'My Cambodian Moment': The truth in Iraq

[UpInArms]

http://greenvilleonline.com/news/opinion/2003/11/14/2003111419070.htm

By Ernest F. Hollings

The majority leader of the Senate, Mike Mansfield, quietly opposed the war in Vietnam for years. He had a practice of writing memos in opposition to the war to presidents Johnson and Nixon while publicly supporting the war on the floor of the Senate. But finally, when Cambodia was invaded under President Nixon, he snapped.

Going on television, he said Vietnam was a mistake from the get-go. The next day he received a letter from an admirer who had just lost her son. She said: "I just buried my son to come home and watch you say that the Vietnam War was a mistake from the beginning. Why didn't you speak out sooner?"

I came to the Senate in 1966, and if Mansfield, an expert on the Far East, had spoken out at that time, we might have saved 50,000 lives. I have reached my "Cambodian moment."

<snip>

I was misled. Saddam was not reconstituting a nuclear program, and in no way was he connected to 9-11. There were no terrorists in Baghdad, no weapons of mass destruction, and Saddam was no threat to our national security. Iraq was not a part of the war on terrorism.

...more...

and it is not "good news" - it is dreadful news - we are so f***ed that it is going to destroy our country because of the lack of options.

[Paschall]

1. You can thank Senator Hollings for this op-ed by e-mail here

http://hollings.senate.gov/contact/Webform.cfm

Otherwise, his phone numbers are listed on this page
http://www.senate.gov/~hollings/

[DrBB]

2. The key difference between Hollings' "Cambodian moment"

...and Mike Mansfield's, of course, being two essential phrases: "The majority leader of the Senate," and "Going on television."

Hollings's statement is as clear and uncompromising as one could wish. The only problem is that there it is, tucked away in the Greenville online opinion pages instead of blaring into living rooms on the CBS Evening News and standing in stark, accusatory 20-point type on the front page of the NYTimes.

But it is significant. Bush has had the luxury of an opposition party that by and large was willing to play along. That no longer seems to be the case. The more of 'em who make statements like this, the more "mainstream" and acceptable it will be for others to acknowledge what a massive fuck-up these arrogant bozos have dragooned us into.

The GOPigs are said to be planning a scorched-earth, all-Dems-are-terrorist-enabling-traitors strategy for 2004. There's an increasing chance that such a strategy will only serve to focus more attention on what a mistake the Flying Chimp & Co have made by veering off into Iraq.

The greatest non-sequitur in US foreign policy history--as if, after Pearl Habor, we saddled up and invaded Uttar Pradesh. The current "plan," for want of a better term, is to declare victory and pull out by June. That won't fix the political problem any more than the geo-political one--it will just stand as a humiliating acknowledgment that they didn't have a clue what they were doing from the get-go.