On McClellan's Memoir and Its Applicability to Iran

Scott McClellan, no doubt in an effort to assuage his guilty conscience about all of the lies he told as Presidential Press Secretary from 2003-2006, reveals some truths about this White House in his memoir.

The story he tells about the run up to the Iraq war - "manipulating sources of public opinion" and misleading people about why they wanted that war - is all being played out once again in relation to their plans for war on Iran.

The only difference is that the press secretary now is Dana Perino, but the game plan remains the same.

Will we be able this time to stop their vicious march to war and their plans to kill many, many innocent people, above and beyond the more than 1.2 million Iraqis they have killed to date in Iraq?

On April 21, 2008, CBS News reported that Dr. Ira Katz, the VA's head of Mental Health, in internal emails, admitted that there "are about 18 suicides per day among America's 25 million veterans." This, according to CBS, works out to 6,570 suicides per year. Since we have been in Iraq since March 2003, this translates to, conservatively, somewhere over 30,000 soldiers committing suicide.

In other words, seven and a half times as many American soldiers have died by self-inflicted means than have been "killed in action."

If instead of killing themselves, these soldiers turned their anger and frustration on the people who are really responsible - the Pentagon, the White House, and the Congress - then they'd be doing not just themselves, but the whole world, a gigantic favor.

I do not know what the suicide numbers were during the Vietnam War, but I do know this: the anti-war movement created the conditions within which soldiers - who were confronting first hand the ugly truths about the war's real nature - could turn their experiences into fodder for anti-war resistance and rather than escaping a terrible personal agony by killing themselves, turn their fury against their officers and against the US government that was prosecuting that war.

GI resistance played a very big role in ending that unjust war. The anti-war movement at home (and abroad) in turn played a big role in making that GI resistance possible. The anti-war movement did this not by repeating ad nauseum that it "supports the troops" but by saying loudly and clearly that GIs should resist an immoral war. We do no service to soldiers by saying that we support them in carrying out the atrocities of this immoral government. We only do them a service by urging them to do the only right thing: fight AGAINST this war.

The painfully large numbers of suicides being committed now is the direct result of an immoral and unjust war being waged by this government that claims with so much self-righteousness that they are "supporting" and "honoring" the troops. What filthy rotten monsters they are!

Ex-Press Aide Writes That Bush Misled US on Iraq

Wednesday 28 May 2008 by: Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post

Former White House press secretary Scott McClellan writes in a new memoir that the Iraq war was sold to the American people with a sophisticated "political propaganda campaign" led by President Bush and aimed at "manipulating sources of public opinion" and "downplaying the major reason for going to war."

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