The Advisor - 16 September, 2006

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Comments

[Hal Carpenter]

Col. Lang,

That's a miserable attempt on page 6 to tie the mess in Iraq to 9/11. The Zalmay Khalilzad quote at the bottom is particularly two faced.
I wish the Army media would get the hell out of partisan politics.

Hal Carpenter

[Michael Murry]

Mr. Carpenter,

I share your distaste for those who knowingly and dishonestly conflate the events of 9/11/2001 with anything to do with Iraq, its government, or its people. The factual truth of things has never, ever, supported such transparently bogus propaganda. Yet still the shameless flogging of long-discredited lies persists in our civilian and military publications. That so many Americans continue to tolerate this managed mendacity would surprise and enrage me if I hadn't already lived through the same sort of thing decades ago during the entire debacle of the American War on Vietnam. Long ago the American government also sent me abroad in search of monsters to destroy, stuffed full of the same kinds of lies and ignorance. The shock of learning the truth, naturally, left me bitter and skeptical to this day.

Anyway, we could discuss in expository prose the many reasons why our government and military treat us citizens as the enemy they most fear, but for my part, I'll just contribute a little poetic verse called:

"Buyer's Remorse"

They go to their deaths and maiming
Convinced of the lies they were told
Like the Fig Leaf Contingent before them
The Buy Time Brigade has been sold

He sent them to die for nothing
Who never himself had to serve
Now he covers his ass in a dither
While promising never to swerve

They fill up their days with minutes
Spent marking the time that remains
Then extended or stop-lossed they re-up
For him who has no cogent aims

Their leader has gambled their fortunes
A deck of marked cards up his sleeve
So they pay with their lives to no purpose
For him absent without their leave

The last time we had the smart ones:
The Best and the Brightest, they said
But now our low aim only guarantees
The Worst and the Dullest instead

Campaigning, he primps and poses
He always has done so before
Hoping others accomplish his missions
While he escapes out the back door

Yet why seem surprised to see it?
What the fools and the knaves have wrought
Great Leader just did what he knew he could:
He sold them the lies that they bought

We keep getting rotten samples
Of Lyndons and Dubyas and Dicks
So unless we start having some hangings
We'll only get more of the pricks

Remember old Mussolini?
Hung upside-down by his own heels
The Italians have since had no other
Just think of it and the mind reels!

Our government lies from habit
Whoever speaks truth will get smeared
On the home front the psy-ops continue
With us as the enemy feared

Bush told us to just go shopping
He told us it wouldn't take long
"We had to hit someone," Tom Friedman said
For gratis we'd get to look strong

Bush told us we had to hurry
We couldn't take time out to think
He asked us for nothing but fear itself
He told us his shit didn't stink

He didn't need our permission
Forgiveness he'd take later on
So we shopped till we dropped on our plastic
The same way he financed his con

He sold us the war he wanted
We purchased a pig in a poke
Now he makes lame excuses undaunted
By what has become his sick joke

Osama can't veto our laws
Al Qaeda can't change how we live
Only we can abandon our freedoms
They can't take what we do not give

Michael Murry, "The Misfortune Teller," Copyright 2006