Right. He could have joined the army anyway, but the expectation of being put in harms way only when necessary and just is still there. Regardless. Bush lied and the kid died. That really is the issue at hand.

The rest of the post just tried to avoid the real issue: Bush's lies that have unjustly killed and injured far too many Americans. We are pushing 15,000 at this point.

I certainly understand the frustration and the anger.

1 was too many.

Incorrect. The issue at hand is that Cindy Sheehan is publicizing her son's death to further her protest against the war. We were in Iraq and her son STILL joined. Therefore, you cannot blame Bush becase her son ALREADY knew the risk and was willing to risk his life in the military. It was a decision he made and he was sound with. All she's doing now is being a media whore and her protests aren't newsworthy in the least. What she needs is help. Once Congress goes back to session in September and they have other issues to deal with, Mother Sheehan will fade into the background noise after her 15 minutes of fame, and she will have no family to support her.

She trashes our troops as much as she does the president (president I can understand, but not the troops) saying "US troops kill innocent people". Really now? I never knew we just moseyed into a country and shot every civilian we saw. The only incident that I can think of where that happened was My Lai, and Charlie company had just been quite badly f*cked up a day or two before. I've never heard of a military that was so inhumanly effective that they killed an enemy while causing absolutely, positively, no collateral damage. The US does not target civilians.

She also said her son was "murdered". Unless he was incapacitated in some way or was completely helpless to defend himself, he was no murdered. Even if he died in a truck explosion or sniper shot, it's not murder. They are armed expecting resistance to whatever mission they are trying to accomplish. Conversely, driving through the bronx in a convertible and getting sniped would be murder. The difference is your location and what you're doing.

I'm not saying Bush was completely honest about everything, what president is? Some people really don't / didn't want to be in Iraq, and some did die because of it. Not in Casey Sheehan's case. He joined knowing that he could be sent to Iraq. He did not have to join, he could have chose not to. Mother has simply found a scapegoat in Bush and is simply soaking up the media attention. I empathize with her loss but that does not justify blaming it on Bush and saying that we're in Iraq for the ske of Israel. She's just incredibly unstable right now. It's similar to Beth Twitty's behaviour during the Natalee Holloway search (oh wait...that's still going on, right? Funny how the media just left it alone now. LOOK! More newsless news!).

Point is: Bush did not cause Casey Sheehan's death. Mother is being quite eccentric.

That is a weak argument because her son joined under false pretense. In other words he, like the american public, were lied to by Bush to make this war seem just and gain support. It is anything but just and the kid died because of Bush's lies.

Philippines

The 1899 Filipino-American War is one of those nasty little conflicts that you won't find a lot about in your high school history textbook. Call it the first Vietnam. During the 1898 Spanish-American War, the U.S. help the Filipinos gain independence from Spain. Then they declare the country an American colony. A brutal war follows. Many of the scorched-earth tactics used in Vietnam are first used here. More than 100,000 Filipinos die. A large anti-imperialism movement starts in the U.S. 'We do not intend to free, but subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem,' wrote early celebrity activist Mark Twain. In 1945, the Americans come back to the Philippines. Even though they have a common enemy - Japan - America fights leftist forces known as Huks. The U.S. defeat the Huks, and install a series of puppet presidents, culminating in the absurdly corrupt Ferdinand Marcos. He and his high-heel-obsessed wife bilk the poverty-ridden country dry for three decades, until retiring comfortably in Hawaii.


Iran

1953 - The CIA's first big takedown. The democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadegh had to go. He was talking crazy talk, like nationalizing Iran's oil. A CIA-sponsored coup restores the Shah to absolute power that begins 25 years of repression and torture. Iran's oil is returned to its rightful owners, the Americans and British. This, of course, sets the stage for a radical Islamic revolution in 1979, when the Ayatollah Khomeini takes over, holds Americans hostage, burns many American flags, and pisses off rednecks across America.


Guatemala

1953 - Jacobo Arbenz also had to go. The progressive democratically elected president is also talking that crazy talk - you know, land reform, civil liberties, nationalizing the Washington-connected United Fruit Company. The CIA organizes a massive disinformation campaign and coup. Next up: 40 years of bad, bad things you don't even want to think about - American-trained death squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions. Victims: 100,000.


Middle East

In the 50s, the Eisenhower Doctrine stated the United States 'is prepared to use armed forces to assist' any Middle East country 'requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism.' In other words, no one is allowed to fuck around in the Middle East or its oil fields except the United States. The U.S. tries to overthrow the Syrian government (twice), lands 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspires to overthrow and assassinate Arab nationalist Nasser in Egypt. U.S. supports Israel with billions of dollars of aid, despite its harsh treatment of Palestinians and massacres in Lebanon.


