Thursday, March 04, 2004
This is too odd a factoid not to put it in:
Church of England hunts for virtual vicar
LONDON (Reuters) - The Church of England has begun a hunt for a virtual vicar to take charge of a flock of "cyber-worshippers" in its first Internet parish.
The diocese of Oxford has advertised for a "Web pastor" to take charge of its soon-to-be-launched online church (www.i-church.org), set up for those who want to be part of a congregation but are unable or unwilling to join a traditional parish.
"We are looking for a dynamic, confident Christian (lay or ordained) who is able to build this new community, lead its core members, and be available to visitors to the site," the diocese`s advertisement published on Friday said.
The i-church Web site said it will offer online daily worship, a reading for the day and prayers.
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Church of England hunts for virtual vicar
LONDON (Reuters) - The Church of England has begun a hunt for a virtual vicar to take charge of a flock of "cyber-worshippers" in its first Internet parish.
The diocese of Oxford has advertised for a "Web pastor" to take charge of its soon-to-be-launched online church (www.i-church.org), set up for those who want to be part of a congregation but are unable or unwilling to join a traditional parish.
"We are looking for a dynamic, confident Christian (lay or ordained) who is able to build this new community, lead its core members, and be available to visitors to the site," the diocese`s advertisement published on Friday said.
The i-church Web site said it will offer online daily worship, a reading for the day and prayers.
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Here is an interesting strategy that could be pursued over here:
Doubts on case for conflict may bring flood of claims
Pressure grows to publish advice to Blair in full
Clare Dyer, Nicholas Watt and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian
Doubts about the legality of the war could lead to a flood of compensation claims against the government from servicemen injured in Iraq, according to a leading international lawyer.
Such a claim would require the courts to decide whether the war was lawful and force disclosure of the attorney general's full advice, said Jeremy Carver, head of public international law at the City law firm Clifford Chance.
Battlefield immunity, which protects the government from claims for soldiers' injuries or death during military operations, might not be effective in the case of an unlawful war.
Mr Carver, who represents governments and has helped them draft alternative UN resolutions, said he had initially formed no view on the war's legality.
"I didn't know then whether there was any sufficient basis on which to say the war was lawful," he said.
"From everything we have learned since then, it has become obvious there was no valid basis for the war and therefore the war was illegal."
Mr Carver's warning came as Tony Blair was facing intense pressure to publish the attorney general's full legal advice on the Iraq war.
Leading the call, John Major said that the government's stance was damaging.
In a carefully-timed intervention, Mr Blair's predecessor in No 10 told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost: "I think the air does need clearing. This is poisoning the whole political atmosphere ... domestically - internationally as well."
Mr Major's demand was backed by an international law expert, Sir Franklin Berman, a former chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who also called on the government to disclose its full reasons for going to war.
"For a decision to go to war, especially when the government claim to be acting on behalf of the international community, they ought to explain in the necessary detail the basis on which they were acting."
Downing Street stood firm in its refusal to publish the attorney general's advice. Lord Goldsmith gave the green light to the war on the eve of hostilities after warning that failure to secure a second resolution at the United Nations security council would make the war unlawful.
When a vote was not held - in the light of France's "unreasonable veto" - Lord Goldsmith said that resolution 1441 of 2002, coupled with resolutions dating back to the first Gulf war, provided legal cover.
The agonising by Lord Goldsmith was seized on yesterday by lawyers and other experts. Lady Kennedy, the Labour peer who is a leading barrister, told GMTV that America put pressure on the government to seek more hawkish legal advice after it was told by Foreign Office lawyers that the war against Iraq would be illegal.
Lord Goldsmith had then based his case on advice from Christopher Greenwood QC, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, whose views were "hawkish" and known to be in the minority of legal opinion, she added.
"The preponderance of Foreign Office opinion, legal opinion, was that going to war without a second UN resolution was unlawful ... Out of proba bly only two lawyers who would have argued for the legality of going to war, one of those was the person to whom the attorney general turned."
