11 Comments

1. les:

   The Downing Street memo has been missing from the media in Britain of late. Blair has effectively used an attack on the European Union’s budget and the British rebate to shift focus from the evidence of his mendacity and the murders in Iraq. The row with Chirac and Europe was contrived as a diversion from the memo and also to cause division within the EU on behalf of Blairs master in Washington. It is a manufactured crisis unlike the votes in France and Holland that have questioned the direction of the European project by the people.
   The media in Britain are more than happy to go along with this as it lessens the questions that would be asked about their complicity in cheerleading for an illegal war.
   Why has Murdoch’s media in the USA not run with the memo when his media in Britain broke the story? I do not know Murdoch’s agenda on this issue, except that he is ‘anti’ the European project, ‘pro’ the illegal war and is no friend of ordinary people.
   I really enjoy Feral Scholar with its articulate politics and have been thinking of having a say about Stan’s postings for a while but have felt reticent about responding till this morning when I find that I lose my reticence for a posting by Dave Lindorff, whose writings I usually read in Counterpunch.

   21 June 2005, 3:31 am

2. Mewshkin:

   The connection between Blair’s ‘Phoney war’ with Chirac and the EU constitution vote was blindingly obvious (at least it seems everyone in Britain’s mainstream media was blinded), but as a distraction from the downing street memo? Personally I’d say our media drop a subject after a week or two however important, unless its something as exciting as royalty. Its (briefly) astonishing how little import is given to stories which should bring down governments…
   Its my personal belief that the British press can always run a story damaging both UK and US governments knowing thats its readers will see the damage done to the US first, the damage to the PM second and the damage to Britain hardly at all (like we’re innocent virgins taken along for a ride). Its amazing how many Brits you can talk to who act like Iraq is something America is doing.
   Murdoch? I don’t know either. But I think hes cooled on Blair (the sex can’t have been up to much)*, and as I say, no harm bashing the States in Britain.
   Mewshkin
   (while I’m ranting about the British press, anyone else from these isles infuriated about the ‘coverage’ of the G8 summit? Terrorists, toilets, half-cognisant rockstars…I half-expected the Beeb anchors to start talking about their grannies rather than give a minute of airtime to what the meeting was about, why anyone was protesting etc)

   * Put into vaguely intelligent speech, Blairs a lame duck and Murdoch knows it.

   21 June 2005, 2:55 pm

3. Battered_Newshound:

   I’m a journalist at a mid-sized daily just outside of New York City. I managed to convince one of my editors to allow me to pursue the DSM with a hard-hitting story using a strong local angle. He managed to sneak it onto page one above the fold on a Monday, only because none of the bigwig editors were working on Sunday. Since, we have been absolutely inundated with emails from our readers, and from people around the nation and the world, almost all of them positive and screaming for more coverage of what is obviously a serious issue.

   Senior management’s response: My editor got his ass kicked around the block. He was told it’s not a “local” story, despite the fact we’ve lost many soliders from our readership area, we have dozens and dozens of reader families with sons and daughters over there, and a Congressional delegation that gleefully voted for the the war powers reolution. The volumnous email response, an avalanche of letters to the editor and the huge number of web hits the story generated were dismissed. I was told to “Sit the f**k down and shut the f**k up!” and yanked off the story, apparently forever.

   An observation: a lot of the people who run the small-to-medium sized newspapers that the majority of Americans read are just small-minded f**kwits minus the brains God gave a goat. Perhaps these idiots can be excused for not knowing a good story when they see it, or deliberately ignoring it because it scares them by running counter to their tiny world view.

   As for the New York Times, well they do have the wit to see the merits of the story, and yet they choose to spin it or ignore it. That’s not journalism, that’s cowardice. Journalism, at least at the level of the Times and the Post, is supposed to be about upholding democracy by holding power accountable for its actions. Incidental/accidental failure in that duty is bad. Deliberate failure in that duty is very, very bad: it’s a conscious betrayal of the very democratic foundations of this great country.

   Anyway, I’m glad I had a chance to write about the DSM, and glad so many people read and responded to the story we ran. At least it was good for something other than destroying my career!

   Cheers!

   21 June 2005, 7:44 pm

4. m.c.:

   {From a Comment from David Corn’s Nation column online}–m.c.

