Iraq, Vietnam, Politics and Lies

Lyndon Johnson knew by 1968 that the Vietnam War could not be won. Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon both knew when they were running for president in 1968 that the Vietnam war could not be won. The war continued for several more years and thousands died. Not until 1971, when Daniel Ellesberg leaked the Pentagon Papers did the American people first begin to realize that their government had been lying to them for years as their sons and daughters died in Vietnam.

In 2004 we have an incumbent president and a challenger running for the highest office in this land and once again they both know we are bogged down in a war we can't win but neither one of them will tell us the truth.

Daniel Ellesberg has a plea to officials in government to leak the truth in his NYT op ed, Truths Worth Telling. He asks someone to not wait 8 years like he did but leak the truth now before more die.

All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy - and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely.

Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.

Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.