Ray McGovern

 

Dempsey insists, correctly, “generals have an obligation to uphold our apolitical traditions. They have just made the task of their successors — who continue to serve in uniform and are accountable for our security — more complicated. It was a mistake for them to participate as they did. It was a mistake for our presidential candidates to ask them to do so.”

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/military-leaders-do-not-belong-at-political-conventions/2016/07/30/0e06fc16-568b-11e6-b652-315ae5d4d4dd_story.html

 

Dempsey is the only four-star in recent memory that helped a president (Obama) avoid being mousetrapped into a feckless, unnecessary war (Syria, the neocon target in September 2013).  Moreover, he did not have his orderly plaster ten rows of medals, ribbons, and merit badges on his left breast – like the preening “warrior/scholar” David Petraeus.  And Dempsey avoided barking, like Gen. John Allen (see next posting).

 

The Petraeuses and Allens of this world bring to mind one of Sid Caesar’s best roles as a preening, schpitt-und-polish German General.  His orderly, performing what appear to be some of the spiffing-up functions of Paula Broadwell, offers an equally memorable performance.  Enjoy!

 

(8 minutes)

Pride/Hubris before the fall:  USA! USA! “Indispensable, Transformational Power;” The Bad Guys “will fear us!” – and not only they.

Parental guidance advised

http://reason.com/blog/2016/07/31/readwatch-the-scariest-speech-from-both

(8 minutes)

 

UPDATE:  In addition, all are invited to watch the scary introductory 3-minutes not included in the above link.  Don’t miss the “spit-and-polish” cadenced march-in by military retirees endorsing Clinton, and Congressman Ted Lieu’s introduction.  (Part of the introduction struck me at first as super-weird.  Lieu: “When you ignore the facts people will die.”  For a moment I thought, Wow, he’s alluding to how Gen. Allen and his fellow “four-stars” have been ignoring the facts and getting thousands killed.  But, alas.)

Again, parental guidance advised.  But adults should go to the link below to watch Gen. Allen impersonate another “Marine”—“You-can’t-handle-the-truth” Jack Nicholson.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oYuH5fKUn_0

(11 minutes)

http://sputniknews.com/politics/20160802/1043849062/trump-russia-crimea.html

Interview of Ray by Sputnik (excerpts below)

 

Ray has taken another admittedly risky step from the contemporary mainstream, by drawing on some ancient wisdom he picked up in a college course named “Logic.”  Double-checking what he remembered from that course a half-century ago, he confirmed that the arcane procedure called a syllogism can still be applied without prejudice or opprobrium.  A far more recent scholarly book said it was still acceptable to distinguish logic from rhetoric – and even to apply, logically, a major and a minor premise to reach a conclusion.  The book noted, though, that “in everyday life, few of us bother” with premises or conclusions.  Well that much is clear, thought Ray – and sadly true.

 

Here’s the syllogism in question:

 

Major premise: Russian President Vladimir Putin wants Donald Trump to win the election.

Minor premise: The publication of documentary (email) proof that Hillary Clinton stole the Democratic nomination was aimed at helping Trump defeat Clinton.

Conclusion: Putin did it.

 

Anyone want to look up “fallacy?”  Again, if memory serves, in Logic a fallacy is a mistaken belief or conclusion based on faulty or misleading reasoning.  It is a fallacy, for example, to conclude that the sun moves round the earth, even though we can SEE the sun moving, right?  And we are equally certain that Putin prefers Trump because we can SEE everyone saying that on TV, right?

 

Alas, if the rules for logical reasoning have not been suspended, then when a major premise is not sound, you really want to have a hard look at the conclusion.  (Ray apologizes for the pedantry and his requirement for rigor in reasoning.  Chalk it up to his training at the hands of the Jesuits.)

