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April
26 / 27, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
The Other War: Bush, Ashcroft and
the End of Civil Liberties
Saul
Landau
Iraq War: a Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism
William
A. Cook
Sharon Recruits US as Mercenaries Against Syria
William
S. Lind
Now the Real War Starts
John Chuckman
In Jesus's Name:
Franklin Graham's Christian Empire
David
MacMichael and Ray McGovern
Ex-CIA Analysts on WMD: Where? Find?
Plant?
Gary Leupp
Why the War on Iraq was (and Remains) Wrong
Robert
Sandels
Cuba Crackdown: a Revolt Against Bush's National Security Strategy?
CounterPunch
Wire
An Open Letter to Jerry Brown on Oakland Police Violence Against
Peace Activists and Dock Workers
Mickey
Z.
Our Ba'athists
Anthony
Gancarski
Nader Plays Pullman
Scott
Handleman
The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case in Its True Colors
Claud Cockburn
Evelyn Waugh's Ear Trumpet
Poets'
Basement
Matt Simon, Sam Hamod, Hammond Guthrie and Stew Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/26
April
25, 2003
David
Vest
It's Not the Oil; It's the Art!
Steven
Higgs
All About Tucker Carlson
Walt
Brasch
The Shock and Awe of American Ignorance
Alexander
Cockburn
The Decline of American Journalism:
the Case of Judy Miller
Zeynep
Toufe
A Letter to the People of Iraq from an Anti-War Activist
CounterPunch
Wire
Season of the Witch: Jeane Kirkpatrick Unbound
Hammond
Guthrie
Springtime in Iraq
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/25
Website
of the Day
Having
a Great Time, Wish You Were Here: Postcards from a War
April
24, 2003
Lois
Whitman
An Open Letter to Rumsfeld on the
Child Detainees at Guantanamo
Uri
Avnery
Abu vs. Abu: It's Not About Egos
David
Lindorff
Day Care in the Name of National Security? About Those Kids in
Camp X-Ray
John Grebe
Rev. Pat Robertson's Message in the Temple
Dokhi
Fassihian
Monster.Com: Ethnic Cleansing on the Web?
CounterPunch
Wire
Israeli Army Chief Threatens Peace Activists
Sam
Hamod
Our Man in Baghdad
Annie
C. Higgins
Do You Regret Being an American?
Harold
A. Gould
Will They Hate Us Forever?
Stew Albert
Big Brother in Bed
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/24
Website
of the Day
Muscles
Abroad
Hot Stories
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
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Gore Vidal
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Erosion of the American Dream
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April 29,
2003
POWs:
Then and Now
By MICKEY Z.
On Jan. 17, 1991, Navy Capt. Michael Scott Speicher,
32, was piloting a F/A-18 fighter jet at the start of the first
Gulf War. Hit by an air-to-air missile fired by an Iraqi warplane,
Speicher, known as a "top gun among fliers," was later
given up for dead. However, as reported by Chicago Tribune foreign
correspondent, Christine Spolar ("U.S. hunts POW of '91
war," April 24, 2003), "Classified documents show that
Speicher was seen years after being shot down." As recently
as early 2002, a host of unnamed, anonymous, yet "credible"
sources declared Speicher to be alive and in Iraqi custody.
A faulty DNA test misidentified a body
as that of Speicher's and the case was considered closed. "His
wife remarried, and she and her new husband, a former Navy pilot,
had two children," explained Spolar. When Speicher's fighter
plane was found, largely intact, in December 1993, everything
changed. The Pentagon admitted the error and by 2000, President
Bill Clinton publicly declared Speicher "might be alive"
and "if he isSwe're going to do everything to get him out."
In reality, of course, little was done
to secure Speicher's release...but he was promoted twice and,
dead or alive, is now a captain.
Besides highlighting U.S. military inefficiency
and insensitivity, Speicher's story evokes images of a soldier
left behind to face inhuman torture in a hateful country. This
image, along with more recent U.S. POWs like Jessica Lynch, resurrects
a potent tool of wartime spin: The template of a dehumanized
enemy victimizing the good guys (and girls) was forged during
the U.S. invasion of South Vietnam.
