Reliving the Joys of Viet Nam Dissent

[Corlyss_D]

July 15, 2005 edition

Rove leak is just part of larger scandal

By Daniel Schorr

WASHINGTON – Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war.

In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report, based partly on forged documents (it later turned out), provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. It did not seem to matter that the CIA advised that the Italian information was "fragmentary and lacked detail."

Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney and in the hope of getting more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium and, anyway, Niger's uranium was committed to other countries for many years to come.

No news is bad news for an administration gearing up for war. Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence. He told various people that the president was at least mistaken, at most telling an untruth. Finally Wilson directly challenged the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion.

One can imagine the fury in the White House. We now know from the e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a supersecret conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger assignment. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Mr. Novak has yet to say, in public, whether Mr. Rove was his source. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States when he was striving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq.

The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.

• Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

[Ralph]

No joy, real heartache.

[DavidRoss]

In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli.•

Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

Daniel Schorr lost all credibility years ago. He's just another hack journalist blinded by ideology. Statements like the one above--opinion masquerading as fact--demonstrate that he's as unprincipled a propagandist as Michael Moore and that none of his other statements can be trusted. It's a crying shame that NPR gives this clown a respected soap box.

[Barry]

I don't know Schorr's work well enough to agree or disagree generally, but I hardly think it's going out on a limb to write that Bush had decided before the end of 2002 that we were going to war with Iraq, and that the big debate within the administration was how to sell the war to the public.

And I don't say going to war was the wrong thing to do. They just bungled the publilc justification for it.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u ... nterview_7

[pizza]

In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli.•

Daniel Schorr is the senior news analyst at National Public Radio.

Daniel Schorr lost all credibility years ago. He's just another hack journalist blinded by ideology. Statements like the one above--opinion masquerading as fact--demonstrate that he's as unprincipled a propagandist as Michael Moore and that none of his other statements can be trusted. It's a crying shame that NPR gives this clown a respected soap box.

What all these propagandists conveniently forget is that Bush didn't need any excuse whatsoever to declare the '91 truce finished and resume the war. Saddam hadn't fulfilled a single one of the committments he had made as a condition for implementing the truce.

NPR is among the worst of the propagandists so it isn't at all surprising that Schorr enjoys a senior position there.

[Donald Isler]

I generally agree with Schorr.

And I think it's almost sick to refer to the "joys" of Viet Nam dissent. It was an ugly time in America and there was little joy to anything about the situation, whatever side you were on.

[DavidRoss]

I think it's almost sick to refer to the "joys" of Viet Nam dissent.

Imagine the scene in The Graduate when the guy leans over to whisper just one word in Dustin Hoffman's ear: "Irony."

[Corlyss_D]

I don't know Schorr's work well enough to agree or disagree generally,

I don't blame you. I've been following him off and on since the Viet Nam war. He's never really recovered from learning that he was on Nixon's 'enemies list.' Ever since then, I've watched him go the way of Moyers into more and more shameless pontificating and bloviating on behalf of liberal and Democratic and anti-Government causes. I used to like him when he was on CBS. I don't know why NPR keeps him on.

but I hardly think it's going out on a limb to write that Bush had decided before the end of 2002 that we were going to war with Iraq, and that the big debate within the administration was how to sell the war to the public.

Barry, that's because you're pretty well-informed on foreign affairs and your positions are therefore always thoughtfully articulated. Schorr's making these statements is something akin to the Hydrogen Dioxide stories published periodically. "Highly corrosive hydrogen dioxide rises to new levels!" "Dangerous solvent enters area homes!" Schorr's statements make it sound like something other than what it is. Millions of us knew on 9/12 that the unfinished business of Gulf War I would be finished shortly. Millions more of us knew when Bush went to the UN in the fall of 02 that we were going to war; the only question was would it be with or without the UN.

They just bungled the publilc justification for it.

Boy! You can sure say that again!!!!! We shouldn't have to work so f***ing hard to help the President do what needs to be done!!!!!

[Corlyss_D]

It was an ugly time in America and there was little joy to anything about the situation, whatever side you were on.