Further evidence emerged yesterday of the deep unease in senior government circles about the legality of the war. The Guardian has learned that on the eve of war senior lawyers in the Foreign Office believed an invasion of Iraq was illegal because of fresh intelligence that Saddam Hussein's banned weapons programme did not pose anything like an imminent threat to Britain.
Military chiefs at the Ministry of Defence were also extremely concerned about the prospect of British troops fighting a war that was unlawful. Lord Boyce, then chief of the defence staff, was described by sources yesterday as being "worried" about the ambiguous advice coming from Lord Goldsmith in the weeks leading to war as British troops were gathering in the Gulf.
"He wanted to make sure, was a war legal or not?" a well-placed source said yesterday.
The chiefs of staff were finally appeased only when the attorney general said a second UN resolution was not necessary.
The fresh intelligence which gave rise to doubts in the Foreign Office, shown to Tony Blair in the weeks before the war, painted a much less dramatic picture than the government's disputed weapons dossier published the previous September.
The much more sober analysis, which was expressed in joint intelligence committee reports in February and March last year, increased the doubts in the Foreign Office.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser to the FO, resigned in protest at the decision to go to war.
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Doubts on case for conflict may bring flood of claims
Pressure grows to publish advice to Blair in full
Clare Dyer, Nicholas Watt and Richard Norton-Taylor
Monday March 1, 2004
The Guardian
Doubts about the legality of the war could lead to a flood of compensation claims against the government from servicemen injured in Iraq, according to a leading international lawyer.
Such a claim would require the courts to decide whether the war was lawful and force disclosure of the attorney general's full advice, said Jeremy Carver, head of public international law at the City law firm Clifford Chance.
Battlefield immunity, which protects the government from claims for soldiers' injuries or death during military operations, might not be effective in the case of an unlawful war.
Mr Carver, who represents governments and has helped them draft alternative UN resolutions, said he had initially formed no view on the war's legality.
"I didn't know then whether there was any sufficient basis on which to say the war was lawful," he said.
"From everything we have learned since then, it has become obvious there was no valid basis for the war and therefore the war was illegal."
Mr Carver's warning came as Tony Blair was facing intense pressure to publish the attorney general's full legal advice on the Iraq war.
Leading the call, John Major said that the government's stance was damaging.
In a carefully-timed intervention, Mr Blair's predecessor in No 10 told BBC1's Breakfast with Frost: "I think the air does need clearing. This is poisoning the whole political atmosphere ... domestically - internationally as well."
Mr Major's demand was backed by an international law expert, Sir Franklin Berman, a former chief legal adviser to the Foreign Office, who also called on the government to disclose its full reasons for going to war.
"For a decision to go to war, especially when the government claim to be acting on behalf of the international community, they ought to explain in the necessary detail the basis on which they were acting."
Downing Street stood firm in its refusal to publish the attorney general's advice. Lord Goldsmith gave the green light to the war on the eve of hostilities after warning that failure to secure a second resolution at the United Nations security council would make the war unlawful.
When a vote was not held - in the light of France's "unreasonable veto" - Lord Goldsmith said that resolution 1441 of 2002, coupled with resolutions dating back to the first Gulf war, provided legal cover.
The agonising by Lord Goldsmith was seized on yesterday by lawyers and other experts. Lady Kennedy, the Labour peer who is a leading barrister, told GMTV that America put pressure on the government to seek more hawkish legal advice after it was told by Foreign Office lawyers that the war against Iraq would be illegal.
Lord Goldsmith had then based his case on advice from Christopher Greenwood QC, professor of international law at the London School of Economics, whose views were "hawkish" and known to be in the minority of legal opinion, she added.
"The preponderance of Foreign Office opinion, legal opinion, was that going to war without a second UN resolution was unlawful ... Out of proba bly only two lawyers who would have argued for the legality of going to war, one of those was the person to whom the attorney general turned."
Further evidence emerged yesterday of the deep unease in senior government circles about the legality of the war. The Guardian has learned that on the eve of war senior lawyers in the Foreign Office believed an invasion of Iraq was illegal because of fresh intelligence that Saddam Hussein's banned weapons programme did not pose anything like an imminent threat to Britain.
