Another Karl Rove production - Bush speaks with troops as his stage props
My opening remarks for the press conference at Quaker House, Fayetteville, NC, organized in response to George W. Bush’s speech on June 28, 2005, at Ft. Bragg:
I retired out of 3rd Special Forces ten years ago, right up the road here when the out-processing one-stop was still over by the Main PX. My son’s first assignment after jump school was there in the 82nd Airborne Division, and it was with them that he went to Iraq the first time.
Dozens more soldiers and hundreds more Iraqis have been killed over the past couple of weeks… and not just killed – crippled, burned, blinded, amputated, consigned to colostomy bags and medication for their rest of their lives, and countless others will be driven a little bit mad by their experience. And we have no idea how many will be damaged by the ticking time-bomb in their bodies that is depleted uranium.
Not only are the troops suffering, but the families of those who are on their second and third deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan are living with unremitting fear, and I am one of those families. My grandson has seen his father for only a few months of his two and a half years.
Yet, tonight the President of the United States is going to come here to Fort Bragg and tell everyone in the country that this war is making people safer. In fact, since the Bush administration opportunistically used the terrible shock of 9-11 to advance what we now know to have been a pre-determined agenda, the number of terror attacks in the world has dramatically increased.
Let me say this very clearly, because the empirical evidence is very clear. Bush’s war has not made anyone safer. It has, however, destroyed the lives of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, and according to international polls, the United States is now held in lower public esteem in the world than China.
The United States is already suffering higher casualties than we were at the same stage of the Vietnam War. So, okay, Iraq is NOT Vietnam. It could, in fact, get worse. Rumsfeld is now telling us that the war could last for 12 more years.
And just two years ago George Bush pulled his little airplane stunt on the USS Abraham Lincoln, and had a big MISSION ACCOMPLISHED sign as his backdrop.
Tonight he will use a captive audience of soldiers, who he commands, and who will be ordered to smile and cheer and shout hooahs at the appropriate points in this latest Karl Rove production, and I find that offensive. More than offensive, it is obscene.
I find it offensive that the very people he would send to death, disfigurement and despair in the service of this administration’s lengthening list of lies, are now required, — when they could be home tonight with the loved ones they have missed so much in the last two years – to serve as stage props so George W. Bush can add one more bit of cheerleading hype, one more publicity stunt, to his resume. And in Iraq, every time the poll numbers spook the White House, they add one more so-called counter-offensive, each promising that there is light at the end of this tunnel, and each dispatching more military sedans to the homes of those who wait to hear the terrible news that someone they loved is no longer in the world.
George W. Bush is using troops as props, but he doesn’t show up for the funerals of the troops who have been killed in his war. This is about as clear as things get.
This publicity stunt is an obscenity. It is an insult to the intelligence of the nation, that is now waking to the reality that this war had nothing to do with 9-11, nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction, nothing to do with liberation, but everything to do with establishing permanent military bases on the earth’s biggest oil patch.
Americans are waking up, and members of Congress who let themselves be stampeded into this war need to put their wind meters back out, because while Bush doesn’t have to run for anything again, every member of the House of Representatives and a third of the Senate are running in 2006. Americans are waking up, and they are in a very bad mood about this war, and as Bob Dylan once sang, it don’t take a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. I’ll tell my Democrat right now from the platform, if he doesn’t fight to bring them home now, I’ll vote a Republican who says he or she will. People are dying, and we will not respect on election day those who sat on a fence while the coffins arrived at Dover, and the cries of pain echoed off the walls at Landstuhl and Walter Reed.
Bush says if we declare a withdrawal date, the insurgents will wait us out. But we haven’t even declared the *intention* to leave Iraq — in fact, it looks like we are building permanent bases there — and the Iraqi resistance seems to be growing stronger, more sophisticated, and more audacious with every day. This could not be happening if the resistance did not enjoy substantial popular support. And if our presence strengthens the resistance, how is this better than having them “wait the US out”?
WE, who wasn’t all of us after all, WE… had no business in Iraq in the first place. That’s why this administration doctored evidence, attacked its critics, purged its own public servants, intimidated the press, and repeated 9-11 and Iraq in the same breath like a never-ending mantra for months, in order to get the American public to acquiesce to this crime.
