HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF: AMERICA GETS AN 'F' FOR FAILING TO LEARN LESSONS
Randy L. Harrington
June 07, 2006
Fifty eight thousand American military personnel died in Vietnam. It is estimated that between 1964 and 1972 the total cost of the Vietnam war to the U.S. was $111 billion. On March 16, 1968 U.S. Soldiers of Charlie Company, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Brigade under the command of Lieutenant William Calley entered the Song My village in the Quang Ngai providence of South Vietnam. Once there it was alleged that Calley, and his soldiers raped, tortured, and killed between 304 and 507 civilians—primarily old men, women, and children. The soldiers were convinced that all of the villagers could be a threat because of Army intelligence reports. Vietnam was an expensive war in the context of American deaths, and dollars. Our involvement in Vietnam was to stop the domino effect of communism, and block communist domination of the world. The American public was repeatedly told that American involvement in Vietnam was wanted. In the end the U.S. left Vietnam, and it fell to communist forces.
Fast forward to the 21st Century—32 years later. The United States invades Iraq. Our objective was to depose the Iraq leader Saddam Hussein. As of June 1, 2006 Department of Defense Casualty Reports indicate that 2,475 American service personnel have died in Iraq. An MSNBC report of March 17, 2006 indicates that the cost of the Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion dollars.
In Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005 a bomb exploded under Kilo Company’s Marine convoy. It took out the fourth humvee, killing its driver, Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas and wounding two other Marines. Soon after, the Marines from Kilo Company started their operations that resulted in an alleged massacre.
As the Marines got out of their humvees they spotted four Iraqi students in a nearby taxi. They reportedly suspected the men of either triggering the bomb or acting as spotters. The Marines ordered the men and the driver, who by then had exited the taxi, to lie on the ground. The Iraqis seemed to sense what was coming next, they ran, and the Marines shot and killed them. All four men were unarmed.
Members of Kilo Company moved into the town of Haditha; they didn't even attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood.
The targets were children from ages 2 to 14, an old man in a wheelchair and taxi passengers. The house-to-house killings went on for hours. After the alleged murders, the Marines involved carefully mopped-up the area and constructed a story that most of the dead were involved in an earlier bomb attack.
I can see all of the feedback so far, so let me say that first the Marines involved in this alleged crime are entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Secondly, as a former combat soldier I know that the U.S. military doesn’t make foreign policy decisions. They go where they’re told to go, and fight who they are told to fight. I support our military personnel, and they deserve out thanks for their hard work.
Notwithstanding, the first question that we should ask is why are we fighting the war in Iraq in the first place? In Vietnam the massive escalation of the war from 1964 to 1968 was justified on the basis of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident on August 2-4, 1964 in which the Johnson Administration claimed U.S. ships were attacked by the North Vietnamese. The accuracy of that claim is still hotly debated. On the basis of the attack the U.S. Senate approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war "as the President shall determine".
Since September 11, 2001, the US and British governments steadily increased the volume of accusations that Iraq possesses chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and/or continues to develop them. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that preventing these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists constitutes the “second phase” of the “war on terrorism” that began in Afghanistan.
The problem is, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, there were never any objective facts to support the allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The US Senate debates and hearings conducted prior to the invasion of Iraq specifically excluded Scott Ritter who was the Senior UN Weapons Inspector for UNSCOM until 1998. He personally led the inspections, investigations and destruction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs. As such, he is uniquely qualified to assess how much of a danger the Hussein regime represented.
Ritter addressed a meeting in Boston in which he bluntly stated that the Bush administration “has built a foundation for war that is built on a bed of lies. There is no case for war and without a case for war there should be no war”.
Ritter stressed that he was no friend of Saddam Hussein. “I'm not a pacifist. I'm not someone who is afraid of war. I've been to war [in 1991]. I'm a veteran of the US Marine Corps and I'd go to war again if required to defend my country. I'm a card-carrying Republican, of conservative/moderate leanings, who voted for George W. Bush for president.” The Bush administration's charges that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction are “little more than rhetorically laced speculation”, Ritter said. “There has been nothing in the way of substantive fact presented that makes the case that Iraq possesses these weapons, has links to international terror or poses a threat to the USA worthy of war.” Ritter explained that in the late 1980s (with the assistance of the US) and in the early 1990s, Iraq had indeed developed basic chemical weapons like mustard and cyanide gas, and was attempting to perfect more sophisticated chemical weapons, as well as biological and nuclear weapons.