Are you kidding? No matter what side anyone who lived thru it was on, we all fondly remember those halcyon days of our youth when everything seemed possible and children could bring a government to its knees and force a president, possibly the most effective president since Lincoln, out of office. Mmmm. Hard not to be dazzled by the memories.

[Donald Isler]

No I'm not kidding. I don't remember the era with any fondness at all. The country was torn apart by people who passionately agreed with one side or the other, and we had a president who was a liar, and whose own party leaders at long last told him it was time to go.

[Corlyss_D]

No I'm not kidding. I don't remember the era with any fondness at all. The country was torn apart by people who passionately agreed with one side or the other, and we had a president who was a liar, and whose own party leaders at long last told him it was time to go.

I know, We haven't has so much fun with our government since. God! I miss those days!

[DavidRoss]

No I'm not kidding. I don't remember the era with any fondness at all. The country was torn apart by people who passionately agreed with one side or the other, and we had a president who was a liar, and whose own party leaders at long last told him it was time to go.

Sounds just like the '90s, except that the Democratic Party showed their true slimy partisanship then, unlike the Republicans who at least had the class and integrity to tell Nixon to take a hike.

[Donald Isler]

There's no partisanship much slimier than that of the people running the country today. But they will soon feel more and more heat.

[Werner]

But, Corlyss, are you serious? Nixon the most effective President since Lincoln? "I am not a crook!" Some effectiveness!

And, David, if I remember correctly, Congress was Democratic at the time. Remember Sam Erwin and Peter Rodino? But to give credit where credit is due, we should acknowledge Goldwater's integrity, too.

[Ralph]

I generally agree with Schorr.

And I think it's almost sick to refer to the "joys" of Viet Nam dissent. It was an ugly time in America and there was little joy to anything about the situation, whatever side you were on.

*****

There are a few excellent books about that period. It was a tough time in which urban rioting, crime, youth dissent, assassinations, racism and a terrible war added up to a real challenge to our social and political stability. Of course we're too strong a nation to have ever faced the near anarchy of Paris in '68 but it was a tense time and for part of it I was very close to the center of government.

[Ralph]

It was an ugly time in America and there was little joy to anything about the situation, whatever side you were on.

Are you kidding? No matter what side anyone who lived thru it was on, we all fondly remember those halcyon days of our youth when everything seemed possible and children could bring a government to its knees and force a president, possibly the most effective president since Lincoln, out of office. Mmmm. Hard not to be dazzled by the memories.

*****

Perhaps if one's personal memories don't include the loss in combat of close friends.

[DavidRoss]

And, David, if I remember correctly, Congress was Democratic at the time. Remember Sam Erwin or Petert Rodino? But to give credit where credit is due, we should acknowledge Goldwater's integrity, too.

Yes, in 1974 Congress was controlled by the Democrats. Just as Congress was Republican at the time of Clinton's impeachment. And many Republicans stood by Nixon, giving him the benefit of the doubt. And then when the evidence piled up, leaving little doubt of Nixon's involvement in the coverup and his lying about it (though only to the public, not perjuring himself before a Grand Jury like Clinton), the Republican Party leadership, including former party chairman Senator Bob Dole, went to Nixon and said, effectively, "Get out or you'll be run out of office and we won't try to stop it because you deserve it."

A lifelong Democrat until the Clinton administration demonstrated that the Party had become a viper's nest of consciousless powermongers, I was disgusted by the Democratic Party leadership's cynical collusion in Clinton's perversion of justice. I doubt I could ever again in good conscience vote for one of their candidates.

The following article offers a concise summary of the two events: Watergate vs. Clintongate.

[Barry]

I honestly find it difficult to believe you buy this, David, but we are all entitled to our own views.

Just the very beginning of the article raised a couple red flags immediately. First, his first cite is of Ann Coulter. Second, her point that he cites is that Nixon neither knew of nor approved/directed the Watergate break-in, the underlying act that caused the scandal. But he knew damn well that people were committing "dirty tricks" on his behalf. Is it a surprise that he didn't want to know the details to maintain deniability?

Nice ad at the bottom of the column by the way.