 

Trump Probably Makes Russia Nervous (from above; excerpts)

WASHINGTON (from the Sputnik wire), August 2, 2016

 

“Former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern told Sputnik that despite widespread speculation that the billionaire businessman has become President Vladimir Putin’s favored candidate, the president unlikely wants him to win.  ‘I know a little bit about Russian and Soviet leaders,’ McGovern added.  ‘The last thing they want is somebody who is proud of being unpredictable and who gets irate at the slightest slight.’  That Putin, McGovern added, would want Trump to have his finger on the nuclear button ‘is a leap of faith that I cannot possibly make and remain sane.’ …

 

“Unfortunately, McGovern suggested, the idea that Putin supports Trump has wormed its way into a narrative being spun by Democrats and major US media outlets that back Clinton.  If the media says Putin wants Trump to win 50 times, then 95 percent of the American people will believe that to be true, McGovern added.”

 

So how and why did the Trump-Loves-Putin-and-vice-versa idea “worm its way” into the narrative.  Well, Ray’s main point was edited into a Part Two of the same interview (Part Two is not on the Sputnik wire – not yet, at least).  Here’s the edited piece Sputnik had prepared.

 

US Democrats Use Russia to Distract From Clinton Stealing Nomination – Ex-CIA Analyst

WASHINGTON, August 2, 2016 (full text)

 

“‘US Democrats have pulled off a masterful slight-of-hand by shifting the focus from documentary proof that Senator Bernie Sanders was robbed of the party’s nomination to charges that Russia leaked the documents to influence the US election,’ former CIA analyst Raymond McGovern told Sputnik.

“‘It is a classic diversion from the fact that those emails show beyond any doubt in documents, in documentary evidence, that Hillary Clinton and her pals in the Democratic National Committee stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders,’ McGovern said on Monday.

“The former CIA analyst was referring to a trove of documents provided by WikiLeaks that exposed secret efforts to exploit Sanders’ ethnic Jewish background and presumption that Sanders is an atheist, to weaken his support.

“‘Hillary and all her minions are doing their best to blacken Trump by associating him with the other bête noir, Putin, and it’s all ludicrous on its face,’ McGovern explained.

“In a weekend interview with Fox News, Clinton claimed that Russian intelligence services stole the documents, raising serious issues about Russian interference in the US election.”

And Chuck the Toady Todd (see posting directly above on pimping the “red line” on Syria) comes through for Hillary again, giving sycophancy a bad name.  Aiming for White House press secretary, Chuck?

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/08/02/meet-press-grills-wikileaks-source-ignores-substance-dnc-emails

Quo usque tandem abutere sycophanti patientia nostra?!

(27 minutes)

 

Puzzled by U.S. Policy on Ukraine and Russia?  Think neocons.  (Also, to add context, you are invited to skim through “Background: From Syria to Ukraine” below, before viewing.)

In this final installment, Ray talks with Regis Tremblay about what has been called “the most blatant coup in history” – the West-orchestrated Putsch in Kiev on February 22, 2014.  The neocons were determined to put Putin in his place after he helped spoil their plans for war on Syria six months before.  So it was partly payback.

Ray discusses the strategic importance of Crimea, and how it should have been a no-brainer how the Kremlin would react to its possible loss to NATO.  The tension created by the coup d’état in Kiev, just six months after a brief Obama-Putin partnership helped prevent war on Syria, torpedoed further progress toward a good working relationship between Washington and Russia.  There is good reason, in fact, to believe that this was the main aim of the coup; in any case, the hapless Obama let it happen.

While holding out some hope that Moscow’s help on Syria might encourage a more cooperative spirit in Washington, Putin suggested that in order to cultivate healthy bilateral relations based on mutual interest, Washington might consider abandoning the notion that the U.S. is more equal, so to speak, than other nations.  Ray quotes part of a highly unusual Putin op-ed published by the New York Times on Sept. 11, 2013 – before the neocons launched their payback.  Putin reportedly drafted the final paragraph himself.  It is worth citing in full:

“My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different, but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal.”

 

Background: From Syria to Ukraine

Our last installment (video interview #2 posted yesterday) addressed the fact that pro-Israeli neocons are running U.S. policy on Syria.  Ray noted – in part from his own personal experience – how distraught the neocons were when Obama stepped back from attacking Syria in Sept. 2013.  (Normally clay in then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s hands, Obama was given some backbone by JCS Chair Gen. Martin Dempsey and – amazingly – by the British Parliament which voted against war on Syria.)

