Bearing on Afghanistan? You Decide

As we didn't learn any of the lessons of Vietnam, this might be something more to ad to the debate or decision to get out of the already extremely failed occupation of Afghanistan!

Earlier today I received this:

JFK Library Releases New Evidence on Diem Assassination

Posted - November 3, 2009

Washington, DC, November 3, 2009 - The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library has just released new evidence on United States collusion in the late 1963 coup d’etat in South Vietnam that ended in the assassination of Saigon leader Ngo Dinh Diem. This is a crucial new piece of the puzzle, for the release includes actual tape recordings of White House meetings several months earlier when President Kennedy initially considered requests from South Vietnamese generals for U.S. backing in a coup attempt. The tapes reflect both Kennedy’s doubts and U.S. determination to change the game in South Vietnam, and decisions made here, in August, led directly to the November coup. Later this month the Archive will post an Electronic Briefing Book reflecting upon the new evidence. For the present we are re-posting our earlier commentary presentation, documents and tapes directly pertinent to the American role in the Saigon coup.

Then just caught this Media report I'm sure similar will be reported on other outlets tonight and tomorrow:

Tapes show JFK conflicted over Saigon coup

Struggles with South Vietnam leader similar to Obama's Afghan situation

Newly released White House tapes from the Vietnam War era portray President John F. Kennedy wrestling over the fate of South Vietnam's strongman in a situation that appears to mirror President Barack Obama's quandary today in dealing with Afghanistan's shaky government.

Obama is beset by questions about President Hamid Karzai's popularity, honesty and management of the war against Taliban, while Kennedy dealt in 1963 with President Ngo Dinh Diem and his inability to turn the tide against Viet Cong insurgents.

At issue in both conflicts was a rising number of U.S. casualties in defending unpopular governments...>>>

Report with JFK Tapes Played

July 14, 1958 in Iraq-CIA-U.S.

A group of Iraqi army officers staged a coup in Iraq and overthrew the monarchy of King Faisal II (who had ascended to the throne at age four). The new government, led by Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted in 1963 by a coup helped by the CIA and led by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party—later dominated by Saddam Hussein.

Saddam Hussein: whom we knew as a brutal street thug, connected to the right family, U.S. ideology of the time, and more importantly, for him, connected to the right people in the U.S. and CIA!

1958: Coup in Iraq sparks jitters in Middle East
A group of Iraqi army officers have staged a coup in Iraq and overthrown the monarchy.

Baghdad Radio announced the Army has liberated the Iraqi people from domination by a corrupt group put in power by "imperialism".

From now on Iraq would be a republic that would "maintain ties with other Arab countries". It said some 12,000 Iraqi troops based in neighboring Jordan have been ordered to return................

And how does a certain, important even then, Iraqi resource play into this coup:

While Iraqis are celebrating on the streets of Baghdad, the news is a cause for concern for western powers worried about their oil interests and instability in the region.

And in those days in the history of the World it was cold, as in cold war mentality.

Officials in Washington fear the Iraqi coup will mean the end of the Baghdad Pact whose members include Turkey, Persia and Pakistan. It was intended to stem the influence of the Soviet Union in the region.

There are fears the Iraq coup will have a domino effect and that the pro-Western oil regimes of Kuwait, Bahrain and the Trucial States may fall to Arab nationalists.

And the CIA, with one Saddam Hussein on the payroll, took it from there:

Iraq's coup leader and prime minister, Abdul Karim el Qasim, was ousted and killed in 1963 in a coup led by the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party.

And as they say, "The rest is History!", or some would now say, "The history that was is our present!".

35 Years After Original 9/11

I'm going to steal a part of Peter Kornbluh's title, above, from his Huffington Post Report about this, also a cut from him:

When Henry Kissinger began secretly taping all of his phone conversations in 1969, little did he know that he was giving history the gift that keeps on giving. Now, on the 35th anniversary of the September 11, 1973, CIA-backed military coup in Chile, phone transcripts that Kissinger made of his talks with President Nixon and the CIA chief among other top government officials reveal in the most candid of language the imperial mindset of the Nixon administration as it began plotting to overthrow President Salvador Allende, the world's first democratically elected Socialist. "We will not let Chile go down the drain," Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in a phone call following Allende's narrow election on September 4, 1970, according to a recently declassified transcript. "I am with you," Helms responded.

Go over and read his post it will give insight into this:

NEW KISSINGER ‘TELCONS’ REVEAL CHILE PLOTTING
AT HIGHEST LEVELS OF U.S. GOVERNMENT

Nixon Vetoed Proposed Coexistence with an Allende Government
Kissinger to the CIA: “We will not let Chile go down the drain.”

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 255

Posted - September 10, 2008

A snippet of our past of which is only part of the circle that keeps going round and round, repeating but with different players added to the old players:

Washington D.C., September 10, 2008 - On the eve of the thirty-fifth anniversary of the military coup in Chile, the National Security Archive today published for the first time formerly secret transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s telephone conversations that set in motion a massive U.S. effort to overthrow the newly-elected socialist government of Salvador Allende. “We will not let Chile go down the drain,” Kissinger told CIA director Richard Helms in one phone call. “I am with you,” the September 12, 1970 transcript records Helms responding.

The telephone call transcripts—known as ‘telcons’—include previously-unreported conversations between Kissinger and President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State William Rogers. Just eight days after Allende's election, Kissinger informed the president that the State Department had recommended an approach to “see what we can work out [with Allende].” Nixon responded by instructing Kissinger: “Don’t let them do it.”

Click on the link above to read more, and while over there check out their other reports, they've had a couple of others this week, like this:

National Security Archive and Historians Secure Long Secret Rosenberg Grand Jury Testimony

With historic government release of new papers, atomic bomb spy story will require some rewriting
Tuesday, September 9, 2008

More than 50 years after the historic but controversial execution of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of atomic espionage, the U.S. government this Thursday, September 11, is expected to make public long shrouded grand jury testimony from its prosecution of the Rosenbergs, which will be the subject of a press briefing on September 11, 2008.

As well as this and apparently how some get gather their idea's on power and control:

ARCHIVE EXPERT TESTIFIES IN FUJIMORI TRIAL

National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 256
September 9, 2008

Lima, Perú (September 8, 2008) – National Security Archive Senior Analyst Kate Doyle testified yesterday before Peru’s Special Tribunal of the Supreme Court of Justice in the case against former-president Alberto Fujimori. Doyle provided expert testimony, explaining how 21 declassified U.S. documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) provide illuminating information on human rights abuses carried out under the Fujimori government (1990-2000)

The 21 documents, produced by the U.S. Embassy in Lima, describe how the Fujimori government tried to hide the involvement of government security forces in human rights crimes. Doyle emphasized that, “over time, and after years of study, the declassified documents produced by the U.S. Embassy reveal that the extra-legal operations were a part of official state policy and not a result rogue elements out of control of the military, police or intelligence services.”

Studies of history can and do open the doors to a clearer view of the presents as we are flawed beings who never really learn from our mistakes but some will feel they can do them better for the same gains sought originally.