I don't approve of what Clinton did, and have said censure would have been appropriate. But trying to cover up an affair to spare embarrassement for yourself and emotional hurt to your wife and daughter is not at the level of the things Nixon did in terms of hiring the plummers to commit dirty tricks against his political enemies, then covering it up (the racist, anti-Semitic bastard......some of the things he said on those tapes are astonishing in their vileness........but being a lousy person isn't why he deserved his fate).

I can understand your statement on not voting for the Dems in good conscience though. In spite of moving from the left to the center, and even right of center on some foreign policy issues, I still don't feel like I could be a Republican or vote for one (with the possible exception of McCain or Powell) for President. They've offended me too many times from my own moral point of view.

[Barry]

I also have to say I'm surprised that you'd turn to a right wing (with the various links, obviously very pro the agenda of the Religious Right) site like that one as a news source after routinely bashing the mainstream media.

[Corlyss_D]

But, Corlyss, are you serious? Nixon the most effective President since Lincoln?

Sorry. I wasn't referring to Nixon, but to Johnson. I was bemused recently to learn that it wasn't Clean Gene's success that forced Johnson to withdraw from the presidential race in 1968; it was Robert Kennedy's decision to run because of Clean Gene's success in the primaries. How ironic! By June 10, RFK was dead and Johnson was stuck with his decision.

It wasn't us kids demonstrating about Viet Nam who forced Nixon out of office. It was Watergate. In my reading of events, it was Watergate that forced Nixon to end the Viet Nam war, not the protests. Kissinger has claimed as much in his memoirs.

[Corlyss_D]

it was a tense time and for part of it I was very close to the center of government.

Wasn't it one of the most exhilerating times of your entire life? There was a snap in the air in DC that has never been equaled. I thought you were there in DC during the latter days of the Nixon administration.

[Werner]

Corlyss: Thank you for clearing up my question re Nixon/ohnson. I see your point there, although I suspect you credit Johnson for being effective in a direction of which you don't approve. Neverthelss, he WAS effective domestically and heading in the right direction in the opinion of many people.
His legacy is tainted by Vietnam, which was the first war we lost, and for a reason we never heard of before - we shouldn't have been in it.

There is a similar feeling about our present war. What will be said about it in thirty years? The final result is not in yet and may not be in for some time. But certainly there are lots of doubts and evident mistakes of judgment and execution.

Perhaps we do better in riding to the rescue in wars started by the Europeans?

[Corlyss_D]

A lifelong Democrat until the Clinton administration

Welcome to the Party of the Mugged By Reality. For me and my Mom, generations of Democrats behind us, it was Carter.

[Kevin R]

A lifelong Democrat until the Clinton administration

Welcome to the Party of the Mugged By Reality. For me and my Mom, generations of Democrats behind us, it was Carter.

Yes, welcome DavidRoss..... to the dark side

Carter was one of those who pushed me over as well, but I continued to vote Democratic all the way up to 1988! (yes, I was the one who voted for Mondale). I'm convinced I'm going to hell for voting against Dutch.

[Ralph]

it was a tense time and for part of it I was very close to the center of government.

Wasn't it one of the most exhilerating times of your entire life? There was a snap in the air in DC that has never been equaled. I thought you were there in DC during the latter days of the Nixon administration.

*****

I truly don't know what you're talking about. I put in scores of 24 hour days from June '67 to October '68 which covered everything from the Detroit riot to the murders of Kennedy and King to Resurrection City to urban rioting in a number of cities to anti-war protests (I was in charge of analyzing for the generals the October '67 march on the Pentagon-from the ground) and more.

Was it fascinating for me? Sure. A mere 1st LT/CPT dealing with the highest ranks of the Defense Dept. and Army on a daily basis. But exhilarating? Challenging and depressing and at times very, very scary.

I frequently went to D.C. when I was with Senator Sam's subcommittee and that was at the end of the Sixties and the early Seventies but I didn't live there.

The "snap in the air" that you describe was a time for oppressiveness for much of the black population whose neighborhoods were in terrible decline. The Martin Luther King riot (like other urban riots) left wide swaths of Northwest D.C. in ruins with essential infrastructure stores and facilities wrecked and not soon to be resurrected.

