Yeah, Yeah, 'They' keep saying it's not another Vietnam. . . .

. . . but the damn facts keep getting in the way.

C. William Boyer

A.P. June 17, 2005

The U.S. military charged a Staff Sergeant from the New York National Guard with murdering his two commanders at a base outside Baghdad, in what is believed to be the first case of an American soldier in Iraq accused of killing his superiors.
The military initially concluded that the June 7 deaths of Capt. Phillip T. Esposito, of Suffern, N.Y., and 1st Lt. Louis E. Allen, of Milford, Pa., were caused by a mortar round.

But this week the military charged Staff Sgt. Alberto B. Martinez of Troy, N.Y., with two counts of premeditated murder, according to a statement issued in Baghdad on Thursday.

There was a name for this activity in Vietnam: fragging. See, it seems back in the late 60s, America was embroiled in an unpopular and quite often nasty war in a far away land with a difficult-to-define enemy fought under false pretenses, and . . . Holy crap! Is that Vietnam? Or is it Iraq? More people are getting killed in Iraq at similar stages in the war . . .

Dang, you can almost SEE how people are making comparisons between the two wars and-----

Oh, no, that's just petty liberal pessimism.

Support the troops!



KILL THE MESSENGER! KILL THE DAMN MESSENGER!

. . . and the bad stuff will all just go away.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The White House and Senate Republicans on Thursday assailed a Democrat for comparing American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay to Nazis, Soviet gulags and Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot. It is "beyond belief" that llinois Sen. Dick Durbin would compare the treatment of dangerous enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to the death of millions of innocent people by oppressive governments, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I think the senator's remarks are reprehensible. It's a real disservice to our men and women in uniform who adhere to high standards and uphold our values and our laws," he said.

The thing about this story you've got to love is that Senator Durbin's committed the massive sin here of calling out the emperor's clothing gaffe. Never mind the emperor didn't dress himself, nor did his ministers inform him of his nakedness, the problem here is that someone dared speak out.

What the Bushies fail to understand is that it's not good enough to be BETTER than Stalin and his Gulag, or the Nazis and their concentration camps. We're AMERICAN FOR GOD'S SAKE! We are the GOOD GUYS! We don't lock people up in camps off the American mainland, hood them, deprive them of food and water, possibly beat them and engage in legalistically defined torture because, again, WE ARE THE GOOD GUYS. Or at least, that's what we used to be considered.

From the expose INSIDE THE REPUBLICAN MIND:

You've got to absolutely love White House Spokesman McClellan's line "It's a real disservice to ourmen and women in uniform who adhere to high standards and uphold our values and our laws." You cynical bastard! How dare you hide behind the unsoiled skirts of our soldiers. We aren't talking about them and their actions. We're talking about you and your policies. Don't play Follow The Birdie and try and draw away attention. YOU are the ones who dictated that America would arrest people in foreign lands, deny them the protection of the Geneva Convention and access to legal counsel. Never was Pfc. 1st Class Newsome or Sergeant Enright accused of deciding this, merely of carrying out their orders.

Some day, the average American will recognize this standard trick of the GOP to draw attention away from the act and on to the reporting. This is epitomized by the Newsweek farce. Right. Blame Newsweek for causing innocent loss of life in the middle-east with it's reporting of the Koran abuses. Claim incompetence, malfeasance and irresponsibility. Demand a retraction. But when the following week, YOUR OWN PENTAGON ADMITS TO AT LEAST 5 EVENTS AS REPORTED . . . shhhhh . . . don't say a word.