When the Truth is Unconscionable
by Pamela LeaveyI’ve read with great remorse and sorrow the stories in the MSM about the massacre in Haditha. My heart aches, as the heart of every American should right now, for this and… how we got here.
There’s some reckoning to be done and justice must be served. The time to turn our backs in denial is over. The time to place the blame on those who stand and speak the truth to power is over.
Even today, as the Haditha massacre is drawing outrage in the right wing blogosphere, some continue to push the swift boat lies, thanks to a piece in the NY Times that Ron posted about earlier today.
“When Is Enough Really Enough,” in this circumstance and others like it in the past — “where’s the insistence that – after having lives lost to this abuse of power and more lives on the line – we’re going to demand an accountability moment?”
Good men, who have served this country well and spoken up about this and similar atrocities in the time of war have paid dearly for speaking the truth.
Good men who have fought bravely to defend this nation, have paid dearly for their courage to return from serving our country, and dare to dissent over incidents like Haditha.
It’s time to end this madness. It’s time to stand up for what is right.
And, it’s time for some serious apologies and contrition on the part of those who smeared the good names of men like John Kerry, Max Cleland and John Murtha and many others, for speaking the unconscionable truth that no one wants to face.
We were led into this war for all the wrong reasons and now it’s time to leave.
UPDATE: AP News reports tonight: Marine scandal could roil Iraq.
Time to go… Stay the course is no longer an option.
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And, it’s time for some serious apologies and contrition on the part of those who smeared the good names of men like John Kerry, Max Cleland and John Murtha and many others, for speaking the unconscionable truth that no one wants to face.
Good point – I’m sorry John Kerry didn’t have enough character to vote against the war in Oct 2002, or to oppose it during the campaign.
Tom Maguire
He did oppose it during the campaign – sorry you missed that.
This is a sad and beautiful statement, Pam.
What I also find sad is how so many people insist on staying in the past and clinging desperately to blame when our country is longing for good leadership and to be released from this horrible mistake. I’m sure deep down we all want the same things. Kerry, himself admitted his mistake in trusting Bush at the time. The rest of us could show the courage and dignity to focus on our present dilemma and put everything we’ve got into its resolution. In fact, I’m asking that everybody do this. It will help.
This is a fitting tribute on Memorial Day and surely a moment of truth.
Kerry not only opposed the war during the campaign, he also opposed going to war in the first place. He made it clear that ihs vote was for the use of force as a last resort only if we were proven to be threatened by WMD.
Kerry spoke out against going to war many times leading up to the war when no evidence was found of WMD, and called for regime change in the United States in protest when Bush did go to war.
This letter was forwarded to me from an email friend. It had gone to a mutual friend from an Iraqi civilian. For privacy and security I am leaving out names. I cry every time I read it.
Dear *******,
It breaks my heart that I am making people cry instead of laugh and smile, but it’s out of my hand. I am really helpless and desperate. Things here are getting more than worse. I’ve made it since I was born in 1980 when Iraq-Iran war started. I’ve went through three unbelievable wars but now I feel it’s the end.
Sometimes I regret writing my feelings on ***** because of the feeling I get from most Americans and western people. They all blame us for this struggle. They reached the extent of mocking us despite the fact that we are suffering because of them. ***** closed the comment section after a group of anonymous Americans attacked me on my last post. I was grieving my friend’s mother lost while they were attacking me like monitors [monsters]. I swear I felt they were throwing knives, not words with spiteful faces and hateful smiles. They left no space for feeling and that makes more insistent of not sharing my life with them anymore. I may post every now and then but maybe not as before.
I apologize for every tear I made drop. Between us, my name …. means the one who usually smiles. This smile is fading gradually and being turned into tears.
Thank you so much for all your kind feelings. I hope one day things become normal to write about. I hope I can make you smile instead of crying then.
Bests,
[the one who usually smiles]
____________________
Teresa
Thank you dear friend. It is so time for people to wake up. We are better than this. We have evolved. We have come to far, the human race to continue on this path of destruction, pain and misery. Our leader awaits us and those who don’t get it now will soon.
Pamela,
And thank you. I think something happened to me this weekend. I realized how impossible it is for me to get others to see the truth and I think maybe I should stop forcing it. Here at Democratic Daily, I see everybody getting along in a harmony I don’t find elsewhere. Even though I’m reluctant to follow anyone, I think leadership is necessary and Kerry is light years beyond the rest. I think our recognition of this fact is what unites us with a common cause and deletes hate, bitterness, envy, accusation and all the rest.
I know if anyone threatened me, the people here would not hesitate for a moment to come to my defense.