And in the Pentagon tension was endemic and palpable. So no exhilaration for me other than as an occasional side effect of bouts of self-importance.

[Ralph]

Well I travelled a different route. I first campaigned for Eisenhower in '51 by handing out leaflets in a solidly Democratic neighborhood. My parents ordered me not to do that and when I persisted I got a beating. So I then helped the general's campaign sub rosa by putting leaflets under windshield wipers and on porches.

I voted for Goldwater in '64.

Following an accidental contact with electricity while changing a bulb in '67 I became a Democrat and remain so to this day.

Of course there are many examples of things gone wrong in the Democratic Party as there are in the Republican Party. But for root values that mean much to me, the Democratic Party is my political home.

[Ralph]

The McMaster's book IS available in paperback. Here are some reviews from Amazon:


Dereliction of Duty : Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam (Paperback)

by H. R. McMaster

List Price: $16.00
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For years the popular myth surrounding the Vietnam War was that the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew what it would take to win but were consistently thwarted or ignored by the politicians in power. Now H. R. McMaster shatters this and other misconceptions about the military and Vietnam in Dereliction of Duty. Himself a West Point graduate, McMaster painstakingly waded through every memo and report concerning Vietnam from every meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to build a comprehensive picture of a house divided against itself: a president and his coterie of advisors obsessed with keeping Vietnam from becoming a political issue versus the Joint Chiefs themselves, mired in interservice rivalries and unable to reach any unified goals or conclusions about the country's conduct in the war.

McMaster stresses two elements in his discussion of America's failure in Vietnam: the hubris of Johnson and his advisors and the weakness of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Dereliction of Duty provides both a thorough exploration of the military's role in determining Vietnam policy and a telling portrait of the men most responsible.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

The New York Times Book Review, Ronald Spector
The notion that a war like that in Vietnam, which began 14 years before the election of Kennedy and continued for six years after the end of the Johnson Administration, can be satisfactorily explained by reference to decisions made in Washington during late 1964 and early 1965 would seem at best questionable.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
The "error not of values and intentions but of judgment and capabilities" to which Robert McNamara admitted in In Retrospect (1995) leaves out his deceptions that helped plunge America into the Vietnam War. McNamara may not have remembered them in his memoir, but army officer McMaster found them in the Joint Chiefs of Staff's archives for the crucial decision-making years of 1964 and 1965. Distilled to its essence, McMaster's thesis proposes that the plans and advice on Vietnam prepared by the nation's military advisers were systematically sidetracked by McNamara. Two facts exemplify the whole dense forest of facts McMaster explores: the prediction of the Joint Chiefs of the Army and Marine Corps that "victory" would require five years and 500,000 troops only reached LBJ's ears once (he didn't listen, obviously), and the Pentagon war games of McNamara's theory of "graduated pressure" eerily ended in stalemate. McNamara suppressed all such warning signs, theorizes McMaster, because he was responding to LBJ's anxiety to keep Vietnam's "noise level" down until the 1964 election was over and the Great Society safely enacted. As damning of the civilian leaders as he is, McMaster doesn't blithely exonerate the brass. They didn't heed their own warnings and acquiesced in McNamara's incrementalist policy, in the hope of eventually getting the huge force they diffidently advised would be needed to win. Writing about an ocean of memos, meetings, and reports as he does, McMasters delivers a narrative more diligent than dramatic, but his take on pinpointing the architect(s) of the Vietnam fiasco should prove, nonetheless, of high interest. Gilbert Taylor--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Kirkus Reviews
An intriguing analysis that challenges the view that Cold War anticommunism was primarily responsible for American military intervention in Vietnam. In his first book, McMaster, a US Army major and Persian Gulf war veteran, and a historian who has taught at West Point, zeroes in on the actions of Lyndon Johnson and his top advisers from the time LBJ became president in November 1963 to the July 1965 decision to escalate the war drastically. The author makes a convincing case that domestic political considerations were behind the development of the failed strategy of graduated military pressure. The actions of Johnson, his top civilian advisers, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) were, moreover, characterized by ``arrogance, weakness [and] lying in the pursuit of self interest.'' President Johnson heads McMaster's culpability list, which also includes Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, JCS head and US ambassador to South Vietnam Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Taylor's JCS successor, Gen. Earle Wheeler, and top advisers William and McGeorge Bundy. McMaster's touchstone is the unchallenged fact that Johnson wanted to fight the war on poverty, not the war in Vietnam. McMaster interprets virtually all of LBJ's actions as chief executive in that light. From November 1963 to November 1964 Johnson's overarching goal was to win the presidential election. After that, his main concern was enacting his Great Society programs. The fact that Johnson made Vietnam policy based on domestic-policy implications, McMaster believes, was a recipe for disaster in Vietnam. David Halberstam promulgated similar arguments in The Best and the Brightest (1972). McMaster, using newly released transcripts and other primary source material, pays more attention to the JCS's role. Unsparing in his analysis of the chiefs, McMaster takes them severely to task for their ``failure'' to provide LBJ with ``their best advice.'' A relentless, stinging indictment of the usual Johnson administration Vietnam War suspects. (illustrations, not seen) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Book Description

