Happy Thanksgiving from Wes Clark

This morning QuestionItNow received the following email from General Wes Clark. We share his wishes with our visitors. Happy Thanksgiving!

Dear Friend(s),

Tomorrow, Americans will sit down together with friends and family across the country to celebrate Thanksgiving. It's the most American of holidays -- a tradition that we trace back to our pilgrim ancestors who gathered with the Wampanoag tribe to celebrate the first Thanksgiving in 1621 near Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Thanksgiving continued to be celebrated occasionally through the 17th and 18th Century, but it wasn't until 1863 when Abraham Lincoln set aside the fourth Thursday of November as a national Thanksgiving Day that the annual holiday formally took root.

I think President Lincoln's words from his first official Thanksgiving Day proclamation, during America's Civil War, are especially appropriate this year as we pause to reflect on the blessings that have been bestowed upon us even while in the midst of our current conflict:

"The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God. In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle, or the ship; the axe had enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years, with large increase of freedom.

"No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.

"It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and voice by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to his tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union."

-- Abraham Lincoln, October 3, 1863

Tomorrow, Americans will gather to give thanks for the many blessings we have received -- while offering prayers for our brave men and women in uniform serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world, as well as their families and friends here at home.

And, as President Lincoln wished in 1863, let us do everything in our power, and ask for God's help, to bring a swift end to our current military conflict abroad, while healing the many wounds that divide us as Americans here at home.

Gert and I send our very best wishes for a safe and happy Thanksgiving.

Sincerely,

Wes Clark

P.S. To learn more about how to support our men and women in uniform this Thanksgiving, I invite you to visit www.americasupportsyou.mil/americasupportsyou/help.html. (Link provided in title text of this post)

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Jack Murtha Honors Our Troops

As I watched C-Span this evening I witnessed several moments of inspiration from Jack Murtha. This gentleman can not be legitimately challenged by any honest member of the US House or our military. He knows what it is like to be wounded in battle and he visits our troops in the hospital more than any other House Member.

Representative Murtha is not calling for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq; he is calling for intelligent leadership from the Bush Administration. He is pleading for our government to honor and respect our wounded veterans and their families. How many people on the right even acknowledge the 15,700+ wounded and 2,085 War dead? This man speaks to the wounded, their families, and the families of those who died. He visits them and helps them with their problems, but most importantly he listens to these patriotic Americans and gives them a voice.

It is likely that if a man with Jack Murtha’s mind and soul was our president, we would have never entered this war in Iraq. As far as the war on terror is concerned, we would have finished the job in Afghanistan and maybe even caught bin Laden. Why doesn't America realize we need a man of superior intelligence and compassion as our President?

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The Military Industrial Complex Redux

While I am not a veteran, my father and his three brothers were all Korean War era veterans. My youngest uncle recently passed away in his early 60's due to the long-term effects of alcoholism and the abuse of prescription drugs. His heavy drinking began in the military. The pills came from the VA Hospital. He was also a life-long smoker.

I was sharing some of his story with another vet who quit smoking tobacco years ago. He now runs marathons. He re-emphasize how almost everyone in his unit smoked and drank heavily.

As he was sharing how the defense establishment subsidizes tobacco and alcohol for US military consumption, I thought of something that I have never heard articulated previously. The military industrial complex extends far beyond weapons systems, combat machinery, and supplies. The military is in an unholy alliance with big alcohol and tobacco. How many American veteran's lives have been cut short due to addictions that begin with cheap booze and cigarettes?

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Giving Neo-Cons Credit

For a moment, let us enter the two dimensional world of the PNAC and the Bush administration and assume America has a divine right to impose her will on the rest of the world and turn rogue states away from their evil ways, fly the American flag, and turn them into stable democratic societies (leaving messy details like centuries of tribal tensions and rivalries out of the picture).

Why would we as good neo-cons committed to Homeland Security and "fighting 'em there - so we won't have to fight 'em over here" select Iraq as the country most likely to bring a mushroom cloud to our shores?

Doesn't North Korea have a couple of "Nucular" weapons? Don't we have solid evidence of Iranian involvement in terrorist acts? Isn't Iran openly and actively pursuing a nuclear enrichment program? Is Pakistan a stable nuclear power? Are all of the nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union accounted for? Where is bin Laden? Is China quietly biding its time while we trip over our own feet?

Why didn't our leaders ask these questions before we rushed into a war with no plan to maintain the peace? We are over-extended. God help us if we need to fight a third war!

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Neo-Con Iraq Regime Change Plans from January 26, 1998

In a letter to President William Jefferson Clinton dated 1/26/1998, the neo-con leadership pleaded for a pre-emptive war to remove Saddam from power. Following is a brief excerpt (a link to the full text of the letter is provided in the title of this blog):

Given the magnitude of the threat, the current policy, which depends for its success upon the steadfastness of our coalition partners and upon the cooperation of Saddam Hussein, is dangerously inadequate. The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.

We urge you to articulate this aim, and to turn your Administration's attention to implementing a strategy for removing Saddam's regime from power. This will require a full complement of diplomatic, political and military efforts. Although we are fully aware of the dangers and difficulties in implementing this policy, we believe the dangers of failing to do so are far greater. We believe the U.S. has the authority under existing UN resolutions to take the necessary steps, including military steps, to protect our vital interests in the Gulf. In any case, American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council.

We urge you to act decisively. If you act now to end the threat of weapons of mass destruction against the U.S. or its allies, you will be acting in the most fundamental national security interests of the country. If we accept a course of weakness and drift, we put our interests and our future at risk.

Sincerely,

Elliott Abrams - Richard L. Armitage - William J. Bennett
Jeffrey Bergner - John Bolton - Paula Dobriansky
Francis Fukuyama - Robert Kagan - Zalmay Khalilzad
William Kristol - Richard Perle - Peter W. Rodman
Donald Rumsfeld - William Schneider, Jr. - Vin Weber
Paul Wolfowitz - R. James Woolsey - Robert B. Zoellick


Clinton was a bit distracted at the time. In an odd coincidence he declared to the media on the same date, "I want you to listen to me. I did not have sex with that woman, Monica Lewinsky. I never told a single person to lie, not a single time, never."

A couple years after President Clinton declined to "wag the dog" by entering into a pre-emptive campaign to invade Iraq, these neo-cons found their man in George W. Bush. The rest is an evolving history that is increasingly costing America lives, treasure, and good will around the world. When will America wake up from this self-inflicted nightmare?

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Lies, Damn Lies, and Misinformation

It appears that Scooter Libby was anticipating his upcoming trial and the "I don't recall" defense while he was testifying under oath before a Grand Jury. In testimony of an alleged conversation with Tim Russert of NBC News - during which Libby claims that Russert was the first person to inform him that Valerie Plame Wilson was a CIA agent - Scooter Libby stated:

"I remember being taken aback by it. ... And I said, no, I don't know that. And, I said no. I don't know that intentionally because I didn't want him to take anything I was saying as in any way confirming what he said, because at that point in time I did not recall that I had ever known, and I thought that this was something that he was telling me that I was first learning. And I said, no, I don't know that because I want to be very careful not to confirm it for him, so that he didn't take my statement as confirmation for him."

Huh? Any parent who asks their kid if they did something wrong and gets a response like that will know their kid is not telling the truth.

The title of this blog provides a link to the full text of the United States Department of Justice Indictment of I. Lewis Libby, also known as "Scooter Libby." Those who assert Patrick Fitzgerald is engaging in the "criminalization of politics" will be well served to read this, assuming they care about the democratic process.

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