Military chiefs at the Ministry of Defence were also extremely concerned about the prospect of British troops fighting a war that was unlawful. Lord Boyce, then chief of the defence staff, was described by sources yesterday as being "worried" about the ambiguous advice coming from Lord Goldsmith in the weeks leading to war as British troops were gathering in the Gulf.
"He wanted to make sure, was a war legal or not?" a well-placed source said yesterday.
The chiefs of staff were finally appeased only when the attorney general said a second UN resolution was not necessary.
The fresh intelligence which gave rise to doubts in the Foreign Office, shown to Tony Blair in the weeks before the war, painted a much less dramatic picture than the government's disputed weapons dossier published the previous September.
The much more sober analysis, which was expressed in joint intelligence committee reports in February and March last year, increased the doubts in the Foreign Office.
Elizabeth Wilmshurst, deputy legal adviser to the FO, resigned in protest at the decision to go to war.
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ITV Just reported this little gem from Georgie da Turd
US President George W Bush has started his 2004 campaign with his first direct attack on rival John Kerry by name.
He challenged his record on national security and the economy just 24 hours after congratulating him on securing the Democratic nomination.
Bush also derided Kerry for waffling on important issues during two decades in Congress, and warned that he would roll back tax cuts critical to economic growth.
He added: "I've got news for the Washington crowd: America has gone beyond that way of thinking and we're not going back."
Bush continued: "Kerry spent two decades in Congress; he's built up quite a record. In fact, Sen. Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue."
He rebuked Kerry for saying the war on terrorism was less of a military operation than an intelligence and law enforcement operation. And he questioned Kerry's strategy on the economy, saying, "Empty talk about jobs and economic isolation won't get anyone hired."
Bush's goal is to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to saturate the airwaves with commercials designed to both bolster his image and try to create doubts about Kerry.
A senior Bush campaign official said: "John Kerry will be a formidable candidate. He's successfully run for re-election many times. He's a skilled debater and with a closely divided electorate, we can't take anything for granted."
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US President George W Bush has started his 2004 campaign with his first direct attack on rival John Kerry by name.
He challenged his record on national security and the economy just 24 hours after congratulating him on securing the Democratic nomination.
Bush also derided Kerry for waffling on important issues during two decades in Congress, and warned that he would roll back tax cuts critical to economic growth.
He added: "I've got news for the Washington crowd: America has gone beyond that way of thinking and we're not going back."
Bush continued: "Kerry spent two decades in Congress; he's built up quite a record. In fact, Sen. Kerry has been in Washington long enough to take both sides on just about every issue."
He rebuked Kerry for saying the war on terrorism was less of a military operation than an intelligence and law enforcement operation. And he questioned Kerry's strategy on the economy, saying, "Empty talk about jobs and economic isolation won't get anyone hired."
Bush's goal is to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to saturate the airwaves with commercials designed to both bolster his image and try to create doubts about Kerry.
A senior Bush campaign official said: "John Kerry will be a formidable candidate. He's successfully run for re-election many times. He's a skilled debater and with a closely divided electorate, we can't take anything for granted."
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Do the Bush people have no shame?
9/11 Victims' Kin Angered by Bush Ads
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a firefighters union are angry that President Bush (news - web sites)'s new campaign ads include images of the destroyed World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin through the rubble.
They say the ads are in poor taste and accuse Bush of exploiting the attacks. Bush's campaign defended the commercials as appropriate for an election about public policy and the war on terror, saying they were a tasteful reminder of what the country has been through the last three years.
The campaign had said in the past that it would not use the attacks for political gain.
"It makes me sick," Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill Kelly Jr. in the attacks and leads a victims families group called Peaceful Tomorrows, said Thursday. "Would you ever go to someone's grave site and use that as an instrument of politics? That truly is what Ground Zero represents to me."
"September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It's a defining event for the future of our country," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser, told "The Early Show" on CBS on Thursday. "Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11 fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it's vital that the next president recognize that."