   Last night David Gregory filled in for Hardballs Chris Matthew’s and had an exclusive with Michael Smith, who broke the story of the highly confidential Downing Street memo for The Sunday Times of London. I find it rather odd that Matthews wasn’t there for this exclusive.

   An excerpt:

   SMITH: First of all, it says very clearly and in these terms, not–is not me making this up. It’s what it actually says is the document, is that the prime minister agreed, when he went to the Crawford summit in April 2002, he agreed to back military action to achieve regime change. Now, that, actually, at that stage, was something illegal for the British prime minister to agree.

   But, by extension, of course, if Mr. Blair agreed it, he’s agreeing it with Mr. Bush. It then says in that document it is necessary to create the conditions to make military action legal, because regime change per se is illegal under international law.

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8301757/

   Posted by MUNICH 06/21/2005 @ 5:27pm

   21 June 2005, 8:45 pm

5. Markus Blomberg:

   I actually believe there is a war about the constitution, but not about the content - all our wonderful European leaders agree on that. It’s just a matter of keeping face. Blair doesn’t want to leave office, with a public referendum failing to send a clear yes-vote. When campaigning for his first term, Blair promised to make Britain more friendly-minded towards the EU. A promise it’s fair to say, most European leaders feel has fallen flat to the ground. The leaders wishing for a new etats-du-force à la Europe are enraged with his “selfishness”.

   The debate right now, about the long-term budget for the union and the pseudo-debate of constitution-blah-blah, is a method/tool. Although Blair and Swedish P.M. Persson have a lot of points with their reforms (agro-cultural fundings building on structures from the 1940s etc), it’s obvious that Blair wants to shift focus from Iraq.

   It’s still boiling within Labour. The newly elected president of Labour Youth at Oxford University, Albin-Svensson, is openly furious and is open with his Marxist views. Many local offices of Labour Youth are openly campaigning against Blair, under the flag of “we do not exist to apologize for a poor Labour, but to improve Labour”. And as you know, a lot of his own MP’s are indeed: mad.

   This is not to cover up, to hide the Iraq-agenda from the British population - it’s simply a desperate party leader trying to cover up his naked failure, to his own members.

   That’s what’s happening. Like all deranged right-wing Labour-leaders among the European socialist parties, he’s trying to avoid a revolution among his own.. Our PM, Göran Persson of the Swedish Socialdemocrats, are using the EU for the same agenda. Quite sad, actually

   //Markus Blomberg
   Local president Socialdemocratic Youth, Malmo, Sweden
   markusblomberg@agera.ssu.se

   22 June 2005, 12:37 am

6. ray-davison:

   military itself as an institution, like jesuits or something, need to act, start thinking about this — could we cut a deal, ya’ll watch out for us, and no standing army? like pirates, ah phooey that’s primitive capital accumulation 101…do you really wanna stay around how bout write your memoirs, then join the big they in the sky. anyway, a woman’s dreams, no matter — CAFTA flim flam jobs just as noisom states’ side.

   22 June 2005, 11:46 am

7. Juan:

   Good to see some European comments on Stans´excellent site ! Question to anyone who could care,,,, here in Denmark a recent national election re-installed the neo-nazi pro war support Bush party,,,,, it is my understanding that Denmark was the only country to officially declare war on Iraq,, with 550 plus troops in theater supporting the carnage, why hasent anyone brought the national leaders of this little country up on war crimes charges ? This country is a signatory member of all kinds of anti torture and such worthless treaties,,,,, and bringing this band of thugs up on charges should be much easier than charging the poodle or the shrub,,,, but acomplishing the goal of getting public attention to the illegality of the whole mess,,,,,,,any ideas out there ???

   22 June 2005, 2:08 pm

8. denisdekat:

   I believe and support all efforts to trust bust big media.

   I already canceled cable as the first step in protest…

   23 June 2005, 2:08 pm

9. m.c.:

   {Today’s Los Angeles Times Op-Ed, p.B13}
   June 23, 2005 latimes.com : Opinion :
   COMMENTARY
   The Real News in the Downing Street Memos
   By Michael Smith, Michael Smith writes on defense issues for the Sunday Times of London.

   It is now nine months since I obtained the first of the “Downing Street memos,” thrust into my hand by someone who asked me to meet him in a quiet watering hole in London for what I imagined would just be a friendly drink.

