The Ming Report

May, 2005

A WEEK IN THE BATTLE FOR IRAQI HEARTS AND MINDS

May 23, 2005 - Last week a senior American commander in Baghdad speaking “on background” expressed the opinion that while the US mission would be ultimately successful the effort would take years. Last week one more American soldier was convicted in the Abu Ghraib scandal. Last week the Army’s investigation of abuse and murder of Afghanis held at Bagram Air Base. Last Week international media mogul Rupert Murdock published degrading photographs of Saddam Hussein and others in US custody – photographs that could only come from the US military. Last week at least 13 American soldiers died in Iraq bringing the war’s death toll to at least 1634. And last week Operation Squeeze Play, the largest Iraqi – US joint operation to date - swept the Abu Ghraib district and detained an estimated 300 suspected rebels overnight. The commander of the US 10th Mountain division troops involved in the raid described the Iraqi forces as working well together and demonstrating good skills. It is the same kind of language that came out of the Saigon follies so many years ago. And finally this week the administration blamed Newsweek for anti-American demonstrations that cost 16 demonstrators their lives....click here for entire article.

The Non-Denial Denials

May 16, 2005 - Once upon a time Michael Isikoff was the conservatives’ ideal investigative journalist. That was when he leaked the story of the Monica Lewinski – Linda Tripp tapes to Matt Drudge. Now he has joined the ranks of the malignant left leaning reporters who infest the main stream news media. The right is rising in righteous indignation over a paragraph written in part by Isikoff in Newsweek’s May 1st Periscope column. Isikoff reported that U.S. Southern Command report would say that military investigators had found that interrogators desecrated the Koran as a technique to psychologically break detainees at Guantanamo. Following a firestorm over the story in the Moslem east, Anti-American rioting, and demands that the guilty be punished the Pentagon issued a terse statement denying that the Southern Command report would substantiate the story that the Koran had been desecrated which had been reported in the media for weeks based upon freed detainees’ statements....click here for entire article.

RUBBER STAMPS

May 13, 2005 - As early as July 2002 the British cabinet was told that the President of the United States had decided on using military force to achieve regime change in Iraq. The ministers were told that intelligence was being “fixed” to prepare the public for war. In January 2003 the Secretary of State of the United States went before the United Nations Security Council with that “fixed” intelligence to make the case for war against Iraq. He freely cited supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as the justification for military action. The warnings to the world were false; the world now knows them to have been false; and it was America’s credibility and her reputation that has suffered.

Now, as the war in Iraq stumbles on and on the President has chosen John Bolton to be our man in the United Nations. His record is as clear as his bias. When the intelligence community would not twist its findings to support his policy directions he demanded that the recalcitrant analysts be transferred or fired – not once but several times. Even the Senators who support the nomination acknowledge that Bolton has a style that is rough around the edges. The Secretary of State seeks to allay some Senators’ concern as she too acknowledges Bolton’s faults and says that she will closely supervise him. That is small comfort coming from one who defended the fixed intelligence to the bitter end....click here for entire article.

The Way Things Are

May 12, 2005 - According to The Financial Times real incomes of Americans are shrinking at the fastest rate since December 1991 when George H. W. Bush was President. As it did 12 years ago price inflation is outstripping wage gains and Americans are falling farther behind – especially at the gas pump. The Senate quietly passed a $83 Billion supplemental appropriation for operations in Iraq. That brings the cost of the war to in excess of $300 Billion. The American casualty count in Iraq is edging toward 1700 dead with nearly 12,500 wounded in the war that was over two years ago.

Marine raids along the Syrian border ran into a well planned defense in depth from prepared defensive positions. The Baghdad follies report an insurgent body count of at least 100. Commanders on the ground say it is closer to a dozen or two. The language of the military news briefings is familiar. The Marine’s mission along the Syrian border is interdiction the infiltration of supplies and fighters along the enemy’s rat line from its Syrian sanctuary. In this re-enactment the Euphrates is playing the part of the Mekong and the Swift Boats’ descendants are back on the river as we plunge into the third year of this war. Are we far removed from a 21st century version of the Cambodian incursion with the Marines operating on the Syrian border?....click here for entire article.

LOOKING FOR THE LIGHT

May 2, 2005 - "I can still hear the voices of American embassy officials and their Vietnamese interpreters shouting: 'Khong ai se bi bo lai!' (no one will be left behind) at the frantic throng outside the embassy compound. It was a scene that still saddens me - one that made me ashamed to be an American, not because we were leaving in abject defeat but because we were betraying thousands if not millions of Vietnamese who believed our promises of a free and better Vietnam if they supported our policies"

Ron Yates is Dean of the College of Communications at the Champaign-Urbana campus of the University of Illinois. Thirty years ago he was a young reporter assigned by the Chicago Tribune to cover the last days of the War in Vietnam and he was there on April 30, 1975 when United States citizens were evacuated. For the United States the war had ended 2 years earlier when the Kissinger peace deal was inked in Paris. From that point on the burden of defending the regime in Saigon fell on the Vietnamese alone. Henry collected his Nobel Peace Prize and the Vietnamization policy was implemented....click here for entire article.