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. In Vietnam and elsewhere, the CIA's torture regime already pointed
to Abu Grahaib.
Professor Al McCoy's 2006 book A Question of Torture documents the
100 000 Vietnamese tortured to death in the CIA's 'pump and dump'
program --- pump prisoners for information then dump the bodies.
Hundreds of thousands of torture survivors also had their lives
broken. (And Vietnam was not the worst place for torture in the
American Empire. 'Pump and dump' probably had its heyday in the
Philippines. Rather than dispose of the evidence of torture there, the
mangled bodies of torture victims were often dumped conspicuously on
street corners to traumatize society at large).
But back to the campaigns for Vietnamese and Iraqi Freedom.
In Vietnam, the hundreds of thousands of torture victims, the tens
of thousands murdered by US operatives in the Pyle-like Phoenix
program, the millions of Vietnamese killed and untold destruction of
the largest conventional bombing offensive in history, the on-going
effects of chemical defoliation with Agent Orange, and the hundreds of
thousands of US and allied troop casualties before the forced
withdrawal in 1975 have all gone missing from President Bush's
analysis. These agonies were a legacy of the US involvement in Vietnam
in the first place. The agonies of the 'boat people' and the 're-
education camps' followed.
Again in Iraq, the President imagines American idealism stepping in
to confront a pre-existing catastrophe. But his administration caused
it. Its insistence on the threat of non-existent WMD and of the
unproven links between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda in 2002 created the
present problem. The failure to have an occupation plan to restore
essential services after the invasion, the obscenity of Abu Ghraib,
the unchecked killing of Iraqi civilians, the inability of the Iraqi
regime to meet the bench marks of acceptable progress in the war, and
the doubtful impact of the recent US troop surge simply round out the
disaster. The radical increase when compared with the Vietnam War of
genital surgery among US casualties from bomb blasts is another of the
unstated agonies of the devil's playground that, with John Howard's
support, the Bush Administration has created for terrorism in Iraq.
At APEC 2007 in Sydney, Bush did not mention Vietnam. But he again
urged us to support his disastrous policies in Iraq---where Graham
Greene was also got it right. As one American commentator recently put
it: George Bush is 'the ultimate Alden Pyle'. 4
1 China Hand, Monday, "I Am Alden Pyle: President Bush's Vietnam
Fantasy", August 27, 2007, http://chinamatters.blogspot.com/80/ points
this out before me.
2 CIA admitted the deaths of 20,587 Viet Cong 'suspects' in between
1968 and 1971. The Saigon government attributed 40,994 VC deaths to
Phoenix. McCoy, p. 67.
3 Journalist David Rosen, Genital Injuries, 'Prosthetic Devices and
the War on Terror: The Hidden Cost of the War on terror'.
d...@i...netcom.com
4 See note 1.
Guests
Greg Lockhart
Served in the Australian Army Training Team in Vietnam
Honorary Historian of the Vietnam Vetrans' Federation of Australia
Australian Research Scholar
Australian National University
Publications
Title: The Minefield: An Australian Tragedy in Vietnam
Author: Greg Lockhart
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN 978 1 74114 106 1
Producer
Sue Clark
Perspective
Expert Commentary by opinion-makers on Radio National.
thursday 13 september 07
www.abc.net.au/rn/perspective/ -
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