I cannot tell you how many VA hospitals I have visited and taken clothes for tune ups as many combat vets like to say regarding their overnight or week stays. I cannot begin to tell you of the agony or pain I have witnessed regarding veterans caught in a fugue state of mind with loss limbs, broken relationships or homelessness, and some posting right here. I cannot tell you the lives changed forever regarding unnecessary war. I can quote stats of suicides. I can quote stats of homelessness. I cannot convey to you the impact Henry Kissinger had on this United States. I cannot begin to tell you how so many lives were changed forever due to this man's criminal behavior. He bragged about it and when Hillary Clinton spoke of consulting with him, my jaw dropped. I may never get it picked up again.
There are diaries on here about this man but take a look at what Viet Nam Veterans Against the War had to say about him.
For over a million Americans the price for Kissinger to come to power was a tour in Vietnam since, had the peace process gone ahead, it's certainly possible that the war would have wound down in '68. As one who spent 1969 in Vietnam, my price was relatively small; for friends who returned home with minds, bodies and/or spirits shattered or for the families of those who didn't return home at all, the price was enormous—unpayable.
In the event after the event of the Nixon/Kissinger years, The Price of Power draws its indictments. There's Kissinger's refusal to take even the most elemental steps to prevent starvation after the Biafran War in Nigeria for fear that he might appear "soft" to a White House where "toughness" is so important (the Books make it clear that no matter how insane, if a proposal was hard-line enough, the proposer looked good). There's Kissinger's prolonged and tortuous maneuvering to underwrite the assassination of Allende in Chile and to install the present Pinochet military regime. In the Middle East, "The president and his national security advisor managed to escalate that civil strife (in Jordan in 1970)...with its local origins, into a direct big-power confrontation involving military alerts, deployment of aircraft carriers, and a presidential order to commit an act of warfare in the Middle East that was ignored by his Secretary of Defense"
There is Kissinger's overwhelming need to be the 'star," to gather all the strings into his own hands so that the puppets will dance to his tune. His drive to stand solo during arms talks with the Soviets led him to ignore specialists who had been negotiating for months with the result that he took positions which had to be retracted later—and that did nothing to speed arms agreements. And there is Kissinger's same desire to hog the spotlight during negotiations with the Peoples' Republic of China; Kissinger almost eclipsed Nixon which led to a temporary fall from favor. And there's the picture of Kissinger plotting targets for the secret bombing in Cambodia; Kissinger seems to be running for the job of emperor of the world, and almost made it.
His manipulations fill the book. From the start Kissinger set up his own channels of communications (backchannels) so he would not have to rely on State Department information (and so that the State Department wouldn't know what he knew). Since Kissinger's agents were as devious as he, at least one of his protégés, Alexander Haig, almost eclipsed Kissinger for basking in the Presidential limelight (and the power that flowed from it).
Because Kissinger was aware of his own trustworthiness, he naturally enough suspected anyone around him. The story of his taps on his assistants as well as newsmen runs through the book. More seriously, because Kissinger was consistently dealing double (or triple or more) he couldn't afford to let anyone know just what he was doing—including his closed aides. As a result, however, he refused advise from experts; in fact, a monumental ego seems to have given Kissinger the assurance that he knew all there was to know on almost any aspect of diplomacy, leading to equally monumental goofs—like his own solution to the war in Vietnam which came completely unglued with the Christmas bombing in 1973.
Seymour Hersh wrote the book which uncovered MY Lai, then the book which uncovered the cover up My Lai. He is a respected journalist and, as this book shows, an exhaustive researcher. When The Price of Power appeared it was noticed, even quoted, but then pretty much ignored. Perhaps the revelations are so frequent and so tied in to the history of the time that none of them rank as a major, newsworthy sensation. Perhaps we're all so used to governmental intrigue and lies that yet another collection of them makes scarcely a ripple.
This band of powerful men do have a life and death power over the rest of us. That the ego of a Kissinger or Nixon or any of the others needs a little stroke can send thousands of us off to war—that is the bottom line of The Price of Power. And the utter outrage that should follow the revelations in this book is, for whatever reason, missing; it shouldn't be. With its hundred of examples of the total cynicism of our "leaders" The Price of Power could hardly match the cynicism of the act of appointing Henry Kissinger to another position in the government where he can start his slithering toward the seat of power once again.
Pete Zastrow
VVAW National Office
My family is one of those families touched in the article as my husband served in country 70-71 US Army. As if that was not enough to rile me up, I look at Salon's article about emails released about Kissinger and the Clintons. Oh my goodness.
Here this is….and do you think the Trumps and opposition won't use this?
And then this bombshell from Salon…
Here this is….and do you think the Trumps and opposition won't use this? They gather info on candidates just as we do.
To Hillary Clinton From Henry Kissinger
This time my anger is personal ! My husband in Nam."I greatly admire the skill and aplomb with which you conduct our foreign policy," wrote Henry Kissinger in a 2012 letter to "the Honorable Hillary Rodham Clinton." The compliment was included as a handwritten postscript added to the printed letter.
The Feb. 7 letter, which was released in a batch of emails from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a request that she help declassify documents from Kissinger's time as secretary of state, which he says constitute "a unique record of a critical period in American foreign policy."
Critics say Kissinger helped carry out egregious war crimes in this critical period, during which he served as secretary of state under presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.
Several emails provide more insight into the cozy relationship between Clinton and Kissinger.
In a June 2009 email titled "Startegy memo," Clinton mentions an upcoming dinner she will be having with Kissinger — along with Cold War-era statesman and National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, who pushed for the U.S. to arm Islamic extremist mujahideen militants in Afghanistan in order to fight the Soviet Union, giving rise to al-Qaeda and the Taliban
I have scraped up pieces of my life and other vets and their families lives too many times to ignore this bombshell that I learned last night. I physically got ill. I have not even gone into the Kent State massacre and the protests that again some of our posters on here have lived through. How in the world could Hillary Clinton seek advice from Kissinger? How can anyone defend this?
He is a WAR CRIMINAL.
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