Look at what a sevicemans fiance said on CNN this morning

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0307/16/ltm.07.html

<snip>HAMILTON: No. Actually, I just hope that he's here for Christmas.

HEMMER: How are you feeling about this?

HAMILTON: It's hard to take. It's unbelievable, astonishing.

HEMMER: How's he doing?

HAMILTON: He's exhausted. He's mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted. He says he can't fight any longer. There's nothing in him that he can fight with.

HEMMER: You're soon to be the wife of a member of the U.S. military. It comes with the territory in many ways. What have you thought about how difficult this might be going forward in the future with him, knowing that the U.S. military's engaged in so many different hotspots around the world?

HAMILTON: We have actually, since this deployment began, we have decided that we will no longer be in the army.

HEMMER: Oh, he's getting out after this tour of duty in Iraq? How do feel about that?

HAMILTON: Yes, yes. He can't stand for it.

HEMMER: Why is that?

HAMILTON: I support him 100 percent.

HEMMER: Why do you say he can't stand it?

HAMILTON: It's hard on the families, it's hard on the soldiers, and it's especially hard to know that you put your faith and trust into a president, and they continue to lie to you, they break promises, and it's hard to fight for somebody like that.

more

[chimpymustgo]

1. Wow. How many military votes is this going to cost this liar.

I really feel sorry for the troops and their families.

[Name removed]

6. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lcordero]

10. They didn't volunteer to get lied to

The volunteered to defend the Constitution of the United States. They didn't volunteer to grab somebodyelse's oil.

[atreides1]

17. But

They aren't fighting for the Constitution, they aren't fighting for our freedom, they are fighting for Halliburton, Unocal, Brown&Root,
defense contractors, and now for their own survival.

This war was never about protecting America, because while they are in Iraq dying for Shrub and his cronies, Asskiss along with some Republicans are trying to take away our freedom, in the name of security.

So, no they aren't defending the Constitution, they are helping to destroy it.

I wish them well, and pray for their safe return home. But I hope that the military wakes up and starts to realize that they have been used to increase the profits of corporations, not to defend our way
of life.

[CafeToad]

18. OK, I suspected I'd soon run into trouble on this pro-war site

but the United States government has a long history of lying to get troops killed (see below), don't people know this fact when they sign-up?

And if they're naive children, why haven't their parents warned them of a few of the following instances?

The Sinking of the Maine

The Lusitania – placed deliberately in harm’s way to incite American opinion against Germany

Pearl Harbor – ignored warnings, let it happen to get the U.S. into WWII

Gulf of Tomkin hoax

Soviets baited into Afghanistan by the Carter administration (led to 9-11)

Gulf War I – babies thrown out of incubator bogus story

Clinton’s continuous war against the Iraqi people

Gulf War II !!!

on edit:

I sincerely apologize if I offended anyone with my previous post, (#6, now removed) - it's just one of my pet peeves when the troops and/or their families pull this "I shocked, shocked . . . that we were lied to" routine. It's just not credible, but for the sake of being new here, I'll play along with the charade and say no more.

[GumboYaYa]

29. Welcome to DU CafeToad!

I'll add a few to your list:

The assassination of Lumumbu in the Congo
The installation of Pinochet in Chile
and many more.

Most people do not know about the facts about so many aspects of American history. Blame the schools, the press, and the individuals who are too lazy to educate themselves.

Having said that, many members of the miltary are young and immature. They probably did not think their decision to join much farther than beyond the idea that they weren't doing anything else productive at the time. While there is some fault to be shared for that attitude, particluarly given the history of the US military, it certainly does not rise to the level of grievous culpability of the Bush administration.

Also, you will find some of the most persistent anti-war folks anywhere here at DU. Please try to paint with a smaller brush next time.

[CafeToad]

33. Thank you for the welcome and the input

(even though I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot so to speak).

I will try to tread lightly so as to not get banned from this site as I see that dissent is not much tolerated. But now that I realize that the mission of this site is to restore the Democratic Party to power (as compared to bringing back democracy to America, which was my original assumption - and something quite different) I can live with that - I guess that taking baby steps and getting rid of the GOP fanatics is at least heading in the correct direction. In the past, the Republicans have had a few good ideas, I guess I should say two good ideas (ending slavery and raising speed limits is about all I can think of - which isn't all that impressive a list for 150 years). I would add the whole concept of personal responsibility to those two items, but that would fit into something they say but don't do, so I won't. Personally, I'd like to see just a little personal responsibility on the part of the Democratic Leaders wrt the the Iraq attack (I promised to say no more about the troops)- were they really 'duped' into supporting the war, or did they do so because it was politically expedient? I suspect the latter.