The first ads started running Thursday on broadcast channels in about 80 markets in 18 states, most of which are expected to be critical to the election, and nationwide on select cable networks. The ads do not mention Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), focusing instead on improving Bush's image after criticism by Democrats in recent months. Bush is expected to spend a large part of his $100 million war chest on ads.
One of the ads shows the charred wreckage of the twin towers with a flag flying amid the debris. Another ad — and a Spanish-language version of it — use that image as well alongside firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin through the rubble as sirens are heard. Firefighters are shown in all the ads.
Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, on Thursday called the ads disgraceful and said they should be pulled.
"We're not going to stand for him to put his arm around one of our members on top of a pile of rubble at Ground Zero during a tragedy and then stand by and watch him cut money for first responders," Schaitberger said. He said his union is politically independent even though it endorsed Kerry and has donated money to Republicans.
Barbara Minervino, a Republican from Middletown, N.J., who lost her husband, Louis, in the attacks, questioned whether Bush was "capitalizing on the event."
David Potorti, an independent from Cary, N.C., whose brother Jim died in the north tower, called the campaign's use of the images audacious.
"It's an insult to use the place where my brother died in an ad," Potorti said. "I would be just as outraged if any politician did this."
Until Bush cooperates with the federal commission that is investigating the nation's preparedness before the attacks and its response "by testifying in public under oath ... he should not be using 9/11 as political propaganda," said Kristen Breitweiser, of Middletown Township, N.J., whose husband, Ronald Breitweiser, 39, died in the World Trade Center.
"Three thousand people were murdered on President Bush's watch," Breitweiser said. "He has not cooperated with the investigation to find out why that happened."
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
9/11 Victims' Kin Angered by Bush Ads
By LIZ SIDOTI, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON - Relatives of victims of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a firefighters union are angry that President Bush (news - web sites)'s new campaign ads include images of the destroyed World Trade Center and firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin through the rubble.
They say the ads are in poor taste and accuse Bush of exploiting the attacks. Bush's campaign defended the commercials as appropriate for an election about public policy and the war on terror, saying they were a tasteful reminder of what the country has been through the last three years.
The campaign had said in the past that it would not use the attacks for political gain.
"It makes me sick," Colleen Kelly, who lost her brother Bill Kelly Jr. in the attacks and leads a victims families group called Peaceful Tomorrows, said Thursday. "Would you ever go to someone's grave site and use that as an instrument of politics? That truly is what Ground Zero represents to me."
"September 11th was not just a distant tragedy. It's a defining event for the future of our country," Karen Hughes, a Bush campaign adviser, told "The Early Show" on CBS on Thursday. "Obviously, all of us mourn and grieve for the victims of that terrible day, but September 11 fundamentally changed our public policy in many important ways, and I think it's vital that the next president recognize that."
The first ads started running Thursday on broadcast channels in about 80 markets in 18 states, most of which are expected to be critical to the election, and nationwide on select cable networks. The ads do not mention Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry (news - web sites), focusing instead on improving Bush's image after criticism by Democrats in recent months. Bush is expected to spend a large part of his $100 million war chest on ads.
One of the ads shows the charred wreckage of the twin towers with a flag flying amid the debris. Another ad — and a Spanish-language version of it — use that image as well alongside firefighters carrying a flag-draped coffin through the rubble as sirens are heard. Firefighters are shown in all the ads.
Harold Schaitberger, president of the International Association of Fire Fighters, on Thursday called the ads disgraceful and said they should be pulled.
"We're not going to stand for him to put his arm around one of our members on top of a pile of rubble at Ground Zero during a tragedy and then stand by and watch him cut money for first responders," Schaitberger said. He said his union is politically independent even though it endorsed Kerry and has donated money to Republicans.
Barbara Minervino, a Republican from Middletown, N.J., who lost her husband, Louis, in the attacks, questioned whether Bush was "capitalizing on the event."
David Potorti, an independent from Cary, N.C., whose brother Jim died in the north tower, called the campaign's use of the images audacious.
