Lest We Forget

Here's a Donald Rumsfeld Blast from the Past:

Salon.com reported that back at the beginning of this invasion, the people "in charge" of it believed that we would be in and out with no trouble and no long term occupation. Not 5 years, not 10 years, not John McCain's 100 years.

Read on:

Monday, Sept. 11, 2006 15:16 EST
General: Rumsfeld told us not to plan for "postwar" Iraq
When Dick Cheney says he'd do "exactly the same thing" all over again in Iraq, we wonder if this is what he has in mind: In an interview last week with Virginia's Daily Press, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps says that Donald Rumsfeld specifically directed war planners to stop short of planning for what would happen after Saddam Hussein's government fell.
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us ... that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," said Brig. Gen. Mark Scheid.
Scheid, one of a small group of officers involved in drafting an Iraq plan, said that he and his colleagues tried to write "what was called Phase 4" -- a plan for post-invasion operations -- so that "at least [we'd have] a plan for it" if U.S. soldiers didn't leave Iraq immediately after deposing Saddam.
"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today. He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."
― Tim Grieve

Winter Soldier II

I've been watching the Winter Soldier II panels on LINK TV.
The event is organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War: http://ivaw.org/index.html
Thank goodness we have some independent media still in this country because the mainstream media is not covering the event. In fact they are not covering the Iraqi Occupation much at all.
You could watch on LINK TV or Free Speech TV or listen on Pacifica Radio or on the IVAW website.
I found one article in the MSM via Google News Search from the Boston Globe:

"Liz Jackson's eyes were fixed on a screen showing a live broadcast of anguished testimonies by Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans describing what they had seen and done during their combat tours.
more stories like this
Jeffery Smith recalled how his Army unit beat and humiliated Iraqi prisoners. Former Marine Bryan Casler recounted how fellow Marines urinated and defecated into food and gave it to Iraqi children. Former Marine Matthew Childers talked about how he used to humiliate Iraqi civilians during predawn raids on their homes. When he described turning away an Iraqi father who was asking American troops to help the badly burned baby he carried in his arms, Jackson began to weep silently.
"These soldiers are saying: 'I'm complicit,' " said Jackson, 29, a community organizer from Cambridge. "But every American citizen who saw this happen and isn't out there protesting is complicit. I include myself."
Hundreds of soldiers and Marines from across the country are testifying this weekend in the "Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan" hearings, a four-day event held at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md. The event is named after the 1971 Winter Soldier hearings in which Vietnam War veterans testified in a Detroit hotel about war crimes they had participated in or witnessed.
The hearings, which began Thursday and end today, were organized by the Iraq Veterans Against War, a national antiwar organization, and broadcast live in locations across the country. The veterans who testified called for an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq."

The coverage was hard to watch. The first-hand stories these soldiers told were hard to listen to. The looks of pain, remorse, outrage, and anger on these young faces was hard to take. But I don't think not listening is doing the majority of Americans any good.

Even if you are completely egotistical and self-centered, it should be obvious that participating in the Iraqi Occupation is not something that would be good for you.

Even if you are completely ethnocentric, it should be obvious by now that the Iraqi Occupation is not good for your country. America is being hurt the longer we stay in Iraq.

Even if you only believe in Corporate profits, it should be obvious by now that the Iraqi Occupation is not good for the American Brand. And it should be obvious that we cannot afford this occupation monetarily.

And if you have a more world-centric point of view, it should be obvious by now that the Iraqi Occupation is not good for the human race. We are jeopardising our dignity, integrity and our souls by continuing this military occupation. And we are damaging the lives of countless Iraqis.

I encourage you to read or listen to the reports of some of these soldiers, the real young people being asked to do the dirty work so that billionaires can make more profits.
And I encourage you to ask yourself why coverage from the streets of Iraq do not make it onto our TV screens and our front pages.
I think supporting the troops should include listening to their eye-witness accounts when they come home.