Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 29, 2003
Lenni Brenner
God
and the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party
Bister, Estrin and Jacobs
Howard Dean, the Progressive Anti-War Candidate? Some Vermonters
Give Their Views
August 28, 2003
Gilad Atzmon
The
Most Common Mistakes of Israelis
David Vest
Moore's
Monument: Cement Shoes for the Constitution
David Lindorff
Shooting Ali in the Back: Why the Pacification is Doomed
Chris Floyd
Cheap Thrills: Bush Lies to Push His War
Wayne Madsen
Restoring the Good, Old Term "Bum"
Elaine Cassel
Not Clueless in Chicago
Stan Goff
Nukes in the Dark
Tariq Ali
Occupied
Iraq Will Never Know Peace
Arnold Schwarzenegger
Behold, My Package
Website of the Day
Palestinian
Artists
Recent
Stories
August 27, 2003
Bruce Jackson
Little
Deaths: Hiding the Body Count in Iraq
John Feffer
Nuances and North Korea: Six Countries in Search of a Solution
Dave Riley
an Interview with Tariq Ali on the Iraq War
Lacey Phillabaum
Bush's Holy War in the Forests
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Website of the Day
The Dean Deception
August 26, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing the Dead
David Lindorff
The
Great Oil Gouge: Burning Up that Tax Rebate
Sarmad S. Ali
Baghdad is Deadlier Than Ever: the View of an Iraqi Coroner
Christopher Brauchli
Bush Administration Equates Medical Pot Smokers with Segregationists
Juliana Fredman
Collective Punishment on the West Bank: Dialysis, Checkpoints
and a Palestinian Madonna
Larry Siems
Ghosts of Regime Changes Past in Guatemala
Elaine Cassel
Onward, Ashcroft Soldiers!
Saul Landau
Bush:
a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action Figure?
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
30, 2003
The Red Badge of Knowledge
A Review of TDY by Douglas
Valentine
By ADAM ENGEL
Remember Pete from college, circa 1971? Older
than most under-grads--early twenties. Quiet, introverted, so
it's no big deal if you can't place him. Didn't do anything special
except lead that small chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the
War (VVAW) and there weren't many veterans on campus, so why
should we remember Pete?
Well, Pete's seen some things we're not
supposed to see, that nobody is supposed to see, except maybe
the CIA. It's not Pete himself--after all, he's only Pete--but
what he remembers that should concern us now, for what Pete remembers
about being conned into accepting a TDY mission (military talk
for "temporary duty," a one-time gig) that blew his
mind with a truth so hot as to be almost useless, like napalm,
has not only happened before, to Pete and his whole generation
in South East Asia, it's happening again all over the world.
Bigger, scarier, more intense, with less accountability for a
few and more despair and misery for the rest.
Knowledge is always useless when it can
be neither communicated nor acted upon, or used in some meaningful
way, but just burns like fuel fire, sealing off vast regions
of the cerebrum. It's not even knowledge then, just facts. Like
the Internet. A whole lotta information but very little wisdom.
No, Pete's not all that important--again,
he's only Pete--but his memories, what he has seen and done,
described vividly in Douglas Valentine's masterfully concise
"TDY,"
are extremely important, for they tell the usually unspoken and
unspeakable story of America's experience in Vietnam. Thousands
of Americans were suckers, conned into playing a game the y didn't
even know they were playing, not even after the game allegedly
"ended."
But Pete, the narrator and protagonist
of "TDY," to quote another Pete, "Won't get fooled
again." Will we? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. But not
necessarily, and not always. It is possible even for us--and
most of us are not as sharp as Pete--to learn from experience,
which is probably why books like "TDY" are written:
to prevent us, for the love of Pete, from being fooled again
and again and again.
So how'd Pete get into this mess? Same
way we all get into all our messes (even Iraq): first gradually,
then suddenly. Pete was a more or less "ordinary" guy
who went to college in the mid-sixties, intent on becoming a
photographer. He misplaced his priorities, flunked out of school,
joined the Air Force to avoid being drafted into the Army.
"Like many people growing up in
the Sixties, I was more conservative by nature than I pretended
to be," Pete confesses on the first page of "TDY."
He's not looking for war, he's looking
for work, that is, something meaningful to do.