Indonesia

1957 - President Sukarno is another troublemaker. He takes back Indonesian companies from their former colonial master, the Dutch. He takes a trip to Moscow. He refuses to crack down on communists. The CIA launches a disinformation campaign, tries to blackmail him with a fake sex film, plots his assassination, and hooks up with dissident military officers to start a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno, unlike many on the Agency's hit list, somehow survives. 1965 - Sukarno is finally overthrown by General Suharto. The U.S. helps him track down anyone suspected of being communist. The New York Times calls what follows 'one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history.' Up to one million die.


Vietnam

After watching the French get their asses kicked halfway to Montparnasse, the U.S. gets embroiled in a civil war pitting communist nationalist forces against a corrupt, pro-west government. In 1961, the first young American men start arriving home in body bags. Before it's over, more than one million Vietnamese and 50,000 Americans will die, Jimi Hendrix will play Woodstock, the Beatles will form and break up, and the American psyche will be radically transformed. In 1975, the U.S. finally admits defeat, forever dooming it to need to overcome the 'Vietnam Syndrome' (see Rambo).


Cambodia

1969 - Nixon and Kissinger begin their secret 'carpet bombings' of Cambodia. They say it is to kill Viet Cong hiding out in the Cambodian jungle. Hundreds of thousands of Cambodian civilians die. 1970 - Washington finally helps overthrow troublesome Prince Sihanouk in a coup. The U.S. enlists the genocidal maniac Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge to help fight the Viet Cong. Five years later, Pol Pot takes over, declares 'Year Zero,' kills anyone with an education, or even wearing glasses, and sends everyone to the countryside to work in agricultural labor camps. More than two million die in his 'killing fields' (see The Killing Fields).


The Congo/Zaire

1960 - Patrice Lumumba becomes the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But the Belgians don't quite leave. They keep their hands on the vast mineral wealth in the Katanga province, where the Americans also have a piece of the action. Lumumba is defiant, calling for the Congo's economic and political liberation. In other words, he is doomed. In January 1961, he is assassinated with help from the CIA, under orders from Eisenhower himself. His body is chopped up into little pieces and burned in acid. Mobutu Sese Seko takes over, changes the name to Zaire, and begins one of the most corrupt and bloody dictatorships in modern times. Even his CIA handlers are amazed at his cruelty. Thirty years later, despite its rich natural resources, the people of the Congo are still dirt-poor, Mobutu is a multibillionaire, and the country is in chaos. In 1997, Mobutu is overthrown, and retires to the Cote d'Azur. The country slides into a civil war that has killed more than one million.


Cuba

1959 - When Fidel Castro rolls into Havana New Years Day he isn't a commie - he is a nationalist and an opportunist. But he did take over Cuba's national industries. And that, as we've learned, is something the U.S. doesn't look kindly on. The Americans begin a comically disastrous campaign to oust Castro. They help launch a full-scale invasion at the Bay of Pigs and are crushed. They launch gunboat attacks, bombings, biological warfare. New evidence has just come out that the CIA even considered committing terrorist acts and then blaming them on Cuba as a pretext to invade again. They try to send Castro exploding cigars. Spray poison on his beard. The U.S. issues sanctions and a trade embargo that, more than anything, ensures Castro remains in power.


Chile

1973 - Salvador Allende was a 'dangerous' man. He was popular, democratically elected, and a leftist. Against the objections of many inside the US State Department, the CIA, pushed by Kissinger, helps the military overthrow the government. Allende is killed. General Pinochet closes off the country to the outside world. Tanks roll in, soldiers round up students, stadiums turn into execution fields, the country is gripped by fear. For two decades, Pinochet rules with a brutal hand, and thousands of students, union organizers and other bad apples are 'disappeared' (see the movie Missing).


East Timor

December 1975 - Indonesia invades the small island of East Timor, which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal left. The day before, U.S. President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger were in Indonesia meeting with Indonesian President Suharto. Amnesty International estimates that by 1989, Indonesian troops had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The U.S. supplies Indonesia with aid, guns, and training throughout.


Nicaragua

1978 - the leftist Sandinistas overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship. Reagan becomes obsessed with taking out the Cuba-and-Soviet-friendly government, enlisting an army of mercenaries, drug dealers and ex-Somoza National Guardsmen. The Contras attack schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, and bombing. When Congress cuts off funds, Reagan's 'freedom fighters' are financed by CIA drug-dealing and secret arms sales to Iran in what comes to be known as the Iran-Contra Affair.


El Salvador

During El Salvador's bloody civil war (1980-92), the U.S. funds, trains, and secretly fights alongside a military that operates less like a traditional army than a loose confederation of homicidal fraternities. By the end of the war, 75,000 Salvadorans are dead.