There is still so much sniping and discord all around. So I think it’s best to stay put here, build from the golden nugget, and let people find their path to us when they’re ready.
As you said, It will be soon.
Thanks to you, Ron, everybody here, and the Kerrys for giving me a central focal point that I know is good.
Pamela,
I can find it in my heart to forgive those Marines, but I would not support them if they tried to run for President of my country.
The Boston Globe – June 6, 2003 — On Feb. 20, 1969, John Kerry earned his second Purple Heart after sustaining a shrapnel wound in his left thigh. According to a previously unreported Navy report on the battle, a two-boat patrol spotted three men on a riverbank who were wearing black pajamas and running and engaged them in a firefight. While not criticizing this engagement, the Navy report did challenge the decision of unnamed skippers to fire at other “targets of opportunity” in the area.
“Area seemed extremely prosperous and open to psyops action, minimum number of defensive and no offensive bunkers detected,” the report said. The naval official who wrote the report concluded: “Future missions in this area should be oriented toward psyops rather than destruction.”
The destruction included 40 sampans, 10 hut-style hootches, three bunkers, and 5,000 pounds of rice. The crews from two swift boats had expended more than 14,000 rounds of.50-caliber ammunition. No enemy casualties were reported.
In regards to this incident John Kerry reported:
“In fact, the only territory that we ever secured was that which stretched two thousand yards on either side of the river-namely, the range of the guns. And the idea that we were ever going to make these people our friends, when we went through shooting up their homes and cutting off the rivers that were their…..livelihood–Christ, if they weren’t VC before we went in, they were bound to be by the time we finished.”
….refer to pages 287-288 of Tour of Duty, John Kerry and the Vietnam War by Douglas Brinkley
Robert Greer
Let’s make it clear from the get go here, incase you didn’t read the fine print under where it say “Leave a Reply,” I’ll point this out to you — “Bashing or attacking our members, Democratic leaders in office or candidates is not tolerated.”
Conisder this your warning. If you think that you’ve sharing some news story here regarding the swift boat lies” that every member of this blog including myself has never seen, think again. We have a library of Kerry news stories. Passing off slanted media crap (with out a link) here as some sort of refutation to John Kerry’s military record is laughable at best.
People around here know John Kerry’s record on just about EVERYTHING, inside and out… so run along and find somewhere else to post your BS. We’re not buying it here.
Oh and Robert, I too can forgive those Marines, but you can bet your bottom dollar none of them will ever run for president.
Insinuating that there is a comparsion is ludicrous.
You’re trolling in the wrong place — we already had enough of you here.
Robert Greer,
Personally, one MSM article is only a start. There is too great a possibility that important details are not in there.
If you haven’t seen the documentary “Going Upriver, The Long War of John Kerry,” it might clarify the difference between what Kerry did in Vietnam and what the Marines did in Haditha. It sounds like the Iraq equivalent to the My Lai Massacre.
The film also details the effort that Kerry was involved in, with other swift boat captains, to meet with Admiral Zumwalt to discuss the futility and inhumanity of the free fire zone. The river banks were mostly inhabited in fishing villages with peasant populations living much the same as their ancestors had for centuries. Keep in mind Kerry’s tour on the river was about 4.5 months – a long time in an assignment that had casualty rates as high as 85%. The swift boat operations on the river were relatively new. Kerry had first applied for a captains assignment when the boats were used in the ocean harbors to check the fishing boats. Zumwalt told them to continue what they were doing.
Is there a difference between bomber pilots who don’t know who they have killed from the air, swift boat pilots who are shooting from the river and marines who respond to a buddy being killed by a buried bomb with entrance into the immediate houses and killing the occupants, including women and young children? The marines apparently spent some time in the open looking at the humvee and shooting at the taxi that came into the street. By that time, if there were any insurgents in those houses who wanted to shoot at them, they would have had more dead and wounded buddies lying around.
Does it make a difference to the victims and their families? Knowing what it does to someone to kill a person they actually see, especially with eye contact; and hearing different reports of vicims who survived bombing raids and those who witnessed this type of killing, I would bet that the in-person killing is more traumatizing to the human psyche.
The cold stench of reality here is that sending soldiers into battle creates two problems that are inherent human reactions to being targets and killers.
1) PTSD, the biggest, uggliest and most ignored war wound. It comes home with many whose lives are then ruined by it, along with their families and other relationships.
2) Turning a percent of the soldiers into monsters who kill (rape, torture, plunder) for revenge, for sport or in cold blooded indifference.
These have happened in every war, through out the world, when armies have gone to war.
Every time we reach a point in a war that it becomes apparent the conflict was a mistake, we think we have learned the lesson. When fog, fear, and misconceptions later take over the mind and wipe out the lesson, tragedy is repeated.