   At the time, I was defense correspondent of the London Daily Telegraph, and a staunch supporter of the decision to oust Saddam Hussein. The source was a friend. He’d given me a few stories before but nothing nearly as interesting as this.

   The six leaked documents I took away with me that night were to change completely my opinion of the decision to go to war and the honesty of Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush.

   They focused on the period leading up to the Crawford, Texas, summit between Blair and Bush in early April 2002, and were most striking for the way in which British officials warned the prime minister, with remarkable prescience, what a mess post-war Iraq would become. Even by the cynical standards of realpolitik, the decision to overrule this expert advice seemed to be criminal.

   The second batch of leaks arrived in the middle of this year’s British general election, by which time I was writing for a different newspaper, the Sunday Times. These documents, which came from a different source, related to a crucial meeting of Blair’s war Cabinet on July 23, 2002. The timing of the leak was significant, with Blair clearly in electoral difficulties because of an unpopular war.

   I did not then regard the now-infamous memo — the one that includes the minutes of the July 23 meeting — as the most important. My main article focused on the separate briefing paper for those taking part, prepared beforehand by Cabinet Office experts.

   It said that Blair agreed at Crawford that “the UK would support military action to bring about regime change.” Because this was illegal, the officials noted, it was “necessary to create the conditions in which we could legally support military action.”

   But Downing Street had a “clever” plan that it hoped would trap Hussein into giving the allies the excuse they needed to go to war. It would persuade the U.N. Security Council to give the Iraqi leader an ultimatum to let in the weapons inspectors.

   Although Blair and Bush still insist the decision to go to the U.N. was about averting war, one memo states that it was, in fact, about “wrong-footing” Hussein into giving them a legal justification for war.

   British officials hoped the ultimatum could be framed in words that would be so unacceptable to Hussein that he would reject it outright. But they were far from certain this would work, so there was also a Plan B.

   American media coverage of the Downing Street memo has largely focused on the assertion by Sir Richard Dearlove, head of British foreign intelligence, that war was seen as inevitable in Washington, where “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

   But another part of the memo is arguably more important. It quotes British Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon as saying that “the U.S. had already begun ’spikes of activity’ to put pressure on the regime.” This we now realize was Plan B.

   Put simply, U.S. aircraft patrolling the southern no-fly zone were dropping a lot more bombs in the hope of provoking a reaction that would give the allies an excuse to carry out a full-scale bombing campaign, an air war, the first stage of the conflict.

   British government figures for the number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq in 2002 show that although virtually none were used in March and April, an average of 10 tons a month were dropped between May and August.

   But these initial “spikes of activity” didn’t have the desired effect. The Iraqis didn’t retaliate. They didn’t provide the excuse Bush and Blair needed. So at the end of August, the allies dramatically intensified the bombing into what was effectively the initial air war.

   The number of bombs dropped on southern Iraq by allied aircraft shot up to 54.6 tons in September alone, with the increased rates continuing into 2003.

   In other words, Bush and Blair began their war not in March 2003, as everyone believed, but at the end of August 2002, six weeks before Congress approved military action against Iraq.

   The way in which the intelligence was “fixed” to justify war is old news.

   The real news is the shady April 2002 deal to go to war, the cynical use of the U.N. to provide an excuse, and the secret, illegal air war without the backing of Congress.
   ———————————————————————-

   23 June 2005, 4:47 pm

10. LTC Daniel Marvin USA Ret'd:

    The following was sent by me to many of the major media and they refuse to publish it. The American Free Press did publish it and I congratulate them for their courage. Read and believe!!
    General William C. Westmoreland

    Did He confess to aiding the enemy
    in the Vietnam WAR?
    YES!!

    Read his book “A Soldier Reports”
    Learn from the past
    And give our men and women
    a fair shake in WAR….

