Testimony About The War

On a day when the world turns its collective attention toward a Congressional hearing room to listen to a General's testimony about the war, one can't help but remember another officer's testimony about another war:

We watched the United States' falsification of body counts, in fact the glorification of body counts.  We listened while month after month we were told the back of the enemy was about to break . . . Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

So said Lieutenant John Kerry in his testimony before the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations, on April 23, 1971.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.