Kerry fights battle he finds all too familiar: Senator sees Iraq war as history repeating

[DeepModem Mom]

Chicago Tribune: Kerry fights battle he finds all too familiar
Senator sees Iraq war as history repeating
By Jill Zuckman | Washington Bureau
July 23, 2007

WASHINGTON - He was a seminal figure as the Vietnam War spiraled downward, just as the generals and the politicians were starting to acknowledge that the war was a failure.

Young, lanky and highly decorated from his service commanding a Navy swift boat, John Kerry sat before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and famously said, "How do you ask a man to be the last person to die for a mistake?"

Few living American politicians have had their lives so defined by war as Kerry. His wartime service and wartime protest stoked his political career in Massachusetts. His military background burnished his credentials among Democrats seeking a nominee to run against an incumbent president during wartime in 2004. And now, in a quieter time, his hair gray and reading glasses perched on the bridge of his nose, he finds himself again opposing his government's conflict....

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Kerry said he is frustrated when he hears his Republican colleagues privately complaining about mismanagement and mistakes in the war. And he can't understand why they want to wait until September, when Gen. David Petraeus issues his report, to consider changing course. With 100 American troops dying each month, that's another 200 deaths, he said.

Just like Vietnam, he said, he has watched as generals have been dismissed for giving truthful advice and officials who should have been fired are not. The military is stretching to the breaking point, he said.

"It's painful to sort of live through it again," he said. "Here we are coming full circle, in a way, where we have young Americans fighting and dying in a war that we shouldn't be fighting."...

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-kerry_zuckmanjul23,1,3288818.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

[Jim__]

1. It does seem clear that we've "lost" in Iraq.

Yet, we continue to lose soldiers in a hopeless cause. Most generals may know that we've lost, bush only needs to find 1 or 2 who don't think so, and he can continue the slaughter. An extremely sad situation.

[wisteria]

2. Good article. n/t