …
The raid on the Baghdad-based security firm, which was getting paid to provide security for Iraq’s government, was set in motion by Vance, who, after being hired by the firm, found irregularities that turned out to be illegalities. Vance was, in fact, an informant for the F.B.I. Why the F.B.I.? Because it was our tax dollars being used to fund illegal arms sales to militias and insurgent groups.
It gets more interesting. Even after the F.B.I. confirmed to the Pentagon and the command structure in Iraq that Vance was one of the good guys, three weeks after he was detained, Army officials in Iraq decided he was still “a threat” and detained him for another two months.
We’ve broken more than Iraq with this war. Our basic freedoms, those found in the Bill of Rights — Habeas Corpus — and in the First Amendment are dangerously close to being eliminated, all while this president claims we are fighting for freedom. It begs the question, what “freedom” is he talking about?
Iraq is the one defining issue of our day as Vietnam was 35 years ago. On Iraq rests the careers of nearly every politico come 2008. There will be those who said “stay the course” with the president even after the 2006 mid-term elections, and then all the others. And when you break down the others, there will be those who opposed this tragedy from the beginning and those who came late to that opinion.
You will have all the Republicans trying to explain why they supported the war so long, why they thought deposing Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do, why they think the number of U.S. soldiers killed and severely maimed, which by 2008 could number 40,000 or more if the troops stay in Iraq until then, was worth it just to see Saddam hanged; they will try to explain that all to an American electorate looking to hold someone accountable.
Then there are the Democrats, like Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and John Kerry. They will be explaining why they voted “yea” to authorize the president’s war and why they supported it, especially Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. I like Senator Biden (D-DE), but he has to take responsibility for what he did to facilitate the start of this war.
Congressman Dennis Kucinich and Governor Tom Vilsack
Senator Barack Obama
As I read in the Washington Post today, the Joint Chiefs of Staff are reacting against a short-term “surge” of U.S. troops because it will have no permanent effect on the situation in Iraq. The president, after three years of doing nothing, is asking around for advice on what to do, while young men and women die every day in Iraq. Just a couple weeks ago Marine Major Megan McClung, a respected officer and world-class triathelete became the highest-ranking woman officer to die in Iraq.
Marine Major Megan McClung
The big news from the Commander-in-Chief? His Secretary of State will meet with him in Crawford, Texas after Christmas. Young men and women are dying everyday in Iraq, but what passes for “action” on the part of the people who started this war is more talk?
Eight months ago the Iraq Study Group was going to be the way out of Iraq. Today, it’s all but forgotten, barely a footnote in this bloody outrage, talked about only as daddy’s failed attempt to bail you out once again, Mr. President.
As Keith Olbermann said in one of his Special messages right before the elections, you have been making it up as you went along and now your lies, your stubbornness, your inability to focus on policies — your constant demonizing of everyone who doesn’t agree with you — it has all come to this point where we find no good plans, only some plans with less severe consequences than others.
You started this war Mr. President, and now someone else is going to have to finish it. That makes you a loser. Worse still, we broke it when we let you start this war which means for all time we will owe the Iraqi people for the horror we unleashed, first by invading Iraq and then by treating Iraq like a second-rate colonial possession.
The Last Days of Saigon, April, 1975
It wasn’t the troops, as several key politicians like Condi Rice tried to insinuate. It was the policy makers, from the president right on down to the rubber stamp Congress that endorsed this policy. But that reality won’t make the sense of being a loser go away, not quickly anyway. I just hope these policy makers have the decency to fund the Veterans Administration enough to care for all the casualties it has created.
Tune in Thursday for the rest of this rant, which, initially, was about the most dangerous man in America.
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