Bowe Bergdahl on what he saw in Afghanistan(deep truths from a young soldier)

[calimary]

27. The one very bitter pill to have to swallow is just how thoroughly these bastards learned.

Last edited Mon Jun 16, 2014, 11:26 PM - Edit history (1)

They remembered clearly how full-on news coverage that splashed blood across every American dinner table in the evening - via Cronkite and Huntley/Brinkley - brought the war starkly home, straight into your face. You saw the blood and carnage and misery. It made America at large turn away from Vietnam and begin protesting it openly, noisily, and unavoidably. Walter Cronkite's personal turn away from the war led to our whole country turning away, losing faith, and fighting to stop it. The neocons realized that must not be allowed to happen again. Conditions quickly ran away from LBJ and other war supporters and they couldn't control them anymore. These neocons of our recent days did everything they could to prevent that from happening.

And what smarter ways than to own and operate their own slanted snake pit that could reliably provide limited and controlled coverage? The corollary to that was - muzzling ANY contrary input. NO war opponents got face time. NO opposing views were sought out for interviews. And those who tried to force their comments into the national spotlight were laughed at, minimized, talked (or shouted) over, lambasted, insulted, denounced, and declared traitors and veritable enemies of the state. Anyone who tried to take photos and make them public, write about or speak about what was really going on over there in Iraq was punished severely. Fired. Shunned. Denounced. Called a traitor and anti-Americans and Saddam-lovers and al Qaeda sympathizers, and the old fall-backs - "commies," "socialists," "fascists," and more. In public. We were constantly demanded - "WHY do you hate America?" In public. People lost their livelihoods, their reputations, their jobs, their homes, their families. People lost their loved ones and NEVER got even close to finding solutions. And the rest of us, while we protested under cones of silence, kept being fed the same shit - "we need to give it another six months, and then we'll see." HOW MANY OF THOSE " another six months" did we get? HOW MANY TIMES WAS THAT SHIT SHOVED DOWN OUR THROATS??? How many more veterans did America create - with legs blown off - in any of those many six-months-and-we'll-see intervals?

bush/cheney made sure that NO images of the scores of flag-draped coffins coming home from Iraq EVER got coverage. EVER got any attention or honor or any solemn public welcome home or thank-you from a grateful nation or Commander-in-Chief on the tarmac at Dover Air Force Base. NEVER. We NEVER were allowed to see the real cost of war. They anticepticized it. Cleaned it all up. Showed only carefully-manicured and vetted images of the glory of war, without any gory details. They didn't want to risk any adverse coverage that would turn America's stomach, and then turn America's will AGAINST their murderous greedy adventurism over there. BASTARDS!!!! BASTARDS!!!!! BASTARDS!!!!! I wish I could know where they all will be laid to their final rests, whenever that time comes. So I can go and pour a full container of salt all over their graves. To sour the soil so nothing will grow.

That's one thing I will ALWAYS appreciate about President Obama. Let's never forget - one of his first official duties as Commander-in-Chief was to GO AND MEET THE COFFINS coming back from Iraq. In the middle of the night. He invited the cameras and the reporters and the news coverage. Come and see and witness and document this. And he showed himself, in person. He wasn't some chicken-shit who felt the need to hide himself and keep America in the dark about the true costs of war and that so-casually-referred-to cheap-ass, meaningless "freedom-y" thingie. He wasn't afraid to stand up and show the rest of America and the world what the true cost of war was. Something we should have been seeing YEARS earlier.

For that reason ALONE I am and will always be a supporter of President Obama. He has - and PROVED, THAT NIGHT, that he has more macho, and more of a conscience, than all the neocons and warmongers and bush/cheney-ites put together.