I spent seven years in Iraq hunting down these weapons programs. Iraq used to have factories that produced biological weapons, chemical weapons of several varieties, nuclear weapons programs and long-range ballistic missiles.
Furthermore, when [the Iraqi government] was required to declare the totality of its weapons of mass destruction holdings, it lied. It failed to declare a biological weapons program. It failed to declare a nuclear weapons program. It declared less than 50% of its chemical weapons program and less than 50% of its ballistic missile program. They created a systematic mechanism of concealment to keep these hidden capabilities away from the weapons inspectors.
But the UN weapons inspectors mandate was to seek and hunt down these weapons. We did so over the course of many years and we were successful”, Ritter insisted. “Weapons inspections enjoyed tremendous success in Iraq. By 1995-96, we could ascertain a 90-95% level of disarmament. Not because we took at face value what the Iraqis said. I and other weapons inspectors never believed a word the Iraqis told us after their first lie. No, we achieved this level of verification based upon our own hard work.
When Iraq said they didn't have a particular piece of equipment we did not believe them. We went to Europe and we scoured the countries that sold technology to Iraq until we found the company that had an invoice signed by an Iraqi official that showed that Iraq bought five of these pieces of equipment. We would present these documents to the Iraqis and they would say, ‘Oh, that equipment'.
They'd take us to a location where either the equipment was intact and we blew it up, or they took us to a location where the equipment had been destroyed. We did a serial number [check] and confirmed that it indeed was the piece of equipment. That's why I can say that Iraq was 90-95% disarmed, because we tracked each piece down and destroyed it.”
Ritter pointed out that 100% disarmament was not possible. “With time things get lost, get misplaced, memories get clouded. Even if Iraq were fully cooperative, 100% would be difficult. But remember, Iraq was a nation that went through a pretty horrific war in which government buildings were blown up, documents were scattered, people were killed — that had an impact. Economic sanctions cause tremendous problems for the way a government governs and again, that created issues.” Ritter explained that when Iraqi officials realized that they could not hide their programs from UNSCOM inspectors they began to destroy what was left themselves, then pretended it never existed. While officials finally admitted trying to destroy the remaining chemical and biological weapons stocks, related equipment and missiles and the inspectors verified this, inevitably some remains unaccounted for.
Ritter used one example: “We can verify 96 of 98 of Iraq's [long-range] missiles [were destroyed], but two missiles are missing. Now, we have a whole pile of junk over here, bits and scraps of metal that we think are the final two missiles. But because Iraq lied to us we can't accept at face value that these are the missiles. So we don't give Iraq credit for two missiles, they are still two missiles short.” Even if Iraq had succeeded in hiding stocks of sarin and tabun nerve agents, Ritter reported, these chemicals have “a shelf life of five years. After that it deteriorates and becomes useless gunk.” And even though Iraq lied about its research into producing viable long-lasting VX nerve agents, Ritter emphatically dismissed the possibility that Iraq has retained a capacity to produce the chemical weapon.
The research and development factory is destroyed. The product of that factory is destroyed. The weapons that they loaded up have been destroyed. And, more importantly, the equipment that Iraq procured from Europe to be used for a large scale VX nerve agent factory was identified still packed in its crates in 1997 and destroyed. Is there a VX nerve agent factory in Iraq today? Not on your life.” Ritter does not deny that Iraq could have begun to reconstitute its weapons programs after UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn in 1998.
But they would have to start from scratch because they don't have [the factories] any more, we destroyed them. They don't have production equipment, we destroyed it. They would have to go out and reconfigure existing industrial infrastructure to produce this chemical agent. If they did that, it is readily detectable. The technologies are available and I'm here to tell you that if Iraq were producing chemical weapons today on any meaningful scale we would have definitive proof, plain and simple.”