"It's an insult to use the place where my brother died in an ad," Potorti said. "I would be just as outraged if any politician did this."
Until Bush cooperates with the federal commission that is investigating the nation's preparedness before the attacks and its response "by testifying in public under oath ... he should not be using 9/11 as political propaganda," said Kristen Breitweiser, of Middletown Township, N.J., whose husband, Ronald Breitweiser, 39, died in the World Trade Center.
"Three thousand people were murdered on President Bush's watch," Breitweiser said. "He has not cooperated with the investigation to find out why that happened."
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Wednesday, March 03, 2004
This just in from Iran's official news agency:
US stay in Iraq for two more years
London, March 3 - The top British diplomat in Iraq said Wednesday United States and British troops would have to remain in force in the country for two years at least, although numbers could decrease.
Jeremy Greenstock, who works closely with U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, predicted further conflict before sovereignty was handed over to Iraqis at the beginning of July but insisted the U.S.-led forces would stay to "finish the job".
Speaking to the BBC following the bomb attacks on Baghdad and Karbala, the former British ambassador to the United Nations said:" The intention to intensify violence in the months leading up to the handover of authority was expected and is very difficult to stop." This is a crunch period for the future of Iraq. Iraqi society has got to realize that they have got to unite against it."
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US stay in Iraq for two more years
London, March 3 - The top British diplomat in Iraq said Wednesday United States and British troops would have to remain in force in the country for two years at least, although numbers could decrease.
Jeremy Greenstock, who works closely with U.S. administrator Paul Bremer, predicted further conflict before sovereignty was handed over to Iraqis at the beginning of July but insisted the U.S.-led forces would stay to "finish the job".
Speaking to the BBC following the bomb attacks on Baghdad and Karbala, the former British ambassador to the United Nations said:" The intention to intensify violence in the months leading up to the handover of authority was expected and is very difficult to stop." This is a crunch period for the future of Iraq. Iraqi society has got to realize that they have got to unite against it."
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Just found this at Buzzflash.
Thirty-six years ago, Walter Cronkite returned from a visit to Vietnam and set the nation straight. "We've been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds, " he said. "For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."
"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country," President Johnson remarked.
Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past two years can see how fitting these remarks are today -- not only as they relate to this White House's determination to whitewash its blunders, but to the media's power to shape public opinion. And while Howard Stern is no Walter Cronkite, former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman recently explained the extent of Stern's clout. "Eleven years ago, Howard Stern endorsed me for Governor," she told Bill Maher. "I want to tell you, in the closest races that I had, that made a difference."
Listed by FOX last March as one of the "pro-Bush celebs [missing] out on the limelight," [Fox News] Stern has since rethought his position. On Feb. 26 (the day Stern's program was suspended in half a dozen Clear Channel markets), he not only said that the Bush administration doesn't know what it is doing in Iraq, but within a ten minute span pointed out that:
Al Gore won the election.
Bush did not fulfill his duty in the National Guard.
George W. will never admit that Poppy Bush pulled stings to get him into the Guard and keep him out of Vietnam.
There are several questions about Bush's character.
While callers to the show repeatedly expressed dismay that Stern was taken off the air in certain cities, one fan expressed the overall mood by saying that the new FCC/Clear Channel tactics are reminiscent of Nazi book burnings. Never mind that the canaries in the proverbial coal mine were chirping a similar tune last year, back when radio stations were organizing Dixie Chick CD demolitions, the distant rumbling of goose-stepping is now being heard by former Bush supporters, too. Dubbing Clear Channel "fear channel," Stern warned that the "fascist right-wing" is "getting so much power."
The following day, Stern was even more forceful. "Get rid of George W. Bush," he said, adding that Bush is "dangerous" and has a "religious agenda." By Monday, March 1, Stern was circumspect. "There's a real good argument to be made that I stopped backing Bush and that's when I got kicked off Clear Channel," he said.
