military action against Libya

talk, I'm aware of all the stupid ways our country spends taxpayer monies at a time in our history when the support for the American middle class has deteriorated to new lows since WWII.

The vested interests, the corporate culture that don't give a damn and Israel hold on America's balls.

The American Left favors what is cool over what is true.

I have personally met a Palestinian woman who lives in the Old City, but she doesn't have the freedom to travel in her own country

What's cool about 50 years of terrorism against a tiny little country like Cuba?

What's cool about launching two illegal and immoral invasions of two sovereign countries?

Whats cool about Ho Chi Minh dragging his people through decades of war so he can be the big boss man of North and South ?

You mean North Korea invading South Korea and North Vietnam invading Sou8th Vietnam ?

Kill 'em All': The American Military in Korea
By Jeremy Williams

Declassified military documents recently found in the US National Archives show clearly how US commanders repeatedly, and without ambiguity, ordered forces under their control to target and kill Korean refugees caught on the battlefield. More disturbing still have been the published testimonies of Korean survivors who recall such killings, and the frank accounts of those American veterans brave enough to admit involvement.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/coldwar/korea_usa_01.shtml

Ho Chi Minh didn't do that. He asked the Americans to help him to gain independence for him and his people

there was just no way that the US was going to allow a people their independence in their own country.

Vietnam as a country without any invading horde to steal their wealth and treat them as servants.

With the aid of the US they brutalized the people of the south.

Are you vaguely aware of how many people communists murder when they take over ?

Why is it that we must use top-notch elite forces, the cream of the crop of American, British, French, or Australian commando and special warfare schools; armed with the very best that advanced technology can provide; to defeat Viet-Minh, Algerians, or Malay "CT's" [Chinese terrorists], almost none of whom can lay claim to similar expert training and only in the rarest of cases to equality in fire power?

He then supplied the correct and obvious answer:

The answer is very simple: It takes all the technical proficiency our system can provide to make up for the woeful lack of popular support and political savvy of most of the regimes that the West has thus far sought to prop up. The Americans who are now fighting in South Vietnam have come to appreciate this fact out of first-hand experience. [Street Without Joy, Stackpole, 1964, p. 373]

The outside power was never able to compete. The US could maim and kill, drive peasants from their homes, destroy the countryside and organized social life, but not "build a nation" in the approved image. We had taken on a society that was simply not fit for domination. Therefore, it had to be destroyed. This, as the realistic experts now soberly explain, was worse than a crime, it was a blunder.

Failing to saturate the minds of the people with a sufficiently "attractive ideology," the Administration turned to the easier task of saturating the country with troops and bombs and defoliants. A State Department paper observed that "saturation bombing by artillery and airstrikes…is an accepted tactic, and there is probably no province where this tactic has not been widely employed" (end of 1966, IV, p. 398). The only objection raised was that it might be more profitable to place greater emphasis on winning support for the Saigon regime. That US force should be devoted to winning support for its own creation, the Saigon regime, apparently seemed no more strange to the author of this statement than that the US should be conducting saturation bombing of all provinces in South Vietnam.





The main force of the American war has been directed against the population of South Vietnam since the early 1960s, with a vast increase in 1965 when a virtual occupying army was deployed and the "basic strategy of punitive bombing" was initiated in the South (Westmoreland, March, 1965, III, p. 464). It is revealing to investigate the decision to undertake the massive air attack on South Vietnam. "It takes time to make hard decisions," McNaughton wrote. "It took us almost a year to take the decision to bomb North Vietnam" (IV, p. 48). This decision is studied in painstaking detail.



Little is said, however, about the decision to bomb South Vietnam at more than triple the intensity of the bombing in North Vietnam by 1966. This was the fundamental policy decision of early 1965. As Bernard Fall pointed out not long afterward, "What changed the character of the Vietnam war was not the decision to bomb North Vietnam; not the decision to use American ground troops in South Vietnam; but the decision to wage unlimited aerial warfare inside the country at the price of literally pounding the place to bits." But of this decision we learn very little in the Pentagon history, and only a few scattered remarks mention the effects of the bombing.