Ritter also dismissed US claims that Iraq has resumed a nuclear weapons program. “[Before 1998], every one of Iraq's nuclear enrichment programs were destroyed, eliminated from the face of the Earth. The production equipment is gone; the facilities have been leveled. Iraq's means to produce [nuclear] components have likewise been eliminated. The International Atomic Energy Agency did a very good job of monitoring Iraq's industrial infrastructure to ensure that these things cannot be reconstituted.
If Iraq is on verge of building nuclear weapon, it would be a miracle… For Iraq to produce a nuclear bomb today, they would have to resurrect their enrichment program. This would require the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars and the construction of facilities that are readily detectable by a variety of intelligence means. Nobody has detected this…
They would have to acquire fissile material from abroad… There isn't a whole bunch of highly enriched plutonium floating out there ready for someone to buy… But let's say Iraq got their hands on 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. They still have to process it further — melt it down to get the impurities out, cast it again and mill it — to make it useable in an Iraqi designed bomb. You don't do that in a cave or in a basement. It requires technology, a facility and special handling equipment. It emits gamma rays that are detectable — and we have not detected it. So I would not lose any sleep over Iraq's nuclear weapons program.”
Like the Gulf of Tonkin incident used to justify the buildup of U.S. troops in Vietnam, the Weapons of Mass Destruction theory was used as an excuse to invade Iraq, and depose Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq.
Like Vietnam, we have no idea how long we will be in Iraq. The Bush administration has now turned its eye toward Iran. American’s have this uncanny urge to spread democracy to the world. We want every country to experience the republican form of government. We claim that the Iraqi people want us to intervene, we made the same claim in Vietnam when we claimed that the Vietnamese people wanted us to intervene, and help them establish a democratic government. We fought in Vietnam to contain the spread of communism. However, when the spread of American democracy is fought, we as American’s become incredulous. After all, who would not want a new world order of organized democratic governments?
We didn’t learn our lessons in Vietnam, and now we are involved in a war that cannot be won in Iraq. It’s time that we bring our American military personnel home. We must stop trying to police the world, and install our own brand of democracy. The lesson is a simple one, America must mind its own affairs, and stop trying to democratize the world. If not we will be spanked in Iraq, like we were in Vietnam.
Copyright 2006 Randy L. Harrington. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Fast forward to the 21st Century—32 years later. The United States invades Iraq. Our objective was to depose the Iraq leader Saddam Hussein. As of June 1, 2006 Department of Defense Casualty Reports indicate that 2,475 American service personnel have died in Iraq. An MSNBC report of March 17, 2006 indicates that the cost of the Iraq war could surpass $1 trillion dollars.
In Haditha, Iraq on November 19, 2005 a bomb exploded under Kilo Company’s Marine convoy. It took out the fourth humvee, killing its driver, Lance Corporal Miguel (T.J.) Terrazas, 20, of El Paso, Texas and wounding two other Marines. Soon after, the Marines from Kilo Company started their operations that resulted in an alleged massacre.
As the Marines got out of their humvees they spotted four Iraqi students in a nearby taxi. They reportedly suspected the men of either triggering the bomb or acting as spotters. The Marines ordered the men and the driver, who by then had exited the taxi, to lie on the ground. The Iraqis seemed to sense what was coming next, they ran, and the Marines shot and killed them. All four men were unarmed.
Members of Kilo Company moved into the town of Haditha; they didn't even attempt to distinguish between enemies and innocents. Instead, they seem to have gone on the worst rampage by U.S. service members in the Iraq war, killing as many as 24 civilians in cold blood.
The targets were children from ages 2 to 14, an old man in a wheelchair and taxi passengers. The house-to-house killings went on for hours. After the alleged murders, the Marines involved carefully mopped-up the area and constructed a story that most of the dead were involved in an earlier bomb attack.
I can see all of the feedback so far, so let me say that first the Marines involved in this alleged crime are entitled to the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Secondly, as a former combat soldier I know that the U.S. military doesn’t make foreign policy decisions. They go where they’re told to go, and fight who they are told to fight. I support our military personnel, and they deserve out thanks for their hard work.