He leaves school to become a bored Air
Force photographer and general non-combatant military employee.
A TDY assignment promises travel, relative excitement, and extra
money. So when a TDY comes his way, Pete signs on. The mission
was to last a couple of days, nothing dangerous, his superiors
assured him. They just needed an experienced photographer to
take photographs.
But things get creepy. First gradually,
then suddenly.
"The briefing that night was as
quick as it was uncomfortable, lasting maybe ten minutes; just
long enough to meet the security team and learn that after collecting
our survival gear and weapons, we would be flying the next day
to Travis Air Force Base in California on the first leg of our
journey. Before asking the Team Leader to break up the meeting,
the Major did, however, present us with the camera and sound
equipment, which we brought back to our rooms, packed and ready
to go. If it didn't exactly belong to us it was, at least, in
our possession, providing us with some-thing solid to hold on
to while our link with the real world rapidly began to slip away."
"TDY," pg. 27
Vague descriptions of where they are
going, what their mission consists of: quick trip to Southeast
Asia to record some stuff, take photographs. They're told the
mission is to be a safe one, yet in addition to camera and recording
equipment, they are issued grenades, M16s and automatic weapons.
In addition, Pete and three other "technicians" are
accompanied by a security staff of real killers who mean business.
All is secrecy. No unnecessary conversation. No personal histories
or full names. Descriptive moniker's like "Doc," "The
Team Leader," and for the man in charge of the TDY, "The
Major."
It is a long flight to their destination.
The plane windows are painted black. They won't know where they're
going till they get there. The more that is asked of them for
the sake of the mission, the less they are told about the mission.
Until it's too late to do anything but the mission.
Those looking for a fast-paced action
story, a "good read," will be satisfied by "TDY;"
those who demand more are in for more than most readers can handle.
For Valentine's "TDY" uses clear, straightforward language
to follow an intense but traditional plot to a level of moral
ambiguity and "confusion of values" that is some what
beyond the experience told by most writers and ex-soldiers about
this most ambiguous, confusing and cynical of wars.
Pete, the "hero" of "TDY"
is no hero at all and knows it, which is not uncommon. But what
he and his fellow "technicians" learn quite early in
the war, well before the Tet Offensive taught another invaluable
lesson, is that they are patsies, suckers. They're being played
by the Air Force for matters that have less to do with the war
itself than personal rivalries and competition between branches
of military and intelligence.
Pete and the TDY crew touch down not
in South Vietnam, but Laos. They are frightened and confused,
particularly since they're staying near a village of Montagnards
(mountain and jungle dwelling tribes recruited as mercenaries
by the CIA; wouldn't know Ho Chi Min from Lyndon Johnson). The
Major and his security team draft a crew of Montagnards to assist
with the Mission. That night, the Major participates in a blood-drugs-and-bonding
ritual with the Montagnard chief. He calls his technicians and
security team together for a meeting and explains what they're
really there to do.
This is an Air Force mission. The Air
Force suspects certain Americans of dealing opium with drug lords
in Laos. Pete and the technicians are there to collect sounds
and photographs; the security team is there to ensure the safety
of this material and, as a second priority, the lives of the
technicians.
Pete and his colleagues are understandably
shocked, terrified, pissed off and betrayed. But what to do except
what they were told to do--gather evidence--and get the hell
out of there?
Proceed to real "war story"
type adventure as the crew of 22 techies, commandos and Montagnards
travel miles to the opium "farm," photograph a plane
landing and two Americans stepping out with a case full of money
to pay the tribesmen for their opium, and record the minutes
of the drug deal.
But Pete is not a soldier, he just works
for the Air Force Corporation. When a bloody fire-fight ensues
between the TDY team and the drug dealers, assisted by North
Vietnamese Army (NVA) personnel, Pete "makes his bones,"
experiences his first kill. And gets shot at. And runs for miles
through the jungle with his team. Quite an ordeal, one that nobody
warned him about or prepared him for. They have to run for their
lives to make it to the Landing Zone (LZ) where a chopper will
lift them to safety.