Bush will get up there tonight and say that this is the first anniversary of newly-won Iraqi sovereignty.
But sovereignty is defined as supreme and independent political authority. How can anyone make the claim of independence, when they live in the Green Zone surrounded by foreign troops and a occupation authority that has veto power over any political action, the ability to order any press closed, and the ability to arrest and indefinitely detain that country’s citizens without showing cause? How can any country be sovereign, when its entire security apparatus is under the control of a foreign military? There is no sovereignty in Iraq… any more than there was an al Qaeda connection or yellow cake uranium.
The Iraq Sovereignty Scam was a Bush election-year stunt. And tonight is a publicity stunt. It is an offensive publicity stunt, using our troops as his personal stage props. He couldn’t deliver this phony missive from the White House and leave these people alone to spend precious time with their families?
Don’t sell us any more fake milestones, George Bush, that major combat is over, that Saddam is captured so the resistance will stand down, that sovereignty exists under a military occupation, that a constitution is being written under the careful eye of the US Ambassador, or that the insurgency is in its last throes, as Dick Cheney continues to insist in the face of all this blood and fire.
Here are our milestones. They are numbers.
500 is a milestone, when we count returning bodies. 1,000 is a milestone. We will soon enough see 2,000, after 250 more families blanch at the sight of a military sedan pulling up in front of their houses.
Our milestones are names, like Abu Ghraib, like Fallujah, like the Downing Street memo.
Can even the most careful journalist continue now to award the presumption of honesty to this administration? If we had half the analysis of the Michael Jackson trial devoted to the Downing Street memos, there would already be an impeachment under way.
Bush will stand up there tonight and talk about brave soldiers, and he damn well better say something nice after what he has put them and their families through. What he won’t say, though, is that the bravery of the troops has nothing to do with whether that bravery should be placed in the service of an immoral, illegal, and un-winnable war.
There were plenty of brave soldiers who went to Vietnam, but it didn’t change the outcome. We don’t have to question the character of these troops to question the character of the commander-in-chief. In fact, there is something obscene about people like George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld riding around in limos and expensive clothes issuing orders like they are playing Risk, when the folly and criminality of those orders are felt as consequences on the bodies and spirits of soldiers and their families, and on the countless bodies of the Iraq people.
He damn well better say something nice, because just the other day, we watched not just our sons but our daughters killed in clusters, and when I saw that news report, I thought of the same thing I have thought of every day when I get on the internet and review the day’s news about this war.
I think about his cavalier little aside to the press two years ago, when he said, “Bring ‘em on!”
He said it. And they did. They brought it on. And we say, “Bring ‘em home… and do it now.”
Qavi:
Stan,
I want to say your a great American. and I wish more people had the guts to tell the truth. I love reading your blog and keep up the good work. tonight I will be watching our christian emperor speak, and as always I will be hopeing for some kinda miracle. like the one near Miracle we had in Georgia.
good day
28 June 2005, 12:10 pmray-davison:
a bit of theory and praxis:
“A circle is one thing, the idea of a circle another,” thought Spinoza a long time ago & he published & perished, born again if ever, multiple rebirth during one lifetime, late adolesence the first. Unlike Mr.Dickens, younger, at the blacking factory. At present, people like me have survived rebirths at every stage of developent by playing for time wherein we love. Yes, Elizabeth, such a state of humans, if you must, state of divine madness.
Ergo a war is one thing and the idea of a war is another.
Check it out, urges the exile;
at risk of grave exposure.
Carbohydrate based economy? Most common element of life?; ubiquitous to say the least.
HR 3037 - Industrial Hemp Farming Act is a go — pay back for that bankruptcy job you did, Mr.Byrd. (Referential Dylan, no doubt.)
28 June 2005, 1:17 pmrsklnkv:
Thanks for taking the time to inform us.
Our soldiers — our children, our brothers our sisters — seem to have become accessories to the American lifestyle. We can reclaim them, in my opinion, only by bringing them home NOW. My question is, will they trust us again?
If there’s someone reading that has yet to see the documentary ‘Bushs Brain’ this would be a good start to understanding how the Village Idiot comes up with some of these grand designs. What do you think Stan, have you seen this?