Notwithstanding, the first question that we should ask is why are we fighting the war in Iraq in the first place? In Vietnam the massive escalation of the war from 1964 to 1968 was justified on the basis of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident on August 2-4, 1964 in which the Johnson Administration claimed U.S. ships were attacked by the North Vietnamese. The accuracy of that claim is still hotly debated. On the basis of the attack the U.S. Senate approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, which gave broad support to President Johnson to escalate U.S. involvement in the war "as the President shall determine".
Since September 11, 2001, the US and British governments steadily increased the volume of accusations that Iraq possesses chemical, biological and nuclear weapons and/or continues to develop them. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared that preventing these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists constitutes the “second phase” of the “war on terrorism” that began in Afghanistan.
The problem is, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, there were never any objective facts to support the allegations that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
The US Senate debates and hearings conducted prior to the invasion of Iraq specifically excluded Scott Ritter who was the Senior UN Weapons Inspector for UNSCOM until 1998. He personally led the inspections, investigations and destruction of Iraq's chemical and biological weapons programs. As such, he is uniquely qualified to assess how much of a danger the Hussein regime represented.
Ritter addressed a meeting in Boston in which he bluntly stated that the Bush administration “has built a foundation for war that is built on a bed of lies. There is no case for war and without a case for war there should be no war”.
Ritter stressed that he was no friend of Saddam Hussein. “I'm not a pacifist. I'm not someone who is afraid of war. I've been to war [in 1991]. I'm a veteran of the US Marine Corps and I'd go to war again if required to defend my country. I'm a card-carrying Republican, of conservative/moderate leanings, who voted for George W. Bush for president.” The Bush administration's charges that Iraq possesses weapons of mass destruction are “little more than rhetorically laced speculation”, Ritter said. “There has been nothing in the way of substantive fact presented that makes the case that Iraq possesses these weapons, has links to international terror or poses a threat to the USA worthy of war.” Ritter explained that in the late 1980s (with the assistance of the US) and in the early 1990s, Iraq had indeed developed basic chemical weapons like mustard and cyanide gas, and was attempting to perfect more sophisticated chemical weapons, as well as biological and nuclear weapons.
I spent seven years in Iraq hunting down these weapons programs. Iraq used to have factories that produced biological weapons, chemical weapons of several varieties, nuclear weapons programs and long-range ballistic missiles.
Furthermore, when [the Iraqi government] was required to declare the totality of its weapons of mass destruction holdings, it lied. It failed to declare a biological weapons program. It failed to declare a nuclear weapons program. It declared less than 50% of its chemical weapons program and less than 50% of its ballistic missile program. They created a systematic mechanism of concealment to keep these hidden capabilities away from the weapons inspectors.
But the UN weapons inspectors mandate was to seek and hunt down these weapons. We did so over the course of many years and we were successful”, Ritter insisted. “Weapons inspections enjoyed tremendous success in Iraq. By 1995-96, we could ascertain a 90-95% level of disarmament. Not because we took at face value what the Iraqis said. I and other weapons inspectors never believed a word the Iraqis told us after their first lie. No, we achieved this level of verification based upon our own hard work.
When Iraq said they didn't have a particular piece of equipment we did not believe them. We went to Europe and we scoured the countries that sold technology to Iraq until we found the company that had an invoice signed by an Iraqi official that showed that Iraq bought five of these pieces of equipment. We would present these documents to the Iraqis and they would say, ‘Oh, that equipment'.
They'd take us to a location where either the equipment was intact and we blew it up, or they took us to a location where the equipment had been destroyed. We did a serial number [check] and confirmed that it indeed was the piece of equipment. That's why I can say that Iraq was 90-95% disarmed, because we tracked each piece down and destroyed it.”
Ritter pointed out that 100% disarmament was not possible. “With time things get lost, get misplaced, memories get clouded. Even if Iraq were fully cooperative, 100% would be difficult. But remember, Iraq was a nation that went through a pretty horrific war in which government buildings were blown up, documents were scattered, people were killed — that had an impact. Economic sanctions cause tremendous problems for the way a government governs and again, that created issues.” Ritter explained that when Iraqi officials realized that they could not hide their programs from UNSCOM inspectors they began to destroy what was left themselves, then pretended it never existed. While officials finally admitted trying to destroy the remaining chemical and biological weapons stocks, related equipment and missiles and the inspectors verified this, inevitably some remains unaccounted for.
