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“Our President Is Deceiving the American Public” Daniel Ellsberg

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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 09:32 AM
Original message
“Our President Is Deceiving the American Public” Daniel Ellsberg
watch/read/listen:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/3/30/our_president_is_deceiving_the_american


“Our President Is Deceiving the American Public”: Pentagon Papers Whistleblower on President Obama and the Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq

We are joined by a man who played a major role in efforts to end the Vietnam War in the 1970s. In 1971, the then-RAND Corporation analyst Daniel Ellsberg leaked to the media what became known as the Pentagon Papers, a 7,000-page classified history outlining the true extent of US involvement in Vietnam. After avoiding a life sentence on espionage charges, Daniel Ellsberg has continued to speak out against US militarism until the present day.


Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower

Rush Transcript
<snip>

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Dan Ellsberg. In the wake of the surprise visit by President Obama to Afghanistan, your thoughts?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: President Obama is taking every symbolic step he can to nominate this as Obama’s war, just as the Vietnam War became Nixon’s war in November of 1969, just about the time I was copying the Pentagon Papers in hopes of forestalling that, and Johnson made Vietnam his war, Johnson’s war, and McNamara’s war in June of 1965, when I was working for him, when he decided to escalate, an open-ended escalation there, following the previous commitment of Eisenhower and of Kennedy that made it an open-ended war, just as Obama is doing there now, and, I think, with very much the same results in the end, tragic results, especially for the country involved and for the Americans, and with probably the same kinds of pressures on him, actually, as Johnson faced.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw you speak, Dan Ellsberg, here in New York after a production of Top Secret, a very interesting play about not the New York Times and the Pentagon Papers—they were the first to begin to print them but were then enjoined by the Nixon government, and then the Washington Post started to print the Pentagon Papers, and that’s what this was about. But afterwards, you talked about the US ambassador to Afghanistan and how important what Ambassador Eikenberry had to say in these memos and cables that were made public. Can you talk about those?

DANIEL ELLSBERG: Yeah. Well, for years now, really since we set out to go into Iraq on much the same kinds of lies in 2002 that sent us into Vietnam when I was in the Pentagon, since then, I’ve been saying to officials in the government, “Don’t do what I did. Do what I wish I had done in ’63 or ’64, before we had entered the war, before the bombs had fallen. Don’t wait, as I did, ’til we were in the war and the war was essentially unstoppable, before telling the truth about the hopelessness, understood within the government, and the impossibility—the unlikelihood of any kind of victory there. But do it now.”

Actually, almost as I—in recent times, that call has been answered. I don’t know whether it was direct or not, but some government official who is now the most dangerous man in America in the eyes of President Obama, I’m sure—I’m sure there’s a Plumbers operation going on right now to find out who leaked the cables, the secret cables, of our ambassador in Kabul, Lieutenant General, retired, Karl Eikenberry, who had been in charge in Afghanistan, and first in charge of training Afghan troops and then in charge of all of our operations in Afghanistan, before McChrystal, and is now our accredited ambassador to Karzai, the head of the so-called government that we’re supporting there now.


..more..
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Echo In Light Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 09:42 AM
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1. k/r
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Solly Mack Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 10:04 AM
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2. K&R
Good read
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Name removed Donating Member (0 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 10:05 AM
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3. Deleted sub-thread
Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.
 
cali Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 10:29 AM
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4. yep. it's his war
and it's not check in the plus column for him.
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 10:44 AM
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5. If none of our leaders had access to Ellsberg or McNamara or
Howard Zinn or any of the men and women who lived through Viet Nam, this horrible destruction might be understandable.

But they've all been right here, saying the obvious and nobody in power bothers to listen to them. I can only conclude that security and stability in either theater are not goals of our government. They weren't Bush's goals and they're not Obama's goals either.
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 11:08 AM
Response to Reply #5
6. agreed nt
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BeHereNow Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:27 PM
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7. I watched that this morning- great interview.
I wish more people watched DN.
BHN
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:31 PM
Response to Reply #7
10. IMO, the BEST news program offered on American TeeVee
the next best IMO:

www.theglobalreport.org
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BeHereNow Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:39 PM
Response to Reply #10
11. As far as I can tell, it is the ONLY news program in the US.
And sometimes, I don't think even they take it far enough!