Pete's so infuriated by the whole ordeal--the
false pretenses of the mission, the lies about his safety etc.--that
he wants to kill the Major. But he doesn't have to. For there
is only one chopper coming in, enough to carry away Pete and
the techies, the Montagnards and some of the security team. The
Major and a few other real soldiers stay behind to distract the
drug dealers and NVA while the others catch the chopper. The
Major literally gives his life so Pete can live. Or rather, gives
his life so that Pete can deliver the film to a man named Mr.
Jason, who he will meet back at the Air Force Base. The Major
actually is less cynical than Pete himself; he believes these
"corrupt" American drug dealers can be stopped. The
whole "a few bad apples in a good American Pie" theory.
But when Pete reaches the Air Force Base
to hand off his photographs to Mr. Jason, three armed CIA agents,
dressed in suits, try to abduct him. He is saved by an Air Force
Officer and uniformed Air Force personnel.
Mr. Jason debriefs Pete by politely explaining
to him that the mission had nothing to do with the war or U.S.
security, but rather, rivalry between the Air Force and CIA.
The CIA was running the drug operations to recruit various Montagnard
tribes. The Air Force sent Pete and the rest of the crew to Laos
to nail the CIA red-handed and possibly end its "irregular"
style of war fare. Moreover, though Pete is paid $2500 cash for
the mission, he is warned that the CIA is not through with him
yet. They may try to assassinate him.
Thus Pete loses his "innocence"
about good guys versus bad guys in record time. There are people,
mostly CIA people, who are making money off the war. Lots of
money. And living like royalty in relatively inexpensive South
East Asia. While American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians are
dying by the truckload in order to pursue the fantasy war described
in the American Media.
Instead of hanging around an Air Force
base bored, waiting for the CIA to kill him, he accepts a gig
in the relative safety of Vietnam, where he will not see combat,
but work as an English Language Instructor to South Vietnamese,
and get his share of the action on the "black market."
"Money was the name of the game
and I learned how to play the game well. I taught four hours
a day, five days a week, and that's all. The rest of the time
was mine, and in the afternoons the Vietnamese Air Force and
Army officers would pay me as much as two hundred dollars a session
to go to their homes and give private English language instruction
to their families. It was a gold mine, and once the money started
pouring in from my extracurricular tutoring, I moved out of the
MACV annex into a hotel on Trung Huang Dao Street. My Vietnamese
lover was living with me, I was making about three thousand dollars
on the side, and I was doubling those earnings on the black market
by changing military script and money; and by selling all sorts
of commodities, from liquor and cigarettes to major appliances
and marijuana." "TDY," pp 120-121
I will end this brief, all-to-inadequate
synopsis of this complex, concise (127 pages) book; but there
is more, a lot more for Pete to learn and experience before he
can navigate his own path somewhere between "believer,"
like the deceptively deceptive Major, or absolute cynic and war-profiteer
with a possible future in the CIA (if they don't kill him first).
Douglas Valentine's "TDY" is
dense with action, dense with meaning. Pete is an allegory not
just for the typical American soldier, but for the typical American
of his age and era, and "TDY" is America's Vietnam
parable.
Pete wasn't anxious to join the military,
but if it would help him pay to continue his education, and he
could join the Air Force rather than end up a grunt in the Army,
he had no strong feelings against the war. Once in the Air Force,
Pete is offered money for a special "TDY" mission he
is assured will be safe. Why would his superiors lie to him?
When he finds out the mission is definitely not safe, he figures
it must be important, otherwise, why would the Air Force pursue
it? And so on, down the line of lies, deceptions, subterfuge,
greed and violence until Pete himself, coming to believe that
there are no "good guys" or "bad guys," engages
in the very practices the Major died to prevent.
To learn the extent to which this existential
Odysseus navigates the "moral ambiguity" that changes
his life (and America's) over the course of the Vietnam War,
I refer you to "TDY," by Douglas Valentine. Or you
can travel to Iraq or Columbia and experience your own "TDY."
Just because the average sucker is not quite the sucker he used
to be (pre-1967), and "knows" a little more about how
things work, it doesn't mean he will use this knowledge to pursue
the general good rather than his own financial portfolio.
After all, how many of the soldiers and
CIA operatives the American Empire has stationed all over the
planet were even born when Pete experienced the animal adrenaline
rush of his first kill?
Click here
to read Engel's interview with Doug Valentine.
Adam Engel is
utterly nonplussed at bartleby.samsa@verizon.net
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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