After Stern was pulled from six cities, including Orlando, Miami and Pittsburgh (which, coincidentally, are important markets in important swing states), John Hogan, president of 1,200-station Clear Channel, appeared before members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and apologized for letting Stern say the things he's been saying for years. "I accept responsibility for our mistake, and my company will live with the consequences of its actions," Hogan said.
To read the whole article go to http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/03/far04006.html
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Thirty-six years ago, Walter Cronkite returned from a visit to Vietnam and set the nation straight. "We've been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds, " he said. "For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."
"If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost the country," President Johnson remarked.
Anyone who hasn't been living under a rock for the past two years can see how fitting these remarks are today -- not only as they relate to this White House's determination to whitewash its blunders, but to the media's power to shape public opinion. And while Howard Stern is no Walter Cronkite, former EPA Administrator Christine Todd Whitman recently explained the extent of Stern's clout. "Eleven years ago, Howard Stern endorsed me for Governor," she told Bill Maher. "I want to tell you, in the closest races that I had, that made a difference."
Listed by FOX last March as one of the "pro-Bush celebs [missing] out on the limelight," [Fox News] Stern has since rethought his position. On Feb. 26 (the day Stern's program was suspended in half a dozen Clear Channel markets), he not only said that the Bush administration doesn't know what it is doing in Iraq, but within a ten minute span pointed out that:
Al Gore won the election.
Bush did not fulfill his duty in the National Guard.
George W. will never admit that Poppy Bush pulled stings to get him into the Guard and keep him out of Vietnam.
There are several questions about Bush's character.
While callers to the show repeatedly expressed dismay that Stern was taken off the air in certain cities, one fan expressed the overall mood by saying that the new FCC/Clear Channel tactics are reminiscent of Nazi book burnings. Never mind that the canaries in the proverbial coal mine were chirping a similar tune last year, back when radio stations were organizing Dixie Chick CD demolitions, the distant rumbling of goose-stepping is now being heard by former Bush supporters, too. Dubbing Clear Channel "fear channel," Stern warned that the "fascist right-wing" is "getting so much power."
The following day, Stern was even more forceful. "Get rid of George W. Bush," he said, adding that Bush is "dangerous" and has a "religious agenda." By Monday, March 1, Stern was circumspect. "There's a real good argument to be made that I stopped backing Bush and that's when I got kicked off Clear Channel," he said.
After Stern was pulled from six cities, including Orlando, Miami and Pittsburgh (which, coincidentally, are important markets in important swing states), John Hogan, president of 1,200-station Clear Channel, appeared before members of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and apologized for letting Stern say the things he's been saying for years. "I accept responsibility for our mistake, and my company will live with the consequences of its actions," Hogan said.
To read the whole article go to http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/03/far04006.html
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In Honor of John Kerry's sweeping the Democratic primaries, and becoming the party's nominee, here is the best speech he ever gave in his life, which was delivered before the Senate Foriegn Relation Committee, in 1971, when Kerry was a member of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War:
Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations
April 23, 1971
I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....
In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.
We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.
Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
For the VVAW's response to Kerry's becoming the Democratic Party nominee go to http://www.vvaw.org
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Vietnam Veterans Against the War Statement by John Kerry to the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations
April 23, 1971
I would like to talk on behalf of all those veterans and say that several months ago in Detroit we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged, and many very highly decorated, veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia. These were not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command. It is impossible to describe to you exactly what did happen in Detroit - the emotions in the room and the feelings of the men who were reliving their experiences in Vietnam. They relived the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do.
They told stories that at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ghengis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country.
We call this investigation the Winter Soldier Investigation. The term Winter Soldier is a play on words of Thomas Paine's in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriots and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough.
We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country, we could be quiet, we could hold our silence, we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, not the reds, but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out....
In our opinion and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart.
We found that not only was it a civil war, an effort by a people who had for years been seeking their liberation from any colonial influence whatsoever, but also we found that the Vietnamese whom we had enthusiastically molded after our own image were hard put to take up the fight against the threat we were supposedly saving them from.