Panama

During the 80s, Manny Noriega was George Bush's boy. On the CIA payroll, he helped the U.S. run drugs, launder money and ship arms to its operations in Nicaragua and El Salvador. But ol' Pineapple Face became a problem. Turned out he was helping Castro, laundering money for Pablo Escobar, and talking smack about U.S. imperialism. Plus he knew way too much about the whole Iran-Contra scandal. Dude had to go. In December 1989, Bush sends in the Green Berets to arrest him for drug dealing. A whole Panama City barrio is leveled. The official body count is 500-something, others say 3,000. Noriega sits in a Florida jail feeling confused.


Iraq

In the 80s, Saddam Hussein is America's ally. The U.S. sends him weapons and money as he fights a seemingly endless war against Iran, murders his political opponents, and gasses the Kurds. In 1991, Saddam is pissed off at neighboring Kuwait (a country invented by Britain) for undercutting the price of oil. He invades. The U.S. forms an international coalition to 'liberate' Kuwait. Saddam sends an army of barefoot conscripts. For more than 40 days and nights, 177 million pounds of bombs fall on Iraq - the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world. The U.S. uses cancer-causing depleted uranium weapons; they bury soldiers alive; they bomb retreating troops and civilians. At the war's end, the U.S. turns its back on the Kurds and other anti-Saddam forces (see Three Kings). While Saddam remains in power, U.S. sanctions and continued bombing keep food, medicine, and clean water from everyday Iraqis. According to the UN, over one million Iraqis have died, half of them children.


Afghanistan

Beginning in the 1970s, the U.S. pours billions of dollars into overthrowing a pro-Soviet government. The CIA funds, trains, and arms a guerrilla army of Islamic extremists known as the Mujahideen. The Soviets are driven out, in their version of Vietnam. More than a million Afghan are dead, three million disabled, and five million made refugees. The country slides into civil war in which an even more radical group of Pakistan-educated students and uneducated hillbillies known as the Taliban take over. The country becomes a haven for anti-American terrorists groups and women-haters. Lies flourish. While outwardly criticizing the Taliban, behind the scenes the CIA and American oil companies jockey for leverage to build a pipeline across the country.


Yugoslavia

1999 - After the Serbs start 'ethnic cleansing' Albanians in the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo, the U.S. and NATO launch 70 days of air strikes against Serbia. Thousands of Serbs are killed. The ethnic Albanian KLA guerrilla army, a drug-dealing group of thugs who were first accused of ethnic cleansing Serbs by The New York Times back in 1982, start an open season on Serbs living in Kosovo. The bombs stop, and Serb demagogue Slobodan Milosevic is driven from power by a popular movement.


Colombia

2001 - Colombia's three-decade-old civil war is still going strong, despite, or one might say, as a result of $1.4 billion of U.S. military aid. The country is a chaotic death trap. Marxist rebels hold large portions of the country; American mercenaries and defense department front companies like DynCorp are covertly helping the inept Colombian military; right-wing paramilitaries are massacring civilians; and everyone has their hands in the super-lucrative drug trade. Most people don't know that American forces have been around for while. In the early 90s, a secret group code-named Centra Spike launch a covert operation to take out Pablo Escobar, a major cocaine lord who made the fatal mistake of giving money to the poor and talking shit about American imperialism. The Colombian government and the secret American unit go into business with Escobar's rival the Cali Cartel. Escobar is finally killed. The Cali Cartel's power is solidified and the flow of cocaine into the U.S. only increases.


Sources/ Suggested reading:

"The Trial of Henry Kissinger" - Christopher Hitchens, Verso, 2001. Panama Deception -documentary film. Winner 1992 Academy Award for Best Documentary. Director: Barbara Trent.

Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire -Chalmers Johnson, Henry Holt, 2000

Weakness and Deceit: U.S. policy and El Salvador -Raymond Bonner, Times Books, New York, 1984

The War Conspiracy: The Secret Road to the Second Indochina War -Peter Dale Scott, Bobbs Merrill, New York and Indianapolis, 1972.

Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies and the CIA in Central America -Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall. University of California Press, 1991.

Coming to Jakarta: A Poem About Terror -Peter Dale Scott, New Directions, New York, 1989.

East Timor: Genocide in Paradise -Matthew Jardine, Common Courage Press, 1999.

Killing Pablo: The Hunt for the World's Greatest Outlaw -Mark Bowden, Atlantic Monthly Press, 2001.

Between Despair and Hope: Windows on My Middle East Journey 1967-1992 Margarita Skinner, UNICEF Health Coordinator in Baghdad from 1991-1992, The Radcliffe Press, London and New York, 1998.

UNICEF Report August 1999: Iraq surveys show 'humanitarian emergency'.

How many times are you going to post that? We all know you hate the military. You don't have to keep posting a highly slanted and spin-doctored history. You can always just link to your previous post of it.

I could just post links to Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky books instead... or link to the original post. How does one do that easily? I can never find the posts again.

Well if you kind of remember where it was you could always do something like this.