Here’s a link for those interested :
28 June 2005, 1:34 pmhttp://www.bushsbrain.com/
xavier:
wish i was there at the base protesting tonight, this would be my sign:
Rumsfeld: insurgency could last “five, six, eight, ten, twelve years”
UNLESS YOU STOP IT TONIGHT !!!
28 June 2005, 2:06 pmtom boudreau:
Dear Stan:
Thank you for your comments. My father was in the 82 Airborne; I met his commanding officer, General “Jumping Jim” Gavin years later in 1976 when he and I were campaigning for Mo Udall for President. I think General Gavin would be appalled at this use of troops as a prop.
28 June 2005, 3:01 pmRobert,Van Kalck:
Hello!
28 June 2005, 4:02 pmHere in Brussels ,Belgium,we have Canadian Tv once a week.
I saw what you do for those young guys in the us army and against THAT war.
Hartly THANKS!!!!!
People like you give hope for a better world!
Robert.
Brussels Belgium Europe.
PJ:
Well said again, Stan. Consider it forwarded.
28 June 2005, 4:49 pmThomas F Barton:
Got it right.
Respect,
T
28 June 2005, 7:41 pmSheila Samples:
Interesting that he did not mention WMD a single time, while babbling on about terrorists who “want to attack our country,” and throwing “9-11″ out there six times. He did not mention “insurgents” or “insurgency” either, opting to call them “terrorists” and a war on terror.
Farging bastage. Icehole.
28 June 2005, 7:47 pmDavid Howard:
Arrest Bush 41 to prevent “another 9/11″ … Google and type in “The FBI uses polygraphs to eliminate suspects”
28 June 2005, 8:47 pmjean jones:
so now that we are awake to the truth what do we do? Congress seems with Bush.So how to get rid of them all?
29 June 2005, 1:05 amDJ:
Right on, Stan.
29 June 2005, 2:50 amJeff Harvey:
Stan,
I have read your books and regulalry read your columns and you are an inspiration to me and countless others. Please keep on fighting for truth and justice in this twisted world - a world distorted by corporate power and money at the behest of the privaleged few. As a scientist, I have dedicated much of my time and career to countering disinformation on environmental issues and sometimes I wonder if my efforts are having any impact. But I will fight on against those who are destroying our planet for profit. Reading your words tells me that the fight must continue and that we must never give up for what we know is right.
29 June 2005, 4:22 amTreva L. Van Fossen:
“Tonight he will use a captive audience of soldiers, who he commands, and who will be ordered to smile and cheer and shout hooahs at the appropriate points in this latest Karl Rove production, and I find that offensive. More than offensive, it is obscene.”
It’s interesting that you should mention this. Last night, I read a response at GNN from Paul Rieckhoff (Executive Director of Operation Truth.). As I understand it, no applause came from the troops in response to G. W. Bush’s little “pep rally,” as Rieckhoff worded it, until the White House applause prompt squad started clapping. They may as well carry a flashing lighted sign used for television studio audiences to really reflect how low that cartel will sink while so many people are dying for lies, oil and PNAC.
Rummy talks of the war lasting for years. They will not use my son for this when he turns 18. I’ve already taught him enough about how our troops’ service to our country is abused.
[Off topic- Glad to see you blogging, Mr. Goff. I’ve been reading your essays at FTW for quite some time and have quoted you on my own blog. Thank you for your contributions. I’ll add you to my blog list.]
29 June 2005, 6:46 amJon Flanders:
Stan,
Why don’t you run for Congress next year? This could be a campaign heard round the world.
Shouldn’t there be a national campaign to see anti-war candidates, preferably neither Democrat of Republican, in every district?
29 June 2005, 8:18 amnuttymango:
Thanks to Stan for his outsanding work. I just discovered his blog from a comment he left at http://dailywarnews.blogspot.com/
Looks like I’ll be reading http://dailykos.com a little less now that I discovered Stan Goff.
