Has anyone seen "No End in Sight"?

No, but I read about it the other day. Would like to see it if it comes around here. Don't know if it will make it to the South.

S(love the title of this thread)quinney

joe

Not yet, but watching for it. One account I've come across has Armitage's statements in the film as highly unsettling to the administration.

Going to go see Friday at the Film Forum (1:30pm) if any NYCers are about and want to join me.

Joe(i'm becoming social)Nation

Well, I went to see No End in Sight and it's worse than I thought.

Not the movie, the Bush administration.

Paul Bremer should be required to do two things: 1)Present a cogent argument as to why he should not be charged with dereliction of duty and 2) return the Medal of Freedom. The combination of De-Baathification and the dissolution of the Iraqi Army, two policy decisions which by the way were not DISCUSSED with the military commanders in Iraq before they were decreed, has led directly to the four years of insurgency in the country.

And shouldn't it be a crime for a President to receive an intelligence assessment, not read it and proclaim that it is guesswork.

Well, I guess he should know. Joe(Guesswork has been the guiding principle of the past seven years.)Nation

Joe (presents an interesting topic) Nation, this is quite interesting, and something of which I was not aware. I have a feeling it won't be shown in my area, so I will have to get a copy somehow.

Don't forget Tommy (medal-winner) Franks, who said his invasion was the greatest in the annals of military history. He should be similarly tried.

I guess this movie is about stuff that I had already heard but really hadn't thought about.

Did you know that martial law was never declared in Baghdad? I sorta did, but what I didn't realize (what a dunce am I.) that that lead to four months of looting and when the teams arrived from Kuwait to start the reconstruction of the country they found all of the ministry buildings had been stripped to the bare walls and sometimes the WALLS had been taken.

The complete distruction of the national museum has destroyed forever documents and artpieces of this 9000 year old civilization.

Golly, said Rumsfeld, stuff happens.

Especially if you haven't a clue what you are doing.

Joe(golly, do you think the complete looting of the country might have angered some of the Iraqis?)Nation

Bush rewrites history to support our staying in Iraq.

August 25, 2007 at 15:30:55

Lies, Lies, and More Lies, in History-Illiterate America

by larry beinhart Page 1 of 1 page(s)

http://www.opednews.com




George Bush - and other Iraq War supporters - have argued that if we withdraw from Iraq the result will be like the slaughters - the killing fields -in Cambodia.

Here are the facts.

· The killing fields were real. The genocide against their own people was committed by the Khmer Rouge.


· The Vietnamese - the Communist Vietnamese - were the people who went in and put a stop to it.



· The United States then supported the Khmer Rouge.



Here's how that came to happen.

The United States got involved in the war in Vietnam in an attempt to keep South Vietnam from going communist. Which it would have if nationwide elections had been held as promised.

Cambodia is next to Vietnam. It was ruled by Prince Sihanouk. He attempted to be neutral. Both sides abused that neutrality.

The North Vietnamese send arms, support and men through Cambodia on the "Ho Chi Minh Trail" to go around South Vietnamese and American forces. They also used Cambodian ports.

The United States, which was not at war with Cambodia, officially or unofficially, secretly sent armed forces into Cambodia to interrupt North Vietnamese use of that route. In 1969, Nixon began a campaign of carpet bombing sections of Cambodia. Ultimately about 750,000 Cambodians were killed by the bombings (though the numbers are hard to verify.)

In 1970, while Sihanouk was out of the country, visiting Europe, the USSR and China, Lon Nol took over the country in a right wing coup.

There are two stories about American involvement. The first is that we supported the coup, the second (in Tom Weiner's Legacy of Ashes, The History of the CIA) is that it took the CIA and the United States by surprise. Recently declassified documents support Weiner's view.

In either case, once Lon Nol took power, the US supported him. In return, Lon Nol ended the neutrality, closed the ports to the communists and demanded that the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese leave the country, and let US forces openly, though secretly, operate in Cambodia.

There was resistance to Lon Nol. Some of it was certainly a spontaneous matter of national sentiment. Some of it was certainly fomented by various communist interests.

Sihanouk, in China, then allied himself with the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia communists, which conferred new legitimacy on them.

Civil War broke out. Lon Nol was both corrupt and inept. In spite of American financial and military support, he lost.

America left Vietnam in 1973.

The Khmer Rouge took the capital of Cambodia in 1975. They were one of the most horrendous regimes in history. They practiced a kind of class genocide, "re-educating" and murdering anyone who educated or Westernized, as well as minority groups.

In 1978, Vietnam, by then fully Communist, invaded Cambodia to put a stop to the Khmer Rouge and drive them out. They installed a more moderate and sane regime.

The United States, the UK, and China then supported the remnants of the Khmer Rouge. With their help the conflict continued for another ten years.


When George Bush, or anyone else, uses the Cambodian holocaust as a warning of what might happen if America withdraws from Iraq, remember the facts.

Part of the holocaust in Cambodia is directly attributable to American bombing. The 750,000 dead. (Comparable to the number of Iraqis killed by American forces in this war.)
The civil war that led to the victory of the Khmer Rouge came about, at least in part, because of America's support of Lon Nol.
The "enemy," the Vietnamese Communists, were the ones who put a stop to the Khmer Rouge.
The United States supported the Khmer Rouge - after their murders, after the genocide. That support helped a civil war continue for another decade. More death, more destruction.