If it had not dawned on him before, surely Obama and the sophomores he has working for him in the White House could then see how close the neocons and Israel had come to mousetrapping the President into another war of aggression.  The first step was the artful setting of a “red line” against Syria using, or even merely moving, its chemical weapons

At the end of a press conference on Aug. 20, 2012, Chuck Todd, apparently responding to a request originating with Hillary, fed the mousetrap some cheese by asking leading questions that Obama showed himself primed to answer, setting the scene for the “red line.”  (See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBRqRl6RbDM .)  At minute 15:33, Obama looks down at the podium, picks up the cue, and calls “Chuck Todd.”  Todd asks a two-part question (the second part was about Romney’s taxes).  Obama eventually winds around to Toad’s question regarding chemical weapons in Syria at minute 18:30.

You owe it to yourself to have a look at Obama’s well-rehearsed discourse on the new “red line” he establishes.  Note: there is some sort of glitch in the YouTube video that obscures Toad’s follow-up question: “So you’re confident it’s somehow under — it’s safe?”  ( See:

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2012/08/20/remarks-president-white-house-press-corps .)

It is a safe assumption that this pas de deux was set up by State Department neocons.  The Washington Post account of the press conference suggests that White House staffers had been blindsided and were trying to put the best face on it. (  See:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/obama-issues-syria-red-line-warning-on-chemical-weapons/2012/08/20/ba5d26ec-eaf7-11e1-b811-09036bcb182b_story.html .)

The sarin gas attack outside Damascus came a year later – on August 21, 2013 – the attack that Hillary’s successor, John Kerry, did all he could to make into a casus belli by blaming on the Assad government.  Since then, accumulating evidence has pointed to rebels in Syria as the culprit, who were getting sarin precursors shipped from Europe through Turkey into Syria.  It was, as the British told Gen. Dempsey, homemade sarin.

Chuck Toad, though, knows which side his bread is buttered on.  Pimping the “red-line” question could, after all, get you placed at the top of Meet the Press.  And recently leaked emails show he was highly sensitive to complaints by former Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz that some pundits were being too hard on Hillary.  (Subject line of one Schultz-to-Todd email: “Chuck, this must stop.”)

No, “Toad” was not a typo.

The point of including this in introducing the Tremblay/Ray interview on Ukraine is not so much to show how toady the likes of Todd can be, but how the best made plans of mousetraps and neocons can go awry.  Did they take it out on Obama?  We saw that in installment #2.  But it was Russian President Vladimir Putin, by getting Assad to agree to have his chemical weapons destroyed, who made it possible for Obama to emerge with some considerable grace from his having “chickened out” on doing shock and awe to Syria.

And the two are continuing to “plot” sensible solutions to stop the carnage in Syria, with the neocons, the Pentagon, et al. doing their best to put the kibosh on anything short of driving Assad out of Damascus.  And why?  (Please see installment #2.)

So, if you are still wondering why the neocons have made Putin into the devil incarnate, think about his sin of pulling Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire in Sept. 2013.  They would make Putin pay for that grievous sin by moving into high gear plans for a coup d’etat in Ukraine six months later (February 22, 2014), as most attention in Russia was focused on the winding down of the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

 

UKRAINE:  In other words, the U.S. provocation on Moscow’s doorstep was, in some degree, neocon payback.  And – better still in the neocon view – Putin’s altogether predicable reaction in annexing Crimea became icing on the cake.  Putin = bête noire par excellence.  (And now cavorting with Trump! That’s a two-for.)

If one listens only to Western politicians and the corporate media, recent history in Ukraine begins on Feb. 23, 2014 – not by accident.  A particularly blatant example of this came on June 30, when U.S. Ambassador to NATO Douglas Lute spoke at a pre-Warsaw summit press briefing: (See: https://nato.usmission.gov/api-ipa-warsaw-summit-q-and-a/.)

“… beginning in 2014 and still to this day, we’re moving into a new period in NATO’s long history. Why do I say that? Here’s the evidence I cite. So the first thing that happened in 2014 that marks this change is a newly aggressive, newly assertive Russia under Vladimir Putin. So in late February, early March of 2014, the seizing, the occupying of Crimea followed quickly by the illegal political annexation of Crimea. … Well, any notion of strategic partnership came to an abrupt halt in the first months of 2014.” (Emphasis added)

 

Puzzled by U.S. policy on Syria?  Think Israel.

