In the wake of yesterday's vote in Iraq, an email has been
circulating around containing the text of what is, supposedly, a
New York Times article from 1967. Here's a sample of the text:
U.S. Encouraged by Vietnam Vote :
Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
by Peter Grose, Special to the New York Times (9/4/1967: p. 2)
WASHINGTON, Sept. 3-- United States officials were surprised and heartened today at the size of turnout in South Vietnam's presidential election despite a Vietcong terrorist campaign to disrupt the voting.
According to reports from Saigon, 83 per cent of the 5.85 million registered voters cast their ballots yesterday. Many of them risked reprisals threatened by the Vietcong.
The size of the popular vote and the inability of the Vietcong to destroy the election machinery were the two salient facts in a preliminary assessment of the nation election based on the incomplete returns reaching here...
A successful election has long been seen as the keystone in President Johnson's policy of encouraging the growth of constitutional processes in South Vietnam.
Substitute Bush for Johnson and Iraq for Vietnam, and this article could easily be mistaken for any one of the articles written about yesterday's vote in Iraq. So is it real? Apparently it is. Here's a link to
the original article, available (for a fee) in the NY Times archive. (via
Weird is Relative)
Comments
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0120-33.htm
What makes me most furious about this administration of rogues and thieves is that they don't even bother to think of new lies to tell the people, they just recycle the old ones, assuming we won't have learned anything-- and they're usually right.
"We had to destroy Fallujah in order to save it."
"Iraq is like South Vietnam." Okay, how? Because we're still going to be patrolling it with soldiers forty years later, like we're still in Viet Nam now? Because the elections didn't amount to much in the long run?
Or am I supposed to spin it the other way?
Or am I supposed to just think, 'Huh, same old same old," and leave it at that?
In Vietname we kept claiming that we weren't really in a war. This time we just keep changing the rationale. From 9/11 ties, to WMD, to just the fact that we didn't like Saddam, our government has it's own plan and is sticking to it, with or without the will of the people.
Sorry, just had to vent there. Here's to hoping to doesn't become another Vietnam
And for the record, I think the election in Iraq was a wonderful thing, and I don't think Iraq is another Vietnam. But it certainly looks like a situation that could possibly escalate into another Vietnam, and that's what I'm afraid of.
The Vietnam war lasted more like 30 years (from the end of World War II to 1975. U.S. involvement in it became heavy after about 1960.
The number of casualties in Vietnam was closer to 4 million, the vast majority of them Vietnamese, of course. Every one of those lives was worth as much as any American's life.
So far in Bush's Iraq fiasco, over 10,000 people have died and probably ten times that many have been wounded. I don't care what their nationalities are or were.
No, actually, believe it or not, there are still U.S. military personnel 'guarding' the border between North and South Vietnam. Saw a documentary about them. America has been rotating in fresh guards pretty much continually since the 70's. Yes, it's bizarre.
>>>So far in Bush's Iraq fiasco, over 10,000 people have died and probably ten times that many have been wounded.<<<
Hate to contribute to your funk, but the number of killed civilian Iraqis alone is, according to The Lancet (respected English medical journal), 100,000. Almost half of them women and children, I believe. And that number is on the conservative side, if anything. Yay freedom!
I still think you're confused. There isn't a border there anymore after north Viet Nam invaded the south. Maybe it's the border with another country? Cambodia or Laos? Do you have a link to the documentry?
I don't really think about it a lot...War is sad and all...but I'm doing all I can to survive here...w/o a war!
I think it depends on how far back you count. If you start the body count with George I's 1991 invasion and include subsequent attacks and consequences of 12 years of economic embargo, the civilian death count is certainly over 250,000, and probably at least 500,000.