We found most people didn't even know the difference between communism and democracy. They only wanted to work in rice paddies without helicopters strafing them and bombs with napalm burning their villages and tearing their country apart. They wanted everything to do with the war, particularly with this foreign presence of the United States of America, to leave them alone in peace, and they practiced the art of survival by siding with whichever military force was present at a particular time, be it Viet Cong, North Vietnamese or American.
We found also that all too often American men were dying in those rice paddies for want of support from their allies. We saw first hand how monies from American taxes were used for a corrupt dictatorial regime. We saw that many people in this country had a one-sided idea of who was kept free by the flag, and blacks provided the highest percentage of casualties. We saw Vietnam ravaged equally by American bombs and search and destroy missions, as well as by Viet Cong terrorism - and yet we listened while this country tried to blame all of the havoc on the Viet Cong.
We rationalized destroying villages in order to save them. We saw America lose her sense of morality as she accepted very coolly a My Lai and refused to give up the image of American soldiers who hand out chocolate bars and chewing gum.
We learned the meaning of free fire zones, shooting anything that moves, and we watched while America placed a cheapness on the lives of orientals.
We watched the United States falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts. We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break. We fought using weapons against "oriental human beings." We fought using weapons against those people which I do not believe this country would dream of using were we fighting in the European theater. We watched while men charged up hills because a general said that hill has to be taken, and after losing one platoon or two platoons they marched away to leave the hill for reoccupation by the North Vietnamese. We watched pride allow the most unimportant battles to be blown into extravaganzas, because we couldn't lose, and we couldn't retreat, and because it didn't matter how many American bodies were lost to prove that point, and so there were Hamburger Hills and Khe Sanhs and Hill 81s and Fire Base 6s, and so many others.
Now we are told that the men who fought there must watch quietly while American lives are lost so that we can exercise the incredible arrogance of Vietnamizing the Vietnamese.
Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."
We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?....We are here in Washington to say that the problem of this war is not just a question of war and diplomacy. It is part and parcel of everything that we are trying as human beings to communicate to people in this country - the question of racism which is rampant in the military, and so many other questions such as the use of weapons; the hypocrisy in our taking umbrage at the Geneva Conventions and using that as justification for a continuation of this war when we are more guilty than any other body of violations of those Geneva Conventions; in the use of free fire zones, harassment interdiction fire, search and destroy missions, the bombings, the torture of prisoners, all accepted policy by many units in South Vietnam. That is what we are trying to say. It is part and parcel of everything.
An American Indian friend of mine who lives in the Indian Nation of Alcatraz put it to me very succinctly. He told me how as a boy on an Indian reservation he had watched television and he used to cheer the cowboys when they came in and shot the Indians, and then suddenly one day he stopped in Vietnam and he said, "my God, I am doing to these people the very same thing that was done to my people," and he stopped. And that is what we are trying to say, that we think this thing has to end.
We are here to ask, and we are here to ask vehemently, where are the leaders of our country? Where is the leadership? We're here to ask where are McNamara, Rostow, Bundy, Gilpatrick, and so many others? Where are they now that we, the men they sent off to war, have returned? These are the commanders who have deserted their troops. And there is no more serious crime in the laws of war. The Army says they never leave their wounded. The marines say they never even leave their dead. These men have left all the casualties and retreated behind a pious shield of public rectitude. They've left the real stuff of their reputations bleaching behind them in the sun in this country....
We wish that a merciful God could wipe away our own memories of that service as easily as this administration has wiped away their memories of us. But all that they have done and all that they can do by this denial is to make more clear than ever our own determination to undertake one last mission - to search out and destroy the last vestige of this barbaric war, to pacify our own hearts, to conquer the hate and fear that have driven this country these last ten years and more. And more. And so when thirty years from now our brothers go down the street without a leg, without an arm, or a face, and small boys ask why, we will be able to say "Vietnam" and not mean a desert, not a filthy obscene memory, but mean instead where America finally turned and where soldiers like us helped it in the turning.
For the VVAW's response to Kerry's becoming the Democratic Party nominee go to http://www.vvaw.org
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Tuesday, March 02, 2004
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