Veteran and author Charles Sheehan-Miles of Veterans for Common Sense:
Twelve years ago, at roughly two a.m. local time on January 17, I was ready to go off guard duty when the call came down from the command post: wake up the platoon leaders ASAP. Not long after, we got the official word: U.S. forces were in contact. Lieutenant Dorr, my platoon leader came back and briefed us: 100 tomahawk missiles had been launched, and Special Forces were engaged behind the lines. We didn’t need the briefings: all we had to do was look up at the sky to see hundreds of planes heading north for their bombing runs.
Imagine if Ronald Reagan had announced in 1985 that we were going back to Vietnam, and this time we were going to take out those commies. That’s how surreal the whole discussion of invading Iraq is, because we have just about as much justification today. At least in 1991, we had the very real fact that Iraq had invaded and occupied its neighbor as justification for the war (forget that the U.S. Ambassador April Glaspie gave Saddam the go-ahead), and the just-war theorists had a lively debate. It was a fight in Congress and a very close vote: a vote that was swung by lies of babies thrown out of incubators concocted in a DC public relations firm.
I fear that voices like those of Charles will go unheeded in the war-frenzy engulfing the Administration. I was there as well, but as a Marine with the Second Force Service Support Group, supporting two Marine Divisions at various locations in the Saudi sand.
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This entry also posted at Stand Down.