Non Tech -- Daniel Ellsberg: Leak Against This War

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:11:25 -0800
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger () ibd com>
Subject: Daniel Ellsberg: Leak Against This War
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>, Dewayne Hendricks <dewayne () warpspeed com>

Leak Against This War
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1132043,00.html
  By Daniel Ellsberg
  The Guardian

  Tuesday 27 January 2004

US and British officials must expose their leaders' lies about Iraq - as I
did over Vietnam.

  After 17 months observing pacification efforts in Vietnam as a state
department official, I laid eyes upon an unmistakable enemy for the first
time on New Year's Day in 1967. I was walking point with three members of a
company from the US army's 25th Division, moving through tall rice, the
water over our ankles, when we heard firing close behind us. We spun around,
ready to fire. I saw a boy of about 15, wearing nothing but ragged black
shorts, crouching and firing an AK-47 at the troops behind us. I could see
two others, heads just above the top of the rice, firing as well.

  They had lain there, letting us four pass so as to get a better shot at
the main body of troops. We couldn't fire at them, because we would have
been firing into our own platoon. But a lot of its fire came back right at
us. Dropping to the ground, I watched this kid firing away for 10 seconds,
till he disappeared with his buddies into the rice. After a minute the
platoon ceased fire in our direction and we got up and moved on.

  About an hour later, the same thing happened again; this time I only saw a
glimpse of a black jersey through the rice. I was very impressed, not only
by their tactics but by their performance.

  One thing was clear: these were local boys. They had the advantage of
knowing every ditch and dyke, every tree and blade of rice and piece of
cover, like it was their own backyard. Because it was their backyard. No
doubt (I thought later) that was why they had the nerve to pop up in the
midst of a reinforced battalion and fire away with American troops on all
sides. They thought they were shooting at trespassers, occupiers, that they
had a right to be there and we didn't. This would have been a good moment to
ask myself if they were wrong, and if we had a good enough reason to be in
their backyard to be fired at.

  Later that afternoon, I turned to the radio man, a wiry African American
kid who looked too thin to be lugging his 75lb radio, and asked: "By any
chance, do you ever feel like the redcoats?"

  Without missing a beat he said, in a drawl: "I've been thinking that ...
all ... day." You couldn't miss the comparison if you'd gone to grade school
in America. Foreign troops far from home, wearing helmets and uniforms and
carrying heavy equipment, getting shot at every half-hour by non-uniformed
irregulars near their own homes, blending into the local population after
each attack.

  I can't help but remember that afternoon as I read about US and British
patrols meeting rockets and mines without warning in the cities of Iraq. As
we faced ambush after ambush in the countryside, we passed villagers who
could have told us we were about to be attacked. Why didn't they? First,
there was a good chance their friends and family members were the ones doing
the attacking. Second, we were widely seen by the local population not as
allies or protectors - as we preferred to imagine - but as foreign
occupiers. Helping us would have been seen as collaboration, unpatriotic.
Third, they knew that to collaborate was to be in danger from the
resistance, and that the foreigners' ability to protect them was negligible.

  There could not be a more exact parallel between this situation and Iraq.
Our troops in Iraq keep walking into attacks in the course of patrols
apparently designed to provide "security" for civilians who, mysteriously,
do not appear the slightest bit inclined to warn us of these attacks. This
situation - as in Vietnam - is a harbinger of endless bloodletting. I
believe American and British soldiers will be dying, and killing, in that
country as long as they remain there.

  As more and more US and British families lose loved ones in Iraq - killed
while ostensibly protecting a population that does not appear to want them
there - they will begin to ask: "How did we get into this mess, and why are
we still in it?" And the answers they find will be disturbingly similar to
those the American public found for Vietnam.

  I served three US presidents - Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - who lied
repeatedly and blatantly about our reasons for entering Vietnam, and the
risks in our staying there. For the past year, I have found myself in the
horrifying position of watching history repeat itself. I believe that George
Bush and Tony Blair lied - and continue to lie - as blatantly about their
reasons for entering Iraq and the prospects for the invasion and occupation
as the presidents I served did about Vietnam.

  By the time I released to the press in 1971 what became known as the
Pentagon Papers - 7,000 pages of top-secret documents demonstrating that
virtually everything four American presidents had told the public about our
involvement in Vietnam was false - I had known that pattern as an insider
for years, and I knew that a fifth president, Richard Nixon, was following
in their footsteps. In the fall of 2002, I hoped that officials in
Washington and London who knew that our countries were being lied into an
illegal, bloody war and occupation would consider doing what I wish I had
done in 1964 or 1965, years before I did, before the bombs started to fall:
expose these lies, with documents.

  I can only admire the more timely, courageous action of Katherine Gun, the
GCHQ translator who risked her career and freedom to expose an illegal plan
to win official and public support for an illegal war, before that war had
started. Her revelation of a classified document urging British intelligence
to help the US bug the phones of all the members of the UN security council
to manipulate their votes on the war may have been critical in denying the
invasion a false cloak of legitimacy. That did not prevent the aggression,
but it was reasonable for her to hope that her country would not choose to
act as an outlaw, thereby saving lives. She did what she could, in time for
it to make a difference, as indeed others should have done, and still can.

  I have no doubt that there are thousands of pages of documents in safes in
London and Washington right now - the Pentagon Papers of Iraq - whose
unauthorised revelation would drastically alter the public discourse on
whether we should continue sending our children to die in Iraq. That's clear
from what has already come out through unauthorised disclosures from many
anonymous sources and from officials and former officials such as David
Kelly and US ambassador Joseph Wilson, who revealed the falsity of reports
that Iraq had pursued uranium from Niger, which President Bush none the less
cited as endorsed by British intelligence in his state of the union address
before the war. Both Downing Street and the White House organised covert
pressure to punish these leakers and to deter others, in Dr Kelly's case
with tragic results.

  Those who reveal documents on the scale necessary to return foreign policy
to democratic control risk prosecution and prison sentences, as Katherine
Gun is now facing. I faced 12 felony counts and a possible sentence of 115
years; the charges were dismissed when it was discovered that White House
actions aimed at stopping further revelations of administration lying had
included criminal actions against me.

  Exposing governmental lies carries a heavy personal risk, even in our
democracies. But that risk can be worthwhile when a war's-worth of lives is
at stake.
--
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
http://www.ibd.com

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