From The "While Petraeus Testifies" Department: Been There, Done That

[CatWoman]

LBJ and General William Westmoreland in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam,
December 23, 1967.




Bush and Petraeus, et al. in Anbar Province, September 3, 2007


So much of politics is about how you use pictures. Now, if we could only figure out how to put them together half as well as they do....


http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2007/09/from-the-while-.html

[BOSSHOG]

1. What the fuck is so funny in picture number two?

Three four stars and a buffoon just having a good ole time while our kids are dying about them FOR NO APPARENT REASON.

[CatWoman]

2. But Boss

look at the framing.

[lonestarnot]

4. bushitler farted.

[The_Casual_Observer]

3. The whole thing was supposed to last a few weeks and cost about

a billion $, according to the same people. Only fools would believe anything they have to say. The Arabs have beaten them every step of the way, they aren't in a position to dictate any terms to the Iraqis.

[redqueen]

5. That was the lie they fed to the clueless...

they knew full fucking well it'd be a quagmire and we'd be stuck there for god knows how long.

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. I don't give them that much credit or respect. The top guys actually

thought the populace was so softened up that they could blow up a few buildings, go in with a half ass cut rate army & own the oil. They have been putting up a pretty brave face all this time for not knowing what the fuck to do, every time sneaking through funding for it on supplementals & staffing it with national guardsmen & having to all the time play down the losses & people & money.

[panader0]

6. Bruce Westmoreland (the general's son) was in one of my classes

in high school in Hawaii. The general was seen several times on campus as he came to pick up his son. My dad was in the Air Force at the time and I was 16 and 17.

[stillcool]

8. Same old wine...

in a brand new bottle...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Insurgency_Revolution/America_Vietnam_IAR.html
excerpted from the book
Intervention and Revolution
The United States in the Third World
by Richard J. Barnet
World Publishing, 1968, paperback edition
p205
In Vietnam the U.S. intervention steadily deepened in the 1950s as U.S. officials tried to protect their earlier investments. These investments included not only the vast sums of prior years but also their personal reputations. Men had begun to build careers on a series of claims. Academic advisers had written in journals about the success of the Land Reform or the Education Projects. The volunteer propagandists had gone far out on several limbs in predicting the coming triumph of Diem's democracy. The military had filled the pages of the military journals with extravagant promises of the successes of "counterinsurgency." Thus they pressed continually for more effort, more commitment, to make these promises come true. They kept demanding just a few more men, just a few more months, in order to postpone the accounting which would measure performance against promise.

excerpts from the book
War Made Easy
How presidents and pundits keep spinning us to death
by Norman Solomon
John Wiley and Sons, 2005, paper
p39
On April 25, 1972, the White House taping recorded this noontime dialogue among President Nixon, White House press secretary Ron Ziegler, and Henry Kissinger
President: "How many did we kill in Laos?"
Ziegler: "Maybe ten thousand-fifteen?"
Kissinger: "In the Laotian thing, we killed about ten, fifteen. . .
President: "See, the attack in the North that we have in mind... power plants, whatever's left-POL , the docks .... And I still think we ought to take the dikes out now. Will that drown people?"
Kissinger: "About two hundred thousand people."
President: "No, no, no... I'd rather use the nuclear bomb. Have ' you got that, Henry?"
Kissinger: "That, I think, would just be too much."
President: "The nuclear bomb, does that bother you? ... I just want you to think big, Henry, for Christsakes."

Nine days later, while conferring with Kissinger, Al Haig, and John Connally, the president said:
"I'll see that the United States does not lose. I'm putting it quite bluntly. I'll be quite precise. South Vietnam may lose. But the United States cannot lose. Which means, basically, I have made the decision. Whatever happens to South Vietnam, we are going to cream North Vietnam .... For once, we've got to use the maximum power of this country ... against this shit-ass little country: to win the war...
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Norman_Solomon/War_Made_Easy.html