Who Are These Men?

Men without Honor (65 comments )
READ MORE: Iraq, Radical Right, Saddam Hussein, George W. Bush

"No one can acquire honor by doing what is wrong."- Thomas Jefferson

As the trumpets were blaring and the guns were sounding, I watched Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush on television and wondered anew, "What kind of men are these?" Surely, they must be among the first Americans to be almost devoid of conscience....

What kind of men are these?"

Rumsfeld got it all wrong and still thinks that's all right. He went to war with the army he had and then did not take responsibility for the horror they got. He was a partner in corporate America's giant profits off of the war and it did not bother him as small towns had to take up donations to buy bulletproof vests for their children at war. Rumsfeld sent in his army "light and fast" against an enemy even novices knew was going to be slow and asymmetrical. American troops were scavenging in junk yards for scrap metal to armor-up their Humvees while Rumsfeld assured the president freedom was on the march. Instead, it was stumbling into a hopeless abyss.

...


We now need peacemakers; not more warriors. Yet John McCain comes to us and says the answer is more soldiers, which only means more death. General William Westmoreland consistently was able to convince Lyndon Johnson more troops were the answer to an asymmetrical enemy in Vietnam. But they never were. They were only more kids that did not need to die. Iraq is Vietnam without the trees.
McCain served our country with honor but he is slowly sacrificing it for his craven political ambitions. In South Carolina in 2000, from backstage I watched him stand and confront George W. Bush about the nasty attacks on McCain's mental health, his time in the service, and his personal life. Bush explained it all away with the flip, "It's just politics, John." Eventually, McCain was out on the trail with the man who had lied about his character and his honorable service to America; a man who had found a way to avoid the danger of the combat that had turned McCain into a prisoner of war. How could McCain support such a man? ...
Whenever George W. Bush has had a chance to act on principle and honorably, he has chosen the politically expedient course. While his then congressman father promoted the War in Vietnam for the sons of others, his own son was finding a safe spot in an Air Guard unit in Houston. Dealing with Saddam Hussein, our president had a chance to do what is right and honest but he changed the truth and blamed others so that he might have an excuse to work out his psychological yearnings over his own father and their innate competitiveness. Daddy had an oil company; W. drilled dry holes. Daddy played varsity baseball at Yale; W. became a general manager of a baseball team. Daddy ran for congress, W. ran for governor. Daddy got elected president; W. got reelected president. Daddy chased Saddam out of Kuwait; W. ran him down in Baghdad and today shows the former dictator's pistol to close friends visiting the Oval Office. We are all victims of the Bush family's tortured psychology and the people like Rumsfeld, Powell, and McCain who have been drawn into their dark inner circle.
"What kind of men are these?"
The full text is at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/men-without-honor_b_36658.html