Ray talks with Regis Tremblay about Obama’s “red line” and the chemical attack outside Damascus on August 21, 2013; how Obama now brags about singlehandedly thwarting the (pretty obvious) attempt to mousetrap him into launching “shock and awe” on Syria; and how the outraged neocons, cheated out of the war for which they had been lusting, moved quickly to administer “payback” to Putin for pulling Obama’s chestnuts out of the fire.  Payback?  Think the coup in Kiev just six months later.

Ukraine is the subject of installment #3 of Summer Viewing.  Please check back tomorrow.

The stream of events of late August – early Sept. 2013 remains among the most bizarre that Ray has witnessed in over 50 years in Washington.  He relates how, on one key occasion, he witnessed some of it personally.

Sadly, very few folks are aware of how it all went down (the culprit, as usual, the corporate media).  But the result – like no new war of aggression AND the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons – is one of the very few things that came out (relatively) well.  Odd that Obama chooses to brag to journalist Jeffrey Goldberg about the President’s having to face down ALL his advisers (except, as is clear, Vladimir Putin!).  And you are wondering, maybe, why the neocons hate Putin so much?

(32 minutes)

 

Two weeks before bussing up to the Bronx for his 55^th college reunion, and then from JFK to Germany and Russia for the rest of June, Ray gave a series of interviews to Regis Tremblay, a colleague from Veterans For Peace and an accomplished documentary maker.

 

Regis has broken his footage down into three segments: (1) on the media; (2) on Israel’s influence on (otherwise un-understandable) U.S. policy on Syria; and (3) Ukraine.

 

Below is the link to the first, which runs for 12 minutes.  (We will post the other two links in the coming days.) In the first segment, Ray talks about the regrettable but undeniable demise of the Fourth Estate and the happy emergence of a Fifth Estate.  To put some flesh on his remarks, he includes a painful personal experience with some longtime friends and classmates from the New York area, who still think that by reading the New York Times they know what’s going on – like in the old days.

 

Ray had been looking forward to the next five-year reunion with classmates, just two weeks after the interviews with Regis Tremblay.  This seems to be what prompted him to describe an earlier experience confronting distinguished Fordham alumnus (now Fordham Trustee) Gen. Jack Keane, at Ray’s 50^th reunion of Fordham College five years ago.

 

In 2011 Keane was celebrating his 45^th from Fordham’s Business School and had been asked to give a lecture to our Jubilee class of 1961 and others celebrating another five years away from Fordham (and still alive). All dolled up in Fox News attire and calculating (correctly) that his audience would be malnourished on accurate information, Keane gave an unconscionably alarmist account of the danger posed by Iran, which he claimed was about to get a nuclear weapon.  Discomforting as it was to experience his classmates’ reaction to Ray’s speaking truth to power (something not very much encouraged at Fordham back in the day), Ray found the vignette worth telling – as a chilling illustration of the effects of the death of the Fourth Estate on otherwise well educated people.  The more so, since Jack Keane played a key role in thwarting a sensible change in the U.S. role in Iraq ten years ago.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYGnkb1Ia30

(12 minutes)

Ray predicts that Putin will be blamed next for global warming.  (Remember where you heard it first.)

https://youtu.be/LQu6k3t8Ccc

Ray’s brief comments come at minute 2:13 of this 3-minute news segment on July 26.

Yes, it was all Putin’s fault.  “Experts say” he stole the emails to enhance Donald Trump’s chances of winning the election.

 

It is a magnificent distraction; and it has worked so far.  With the “mainstream” media in Hillary’s corner, what can possibly go wrong?  Bête noire Putin, second only to Jack Palance as Central Casting’s evil incarnate, has been pilloried by Hillary and her media minions, who accuse Putin of giving the emails to WikiLeaks to discredit the Clinton campaign.  But why?

 

Unspoken is the (highly dubious) major premise that Putin would prefer to have Donald Trump’s manly – but highly UNPREDICTABLE – finger on the nuclear launch button to that of Hillary.  “Experts say” Putin is trying to embarrass Hillary to help Donald win.  The “logic” behind this premise is never spelled out.  But not a problem.  The pundits are in high dudgeon – and in high gear “proving” that Putin and Trump are in cahoots.