    By
    Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Marvin
    United States Army Special Forces (Retired)

    Our Armed Forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are fighting an enemy difficult to distinguish who employ heinous methods of terror and death tactics with no regard for the innocent. As they wage a fanatic war of suicide, with hit and run tactics designed to wreck havoc on the civilian population our forces are denied the freedom to wage a war to win, forbidden to use those tactics necessary to destroy the enemy, his bases and his source of bombs and bullets.
    We allow the enemy to use mosques as shelters and weapons storage caches while we are forbidden to destroy any of them. Is this policy just another way of aiding the enemy and extending the war as was the case hen the enemy was permitted safe havens in Cambodia during the Vietnam WAR?
    Is it more important to maintain a continuing conflict, regardless of loss of life and limb so as to satisfy our military/industrial/political machine?
    Read this & Learn why WE lost South Vietnam and why we must be alert and aware so as not to risk a similar, costly defeat when facing Islam.
    perhaps you might ask
    General William C. Westmoreland
    He is The Man and the Myth

    There are many displays and tributes to this general who we should instead have established a wall of shame to represent those who would be with us today had it not been for William C. Westmoreland, the commander of all allied forces, who knowingly aided and abetted our enemy in Vietnam and who admitted that fact in his own published testimony: A Soldier Reports © 1976. If we are unwise so as to ignore these facts of the Vietnam era and if we refuse to calculate the numbers of our forces and allied forces that were killed by those enemy who he permitted sanctuary we will acquiesce to those who would again give comfort to the enemy.
    Who is calling the shots in Iraq and Afghanistan? Are the generals and admirals
    of today, at the expense of KIAs, WIAs and MIAs bending to the dictates of a circle of men dedicated to maintaining a conflict of sufficient depth and length to satisfy the monetary lusts of the political/military/industrial complex power brokers?
    Nearer to now: on 24 July 2003 I spoke on the telephone with General Tommy Franks’ aide, LTC Chris Goedeke, expressing my admiration of the General and my concern that he did not appear to have sufficient troops in his command in Iraq to secure the population centers after they taken the area and cleared the enemy out. I was led to believe, when told unequivocally that General Franks had only received half of the numbers of forces he asked for to properly conduct the war, that General Franks had yielded to the desires and dictates of the Secretary of Defense, and went to war with insufficient men and women to realistically get the job done. One who wishes to remain anonymous advised me that the staff who developed the invasion plans, including trrop level requirements for Secretary Rumsfeld were primarily personnel without combat experience.
    My question to those who love this great nation of ours and who would want to believe that the military leadership would ever stoop to aiding the enemy is:

    Why has the world press refused to publish the truth?