"The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of the New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C."

- H. R. McMaster (from the Conclusion)

Dereliction Of Duty is a stunning new analysis of how and why the United States became involved in an all-out and disastrous war in Southeast Asia. Fully and convincingly researched, based on recently released transcripts and personal accounts of crucial meetings, confrontations and decisions, it is the only book that fully re-creates what happened and why. It also pinpoints the policies and decisions that got the United States into the morass and reveals who made these decisions and the motives behind them, disproving the published theories of other historians and excuses of the participants.

Dereliction Of Duty covers the story in strong narrative fashion, focusing on a fascinating cast of characters: President Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, General Maxwell Taylor, McGeorge Bundy and other top aides who deliberately deceived the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the U.S. Congress and the American public.

Sure to generate controversy, Dereliction Of Duty is an explosive and authoritative new look at the controversy concerning the United States involvement in Vietnam.

About the Author
H. R. McMaster, a recent award-winning teacher at West Point and an inspiring leader in the Gulf War, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1984 and has an M.A. and a Ph.D. in American History from the University of North Carolina. He is now attending the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, KS.

[DavidRoss]

I don't approve of what Clinton did, and have said censure would have been appropriate. But trying to cover up an affair to spare embarrassement for yourself and emotional hurt to your wife and daughter is not at the level of the things Nixon did in terms of hiring the plummers to commit dirty tricks against his political enemies, then covering it up (the racist, anti-Semitic bastard......some of the things he said on those tapes are astonishing in their vileness........but being a lousy person isn't why he deserved his fate).

I can understand your statement on not voting for the Dems in good conscience though. In spite of moving from the left to the center, and even right of center on some foreign policy issues, I still don't feel like I could be a Republican or vote for one (with the possible exception of McCain or Powell) for President. They've offended me too many times from my own moral point of view.

Barry--You might not respect Ann Coulter (you prefer Michael Moore?), but I don't respect the arguments of people who distort or ignore facts inconvenient to their prejudices. Clinton apologists repeat that pathological liar's excuse for perjuring himself and suborning perjury (and for submitting to blackmail). "To protect his family from embarrassment and shame" is outrageous BS! You respect and protect your family by not doing those shameful things--and as President, in a symbolic sense, the entire nation was his family. And regardless of one's "excuse," perjury and suborning perjury are serious crimes, especially when conducted by the person most responsible for upholding the law. Clinton and all you Clinton apologists, including the leadership of the Democratic Party, teach the impressionable young not to respect the law, to dishonor it and break it whenever it serves their petty sense of self-interest, and that the only thing that counts is what you can get away with! For shame!

Clinton's perjuries were to protect himself as defendant in a sexual harrassment case. (I also lost all respect for NOW over the matter--greater hypocrisy is hard to imagine.) I don't minimize Nixon's behavior. It was reprehensible. And I don't minimize Clinton's behavior. It was reprehensible. I apply the same standard to both.

BTW, so far as political dirty tricks go, the Clintons took a back seat to no one.