 

On July 26, RT’s Crosstalk hosted Daniel McAdams, George Szamuely, and Ray to discuss these surreal circumstances.  The program was aired on July 27.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_xw5UYC01Q

(25 minutes)

Ray McGovern and Miko Peled tackle the Bible. (34 min)

Genesis 18:1-15 was the first reading for Sunday worship on July 17.  Ray had agreed to preach on it, but on Saturday night realized he could use all the help he could get.  Just then, Ray’s good friend, justice activist Miko Peled, dropped out of the sky from California like a modern-day deus ex machina.  Miko agreed to apply his own life experiences to put some flesh on that Genesispassage about not laughing at seemingly insurmountable challenges.

Miko joined Ray in interpreting and applying the Genesis passage for the “8^th Day Faith Community,” one of the “scattered churches” inspired by the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington.  An Israeli Jew uncommonly adept at doing the impossible, Miko Peled is a strong advocate for justice for Palestinians.  He authored The General’s Son: Journey of an Israeli in Palestine.

The recording of Miko and Ray – like their exegesis – was non-professional; there is a several-second hiatus in a couple of spots, for example.

Vignettes from Miko’s life, however, are true treasure – and not to be missed.

(The Genesis passage is pasted in below in English; Miko read it in Hebrew as the rest of us tried to follow along with our English texts.)

 

 

Genesis:  18:8-15 

“ … then, under the tree Abraham served the three visitors himself, and they ate.  Then they asked him, “Where is your wife Sarah?”  “She is there in the tent,” he answered.  One of them said, “Exactly a year from now I will come back, and your wife Sarah will have a son.”

Sarah was behind him, at the entrance to the tent, listening.  Abraham and Sarah were very old, and Sarah had stopped having her monthly periods.  So Sarah laughed to herself and said, “Now that I am old and worn out, can I still enjoy sex?  And, besides, my husband is old too.

Then God asked Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Can I really have a child when I am so old?  Is anything too difficult for the God?  As I said, exactly one year from now I will return and Sarah will have a son.”

Because Sarah was afraid, she denied it.  “I didn’t laugh,” she said.  “Yes, you did,” he replied.  “You laughed.”

(a summing up; how generals, eagle scouts, and tough-gal-ism got – and is still getting – thousands of people killed, for no good reason)

 

Afghanistan: President Obama’s Vietnam

By Jonathan Marshall, July 24, 2016

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/24/afghanistan-president-obamas-vietnam/

 

Now we are told that 8,400 U.S. troops will remain in Afghanistan to “support Afghan forces” and “go after” terrorists, when Obama leaves the White House.  As Jonathan Marshall points out, the President asks us to take on faith that this is “in our national security interest – especially after all the blood and treasure we’ve invested in Afghanistan over the years.” (emphasis added)

 

And so it goes with our Lemming-in-Chief Barack Obama and those who lemmingly lead or follow him.  A cartoon comes to mind: Two lemmings are chatting while standing in the line going up to the cliff. One says to the other, “Of course we have to go over the edge. Anything else would dishonor all the lemmings that have gone before us.”  (NO way is this funny.)

 

On July 24, Consortiumnews decided to re-run an early piece (#1 below), noting that our young President had let himself be sucked into a fool’s errand (aka quagmire) in Afghanistan by be-medaled, be-ribboned, be-merit-badged, starry-eyed generals, Eagle Scout Robert Gates, and Hillary the Hawk.  (Anyone who had been around a while could have made the same quagmire call; it was a no-brainer.)

 

That re-run from the Archive, prompted a review of some of the pieces Ray wrote on Afghanistan during the crucial period (2009-2011) when feckless decisions bereft of experience and vision were being made.  Some of the items below have already been republished “from the Consortiumnews Archive.” To avoid confusion, they are listed below chronologically, in the order in which they were originally written.

 

Lastly, it seems appropriate to tack onto the end some wisdom from Rudyard Kipling – sadly; wisdom not required reading at West Point, the Ivies, or William and Mary.

