E&P: David Halberstam Calls Iraq War 'Heartbreaking; Dems Behaved Poorly'

[Hissyspit]

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002313851

Halberstam Calls Iraq War 'Heartbreaking'

By E&P Staff

Published: April 07, 2006 2:55 PM ET

NEW YORK Famed Vietnam War correspondent, and bestselling author, David Halberstam on Thursday called the Iraq war a "mistake" and "heartbreaking," during a talk at St. Norbert College in Wisconsin.

"I'm a Vietnam-era journalist. I think most journalists were appalled as we moved toward war in Iraq," he said, according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "The worst mistake this administration made was not about weapons of mass destruction. It was the administration's view that we'd be welcomed as the great liberator. I think they were watching the movie 'Patton' when they should have been watching 'The Battle of Algiers' about urban insurgency....

"The war in Iraq was more swift and more violent than I thought. It's heartbreaking. The only one in the administration with Vietnam experience was (Secretary of State) Colin Powell and he was trying to put the brakes on."

- snip -

Halberstam, 71, said he wasn't sure if he will ever write at length about Iraq. "Part of me wants younger people to write it," he said, according to the newspaper, yet there is the challenge of figuring out "how we have gotten it so wrong and why the Democrats behaved so poorly."

[xchrom]

1. i will NEVER believe that colin powell was trying to stop

anything re: the war in iraq.

[Name removed]

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[SoCalDem]

2. WE behaved poorly??? Last time I looked, we were a MINORITY

with little or NO say on much of anything..

I WILL sat this.. we should have been less afraid of being called unpatriotic, and had there been a cohesive band of democrats sticking to their principles who knows how it would have played out..

Of course without a media VOICE to even express their views, whatever they had to say would have been drowned out by all the flapping flags..and gums...

Part of me wishes that ALL the democrats would have just walked OUT, called a press conference and said that since there had obviously been a coup, and their input was NIL, they had no desire to even be a part of something so dangerously stupid.. They could have all voted present, and retired to a pub somewhere :)

[sandnsea]

3. Why'd the journalists behave so poorly

Especially since they were all so appalled. Maybe that's why they've been laying this at the door of Democrats, they don't want to look at themselves. If they'd done their jobs, it wouldn't have been so difficult for the Democrats' voice of opposition to be heard. And almost all Democrats opposed war in March 2003, regardless of that vote, which they also helped distort. Little tired of these smug journalists who've done nothing but twist everything the Democrats say to feed their own self-serving egos.