BHN
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:45 PM
Response to Reply #11
12. There are good niche shows and reviews.
Edited on Wed Mar-31-10 02:46 PM by EFerrari
Al Jazeera is excellent -- they're accused by the US of being al Qaida and by governments on the peninsula of being CIA. lol

Laura Flanders and Thom Hartmann do a decent job. GayUSA is priceless for bringing up those issues once a week. Mosaic on LinkTV rounds up the news from the Middle East 5 days a week without editorializing.

A long time ago, I figured out that if you watch Washington Journal's headlines and Amy's, your set for the breaking stories of the day that don't involve escaped balloons but I cannot watch WJ any more. It's just too toxic.
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KG Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:27 PM
Response to Original message
8. like every other prez.
no 'change' there.
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:29 PM
Response to Reply #8
9. Still it's time to end the fugging
WARS
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EFerrari Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 02:47 PM
Response to Reply #9
13. These things are not wars. They are income generators for somebody
just not for us or the Iraqi or Afghani people. It's just too obvious to even hide.
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Kolesar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 03:58 PM
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14. Less than 100,000 troops in Iraq now--what can be expected in only one year?
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mike_c Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 04:32 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. the war against Iraq is a CRIME....
Edited on Wed Mar-31-10 04:34 PM by mike_c
How many other crimes do you excuse so easily?

"Sure, he's a serial killer, but you can't expect him to stop in less than a year!"

"Well yes, they're robbing banks, but we can't ask them to stop too suddenly!"

"Child sexual abuse? It's a damned shame, but now that it's happening, we can't expect anyone to stop it until next year or the year after, and maybe not even then."

"It's terrible how Joe beats his poor wife half to death, but it's unreasonable to try and stop him while he's in the middle of breaking her jaw!"


"Genocide is horrible, but we don't want to rush into stopping it without careful consideration and long study."

The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are crimes against humanity, which the U.S. has acknowledged as being so awful that they are a superset of all other crimes-- yet we allow them to continue because it might be "difficult" to stop them? What sort of moral high ground is THAT?

U.S. out of Iraq and Afghanistan NOW!

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FiveGoodMen Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 06:04 PM
Response to Reply #15
18. Absolutely
Shame on those who defend it!
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 04:39 PM
Response to Reply #14
16. U.S. Considers New Base, More Troops In Iraq
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x448452
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LVuAj4qnr2w

Top US general David Petraeus said last week that the US military may set up an additional headquarters in northern Iraq.
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Kolesar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-01-10 06:17 AM
Response to Reply #16
20. Kind of thin
I don't see the imperial colonialist meaning in that one minute. Seriously
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-01-10 10:25 AM
Response to Reply #20
22. I don't need this
to know that the policy of empire is already in place.
This is just a reminder.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/davidswanson/1055
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Kolesar Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-01-10 03:14 PM
Response to Reply #22
24. Cheney and Bush handed President Obama an abortion called Iraq
What do you expect him to do?
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Mar-31-10 04:45 PM
Response to Original message
17. This is Ellsberg's opinion, and
we'll know by the end of 2011 if he's right:

I believe, by the way, that that applies to Iraq, as well, that I believe that our president is deceiving the American public—I don’t say that lightly—in the same way that all of his predecessors deceived us with respect to Vietnam, including the ones I served, which included Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. Specifically, when he says in his State of the Union message that we will—he will get all troops, not just combat troops, but all troops, out of Iraq by the end of 2011, I believe that’s false and that he knows that’s false, and he has no real plan or intention of removing American bases manned by American military personnel, not just mercenaries, ever. By his second term or the second term of his successor, whoever that is, I think we have a future of 30,000 to 50,000 Americans in Iraq indefinitely. And I’m talking about the lives of our children, in terms of actual planning.

So the Iraqis have no say? Interesting.

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flyarm Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-01-10 01:38 AM
Response to Reply #17
19. and how many more innocent people and our troops will be dead by then..this is on your hands too!
When you defend these war crimes against humanity!


I personally will hold you accountable as well!
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G_j Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-01-10 07:47 AM
Response to Reply #17
21.  a very informed "opinion" I would say nt
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amborin Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Apr-01-10 12:40 PM
Response to Original message
23. too late to rec, but thanks for posting
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