Who Will Be Last Soldier to Die for Iraq Mistake?

[babylonsister]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/pressingissues_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003608622

Who Will Be Last Soldier to Die for Iraq Mistake?
The media ought to ponder this question anew, in the wake of a Republican senator's explanation for why he has turned on the war: Military families now want U.S. troops out of Iraq.

By Greg Mitchell

(July 07, 2007) -- This week, in all the press reports on the growing (if so far polite) revolt by conservative Republicans in Congress against current Bush policy on Iraq, what struck me the most was an explanation by Sen. Pete Domenici of New Mexico.

Now, many might say that the real, and only, reason for Domenici finally seeing the light on the need for a pullback in Iraq was simply one short group of numbers: 2008. He is up for re-election next year. So are many of the other GOP hawks.

But let's give the man the benefit of a doubt, and take the following at face value. Speaking to reporters from Albuquerque on Thursday, Domenici said his change of heart came after recent conversations with families of New Mexico soldiers killed in Iraq.

Normally, such families have argued for the U.S. to stay in Iraq and accomplish something so that their loved ones did not "die in vain" -- at least according to reports by the president and many other offiicals who meet them. But now Domenici reveals that many are asking him to do more to save those still serving in Iraq.

“I heard nothing like that a couple of years ago,” he said. “I think that’s the result of this war dragging on almost indefinitely.”

A more profound shift could hardly be imagined. It means the media should re-examine a familiar phrase that I, literally, grew up with. They ought to update John Kerry’s famous question in 1971, as a Vietnam veterans’ leader, “How do you ask someone to be the last American soldier to die for a mistake?”

more...

[Swamp Rat]

1. One too many. n/t

[TomInTib]

2. I do not know who, but I do know that it will be at least a hundred years from now.

Those folks flat know how to hold a grudge.

[babylonsister]

3. Wow. Good answer. OT...

hello there. Nice to see you! Hope all is well in your world.

[TayTay]

4. That was updated in April of 2006 when Sen. Kerry said:

And that's certainly what I felt when I came home from Vietnam convinced that our political leaders were waging war simply to avoid responsibility for the mistakes that doomed our mission in the first place. Indeed, one of the architects of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, confessed in a recent book that he knew victory was no longer a possibility far earlier than 1971.

By then, it was clear to me that hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen-disproportionately poor and minority Americans-were being sent into the valley of the shadow of death for an illusion privately abandoned by the very men in Washington who kept sending them there.

John Kerry, April 22, 2006, Speech: A Right and Responsibility to Speak Out

http://www.johnkerry.com/news/speeches/speech.html?id=16

Yeah Senator, I never thought I would live to see this happen again in my lifetime either. Sigh!

[babylonsister]

6. My oh my, the good senator is on top of things. If only... nt

[WinkyDink]

5. Won't be named Bush or Cheney.