OK, I'll quit babbling - if the reader wishes to pursue this vein of thought, I suggest an article entitled "Bush's Willing Executioners"

at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3988.htm

Where are the Democrats? Under our two-party system it is their patriotic duty to represent the opinions and beliefs of their constituents, who are mostly liberal. That responsibility becomes an urgent necessity when the GOP, in firm control of all three branches of government, abandons a proud tradition of conservatism in favor of outright fascism. With the exception of a few principled men like Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV), leading Democrats have made little or no effort to stymie Bush's agenda, launch a real investigation of 9/11 or appoint a special prosecutor to go after the WMD scandal. To their eternal dishonor 82 Democratic Congressmen and 29 Senators voted for the invasion of Iraq--this despite the pleas of millions of demonstrators. Among the nine leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, only two have made opposition to runaway militarism a staple of their stump speech.

Easily spooked and even more easily fooled, Democratic leaders are neither leading nor acting like Democrats. Thirty years of political duck-and-cover has brought them to the brink of irrelevance. Far more damning, they have abandoned their rightful role as loyal opponents.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

11. It's not the job- it's their POS leader

Bush is a lying POS.

[Chef]

13. Sorry

I am going to assume they didn't sign uo to do what you said. Hopefully, they signed up to defend their country. It is not their fault that they (and the rest of us)were lied to about what defending their country really meant. As I said when this all started, it is a bullshit war, fougt for bullshit reasons, brought to us by bullshit con artists. The problem comes when we really need a military for a real threat rather than bullshit. Then what do we do? Bush is really inflicting damage on these men and the country that will be hard to repair. Remember, "help is on the way".

[ilpostino]

14. Yes, we are

Because for the most part they're 19 and 20 years olds who took the military life because it offered them the best opportunity for a job and an education. Like everybody new on any job they had to be sold on the fantasy before the reality of it set in. It's awful that they had to kill and be killed to learn their lesson, but if they learned it and are ready to speak out about what they learned, they are the best witnesses we could have to the cravenness of Bush's foreign policy. They should be welcome as allies and not scorned as some kind of low life scum.

[justicebuilder]

2. Makes me sick to my stomach

I can identify with these guys. They believed they were going over there to protect their families and liberate an oppressed people. Seeing the truth now, that it was all just a pack of lies... It must just rip the guts right out of you.

What a screw-job. Bring these guys home.

jb

[EOTE]

3. How sad.....

I'm sure this is the viewpoint of a good number of military families. More of them need to be getting on TV and explaining how dismayed they are over *s lying. These are some of the people who *s lies have effected the most and the public needs to be seeing this. If the military has lost faith in bush, how far behind can the public be?

[bowens43]

4. Heard on NPR this morning:

An interview with the aunt of young man killed this week in Iraq.

She said 'President bush told them to bring it on. They brought it on and now my nephew is dead'

[Ekaterina]

7. le bon temps roule

drip drip drip is starting to sound like some serious cracking sounds as the facade crumbles......way past time........

[nostamj]

12. drip drip drip drip drip ..................

[Brian Sweat]

19. Ouch!

Bush is they person I know who uses Lamasil orally.

[oasis]

5. A lying commander-in-thief and a lying Sec. of Defense

When these kids come home the "real" story will be told in homes all accross America.

[BOSSHOG]

8. One way or another

Either they will tell their story of being put in harms way based on a lie and being pissed about it or they will come home in body bags to the delight of christian conservatives. The white house is, as we chat, planning strategy to marginalize what these honest kids will say prior to the next selection. An incredible pattern has emerged; Conservatives have no use for honesty or the truth.

[OrdinaryTa]

16. Marginalizing the Vet

The white house is, as we chat, planning strategy to marginalize what these honest kids will say prior to the next selection.

That's what happened when Viet Nam veterans joined the antiwar movement. Conservatives marginalized these guys as angry, isolated victims of shell shock. In 1980 the myth of the crazy 'Nam vet morphed into the myth that veterans were despised, disowned and betrayed by the antiwar movement. This was never true.

However, the myth served as the foundation of the belief that America didn't lose the war in the field; we lost because lack of support caused our troops to become disheartened. Also in 1980, for the first time, we heard stories about hippies spitting on returning GI's. Significantly, there had been no reports of those incidents 10 years earlier when they were said to have been happening.

[ProfessorPlum]

20. I would love

to see some documentation about this - the "spitting on vets" lie has got to be one of the biggest, most damaging fallicies ever spun on us. Do you have an article or a link where this is discussed? Because if it isn't true, I'll have a great time jamming it down some people's craw.

