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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tonto who wrote (958)	3/9/2005 6:12:20 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Respond to of 9838

The Blemish of Conquest Moshe Dayan questioned American goals in Vietnam. What would he say about Iraq? Martin van Creveld In 1966, Israel’s leading newspaper, Maariv, invited the legendary military commander Moshe Dayan to be its war correspondent in Vietnam. Dayan, then 51 years old, jumped at the chance. He had been working in politics since 1959, eventually serving as minister of agriculture under Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, but he had left his post in 1964 when Ben-Gurion fell out with the new prime minister, Levi Eshkol. He had been casting about for a new project. Although he knew nothing about Vietnam, Dayan—whose brilliance and ruthlessness as a strategist against Arab hostilities had led to his elevation to chief of staff of Israel’s armed forces in the early years of independence—did what came naturally: he prepared himself. First he flew to France, where he had many acquaintances from the time of the Israeli–French alliance of the mid-1950s; some of them had served in, and helped lose, the First Indochina War. In his first meeting a retired air-force general named Loission blamed the situation in Vietnam on the American public for not giving the war its full support (even though, at the beginning, that support had been overwhelming). He thought the war could be easily won if only the American public would approve the bombing of North Vietnam back into the stone age. As he saw it, Viet Cong propaganda had prevented the world, including the South Vietnamese themselves, from seeing how righteous the American cause was; he even believed that, had free elections been held, the Vietnamese might have wanted the French back. He asked that his ideas be kept secret. Dayan, who did not think those ideas constituted “a ray of light to an embarrassed world,” readily agreed. Dayan’s other French contact was a General Niceault. For his role in the 1961 attempt to overthrow the Fifth Republic, Niceault had just spent five years in jail. As so often happens, jail provided an opportunity to think and learn. Niceault explained that the Americans were using the wrong forces against the wrong targets. Their intelligence was simply not good enough, and most of their bombs hit nothing but empty jungle. He thought the solution was to use small groups of five to seven men who would shadow the Viet Cong and act as guides, calling in air power or artillery when contact was made. He also claimed that American attempts to prevent the North Vietnamese from infiltrating South Vietnam across the demilitarized zone were not working; each time a path was blocked, another one opened. Perhaps the war could be won by sending in a million-man army and killing all male Vietnamese, but the days in which such things were possible had gone. Besides, he thought, there was no point in going to Vietnam—the Israeli guest would see nothing. Dayan answered that he would go nevertheless. Even if he did not see the enemy or the war, he would see that he could not see; that, too, would be enlightening. Next, in England, he met Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery of Alamein. The old gentleman was blunt: the Americans’ biggest problem was that they did not have a clear objective. He himself had tried to get an answer on that subject from no less than former vice president Richard Nixon. In response he had been treated to a 20-minute lecture that left him as much in the dark as he had been at the beginning. To Montgomery the Americans’ lack of a clear overall policy meant that field commanders were calling the shots. They did what they knew best, screaming for more and more troops, locking up entire populations in what were euphemistically called “strategic hamlets,” and bombing and shelling without giving a thought to what, if anything, they were achieving. Montgomery asked Dayan to tell the Americans, in his name, that they were “insane.” Again Dayan did not disagree, though perhaps this time for different reasons. * * * From Britain, Dayan flew to the United States. Eighteen years had passed since he first visited there. Like many others, he was impressed by its tremendous power. It was a society racing into the 21st century, with the rest of the world barely keeping pace. [...] bostonreview.net

To: tonto who wrote (958)	3/9/2005 11:23:50 AM
From: Orcastraiter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9838

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) said on Tuesday the Bush administration had never accused Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) of directing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. Her statement, made in an interview recorded for broadcast on ABC's "Nightline" program, came despite long-standing administration charges the ousted Iraqi leader was linked to the al Qaeda network accused of the Sept. 11 attacks. Those charges helped fuel a widespread U.S. public belief that Saddam had a role in the attacks. "We have never claimed that Saddam Hussein ... had either direction or control of 9/11," Rice said. "What we have said is that this is someone who supported terrorists, helped to train them (and) was a threat in this region that we were not prepared to tolerate." Defending the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) to oust Saddam, she said he represented a threat in "a region from which the 9/11 threat emerged." Rice said the United States was "getting closer" to capturing Saddam and she expressed confidence the United States would obtain a "full accounting" of alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which have not yet been found following Saddam's ouster. She said she continued to believe unconventional weapons stockpiles had been present in Iraq. I can't give you a quote. That's because the administration was carefully dancing around the point. However, 7 out of 10 Americans believed that Saddam was linked to 9-11. I'd say that Bush got his message across very well. He bobbed and he weaved the tales of two tyrants...until they merged in to a single enemy...the war on terror. Orca

To: tonto who wrote (958)	3/10/2005 7:46:56 PM
From: PartyTime	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

>>>I did not know that Bush thought attacking Iraq was the equivalent of attacking OBL. He did say that about Afghanistan. Can you direct us to a quote? Thanks.<<< Consider this, for example. The Bush mouthing pattern consistently had been that the so-called "terrorists" were fighting against the US in Iraq. Wby would he call them terrorists, if he weren't linking them to OBL? The US invades Iraq and people who've always lived in Iraq fight back, and then Bush calls them "terrorists?" Tonto, in your honest opinion, do you believe that Bush and his spokespeople made the link that fighting the war in Iraq was fighting the War on Terrorism?