Today the news is filled with remembrances of the heroism of the soldiers who stormed the beach at Normandy. But why have we as a society forgotten the heroism of those who, on that terrible day, took French classes and played baseball in the afternoon?
This question is particularly piquant for me because my grandfather was one of these heroes. Here’s the cover of his journal from World War II:
Journal
—
CA Det D3D1
—
First U.S. Army
—
Normandy
Northern France
Germany
Cour Z
And here’s his entry for June 6th, 1944:
6 June 1944
French class and road march made up morning schedule. Detachment played baseball in the afternoon, after which all members discussed implications of D-day.
Just imagining what it was like for those young men gives me chills.
Bill Clinton on George W. Bush, New York Times, May 28, 2009:
Clinton’s relationship with the younger Bush evolved over the years…Clinton and George W. Bush agreed to appear onstage together in Toronto on May 29 for a 90-minute discussion of current events.
“You know, I’m a Baptist,” Clinton explained. “We don’t give up on anybody. We believe in deathbed conversions.”
Bill Clinton on Saddam Hussein, New York Times, January 14, 1993:
Mr. Clinton made clear that he certainly did not view Mr. Hussein as the ideal ruler of Iraq, but that he also did not see him as a irredeemable foe of the United States, who had to be destroyed no matter what…
“I always tell everybody I am a Baptist. I believe in death-bed conversions.”
As someone who has picked meticulously through Colin Powell’s lies during his UN address, and is also familiar with the grim history of his climb to power, I didn’t think Powell had any tricks left in his Giant Bag of Sleaze that would surprise me.
Oh, how wrong I was!
Check out this amazing exchange yesterday between Sam Husseini and Powell. As you’ll see, Powell denies knowing anything whatsoever about the torture of Ibn al-Libi, which elicited one of Powell’s claims in his UN address about connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and thus has generated screaming international headlines for several years:
Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?
Colin Powell:I don’t have any details on the al-Libi case.
SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?
CP: I don’t know that. I don’t know what information you’re referring to. So I can’t answer.
SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.
CP: So what? [inaudible]
SH: So you’d think you’d know about it.
CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don’t know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don’t know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I’m not aware of it.
It’s a veritable 9th Symphony of Lies. Colin Powell, I will never underestimate you and your scumminess again.
ALSO: Powell has used the “you have to understand, I’m an incredibly incurious moron” defense before, although not with such panache.
AND: Here’s what Powell said referencing al-Libi in his UN presentation:
I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al Qaeda.
Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.
This senior al Qaeda terrorist was responsible for one of al Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan.
His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al Qaeda. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef, did not believe that al Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.
The support that (inaudible) describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological weapons training for two al Qaeda associates beginning in December 2000. He says that a militant known as Abu Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) had been sent to Iraq several times between 1997 and 2000 for help in acquiring poisons and gases. Abdula Al-Iraqi (ph) characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful.
Today, April 10th, 2009, would have been Rachel Corrie’s 30th birthday. As weird old Mr. Lincoln said: “It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us.”
Dean Baker, in this USA Today op-ed about Social Security, points out something no one else has:
In effect, the cutters are proposing that the government default on the bonds held by the Social Security trust fund: U.S. government bonds that were purchased with money raised through the designated Social Security tax.
It is truly incredible, and unbelievably galling, that anyone in a position of responsibility would suggest defaulting on the government bonds held by the Social Security trust fund at the precise moment that the government is honoring trillions of dollars of bonds issued by private banks.
While the government has no legal or moral obligations to pay off the banks’ debts to wealthy investors (who presumably understood the risks they were taking), the Social Security bonds carry the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
It is understandable that people are angry. We have a government and an elite that never stop looking for ways to take money from ordinary workers and redistribute it upward to the richest people in the country.
In case you’ve missed it, the Federal Reserve has guaranteed gigantic amounts of bonds issued by banks (see “bank debt” here). Thus, as Baker says, the Social Security cutters don’t just want us to default on U.S. government bonds essentially belonging to Social Security recipients. They want us to do that at the same time we’re paying off Citigroup’s bonds.