29 June 2005, 8:52 amjJune Mani:
HOORAY!!!!! At last someone tells the truth but believe this, the Americans that are not fighting themselves and do not have anyone in the service are just too LAZY to demand impeachment of the current President and his croonies (I do not call him my president because I never voted for him and never will and proud to say that) While we spend billions of dollars a day over seas rebuilding, the people in dthis country who need it struggle on in poverty. Our American Indians need schools desperately and no one cares, we have seniors starving, and no no one cares. What’s with this country? Our rights have been removed slowly by this president and still NO ONE CARES TO DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT!!! You are indedd a BREATH OF FRESH AIR to me.
29 June 2005, 11:39 amjim priest:
wanted to read matt taibbi so i tried to access ny press but punched in ny post by accident. here’s a little chunk o’ alternate reality for y’all:
By DEBORAH ORIN
“…The White House asked the 750 pumped-up soldiers and airmen in the crowd to avoid clapping or cheering, but they couldn’t resist loud applause.”
I’ve been displaying a huge hand-written U.S. OUT OF IRAQ across my car’s back window for over two years now. responses (at least the ones I hear and see) are about 8 out of 10 positive. You know who gives the highest thumbs up?? That’s right, people. Soldiers-some of them just back-and their families.
29 June 2005, 2:13 pmThere’s no way these maniacs in power are going to stay there. We simply will not let them. I just know there are way more of us than we imagine. Not much of a Doors fan, but “they’ve got the guns but we’ve got the numbers…..”
James P. Reber:
Stan:
I am so glad I found your site today. Keep up the good work. I am appalled at this arrogance of power, blindness of ambition, and the uteer and total collapse of media scrutiny underwhich it has all taken place. I am a veteran (US Navy 1972 - 1976) of the last calamity. I cannot stand to see the way a bunch of cowardly idealogues abuse the trust of the American people by sending truly conscientious and brave young Americans to war to die for the profits of a few parasites. I thank you for your voice and for your eloquence in writing what you have written.
James P. Reber
29 June 2005, 2:55 pmcalvin:
Stan…THANK YOU FOR WHAT YOU SAY!
29 June 2005, 4:52 pmMy father went to the Gulf in 91′…and the resonating effects have worn a great deal on him and our family. Yet he still supports Bush…WHY!
Your fluid thought gives me ground to stand on.
Thank you
Celia Wiildroot:
I am so grateful for you and your work my dear brother. Thanks for the birthday call. keep agitating! love, Celia
29 June 2005, 5:11 pmPenny Lane:
Stan, your words fill me with just the righteous anger I need to get me through another day of this surreal, hellish war. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do. But I know truth when I hear it.
29 June 2005, 9:30 pmShelia Cassidy:
You got it right, again. I couldn’t help but think of a soldier in Iraq, stop-lossed and on his second tour, who disagrees heartily with the war and who, having read some of his blog, I now worry about and think about often. Will he make it home to his wife and children? Bush makes me so angrey I can’t even listen to his voice any more. So I will continue to fight this mean-spirited evildoer who calls himself “born again.” Doesn’t he know the full commandment of Jesus — “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” In fact, the whole US foreign policy could use that concept. Keep it up. I have read you stuff on the FTW site and will now continue to check out this blog. Thanks for taking the time to really tell it like it is.
30 June 2005, 12:38 amCurt:
Watching Bush’s speech to the troops Tuesday night at Fort Bragg, brought back a bitter memory for me.
On March 12, 1994, my infantry battalion had just come home to Fort Drum after a six month tour in Somalia. Three days later, President Clinton decided to “officially” welcome us back by coming to Drum and giving a speech. This just happened to be on our day off, and we were forced to go to this event with threats of block leave taken away if we didn’t. So, not only did Clinton send us to hell for six months, he then took away our precious day off when we got back!
When we were entering the hall, I noticed that the civilians who were attending passed through the metal detector station the Secret Service had set up and then were allowed to enter the auditorium without any further ado. However, after we grunts walked through the metal detector, we were put up against a wall, spread and patted down by the Secret Service as if we were criminals. Apparently, the SS (what appropriate initials) knew that if anybody was going to kill the President, it was going to be a crazed infantryman who just spent six months in Mogadishu because of that asshole.