Aside from developing stronger controls on the War Powers Act, the businesses and financial institutions that have developed war as our economic base need to be investigated and put under more restrictions. We don’t legally allow drug production of heroin or marijuana, the tobacco companies have been forced to curtail their recruiting efforts.
Allowing these companies to sell all the weapons overseas that they want keeps the local millitias in guns and ammo. Then we try to step in and put in troops that will kill, be killed or both, by weapons “Made in the USA”.
Personally, one of the things that impresses me about Kerry is that he had been in war, he knew the ugliness and the full human toll. He had spoken out against the leadership in the millitary, executive branch and Congress for their errors of command and oversight omissions. I trust him to use every diplomatic effort to prevent and avoid war. I understand that something could happen that requires we defend ourselves- and probably won’t because Kerry would be all over it.
We haven’t learned our lessons. Senator Kerry in his questioning on April. 22. 1971, exactly why things happen as they did in Vietnam and it is still stands true today.
War is ugly and it brings out ugliness amongst people. I was in military life for 20 years and it started with Vietnam, I know what the guys said and how it changed from “gook” to “raghead” during the Iran incident.On my husband’s helmet he had these letters taped to the back “DILLIGAFF” translated “Do I Look Like I Give A Flying F—”.
I keep on remembering that one scene in “Fahrenheit 9/11″, where the soldier is singing loudly and proudly “Burn Mother F—–s Burn”. Everytime I think of that scene,and the look on that soldier’s face, I say to myself , what lessons have we learned. In my eyes not many.
Fedup,
Perfect excerpt. This point always hits me with the elucidation:
His reference to the training methods also reminds me that boot camp tactics are well known to ‘reprogram’ the mind so to speak, making the enlisted more willing to follow commands and think less.
Maybe we also need an exit boot camp. When your tour is up and you decide not to continue, the exit training will be to restore some of the citizen attitude that was ‘adjusted’ when you entered.
It’s really embarrassing that a war hero has to defend his behavior while he was defending our country, while a cocaine-addled, cowardly loser gets a free pass from the media. Kerry relased his service record. Why can’t Smirk release his?
And Herr Greer, we can go anywhere on TV, hate radio, or the newpapers for GOP lies. Don’t bring them here.
Logic tells us that if Abu Ghraib was revealed only through the accident of the publication of some unauthorized pictures, and Haditha was revealed through the accident of the failure of a cover-up, then there must have been many other Abu Ghraibs where no unauthorized pictures were taken, and many other Hadithas where the perpetrators were more skillful in covering their tracks. The members of the “embedded” newsmedia never seem of think of this logic.
Other than Haditha, only a single case is pending against the Marines. It involves last July’s killing in cold blood of the cousin of Iraq’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Do you see the pattern here? Ambassador Samir al-Sumaidaie had sufficient influence to force an investigation, although no results have been announced yet. That killing drew attention and got investigated simply because it happened to involve an ambassador’s cousin. Should the newsmedia not be asking themselves whether there have been other killings that did not accidentally involve relatives of ambassadors and other powerful individuals? Would it not be a logically inescapable conclusion that there have been many other such killings?
AL S E
Good points. There has been an investigation of the prisons in Iraq that revealed many signs of torture and abuse. They were no longer being run by US forces.
I have also seen reports of similar incidents in Afghanistan. Reports by Afghans, don’t remember any investigation.
What I find appeasing is that both of these were revealed by personal photographs taken by troops- that were not confiscated by their commanders or investigators. Haditha also got video coverage from the morgue by a journalism student.
With the numbers of photograph capable cell phones growing, the ability to hide anything gets that much harder.
The killings are also fairly well documented in Iraq – to the point that a significant percentage of middle class Iraqis are emigrating rather than stay in the anarchy of a civil war complicated by terrorists and religion.
Fedup:
In regards to the clip from Michael Moore’s film, it’s actually not as bad as you think (”Burn motherf**** burn). The way he edited made it look worse. It actually came from a VH1 program on the music soldiers listen to and even songs that they have written and sung. I can’t explain it, but that shot and editing was extremely unfair to that soldier. Plus that was 2003, before the insurgency came into full force. I am a little wary of Michael Moore since then in how he can make a film sometimes not tell the full truth. That soldier was showing the interviewer different CDs he liked for which that was one. I think he was also talking about how you had to take turns in what type of music to listen to — hard rock, country, R & B, and so on. It was really quite innocent and had nothing to do with him wanting to blow people up; instead it was just the typical 20 year old who liked his hard rock, and who if he weren’t in a war would never be violent.