Ritter used one example: “We can verify 96 of 98 of Iraq's [long-range] missiles [were destroyed], but two missiles are missing. Now, we have a whole pile of junk over here, bits and scraps of metal that we think are the final two missiles. But because Iraq lied to us we can't accept at face value that these are the missiles. So we don't give Iraq credit for two missiles, they are still two missiles short.” Even if Iraq had succeeded in hiding stocks of sarin and tabun nerve agents, Ritter reported, these chemicals have “a shelf life of five years. After that it deteriorates and becomes useless gunk.” And even though Iraq lied about its research into producing viable long-lasting VX nerve agents, Ritter emphatically dismissed the possibility that Iraq has retained a capacity to produce the chemical weapon.
The research and development factory is destroyed. The product of that factory is destroyed. The weapons that they loaded up have been destroyed. And, more importantly, the equipment that Iraq procured from Europe to be used for a large scale VX nerve agent factory was identified still packed in its crates in 1997 and destroyed. Is there a VX nerve agent factory in Iraq today? Not on your life.” Ritter does not deny that Iraq could have begun to reconstitute its weapons programs after UNSCOM inspectors were withdrawn in 1998.
But they would have to start from scratch because they don't have [the factories] any more, we destroyed them. They don't have production equipment, we destroyed it. They would have to go out and reconfigure existing industrial infrastructure to produce this chemical agent. If they did that, it is readily detectable. The technologies are available and I'm here to tell you that if Iraq were producing chemical weapons today on any meaningful scale we would have definitive proof, plain and simple.”
Ritter also dismissed US claims that Iraq has resumed a nuclear weapons program. “[Before 1998], every one of Iraq's nuclear enrichment programs were destroyed, eliminated from the face of the Earth. The production equipment is gone; the facilities have been leveled. Iraq's means to produce [nuclear] components have likewise been eliminated. The International Atomic Energy Agency did a very good job of monitoring Iraq's industrial infrastructure to ensure that these things cannot be reconstituted.
If Iraq is on verge of building nuclear weapon, it would be a miracle… For Iraq to produce a nuclear bomb today, they would have to resurrect their enrichment program. This would require the expenditure of tens of billions of dollars and the construction of facilities that are readily detectable by a variety of intelligence means. Nobody has detected this…
They would have to acquire fissile material from abroad… There isn't a whole bunch of highly enriched plutonium floating out there ready for someone to buy… But let's say Iraq got their hands on 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium. They still have to process it further — melt it down to get the impurities out, cast it again and mill it — to make it useable in an Iraqi designed bomb. You don't do that in a cave or in a basement. It requires technology, a facility and special handling equipment. It emits gamma rays that are detectable — and we have not detected it. So I would not lose any sleep over Iraq's nuclear weapons program.”
Like the Gulf of Tonkin incident used to justify the buildup of U.S. troops in Vietnam, the Weapons of Mass Destruction theory was used as an excuse to invade Iraq, and depose Saddam Hussein. Weapons of mass destruction were never found in Iraq.
Like Vietnam, we have no idea how long we will be in Iraq. The Bush administration has now turned its eye toward Iran. American’s have this uncanny urge to spread democracy to the world. We want every country to experience the republican form of government. We claim that the Iraqi people want us to intervene, we made the same claim in Vietnam when we claimed that the Vietnamese people wanted us to intervene, and help them establish a democratic government. We fought in Vietnam to contain the spread of communism. However, when the spread of American democracy is fought, we as American’s become incredulous. After all, who would not want a new world order of organized democratic governments?
We didn’t learn our lessons in Vietnam, and now we are involved in a war that cannot be won in Iraq. It’s time that we bring our American military personnel home. We must stop trying to police the world, and install our own brand of democracy. The lesson is a simple one, America must mind its own affairs, and stop trying to democratize the world. If not we will be spanked in Iraq, like we were in Vietnam.
Copyright 2006 Randy L. Harrington. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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