Tuesday, June 13, 2006

Iraq's Pentagon Papers

Daniel Ellsberg makes an impassioned case for someone to do the right thing and expose documentation about the illegal and immoral warmaking of the Bush cabal.

But will someone risk life imprisonment, as he did, to save the lives of others?

We can hope.

Today, there must be, at the very least, hundreds of civilian and military officials in the Pentagon, CIA, State Department, National Security Agency and White House who have in their safes and computers comparable documentation of intense internal debates -- so far carefully concealed from Congress and the public -- about prospective or actual war crimes, reckless policies and domestic crimes: the Pentagon Papers of Iraq, Iran or the ongoing war on U.S. liberties. Some of those officials, I hope, will choose to accept the personal risks of revealing the truth -- earlier than I did -- before more lives are lost or a new war is launched.

Haditha holds a mirror up not just to American troops in the field, but to our whole society. Not just to the liars in government but to those who believe them too easily. And to all of us in the public, in the administration, in Congress and the media who dissent so far ineffectively or who stand by as murder is being done and do nothing to stop it or expose it.

It is past time for Americans to summon the civil courage to face what is being done in their name and to refuse to be accomplices. We must force Congress and this president, or their successors if necessary, to act upon the moral proposition that the U.S. must stop killing men, women and children in Iraq, and must not begin to do so in Iran.

Neither the lives we have lost, nor the lives we have taken, give the U.S. any right to determine by fire and airpower who shall govern or who shall die in countries we have wrongly attacked.

1 Comments:

Blogger Cybele said...

Daniel Ellsberg's revelation of the so-called Pentagon Papers led to the creation of the Plumbers Unit, and further crimes against the American people. It was these crimes that led to the resignation of President Nixon, who did not begin, but inherited, the Vietnam war.

Nothing gives the US government the 'right' to do anything. It simply is fact that the US is the biggest and the strongest and will do whatever the bastard bullies in power feel is in their own best interest.

Gone are the days when we have Ellsberg, Graham, Woodward, Bernstein, and Felt to fix on as iconic heros. That was the idealistic Then, and Now is sour and embittered.

10:16 AM  

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