Nixon Era Champion of Peace Calls Again For Iraq Withdrawal

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George S. McGovern Calling Again for Troop Withdrawal

Wednesday, October 25, 2006; A15

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Q. What are the kinds of similarities that you see between Vietnam and the situation in Iraq?


McGovern: I think one obvious similarity is that neither Vietnam nor Iraq constituted a threat to America's security in the world. . . . Secondly, we didn't know much about either one. We didn't even have people ready to go into Iraq that spoke Arabic. . . .

All those years we were in the jungle of Vietnam, losing 58,000 young Americans and probably being responsible for a couple of million Vietnamese deaths, my four daughters and my son used to get discouraged about ever ending that war. They would say, "What good does that do? You keep sounding off. You run for president, you got smashed in the election, what good does it do?"

I would say: "Look, I am an old history teacher. . . . Even bad things in history usually have some good factor. And in Vietnam, the good thing about it is that it is such a tragic mistake we will never again do that again." . . . But I didn't count on terrorism. . . . I really think we are following the same road in Iraq. This time the fear is not communism -- it is terrorism.

Why do you not see the threat the same way ?

I see terrorism as a threat to the United States, but I think it's growing worse in the way we are trying to handle it. That's a problem that is not essentially a military problem. . . . I do fear the terrorists. I feel more threatened by six years of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld plan for fighting it than I did before.


interview: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/24/AR2006102401150_pf.html


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