government officials committed to wars based on lies,
- From: "Raymond" <Bluerhymer@xxxxxxx>
- Date: 3 Apr 2007 14:32:26 -0700
McCain Walks in McNamara's Footsteps
by Norman Solomon
The media spectacle that John McCain made of himself in Baghdad on
Sunday was yet another reprise of a ghastly ritual. Sen. McCain
expressed "very cautious optimism" and told reporters that the latest
version of the U.S. war effort in Iraq is "making progress."
Three years ago, in early April 2004, when an insurrection exploded in
numerous Iraqi cities, U.S. occupation spokesman Dan Senor informed
journalists: "We have isolated pockets where we are encountering
problems." Nine days later, President Bush declared: "It's not a
popular uprising. Most of Iraq is relatively stable."
For government officials committed to a war based on lies, such claims
are in the wiring.
When Defense Secretary Robert McNamara visited Vietnam for the first
time, in May 1962, he came back saying that he'd seen "nothing but
progress and hopeful indications of further progress in the future."
In October 1966, when McNamara held a press conference at Andrews Air
Force Base after returning from a trip to Vietnam, he spoke of the
progress he'd seen there. Daniel Ellsberg recalls that McNamara made
that presentation "minutes after telling me that everything was much
worse than the year before."
Despite the recent "surge" in the kind of media hype that McCain was
trying to boost last weekend in Baghdad, this spring has begun with
most news coverage still indicating that the war is going badly for
American forces in Iraq. Some pundits say that U.S. military fortunes
there during the next few months will determine the war's political
future in Washington. And opponents of the war often focus their
arguments on evidence that an American victory is not possible.
But shifts in the U.S. military role on the ground in Iraq, coupled
with the Pentagon's air war escalating largely out of media sight,
could enable the war's promoters to claim a notable reduction of
"violence." And the American death toll could fall due to
reconfiguration or reduction of U.S. troop levels inside Iraq.
Such a combination of developments would appeal to the fervent
nationalism of U.S. news media. But the antiwar movement shouldn't
pander to jingo-narcissism. If we argue that the war is bad mainly
because of what it is doing to Americans, then what happens when the
Pentagon finds ways to cut American losses - while continuing to
inflict massive destruction on Iraqi people?
American news outlets will be inclined to depict the Iraq war as
winding down when fewer Americans are dying in it. That happened
during the last several years of the Vietnam War, while massive U.S.
bombing - and Vietnamese deaths - continued unabated.
The vast bulk of the U.S. media is in the habit of defining events
around the world largely in terms of what's good for the U.S.
government - through the eyes of top officials in Washington.
Routinely, the real lives of people are noted only as shorthand for
American agendas. The political spin of the moment keeps obscuring the
human moment.
Awakening from a 40-year nap, an observer might wonder how much has
changed since the last war that the United States stumbled over
because it could not win. The Congressional Record is filled with
insistence that the lessons of Vietnam must not be forgotten. But they
cannot be truly remembered if they were never learned in the first
place
Vietnam was about oil too.The whole 20 year Viet Nam "war" from 1955
to 1975 was an oil scam. Both the Vietnam War and the Iraq war were
launched based on intelligence ... existence of our own democracy and,
yes, for the significant matter of oil. .
We missed. China gets the oil.
Singaporean firm to build oil refinery in Vietnam
In the 1920's an insider secret became known to a few people. It was
published in an exhaustive world resources survey book written by a
renowned world-traveling geologist named Hoover, who later became a US
President. Not many copies were printed and few people read the book.
The secret was that one of the world's largest potential oil fields
ran along the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-
China, now known as Viet Nam.
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj050701-3.html
A Singaporean company has planned to build an oil refinery complex
with investment of 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in Vietnam's central Phu
Yen province, local newspaper Labor reported Monday.
Under a memorandum of understanding signed between the SP. Chemicals
Company and the provincial People's Committee on March 30, the future
refinery with annual capacity of 1.5 million tons is expected to come
into operation in 2012.
The construction of Vietnam's first oil refinery started in central
Quang Ngai province in November 2005. Capitalized at some 2.5 billion
U.S. dollars and expected to become operational in late 2008 or early
2009, the Dung Quat refinery with an annual refining capacity of 6.5
million tons of crude oil is of significance in ensuring energy for
the country, said Vietnam's National Oil and Gas Group PetroVietnam
the project's investor.
Vietnam is making preparation for the construction of its second oil
refinery named Nghi Son in central Thanh Hoa province. The Vietnamese
government has recently approved a plan on constructing the third oil
refinery with annual processing capacity of at least 7 million tons in
southern Ba Ria Vung Tau province.
Source: Xinhua
THE U.S. INVASION OF VIETNAM
Herbert Hoover, later to become President of the United States did a
study that showed that one of the world's largest oil fields ran along
the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-China, now
known as Vietnam.
In the 1920's an insider secret became known to a few people. It was
published in an exhaustive world resources survey book written by a
renowned world-traveling geologist named Hoover, who later became a US
President. Not many copies were printed and few people read the book.
The secret was that one of the world's largest potential oil fields
ran along the coast of the South China Sea right off French Indo-
China, now known as Viet Nam.
http://www.brojon.org/frontpage/bj050701-3.html
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/vietnam.html
Denny, Ludwell, We Fight of Oil, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1928.
In the first years of the twentieth century, oil, in addition to its
value as a lubricant, became a serious challenger of coal as a fuel
for means of transportation. World War I brought this new power factor
into sharp focus. Its impressive military and industrial roles
sharpened competition among the Great Powers and encouraged them to
scour the globe for promising future reserves. Oil became a very
important factor in the geopolitics of all the major powers after the
First World War. When the war ended, the entire world desired oil
concessions in the Middle East. The Standard Oil Company, the Anglo-
Persian Oil Company and Sinclair made efforts to acquire rights or to
establish their old claims to the oil treasures of Iran.
Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam
Melvin R. Laird
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005
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Roundtable on the Iraq Study Group Report
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Complete list »
Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam
Melvin R. Laird
From Foreign Affairs, November/December 2005
Summary: During Richard Nixon's first term, when I served as
secretary of defense, we withdrew most U.S. forces from Vietnam while
building up the South's ability to defend itself. The result was a
success -- until Congress snatched defeat from the jaws of victory by
cutting off funding for our ally in 1975. Washington should follow a
similar strategy now, but this time finish the job properly.
MELVIN R. LAIRD was Secretary of Defense from 1969 to 1973,
Counselor to the President for Domestic Affairs from 1973 to 1974, and
a member of the House of Representatives from 1952 to 1969. He
currently serves as Senior Counselor for National and International
Affairs at the Reader's Digest Association.
Topics:
National Security and Defense
U.S. Policy and Politics
Middle East
What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable
By Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Chaim Kaufmann, Leslie H. Gelb, and
Stephen Biddle
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006
Jets or GIs? How Best to Address the Military's Manpower Shortage
By Lawrence J. Korb, Peter Ogden, and Frederick W. Kagan
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006
What to Do in Iraq: A Roundtable
By Larry Diamond, James Dobbins, Chaim Kaufmann, Leslie H. Gelb, and
Stephen Biddle
Foreign Affairs, July/August 2006
Saddam's Delusions: The View From the Inside
By Kevin Woods, James Lacey, and Williamson Murray
Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006
Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon
By Stephen Biddle
Foreign Affairs, March/April 2006
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT
Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 on the assumption that he had a plan
to end the Vietnam War. He didn't have any such plan, and my job as
his first secretary of defense was to remedy that -- quickly. The only
stated plan was wording I had suggested for the 1968 Republican
platform, saying it was time to de-Americanize the war. Today, nearly
37 years after Nixon took office as president and I left Congress to
join his cabinet, getting out of a war is still dicier than getting
into one, as President George W. Bush can attest.
There were two things in my office that first day that gave my mission
clarity. The first was a multivolume set of binders in my closet safe
that contained a top-secret history of the creeping U.S. entry into
the war that had occurred on the watch of my predecessor, Robert
McNamara. The report didn't remain a secret for long: it was soon
leaked to The New York Times, which nicknamed it "the Pentagon
Papers." I always referred to the study as "the McNamara Papers," to
give credit where credit belonged. I didn't read the full report when
I moved into the office. I had already spent seven years on the
Defense Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee listening
to McNamara justify the escalation of the war. How we got into Vietnam
was no longer my concern. (Although, in retrospect, those papers
offered a textbook example of how not to commit American military
might.)
The second item was another secret document, this one shorter and
infinitely more troubling. It was a one-year-old request from General
William Westmoreland to raise the U.S. troop commitment in Vietnam
from 500,000 to 700,000. At the time he had made the request,
Westmoreland was the commander of U.S. forces there. As soon as the
idea had reached the ears of President Lyndon Johnson, Westmoreland's
days in Saigon were numbered. Johnson bumped him upstairs to be army
chief of staff, so that the Pentagon bureaucracy could dilute his more-
is-better philosophy during the coming presidential campaign.
The memo had remained in limbo in the defense secretary's desk,
neither approved nor rejected. As my symbolic first act in office, it
gave me great satisfaction to turn down that request formally. It was
the beginning of a four-year withdrawal from Vietnam that, in
retrospect, became the textbook description of how the U.S. military
should decamp.
Others who were not there may differ with this description. But they
have been misinformed by more than 30 years of spin about the Vietnam
War. The resulting legacy of that misinformation has left the United
States timorous about war, deeply averse to intervening in even a just
cause, and dubious of its ability to get out of a war once it is in
one. All one need whisper is "another Vietnam," and palms begin to
sweat. I have kept silent for those 30 years because I never believed
that the old guard should meddle in the business of new
administrations, especially during a time of war. But the renewed
vilification of our role in Vietnam in light of the war in Iraq has
prompted me to speak out.
Some who should know better have made our current intervention in Iraq
the most recent in a string of bogeymen peeking out from under the
bed, spawned by the nightmares of Vietnam that still haunt us. The
ranks of the misinformed include seasoned politicians, reporters, and
even veterans who earned their stripes in Vietnam but who have since
used that war as their bully pulpit to mold an isolationist American
foreign policy
http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20051101faessay84604/melvin-r-laird/iraq-learning-the-lessons-of-vietnam.html
The American government's relentless pursuit of Open Door policy in
Iran yielded no positive result for private American interests. On the
other hand, the vigorous efforts of the British government to secure
the Persian oil resources for Britain through government participation
in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company insured Britain an upper hand in
dealing with its American counterparts. The American government's
ambivalence and "policy on cheap" made the efforts on the part of the
American companies fruitless. Following its traditional foreign
policy, the United States government disengaged itself from any
commitment that would assist to the cause of the private American oil
companies in Iran. Having been left tete-a-tete with the government
supported Anglo-Persian Oil Company, American oil corporations were
unable to achieve any victory in obtaining oil concessions in Iran,
and were thus forced to withdraw.
" OH YEAH ! Well We're Back "
Cheney/Bush
http://www.khazar.org/jas/text/politics.html
http://www.angelfire.com/co/COMMONSENSE/vietnam.html
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