After getting past the Secret Service we were seated behind the podium as if our seating arrangement was a metaphor to make it look like the troops were “behind” the President and his policies. Every time a TV camera panned across us, I surreptitiously gave it the finger to let whoever was watching know what we grunts really thought about this bullshit.
Clinton thanked us for doing what he called “a great job†in Somalia and that he was really impressed with us. He must have meant it too, because five months later we were the first air assault wave into Haiti. I noticed last night that Bush said much the same thing to the troops, “I thank you for your service, your courage and your sacrifice.†If past Presidential speeches are any indication of future events, those poor grunts standing “behind†the President will soon be sent to invade and occupy another helpless Third World country just like we did.
Enjoy your day off guys…
30 June 2005, 4:12 amTressa Taylor:
My husband and I drove to Fayetteville to join with fellow members of the NC Veterans For Peace to participate in a public vigil for our troops who have died, while Bush gave his speech to a captive audience. I walked into the Quaker House and caught most of the press interview with you. Your words of truth still resound in my head.
I am surrounded by young people who are being sucked into the military myth. A fourteen year old neice who thinks the way to a good education is through the Army. A soon to be 18 year old husband of another neice who thinks the only way to be able to support his new little family is the Marine Corps. I shudder to think that they might sell their lives for these lies of so-called “benefits”. I’m doing my best to burst their bubbles and bring them to the reality of these lies and can only hope that they listen. You can’t “be all that you can be” if you’re dead!
Thank you for speaking truth in this world of evil lies!
Tressa Taylor
1 July 2005, 7:09 amJake:
Thanks for your comments.
Having retired from the military about a year ago I have had time now to watch the news in this country and get a better understanding of what americans are force fed. It makes me sick, the media in this country is quite obviously ruled by the current republican oh so conservative right wing. Im not a democrat or republican, I vote for the best man, I just thought I should clarify that.
Having served in a combat arms capacity I have taken lives for a unjust cause, to spread deocracy, but who is to say they want it, it certainly doesnt look like they do. Who can blame them, in a country like ours the shining beacon of democracy in the world, we set a poor example. With our yearly trials of corporate big wigs who have left their employees broke and jobless. The families sleeping in cars in the southwest and all over, the native american population left to rot on reservations, if you have ever driven through some of the reservations you would know what I speak of. Our crap economy and our dependency on other countries for our well being, are we really a super power? If I was to design a “new” society sure I would take things from our constitution, but my society would be vastly different than the society of the USA, we are far from perfect.
Most of the people I served with knew it was a mistake to go to war. However nothing can be more exciting to someone who has trained years to go to war, than to hear your going to war. That is our job. However most of us would like to do so under justifiable conditions, we had a great reason to fight the Germans, Italians and Japanese. There are two types of American fighting man in Iraq, the ones who think and the ones who don’t. The ones who think know where they are, what they are doing and why and don’t agree. The ones who don’t put up no french allowed or property of toby keith signs in front of their tents, sing the praises of this administration for letting them show the dirty hajji how to live and die. Those people dont think, and unfortunately the majority of them seemed to serve in the USMC, in which I served.
Being that the majority of the military is populated by republican voters people get the impression that the majority of troops support the war. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. Finally top generals are speaking out before their retirements, this is what we need.
Ten or twenty years down the road perhaps much sooner we will see what this administration has done, how they tipped the scales to reach their goal. Needless to say it will be interesting to watch.
P.S. I was injured by a 4 inch long piece of hummv(hummer)door that splintered off after a RPG strike and entered my leg. I received treatment in country, the best treatment possible, from combat medics and surgeons.
1 July 2005, 1:35 pmNow that I am retired I find it hard to get the money I need from my goverment for treatment after I left the military hospital and because of my injury am having trouble finding a job. The goverment is doing nothing to help.
RAY(NAQUONABE)EARLEY:
A COUPLE TOURS IN “NAM”AS A MARINE STILL DON’T KNOW WHY? I LISTENED TO ALL THE LIES,WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE WHO ARE PLAYING SOLDIER NOW? AND WHAT HAPPENED TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE WHO BELIVE THESE CLOSET WANNABES?MIIGWECH OGICHIDAA!NAQUONABE
26 July 2005, 8:56 am