    General William C. Westmoreland, as Commander of all American Forces in South Vietnam from June of 1964 through March of 1968, aided and abetted the enemy by permitting them safe havens inside the Cambodian territory adjacent to South Vietnam and by permitting that same enemy the unrestricted use of the Mekong River as a protected waterway to transport war materiel through South Vietnam to their sanctuaries in Cambodia. It seemed obvious to me, after putting all of the facts together, that General Westmoreland considered his own position, rank and place in history more important to him than the lives of American and Allied fighting personnel and South Vietnamese civilians (men, women and children) alike or he would have demanded an end to President Lyndon Johnson’s provision of safe-havens and protected supply routes to the enemy. Lacking positive action by the President, General Westmoreland should have resigned publicly, informing the American people that he was leaving the service not wanting to be a part of the sham that was Vietnam. He knowingly supported the enemy via the provision of sanctuaries and protected shipping routes for war supplies while subjecting our forces to death and injury of unnecessary proportions. My four best friends are on The Wall – perhaps if they had been given the opportunity to fight on a level filed of battle they would be alive and there would yet be a South Vietnam. Corroborated proof of my direct knowledge of General Westmoreland’s acts to encourage and assist the enemy is contained in my book Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare, © 2003, Trine Day Publishers.
    In General Westmoreland’s book A Soldier Reports © 1976, Doubleday & Company, Inc. he states rather matter-of-factly and very clearly on page 218: “The enemy’s obvious use of Cambodia as a sanctuary and refusal of Washington authorities to allow me to do anything about it was frustrating.” He went on to write, on page 219, of the proof of major shipments of arms and other supplies “reaching the VC via international shipping passing through South Vietnam up the Mekong…” It may have been “frustrating” to General Westmoreland, but his lack of action to deny the enemy sanctuaries and a protected supply route was indeed deadly to many tens of thousands of Americans who depended on him for leadership. From what I was told by officers in Saigon at the time, General Westmoreland wasn’t so frustrated that he denied himself the playful pleasures of a daily tennis routine.
    Strangely enough, General Westmoreland writes at the beginning of Chapter XV (Reflections on Command) of having a quotation of Napoleon Bonaparte under a panel on my desk which states, “A commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order by his sovereign or his minister, when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army’s downfall.”
    The lack of strong moral leadership in this four star general is typified in his own admission, on page 220 of his book: “For long all we could do to the enemy in Cambodia was drop propaganda leaflets on our side of the border whenever the wind was right to blow them across.” And, on page 222, he states unequivocally, “My every request to inform the world press of the enemy’s use of Cambodia was denied…” Why then, inasmuch as our permitting of “the enemy’s use of Cambodia” was somewhat akin to tying our soldiers’ hands behind their back as they were ordered into battle, didn’t he take that matter forward as the sole rationale for his resignation from the military service?
    In 1983, Presidio Press published LTC Charles M. Simpson’s book, Inside the Green Berets, included the account of how LTC Dick Ruble, a member of General Westmoreland’s Intelligence staff, had without the knowledge of the Special Forces Group commander, denied their access to intelligence (“code word” documents) as retribution for Special Forces’ denying MACV non-airborne personnel, who were to be disguised as Green Berets, access to Special Forces Camps (see page 181). The Special Forces Group had been excluded purposely from their distribution list and would include intelligence gathered by CIA resources. Many of those resources were highly classified and compartmentalized, according to my source, who understandably wishes to remain anonymous.
    Directly related to this denial of critical combat intelligence, was a time of solemn remembrance one summer afternoon in 1988 when I stepped through the doors of the Special Warfare Museum on Smoke Bomb Hill at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, wanting to revisit my past. The Green Berets were, after all, a very special organization that would and could tackle any mission, anytime, anywhere and get the job done. No task was too dangerous, too onerous or too difficult as “the impossible just takes a little longer.”
    I was enjoying the many and varied exhibits in that small, but awesome collection of unconventional warfare memorabilia until I was stopped in my tracks in front of an exhibit honoring none other than General Westmoreland. I understand fully that one should not despise another, but that singular word best describes my feeling for that one military man who, by his own inaction and lack of courage before Congress and his military superiors, aided and abetted the enemy in the Vietnam conflict, the same foe that had killed my four best friends, all of them Green Berets.
    My best friend Jerry, his name now engraved on THE WALL - Master Sergeant Gerard V. Parmentier - was killed in action his fifth time in combat in the Southeast Asian War Theater. Jerry, a fellow Green Beret and a number of South Vietnamese irregulars, all mortally wounded in battle by Viet Cong insurgents on 17 August 1967 near Dak To, South Vietnam, were also unsuspecting victims of a power struggle between General William C. Westmoreland’s headquarters and the Special Forces Group commander.
    His son Albert, a Green Beret himself, was serving in a neighboring Special Forces camp when he got word that his father had been killed. After learning details of the battle and its aftermath from his father’s commanding officer, Albert accompanied his Father’s body back to the United States where he was interred with military honors, including a Special Forces Color Guard, at Rosecrans National Cemetery in San Diego.
    After the funeral I spoke with Albert and he confirmed what I’d suspected, having learned from his father’s commanding officer that Jerry’s unit had met defeat and suffered heavy casualties, with most KIA due to faulty or withheld intelligence. The enemy force that killed Jerry was many times the strength that had been gleaned from available intelligence. That fact, in and of itself, was not uncommon in war, particularly in a counter-insurgency situation. What was unusual and unforgivable in my judgment, was the fact that the enemy order of battle was known but withheld from Special Forces. Hard to believe? Yes, I would rather it had been a lie. But those facts were told Albert by Jerry’s commander before he left Vietnam escorting his father’s body to the US. Albert told me, just a few days later and agreed it was important information for the book I was writing about Special Forces in South Vietnam. We also agreed that it would be put on the back burner until his mother was gone as it would hurt too much for her to know the truth. When Jerry’s widow, Rose, died and was buried in Providence, Rhode Island, I spoke with Albert shortly after the funeral had concluded. I told Albert of my need to obtain his signed statement telling of the facts of his father’s death so as to be evidence with which I would demand an investigation and a public disclosure of facts.
    I was to learn instead that Albert had retired from the U.S. Army and was working for the “company.” Needless to say, he was then conveniently forbidden from disclosing any knowledge relating to the CIA. No sense arguing, the cards were stacked against the truth.
    My book, Expendable Elite – One Soldier’s Journey Into Covert Warfare, contains much detail regarding General Westmoreland’s refusal to demand an end to the enemy’s safe-havens in Cambodia and his lack of courage when given the opportunity to go before Congress and tell them that American and Allied forces and innocent civilians were being killed and maimed by the enemy operating out of the “sanctuaries” that President Johnson had provided against the wishes of then Premier Nguyen Cao Ky. He admits to these failures in his book A Soldier Reports.
    Another fact of life in South Vietnam at the time I served as a Green Beret in An Phu and Chau Doc was the absence of routine resupply of Special Forces units by General Westmoreland’s Saigon depot. This was a great cause of concern to me when stationed at the B team and responsible for logistical support of Special Forces Camps under the wing of B-42 in Chau Doc in late 1966. That lack of logistical support by the Saigon depot forced me to “borrow” a Landing Craft Utility (LCU) from the US Navy, pilot it down the Bassac River and on into the Mekong to reach the Saigon Depot. We then “borrowed” two of the depot’s 2½ ton trucks and drove past the fearful guards to pick what we desperately needed from shelves, bins and pallet storage, loaded the sand bags, small generators, pallets of ammunition and other miscellaneous “stuff” on the trucks and then onto the LCU at the depot docking site on the Mekong River. From there we re-traced our way back to Chau Doc, unloaded at the B Team dock and returned the LCU to where it was originally moored. Within a year of my return to the United States, while attending the US Army Quartermaster Career Course at Fort Lee, Virginia, Colonel Pieklik, the commander of the Saigon Depot at the time we were forced to steal supplies, was our final guest lecturer. He stood in front of our class and opened the floor to questions at the end of his presentation. I was class president and fielded the first question, asking why he had shut off the supplying of our Green Beret camps in 1966. I was impressed with the fact that he answered unequivocally, telling our class that the reason his depot was not supplying the Special Forces needs in the IV Tactical Zone (the entire delta area) was that General Westmoreland had ordered him not to. I would learn that Westmoreland’s futile attempts to convince the Commanding General of IV Tactical Zone (Lieutenant General Quang Van Dang) of the need to permit the use of conventional American forces in the delta had angered him to the extent that he refused logistical support of all unconventional forces in the Delta area.
    Is this of whom I write the General Westmoreland you have pictured in the past?
    Interestingly enough, General Westmoreland’s personal Analysis of America’s Unique Experience in Vietnam, titled As I Saw it and Now See It © 1988 General William C. Westmoreland (Go to http://members.aol.com/USAHeroes/wcw2.htm) contains NO reference to the safe havens or protected shipping permitted our enemy during his watch.
    ©2005 LTC Daniel Marvin, US Army Special Forces (Retired)

