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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Crimson Ghost who wrote (28141)	9/19/2003 1:31:39 PM
From: Karen Lawrence	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 89467

Summary: "The author understands that this article may offend some people. However, unless you vote, do volunteer work in your community, and otherwise support our democracy, he really doesn't give a damn about your opinion." Another Casualty of the Iraq War Richard J. Ducey The New Hampshire Gazette nhgazette.com Posted 9/16/2003 8:05:00 PM veteransforcommonsense.org It appears that the war may be lost. Not the non-war in Iraq, to free the people who keep shooting at our soldiers, but the "Big One" right here in America. I apologize to the greatest generation of veterans who thought they already won the Big One some sixty odd years ago. I don't mean to confuse them, given their inability to afford their medications, and their government's refusal to provide them, but there is a new Big One. It's the war for truth, and a free press. In this era of bumper sticker patriotism, where medals are awarded to you for being a cute white blonde, and the American people appear to be begging to be lied to, we may be about to suffer our greatest defeat. The rest of the world may not be impressed with our cowboy diplomacy, and bully foreign policy, but Americans are eating it up like puppy chow. Don't get me wrong, I do not blame Jessica Lynch for any of this. Poor Jessica has been date-raped by the press. And like many victims she is not screaming bloody murder because she feels like somehow it must be her fault. But let's look at the facts. Jessica was told she is a hero and now she has the medals to prove it. The first one is a Bronze star. It used to be a pretty distinguished medal to receive. I have a brother who spent a year on Highway 13 in Vietnam with a left over World War II minesweeper. For miles, day after day, with every step he took he hoped that he wouldn't make a mistake and detonate a 500 pound antitank mine with his foot. He didn't earn a Bronze Star. He received an Army Commendation medal for his efforts, which is the next one lower than Jessica's. But hey, she was in a truck accident. Decorations being awarded for political reasons is nothing new, however, I have to wonder which is worse, the shameless exploitation of Jessica, or the fact that those who died and those who did fight off the Iraqi's have become invisible. Then there is the Prisoner of War Medal. James Stockdale earned his for spending five and a half years in a North Vietnamese Prison camp and being savagely beaten. When his captors wanted to take a picture of him for propaganda purposes he shaved a stripe down the center of his head to stop them. After the guards beat the hell out of him they said they would put a hat on him and take the picture anyway. While he was waiting, Stockdale took the stool he was sitting on and repeatedly smashed it against his face to disfigure himself. The North Vietnamese didn't get their picture, but Stockdale endured another beating. Jessica spent a week in an Iraq hospital. And by all accounts the Iraqi's went out of their way to take good care of her. An Iraqi doctor risked his life to tell the Americans where she was. Anyone know his name? Then there is my personal favorite, the Purple Heart. I happen to know a little bit about this one. I received one in 1969. So did the 58,000 other Americans whose parents received them because their sons died from wounds. The operative word here is "wounds." I know because I went and checked the wording on my citation this morning. I point this out because despite the trauma of a motor vehicle accident, broken bones are not a wound. I can hear the bumper sticker patriots now, screaming bloody murder because I am being insensitive and politically incorrect. I don't know if the Army has a medal for motor vehicle accidents. If they do Jessica has certainly earned it. But my Purple Heart is for wounds; gunshot and shrapnel wounds that kept me in various hospitals for a year and a half and have led to a lifetime of chronic pain and disability. Don't get me wrong, I consider myself damned lucky. I have a friend who just had his leg amputated at age 53 from a condition related to his exposure to Agent Orange, the defoliant used in Vietnam. No Purple Heart for him, or for the tens of thousands that are dying of cancer from the same herbicide exposure. But the Army of our illustrious Commander-in- Chief has bent all the rules in this case. He needed to create a hero to keep up support for the war and keep the American people from noticing the dead bodies being shipped home every day. He needed to draw attention away from the fact that the week we invaded Iraq the United States Congress proposed the largest cut in medical care for the disabled veterans of the last four wars in the history of the Veterans Administration. Did the media question the appropriateness of this pathetic spectacle of lies? Hell no, in fact they were instrumental in creating it. Meanwhile the real questions of this conflict go unanswered. Questions like where are the weapons of mass destruction?. (A national poll showed that 46% of the American people believe we found them.) Why does the press say we have lost 88 American lives when over 250 have died? What does any of this have to do with Al Qaeda? If this is about saving the Iraqi people why don't we give a damn about the people of Africa? Why did the President and Congress cut three billion dollars from veterans health care next year when the World War II veterans need it now more than ever? President Bush seems to think the people speaking out against this disaster are only a minor nuisance who can safely be ignored. When he decided it was time for our children to start dying for foreign oil, the press said almost 80% of the American people supported the war. But only 33% of the American people vote. So why do we care about what the other 50% say? The answer is that in this democracy what the voters want, and what the truth is, gets carefully manipulated by the corporate media, the pollsters and the politicians, who all share the same agenda. Your children have become "acceptable losses." Disagreeing with the current regime has become "unpatriotic." And Jessica Lynch is a "war hero." When the media and the government are done exploiting her, making a movie full of lies and half-truths, she will be forgotten as quickly as the soldiers who died that day. America is looking less and less like a democracy every day. When 66% of the American people don't bother to vote and American foreign policy is decided by the shameless hucksters of pseudo-patriotism we are truly in a desperate situation. You see, we don't deserve a democracy; no one does. It has to be earned. Just like medals are supposed to be, in order to have any real value. So all you proud Americans with your bumper stickers and yellow ribbons who don't vote, all you armchair patriots who never fought in a war but want someone else's kid to be sent to Iraq to die, all you shallow consumers of red, white, and blue propaganda, you are the real enemy of democracy. And by looking no further than the six o'clock follies and the Presidents propaganda machine your ignorance is doing more to destroy America than Saddam Hussein ever did.