Tag: Vietnam War

Democracy is about selection of the best,as it seems, the best available that stand for election and giving them time to represent the people.

The Chief executive runs the country on behalf of the people and as such represents the will of the people at the time of election,not for every action he performs as the Chief executive, for such a process is not possible.

Or you need to run Referendum for every action,even here there will be dissenters) which will lead to nothing but anarchy.

The compromise in democracy is that you trust one and give him time to act whether it is in the interests of the country or not.

If he does not run the country in the interests of the country,you replace him, period.

Not that democracy is the best form of governance, but the best available on date.

Story:

In the 1960s, Ellsberg was a high-level Pentagon official, a former Marine commander who believed the American government was always on the right side. But while working for the administration of Lyndon Johnson, Ellsberg had access to a top-secret document that revealed senior American leaders, including several presidents, knew that the Vietnam War was an unwinnable, tragic quagmire.

Officially titled “United States-Viet Nam Relations, 1945-1967: A Study Prepared by the Department of Defense,”–the Pentagon Papers, as they became known–also showed that the government had lied to Congress and the public about the progress of the war. In 1969, he photocopied the 7,000-page study and gave it to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In, 1971, Ellsberg leaked all 7,000 pages to The Washington Post, and 18 other newspapers, including The New York Times, which published them.

Not long after, he surrendered to authorities and confessed to being the leaker. Ellsberg was charged as a spy. His trial, on twelve felony counts posing a possible sentence of 115 years, was dismissed on grounds of governmental misconduct against him. In April 1973, the court learned that Nixon had ordered his so-called “Plumbers Unit” to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to steal documents they hoped might make the whistle-blower appear crazy. In May, more evidence of government illegal wiretapping was revealed. The charges against Ellsberg were dropped. This led to the convictions of several White House aides and figured in the impeachment proceedings against President Nixon. (*More bio below)……

The federal government has now declassified the Pentagon Papers. The Nixon Presidential Library & Museum will release the documents on June 13, forty years to the day that leaked portions of the report were published on the front page of  The New York Times.

Also, the PBS series POV  is streaming “The Most Dangerous Man inAmerica: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers,” on June 13 and 14.

In this interview, Ellsberg says, “Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. ” (Thanks to the Patriot Act and other laws passed in recent years.) And he says all presidents since Nixon have violated the constitution, most recently President Obama, with the bombing of Libya.

Until now, the public has been able to read only the small portions of the report that you leaked. What do you think the impact of releasing all 7,000 pages might be?

The “declassification” of the Pentagon Papers–exactly forty years late–is basically a non-event.  The notion that “only small portions” of the report were released forty years ago is pure hype by the Nixon Library.  Nearly all of the study–except for the negotiations volumes, which were mostly declassified over twenty years ago– became available in 1971,  between the redacted (censored)  Government Printing Office edition and the Senator Gravel edition put out by Beacon Press….

On June 23, 1971, in an interview with CBS News anchor Walter Cronkite, you said,  “I think the lesson is that the people of this country can’t afford to let the President run the country by himself, even foreign affairs, without the help of Congress, without the help of the public. I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions.” How concerned are you that elected officials haven’t learned those lessons?

I still stand by my cited conclusions, both for 1971 and for every single year since, including this one.  But I never expected elected officials in the Executive branch (of which there are exactly two in each administration) or their myriad subordinates to “learn those lessons” or to accept them as warnings.

Leaders in the Executive branch–in every country– know what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it, and they always want to stay in office and keep on running things with as little interference from Congress, the public and the courts as possible: which means, with as much secrecy as they can manage.  So I’m not exactly concerned that they’re still at it (which is why I’m still at what I do), since that is so predictable, in every government, tyrannical or “democratic.”…

However, as has been pointed out repeatedly by Glenn Greenwald,  ( CLICK HERE) and  Bruce Ackerman , David Swanson and others, no president has so blatantly violated the constitutional division of war powers as  President Obama in his ongoing attack on Libya, without a nod even to the statutory War Powers Act, that post-Pentagon Papers effort by Congress to recapture something of the role assigned exclusively to it by the Constitution…

These days, when you find yourself thinking about Richard Nixon, what comes to mind?

Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, might take bittersweet satisfaction to know that he was not the last smart president to prolong unjustifiably a senseless, unwinnable war, at great cost in human life.  (And his aide Henry Kissinger was not the last American official to win an undeserved Nobel Peace Prize.)

He would probably also feel vindicated (and envious) that ALL the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal.

That includes burglarizing my former psychoanalyst’s office (for material to blackmail me into silence), warrantless wiretapping, using the CIA against an American citizen in the US, and authorizing a White House hit squad to “incapacitate me totally” (on the steps of the Capitol on May 3, 1971). All the above were to prevent me from exposing guilty secrets of his own administration that went beyond the Pentagon Papers.    But under George W. Bush and Barack Obama,with the PATRIOT Act, the FISA Amendment Act, and (for the hit squad) President Obama’s executive orders. they have all become legal….

http://inthearena.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/07/daniel-ellsberg-all-the-crimes-richard-nixon-committed-against-me-are-now-legal/