[w4rma]

24. There are some DUers who had been spit upon. (n/t)

[OrdinaryTa]

26. Spitting Image

The book "Spitting Image" by sociologist Jerry Lembcke was published by NYU press. An essay concerning Lembcke's research is at http://www.rlg.org/annmtg/lembcke99.html In that essay, Lembcke states:

If these things happened as frequently as is now believed, I reasoned that it would be possible to find a record that someone at the time (the late 1960s and early 1970s) at least claimed that such acts were occurring. In newspapers of a city like San Francisco, where many of the spitting incidents supposedly took place, one would expect to find reports and perhaps even photographs that would constitute proof that the alleged incidents occurred. Other places to look included police reports and written histories about the anti-war movement.

My search for evidence turned up a couple of claims which, if interpreted generously, could have been construed to suggest that veterans or servicemen in uniform may have been spat on. But I also found research done by other scholars that showed quite convincingly that acts of hostility against veterans by protesters were almost nonexistent. No researchers cited reports that veterans were spat on ...

Disputing the existence of the legendary Spitting Hippie has been interpreted as bordering on treason. Proceed at your own risk.

[ProfessorPlum]

28. Thank you

I appreciate the information.

[OrdinaryTa]

27. Spitting Image

The book "Spitting Image" by sociologist Jerry Lembcke was published by NYU press. An essay concerning Lembcke's research is at http://www.rlg.org/annmtg/lembcke99.html In that essay, Lembcke states:

If these things happened as frequently as is now believed, I reasoned that it would be possible to find a record that someone at the time (the late 1960s and early 1970s) at least claimed that such acts were occurring. In newspapers of a city like San Francisco, where many of the spitting incidents supposedly took place, one would expect to find reports and perhaps even photographs that would constitute proof that the alleged incidents occurred. Other places to look included police reports and written histories about the anti-war movement.

My search for evidence turned up a couple of claims which, if interpreted generously, could have been construed to suggest that veterans or servicemen in uniform may have been spat on. But I also found research done by other scholars that showed quite convincingly that acts of hostility against veterans by protesters were almost nonexistent. No researchers cited reports that veterans were spat on ...

Disputing the existence of the legendary Spitting Hippie has been interpreted as bordering on treason. Proceed at your own risk.

[KellyW]

22. they don’t want to bring the 3ID home

I think that is why they don’t want to bring the 3ID home. Most will get out and then they are free to speak.

[webDude]

9. made me puke when the "reporter" asks her, immediately after this,...

if she had been seeking treatment for anxiety, medical treatment. Makes me wonder if someone whispered into his ear to ask her that to discredit her and focus attention elsewhere. I mean, c'mon, the next question out of any reporter's mouth should have been something like, " what lies are you talking about?" It was a despicable thing to do, to ask on camera if you were seeking treatment from a psychotherapist, from a lady that had already been run throught the wringer.

To not ask it does assume that everyone know what lies she is talking about, and evidentally, everyone does not.

[xxqqqzme]

21. surprized he didn't

ask her what 'time'of the month it is 4 her or if she suffered from PMS! What a turd!

[yolatengo]

25. yeah, but then should could say

"I'd LOVE to get therapy to help deal with this, but you see,
BUSH cut VA funding for such things and since he ALSO cut
overseas/hazard/war pay for my husband, I can't AFFORD
to pay for it myself".

"Bush lied to all of us, cut everything for us, and now we're
just supposed to soldier on, our warriors and their familes."

Can't hear THAT on national tv, can we?

Bigby

[Brian Sweat]

15. Doing my best John Stewart impression

"Whuh?"

[KCDem]

32. I like the wha-wha-WHA??????? myself!

Very sad interview. I wonder how many more people she represents.

It seems that the military is really losing their faith and energy, becoming very demoralized, and that will lead to only more fatalities.

[damnraddem]

23. They claimed that Clinton was destroying the military -- here's evidence .

that Dubya is. Whether they're home by November 2004 or still in Iraq, voting be absentee ballot, I think that a good number of military votes will have switched to the Democrats.

[Le Taz Hot]

30. I was going to post something about the interview this morning

but I'm notorious lately for unintenionallly duplicating threads. The thing that absolutely made me crazy after this brave young woman got on national TV and outright said the president lied to us was that IMMEDIATELY AFTER that comment, the "reporter" mentioned that she had recently begun seeing a doctor for her "stress." I about threw a shoe through the TV when I heard that. The inference was unmistakeable: "You're obviously mentally imablanced."

I'm sincerely hoping more military will begin speaking out.

[LiberalLibra]

31. Well, there goes the military vote - what - economy voters next???.....

....Nov 2004 can't get here fast enough.