LONG WARS ARE SO DEADLY 

                               SHAME ON GEORGE BUSH, CHENEY AND NANCY PELOSI
                It was not hard to understand that starting a war in Iraq would be a horrible tragedy.

                From from the length of the US War in Viet Nam, I learned that such wars seem to have
                to be stopped in the streets by demonstrating Americans.  Soul-less politicians have no
                problem letting the war go on and on.  It took a soldier who knew war to bring the Korean
                war to an end   The Iraq war fiasco would seem to show that "chicken-hawks" are too
                quick to start a war and too slow to admit they have made a deadly stupid and deadly
                costly blunder.



 ============================ 1917 ===================================           

                         

    ============================ 1918 ===================================     

---------------------------------------- 1969 ----------------------------------------------------------


                                       Nixon Risked Nuclear War in 1969
                    
        The excerpts below come from http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar

        "During his campaign for the presidency the year before, Richard Nixon had vowed to end that conflict.
But more than 4,500 Americans had died there in the first six months of 1969, including 84 soldiers at the debacle
of Hamburger Hill. Meanwhile, the peace negotiations in Paris, which many people hoped would end the conflict,
had broken down. The Vietnamese had declared that they would just sit there, conceding nothing, "until the chairs rot."
Frustrated, Nixon decided to try something new: threaten the Soviet Union with a massive nuclear strike and make its
leaders think he was crazy enough to go through with it. His hope was that the Soviets would be so frightened of events
spinning out of control that they would strong-arm Hanoi, telling the North Vietnamese to start making concessions
at the negotiating table or risk losing Soviet military support."
     "Codenamed Giant Lance, Nixon's plan was the culmination of a strategy of premeditated madness he had developed
with national security adviser Henry Kissinger. The details of this episode remained secret for 35 years and have never
been fully told. Now, thanks to documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, it's clear that Giant Lance
was the leading example of what historians came to call the "madman theory": Nixon's notion that faked, finger-on-the-button
rage could bring the Soviets to heel.
    "Nixon and Kissinger put the plan in motion on October 10, sending the US military's Strategic Air Command an
urgent order to prepare for a possible confrontation: They wanted the most powerful thermonuclear weapons in the
US arsenal readied for immediate use against the Soviet Union. The mission was so secretive that even senior military
officers following the orders — including the SAC commander himself — were not informed of its true purpose....
   "On the morning of October 27, 1969, a squadron of 18 B-52s — massive bombers with eight turbo engines and
185-foot wingspans — began racing from the western US toward the eastern border of the Soviet Union. The pilots
flew for 18 hours without rest, hurtling toward their targets at more than 500 miles per hour. Each plane was loaded
with nuclear weapons hundreds of times more powerful than the ones that had obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The B-52s, known as Stratofortresses, slowed only once, along the coast of Canada near the polar ice cap. Here,
KC-135 planes — essentially 707s filled with jet fuel — carefully approached the bombers. They inched into place
for a delicate in-flight connection, transferring thousands of gallons from aircraft to aircraft through a long, thin tube.
One unfortunate shift in the wind, or twitch of the controls, and a plane filled with up to 150 tons of fuel could crash
into a plane filled with nuclear ordnance. The aircraft were pointed toward Moscow, but the real goal was to change
the war in Vietnam.

    "After their launch, the B-52s pressed against Soviet airspace for three days. They skirted enemy territory, challenging
defenses and taunting Soviet aircraft. The pilots remained on alert, prepared to drop their bombs if ordered. The Soviets
likely knew about the threat as it was unfolding: Their radar picked up the planes early in their flight paths, and their
spies monitored American bases. They knew the bombers were armed with nuclear weapons, because they could
determine their weight from takeoff patterns and fuel use. In past years, the US had kept nuclear-armed planes in the air
as a possible deterrent (if the Soviets blew up all of our air bases in a surprise attack, we'd still be able to respond).
But in 1968, the Pentagon publicly banned that practice — so the Soviets wouldn't have thought the 18 planes were
part of a patrol. Secretary of defense Melvin Laird, who opposed the operation, worried that the Soviets would
either interpret Giant Lance as an attack, causing catastrophe, or as a bluff, making Washington look weak".
    This story continues at http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/16-03/ff_nuclearwar?currentPage=2

                      People discover that Nixon's peace plan was intensifying the bombing of Hanoi.


--------------------------------------- 1970 ----------------------------------------------------------
            Nixon expanded war into Laos and Cambodia, completely violating the international rights of these
countries.  It tried to keep these secret campaigns.  The intense bombing campaigns and intervention in
Cambodia in late April 1970 sparked intense campus protests all across America. At Kent State in Ohio,
four students were killed by National Guardsmen.  Several were not even in the student protects but
were drawn by the crowds.   Shock waves crossed the nation as students at Jackson State in Mississippi
were also shot and killed by police as they demonstrated against the war.
           Here is a Sampling Of Anti-War Songs I remember hearing then.
         

    

                       From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4444638.stm
                                                  Nixon ordered Cambodia cover-up (BBC report)
                                                                               1970
              "Richard Nixon told top aides involved in Vietnam to lie to the public about US operations in neighbouring Cambodia,
               files released in Washington show.    He ordered the deception at a meeting of his top military and national security aides
               in 1970, a month after admitting publicly to a secret war. "Publicly, we say one thing - actually, we do another," the president
               said in a memo after the meeting.  About 14,000 US troops were in Cambodia hunting North Vietnamese forces.  
               Nixon's revelation of the operation sparked protests and congressional action over what many US lawmakers viewed
               as an illegal war.  When he called the security meeting at his Western White House in California on 31 May, it was to tell his
               aides to carry on without regard to public opinion at home.   "I want you to put the air in there and not spare the horses
                - do not withdraw for domestic reasons but only for military reasons," the files released by the US National Archives show
                him as saying.  "Just do it. Don't come back and ask permission each time." "We cannot sit here and let the enemy believe
                that Cambodia is our last gasp," he argued in the memo, marked as "Eyes Only, Top Secret Sensitive".  Nixon noted that
                Americans already believed the Cambodian operation was "all but over".   He also ordered plans for offensive operations
                in neutral Laos and a summer offensive in South Vietnam.
           
                   On April 30th, 1970, Nixon publicly admitted the expansion of the war in Viet Nam to Laos and Cambodia.


                                   Anti War Protests in Washington often led to market weakness.

• November 15, 1969 - National Mobilization to End the War. Vietnam Moratorium.
  600,000 demonstrate against the war in Vietnam.
• May 9, 1970 - Kent State/Cambodia Incursion Protest. A week after the Kent State shootings,
  a 100,000 demonstrators converged on Washington to protest the shootings and President Richard Nixon's
  incursion into Cambodia.
• April 19, 1971 - Operation Dewey Canyon Three by the Vietnam Veterans against the War. Over 2,000
  veterans camp on the Mall, protest all over the city. John Kerry testifies in front of Senate.
• April 24, 1971 - Vietnam War Out Now rally. 500,000 call for end to Vietnam War.
• May 3, 1971 - 1971 May Day Protests. Mass action by Vietnam anti-war militants to shut down the
  federal government.
• January 20, 1973, Anti-war protest demonstration. Includes the Yippie-Zippie RAT float & SDS
  "March Against Racism & the War" contingent.
• 
  -------------------------------------- 1973 ----------------------------------------------------------
    The extent of Nixon's secret war in Cambodia and Laos was not discovered by Congress until
  July 1973.
  
  
  ------------------------------------- 1974 ----------------------------------------------------------
  
  
  
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