"There are some fairly obvious needs
being met by the images of American POWs tortured year after
year by sadistic Asian communists," states H. Bruce Franklin,
author of MIA: Mythmaking in America. Considering the influence
this fairy tale has wielded both in pop culture and in demonizing
the Vietnamese, its veracity is remarkably tenuous. "It
is unique,"  Franklin says. "What
distinguishes it is that this is an entirely manufactured issue."
It is also an emotional issue, an issue susceptible to spin.
Spin-inspired emotion helps account for its durability; it helps
explain how Americans have managed to ignore far greater numbers
of MIAs in other wars. In WWII and the Korean War, between 20
and 25 percent of U.S. combat dead were never found. In Vietnam,
it was 3.4 percent.
This is where the "manufactured"
part comes into play. Upon his election in 1968, President Richard
Nixon added an unusual precondition at the Paris Peace Talks
with North Vietnam: Before the U.S. would agree to even discuss
terms for ending the war, Hanoi and the southern insurgents must
release all U.S. POWs. "This is totally crazy," says
Franklin. "This is not what belligerent nations do. They
figure out the terms for ending the war and then they exchange
POWs." The New York Times, of course, did not agree. In
1969, the newspaper of record weighed in the POW/MIA debate,
calling it a "a humanitarian, not a political issue,"
before condemning "the Communist side" as "inhuman."
According to Franklin, "Nixon and Kissinger were manufacturing
the belief that there might be POWs for very specific purposes:
to renege of the $4 billion in aid and to keep the war going.
There is irrefutable evidence that they were doing this and they
were doing it consciously." Wartime spin was once again
called on to recast the enemy as a merciless villain and it worked.
A pro-war group called Victory in Vietnam Association (VIVA)
concocted a scheme to sell bracelets engraved with the names
of POWS and MIAs to fund a campaign to raise awareness. Before
the end of the war, more than 10 million Americans wore bracelets,
including celebrities from Johnny Carson to Sonny and Cher to
Nixon himself. Such lucrative mythmaking took root in a nation
seeking to justify and explain its behavior and position. Celluloid
POW-rescuers like Rambo and Chuck Norris exacted revenge not
only on Vietnam but also on the U.S. government for its inaction.
As late as 1991, 69 percent of Americans believed that POWs were
still being held in Vietnam and 52 percent believed the U.S.
government had not done enough to bring the POWs home.
With a handful of U.S. POWs having been
held in the Gulf (and now destined for book deals and TV movies)
and U.S. corporations poised to "rebuild" the post-Hussein
Iraq, not much is said these days about those alleged POWs in
Vietnam...where American sneaker companies now erect sweatshops
and utilize impoverished Vietnamese as cheap labor.
So, how do you say "just do it"
in Arabic?
Mickey Z.
is the author of The
Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet
and an editor at Wide Angle.
He can be reached at: mzx2@earthlink.net.
Yesterday's
Features
Elaine
Cassel
The Other War: Bush, Ashcroft and
the End of Civil Liberties
Saul
Landau
Iraq War: a Policy of Christian and Jewish Fundamentalism
William
A. Cook
Sharon Recruits US as Mercenaries Against Syria
William
S. Lind
Now the Real War Starts
John Chuckman
In Jesus's Name:
Franklin Graham's Christian Empire
David
MacMichael and Ray McGovern
Ex-CIA Analysts on WMD: Where? Find?
Plant?
Gary Leupp
Why the War on Iraq was (and Remains) Wrong
Robert
Sandels
Cuba Crackdown: a Revolt Against Bush's National Security Strategy?
CounterPunch
Wire
An Open Letter to Jerry Brown on Oakland Police Violence Against
Peace Activists and Dock Workers
Mickey
Z.
Our Ba'athists
Anthony
Gancarski
Nader Plays Pullman
Scott
Handleman
The Mumia Abu-Jamal Case in Its True Colors
Claud Cockburn
Evelyn Waugh's Ear Trumpet
Poets'
Basement
Matt Simon, Sam Hamod, Hammond Guthrie and Stew Albert
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/26
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