In next weeks Time they will be addressing the DSM:
I have access to some very early quotes:
The issues were momentous, the situation unprecedented. The most massive leak of secret documents in U.S. history had suddenly exposed the sensitive inner processes whereby the Bush Administration had abruptly escalated the nation's most unpopular -- an unsuccessful -- war
Time went on to say:
What lessons can be lifted from all of those pages of secret papers? The most instructive revelation may be how little faith the leaders had in those they led -- a classic case of the arrogance of the powerful. The deceptions and misrepresentations stemmed from a conviction that the public would not face up to the harsh realities of Iraq. Even within the Government, sound intelligence estimates were often rudely ignored if they failed to fit policy preconceptions.
Here is the link:
http://edition.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9606/28/index.shtml
By know some of you might be guess something is a little strange about this Diary.
More below the fold:
I only changed 2 words in those quotes above, Vietnam and Johnson.
Sometimes you forget history and I believe the US has forgotten what the media did in 1971. They fought(in court) for the right to publish documents leaked by the pentagon.
Where have they gone on the DSM issue?
I really don't have much to say about this I want people to read about Vietnam and what the government was doing and ask...are we repeating history?
While the war may be different is some ways(not many) the actions of the government are very similar.
As the documents bared the planning process, they also demolished any lingering faith that the nation's weightiest decisions are made by deliberative men, calmly examining all the implications of a policy and then carefully laying out their reasoning in depth. The proliferation of papers, the cabled requests for clarification, the briskness of language but not of logic, convey an impression of harassed men, thinking and writing too quickly and sometimes being mystified at the enemy's refusal to conform to official projections.
Those records afforded a rare insight into how high officials make decisions affecting the lives of millions as well as the fate of nations. The view, however constricted or incomplete, was deeply disconcerting. The records revealed a dismaying degree of miscalculation, bureaucratic arrogance and deception
Ask the washington post if they feel that it's important to know how world leaders make weighty decisions? Ask why it isn't important now but it was in the Vietnam?
Go back and read what the Washington Post and NYT and Time magazine wrote about the pentagon papers and understand that we can't let this issue die, it is important that we understand how incompitent and corrupt politicians can be when making life changing choices that send the USA's young men and children to die for more planning, polictiocal goals and fake evidence.