Sacrificing Our Kids for Their War

SOTT Commentary

Foreign wars need cannon fodder, the youth of a country to go out and give and take the bullets and bombs in the name of policy established by leaders who are safe at home. In the case of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, an illegal war carried out under false pretences against an "enemy" that was no threat to the invaders, the leaders, many of whom were of draftable age during the war in Vietnam, managed to avoid the military altogether or active service in that war. They are referred to as the Chickenhawks: people who talk a belligerent game but who are unwilling to put their own lives on the line for their beliefs. Let the sons and daughters of the less fortunate die and be maimed.

The current US Commander-in-Chief went AWOL from his cushy post as a pilot with the Texas National Guard when he avoided the medical exam that would have shown traces of his cocaine habit in his blood. Now he struts his stuff in custom-made military garb to quicken the drug-primed hearts of military studs like Jeff Gannon.

We are talking hypocrisy and corruption on a massive scale. It is so unbelievable for most people that when you bring it up, they look at you as if you were putting money on the Vikings winning the Superbowl.

But wars need soldiers to give their lives or their arms and legs, eyes or minds. With 140,000 troops in Iraq, thousands more in Afghanistan, and plans to overthrow Iran and Syria, army recruiters have quotas to fill. In spite of the filtered coverage of the occupation of Iraq shown to Americans, enlistment is down. For four months in a row, the quotas have not been met.

What's an empire to do?

The first is to elect war-mongerers who can set the right example:

Chickenhawk Headquarters

The New Hampshire Gazette

Name: George W. Bush (R-TX)
Born: 1946
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: You know when a guy walks away from a National Guard obligation during wartime and gets away with it, he must come from "a good family." Not that his daddy had anything to do with his getting a Guard slot in the first place - oh, no ...

Name: Richard "Dick" Cheney (R-WY)
Born: 1942
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Says he had "other priorities." You bet he had other priorities. Imagine how early in life you must begin scheming to get away with what this guy has. He was too busy thinking about Halliburton to go fight Charlie.

Name: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby
Born: 1950±
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff. He’s had a string of no-doubt well-paying government jobs in State and Defense. He’s also practiced law. In fact, he was Marc Rich’s lawyer for years. Yes — the Marc Rich whose pardon from President Clinton was excoriated by so many high and mighty Republicans. Maybe if Scooter had been a better lawyer, his client wouldn’t have needed that pardon. Speaking of legal questions, “Scooter” is alleged by some to have traded energy stocks while helping his buddy Dick Cheney cook up a new energy policy in secret. He’s also suspected of having inserted the bogus “Niger yellowcake” reference into the President’s State of the Union address. As if all that weren’t enough, he’s also a top suspect in the outing of CIA operative Valeria Plame. Clearly “Scooter” is a ballsy kind of guy, so it’s a complete mystery to us why, when he graduated from Phillips Andover in 1968, he didn’t enlist in the Marines or go Airborne instead of going to Yale.

Name: Karl Rove
Born: 1950
Employer: Baal
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: This little cherub was born on Christmas Day, 1950. Karl “Bush’s Brain” Rove ran George W.’s campaign, right down to the tiny detail of deciding Bush was going to run. The hardest part was convincing a horde of Republican skeptics that it could be done.

He is said to have said of his boss, he’s "the kind of candidate and officeholder political hacks like me wait a lifetime to be associated with."

Now Karl’s Senior White House advisor. If he really is “Bush’s Brain,” and if the fondest wishes of former US Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV come true, one fine day Karl will be “frogmarched out of the White House in mandcuffs.”

Will history record that event as “Bush’s Lobotomy?”

Name: Donald "The Don" Rumsfeld
Born: 1932
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Korea
Notes: When the shooting started in Korea Rummy here was either 18, or about to turn 18. Not to worry for him, though — he spent the war at Princeton, wearing a ROTC uniform. Once the war was over he flew jets for the Navy for a few years. Defenders of Rumsfeld will say he’s no chickenhawk — he served, and it’s not his fault the war ended before he got his commission. To which others answer, “plenty of farmers and mechanics and kids just out of high school served. Anyone as full of whatever that stuffing in him is, could have tried out for a battlefield commission.”

Name: Paul Wolfowitz
Born: 1943
Employer: The U.S. Taxpayer
Conflict Avoided: Vietnam
Notes: Deputy Secretary for Defense - yet another Bush administration man in the Pentagon who has no idea what it's like to wear a uniform. He got a BA at Cornell in 1965. Maybe if we'd had a guy as bright as he thinks he is in Vietnam, it would have turned out differently.