The Pentagon Papers provide evidence of a criminal conspiracy of long duration to engage the United States in aggressive war. One may debate the sufficiency of the evidence, but hardly its existence. It is natural, if somewhat ironic, that the Justice Department, instead of investigating the possible criminal conspiracy exposed by the Pentagon Papers, has chosen instead to investigate and prosecute those who revealed these acts to the public. Senator Fulbright has stated, in a different but related connection: "I and some of my colleagues have almost been reduced to the situation where it makes no difference what is put into law, the administration will not abide by it." He has also expressed his hope that some day "this country will return to its senses and we will then have an opportunity to resurrect the basic principles of law on which this country was founded" (Congressional Record, October 4, 1971).

As best as I can determine, through all this close to 3,800,000 Vietnamese lost their lives from political violence, or near one out of every ten men, women, and children.1 Of these, about 1,250,000, or near a third of those killed, were murdered.
http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP6.HTM

Why is it that we must use top-notch elite forces, the cream of the crop of American, British, French, or Australian commando and special warfare schools; armed with the very best that advanced technology can provide........The answer is very simple: It takes all the technical proficiency our system can provide to make up for the woeful lack of popular support and political savvy of most of the regimes that the West has thus far sought to prop up.

every ratbag opinion

South Vietnam, Diem, America, the Pentagon Papers, Noam Chomsky and even Malcolm X: The Vietnam War from 1959 To 1963, and Differing Views

Pete McCormack

PeteMcCormack.com, December 1, 2009

All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.
-- George Orwell
Granted, this applies to me, too, alas. And...

Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
-- George Orwell

Somebody out there might find this early aspect of the Vietnam War historically interesting -- beginning something like fifty years ago. I was motivated to do a little research on the subject from seeing a film on the Pentagon Papers, another on cluster bombs dropped on the villagers of Laos, a clip of Malcolm X found in doing other research, and from the Noam Chomsky comment below. And below Chomsky's comment is what came up from memory and a diligent few hours of research. Okay, a little more than that.

In a 1982 interview, Noam Chomsky said, as he had before and has since:

"The real invasion of South Vietnam which was directed largely against the rural society began directly in 1962 [the Strategic Hamlet Program] after many years of working through mercenaries and client groups. And that fact simply does not exist in official American history. There is no such event in American history as the attack on South Vietnam. That's gone. Of course, it is a part of real history. But it's not a part of official history.

And most of us who were opposed to the war, especially in the early '60's -- the war we were opposed to was the war on South Vietnam which destroyed South Vietnam's rural society. The South was devastated. But now anyone who opposed this atrocity is regarded as having defended North Vietnam. And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South. Of course it's fabrication. But it's "official truth" now."

http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/20091201.htm

The location of Palestine is at the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Palestine is located to the south of Lebanon and to the west of Jordan. Palestine Geography consists of four regions in the country. The four regions of Palestine Geography are Jordan valley and Ghawr, coastal and inner plains, Mountain and Hills and Southern Desert.

The coastal plains of Palestine are divided by Saruunah plain, Mount Carmel plain and the Acre plain. In the category of the geography of Palestine the location of Jordan Valley is below the sea level and Ghawr. It results in the quality of the soil to be of very high standard but the resource of water is very limited.

The climate of Palestine results in the growing of such types of vegetables in the last phase of winter season, which usually are grown in the summer season. The hills and the mountains of Palestine have rocky features and terraces are made in the mountains so that the tress can grow.

The geography in Palestine supports the growth of olive trees to a large extent. In some of the parts of Palestine patches of plain land are found which helps in the growth of barley, wheat, lentils. There are many rivers in Palestine and the weather of Palestine remains pleasant for the maximum part of the year.

And that's part of the effort to present the war as if it were a war between South Vietnam and North Vietnam with the United States helping the South.