By Dennis Loo
Scott McClellan, no doubt in an effort
to assuage his guilty conscience about all of the lies he told as Presidential
Press Secretary, reveals some truths about this White House in his memoir.
The story he tells about the run up tothe Iraq war – “manipulating sources of public opinion” and
misleading people about why they wanted that war – are all being played
out once again in relation to their plans for war on Iran.
The only difference is that the press
secretary now is Dana Perino, but the game plan remains the same.
Will we be able this time to stop their
vicious march to war and their plans to kill many, many innocent people,
above and beyond the more than 1.2 million Iraqis they have killed to
date in Iraq?
On April 21, 2008, CBS News reported that Dr. Ira Katz, the VA’s head of Mental Health,
in internal emails, admitted that there “are about 18 suicides
per day among America’s 25 million veterans.” This, according to
CBS, works out to 6,570 suicides per year.
Since we have been in Iraq since March
2003, this translates to, conservatively, somewhere over 30,000 soldiers
committing suicide. In other words, seven and a half times as many
American soldiers have died by self-inflicted means than have been “killed
in action.”
If instead of killing themselves, these
soldiers turned their anger and frustration on the people who are really
responsible – the Pentagon, the White House, and the Congress – then
they’d be doing not just themselves, but the whole world, a gigantic
favor.
I do not know what the suicide numbers
were during the Vietnam War, but I do know this: the anti-war movement
created the conditions within which soldiers – who were confronting
first hand the ugly truths about the war’s real nature – could turn
their experiences into fodder for anti-war resistance and rather than
escaping a terrible personal agony by killing themselves, turn their
fury against their officers and against the US government that was prosecuting
that war.
GI resistance played a very big role
in ending that unjust war. The anti-war movement at home (and abroad)
in turn played a big role in making that GI resistance possible. The
anti-war movement did this not by repeating ad nauseum that it “supports
the troops” but by saying loudly and clearly that GIs should resist
an immoral war. We do no service to soldiers by saying that we support
them in carrying out the atrocities of this immoral government. We only
do them a service by urging them to do the only right thing: fight AGAINST
this war.
The painfully large numbers of suicides
being committed now is the direct result of an immoral and unjust war
being waged by this government that claims with so much self-righteousness
that they are “supporting” and “honoring” the troops.
What filthy rotten monsters they are!
Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled
US on Iraq
Wednesday 28 May 2008
by: Michael D. Shear, The Washington
Post
Former White House press secretary Scott
McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American
people with a sophisticated “political propaganda campaign”
led by President Bush and aimed at “manipulating sources of public
opinion” and “downplaying the major reason for going to war.”
For the rest of this article, go here.
Dennis Loo is an awards winning sociologist,
co-editor of Impeach the President: the Case Against Bush and Cheney,
Cal Poly Pomona Associate Professor of Sociology, WCW National Steering
Committee Member, Declare It Now originator.