 

 

1 –

Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President

(Originally published March 28, 2009)

July 24, 2016

https://consortiumnews.com/2016/07/24/welcome-to-vietnam-mr-president-2/

Editor’s Note, From the Archive: With still no end in sight for the Afghan War, President Obama can’t say he wasn’t warned. Barely two months into his presidency in 2009, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern welcomed Obama to his own Vietnam quagmire.

 

 

2 –

Kipling Haunts Obama’s Afghan War

October 30, 2009

https://consortiumnews.com/2009/103009a.html

 

 

3 –

Heeding George Kennan’s Sage Advice [on Afghanistan]

November 3, 2009

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/110309a.html

 

 

4 –

Obama Ignores Key Afghan Warning

February 7, 2014

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/02/07/obama-ignores-key-afghan-warning/

Editor’s Note; From the Archive:  As the 12-year Afghan War grinds to what many Americans see as failure, ex-Defense Secretary Robert Gates and other hawks won’t admit their counterinsurgency “surge” in 2009 was a waste of lives and money or that U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry was right when he warned President Obama, as ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote in 2010.

(Originally published Jan. 27, 2010)

 

 

5 –

Obama Misses the Afghan Exit Ramp [see Hillary Clinton favoring giving the generals “whatever they need.”]

June 24, 2010

https://consortiumnews.com/2010/062410a.html

 

“Obama’s main dilemma now is likely to be how to say “no” when, as seems inevitable, Westmoreland — sorry, I mean Petraeus — makes requests for more “surges” of troops into Afghanistan.  Petraeus is likely to tell Obama he must have additional forces, or he will go the way of McChrystal and invite removal — and then possibly run for president in 2012. In that case, Obama’s political advisers would probably say send more troops from wherever they might be scrounged up. …

 

“We may well end up with either a President Petraeus or another President Clinton in the person of Obama’s hawkish Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was one official praised by McChrystal’s wild-boy crew because she favored giving the general whatever troops he wanted.  A McChystal aide is quoted as saying, “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’” … (emphasis added)

 

“The tragedy is that all this is unnecessary. If President Obama could get beyond these ill-conceived short-term political considerations, he already has available some well-reasoned guidance as to how to extricate the United States from the Afghanistan morass.  He got solid advice last fall from retired Lt. Gen. Karl Eikenberry, his ambassador in Kabul, who knows more about Afghanistan than Petraeus, McChrystal and special envoy Richard Holbrooke do, put together.”

 

 

6 –

What Obama Won’t Say Tonight

August 31, 2010

https://consortiumnews.com/2010/083110a.html

Editor’s Note: President Barack Obama’s aides say his speech Tuesday night marking the end of “combat operations” in Iraq will avoid the vainglorious aspects of President George W. Bush’s infamous “Mission Accomplished” speech in 2003.  However, in this draft of a speech that Obama won’t give, former CIA analyst Ray McGovern suggests that the President pivot away from the phase-out of U.S. troops in Iraq and address the worsening quagmire in Afghanistan:

 

 

7 –

Petraeus Cons Obama on Afghan War

Sept. 24, 2010

https://consortiumnews.com/2010/092410a.html

 

 

8 –

“Giant” Holbrooke Failed on Afghan War

December 14, 2010

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2010/121410a.html

 

 

9 –

Obama Lacks Clarity on Afghan War [or Déjà vu all over again]

March 28, 2011

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2011/032811b.html

 

 

10 –

More U.S. Soldiers Die in Vain

August 7, 2011

https://consortiumnews.com/2011/08/07/more-us-soldiers-die-in-vain/

 

 

11 –

Lemmingly, We Roll Along

August 19, 2011

https://consortiumnews.com/2011/08/19/lemmingly-we-roll-along/

 

 

… and finally (but, alas, too late)

 

From Rudyard Kipling

 

1 –

It is not wise for the Christian white
To hustle the Asian brown;
For the Christian riles
And the Asian smiles
And weareth the Christian down.

At the end of the fight
Lies a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased;

And the epitaph drear,
A fool lies here,
Who tried to hustle the East

 

+++++++++++++++++++++

 

2 –

… from ‘The Young British Soldier’

 

When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains 

An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier …

A soldier of the Queen!

++++++++++++++++++++

 

3 –

If any question why we died,

Tell them, because our fathers lied.