    28 June 2005, 7:43 pm

11. Dave Harding:

    Thank you. It’s nice to know that somebody knew and yet we just kept racking up bodies. Vietnam…what in the hell was that about. I like to think maybe Michelen tire…but who knows? Maybe drugs?

    I think it’s all about the misuse of the American Military. I just want to weep when I read what you have written.

    Only knew one actual Green Beret. He and I were both from Peabody, Massachusetts. I met him years later when I was bartending at the V. He scared the living shit out of me, not because of anything he did. But about the stories that followed him around town. How he’d beat the living shit out of four fucks that messed with him at another bar downtown. About how he’d killed a German Shepherd with his bare hands at the cemetary, dog trying to protect his recently deceased owner.

    It was just this. He was sitting there and he wasn’t there. He was the best tipper in the entire joint. Some of those, “yea, come on in even though you didn’t serve guys” would leave ya a dime a beer.

    But I knew. I knew what he wanted and he just signalled in a Nam sort a way that it was time for a fresh drink. We never spoke. But he tipped me good. And I was very proud to just give him his beer until he left.

    Nobody, I mean nobody, fucked with him ever. His stare went through not only the walls, but the entire fucking universe. I don’t know what he saw. Just a good kid from Peabody totally beyond comprehension, his and mine, for the rest of his unnatural life. Let’s hear it for war man. How ’bout them Iranians!

    30 June 2005, 3:18 pm

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