Before Clinton, I was so adamantly anti-Republican (an attitude that preceded Watergate) that I wouldn't even date a woman who was Republican. I regarded it as a sign of severe moral deficiency. When I woke up in the '90s and found the Democrats were now the cynical scumbags (ignore their rhetoric, look at what they do) and the Republicans had become the idealists, I was appalled. I'm equally appalled by the blindness of old liberals who continue to believe the myth and swallow the BS their party serves to credulous voters.

As for the site I linked to: I know nothing about it. That's what popped up when I googled for something comparing the cases and the article seemed to lay out the facts pretty clearly. I used to subscribe to The Nation and The New Republic, but even then I wouldn't discredit facts simply because they were printed in the National Review. (I learned about ad hominem arguments in grammar school.)

[DavidRoss]

Of course there are many examples of things gone wrong in the Democratic Party as there are in the Republican Party. But for root values that mean much to me, the Democratic Party is my political home.

I still respect the values they trumpet in sound bites and speeches, but their actions over the past couple of decades demonstrate that the Party leadership doesn't give a damn, they just pay lip service to them because that's the only thing that counts at the polls. Most of the party faithful seems to judge them on what they say--and on what they say they're trying to do--and not on the failures of their policies.

[Barry]

Of course there are many examples of things gone wrong in the Democratic Party as there are in the Republican Party. But for root values that mean much to me, the Democratic Party is my political home.

That sums it up pretty well for me too. I'm really pissed at the Dems for being so (as Corlyss always puts it) feckless in recent years. But as with many Republicans, values mean a lot to me too. And my core values are represented more by the Dems than the GOP.

[Barry]

As for the site I linked to: I know nothing about it. That's what popped up when I googled for something comparing the cases and the article seemed to lay out the facts pretty clearly. I used to subscribe to The Nation and The New Republic, but even then I wouldn't discredit facts simply because they were printed in the National Review. (I learned about ad hominem arguments in grammar school.)

But I didn't do that, David. I gave you a specific reason, based on one of the main assertions by the writer in the body of the column, why it's B.S. My follow-up point is that I am not surprised to see such B.S. on a site like that is clearly run by right wingers who are sympathetic to the agenda of the Religious Right.

And I'll add that I'm not glued to the Democratic party. I won't join the GOP, but I would be thrilled if the moderates of both parties would ever get together and form a third party. I know it's a major longshot, but as I recently said on another thread, I'd love to see McCain get beat out for the GOP nomination by another right winger and bolt the party to run as an Independent, preferably with a moderate Democrat as his running mate. I think that would be just the sort of revolution that American politics needs.

[Ted]

I'd love to see McCain get beat out for the GOP nomination by another right winger and bolt the party to run as an Independent, preferably with a moderate Democrat as his running mate. I think that would be just the sort of revolution that American politics needs.

True Barry, that would be nice
But now you have more important things to do..
Like getting that needle out of your arm (G)
t

[pizza]

I generally agree with Schorr.

And I think it's almost sick to refer to the "joys" of Viet Nam dissent. It was an ugly time in America and there was little joy to anything about the situation, whatever side you were on.

*****

It was a tough time in which urban rioting, crime, youth dissent, assassinations, racism and a terrible war added up to a real challenge to our social and political stability.

From a professional point of view, I found people to be generally fair and thoughtful during that difficult era when it came to discharging their civic responsibilities. I had a long string of personal injury cases I tried for black plaintiffs before all white juries because in those days insurance company lawyers automatically challenged every black juror peremptorily and could get away with it. While cases were being tried in the County Building, civil rights marches and raucous demonstrations were constantly taking place outside the building and could be heard in the courtrooms.

Despite all of that, jurors were not at all affected by it and I personally found no cases of racial prejudice affecting verdicts. Most of my colleagues were of the same opinion. I think that attests to the strength of character of most Americans during periods of social unrest and difficulty.

[Ralph]

I generally agree with Schorr.

And I think it's almost sick to refer to the "joys" of Viet Nam dissent. It was an ugly time in America and there was little joy to anything about the situation, whatever side you were on.

*****

It was a tough time in which urban rioting, crime, youth dissent, assassinations, racism and a terrible war added up to a real challenge to our social and political stability.

From a professional point of view, I found people to be generally fair and thoughtful during that difficult era when it came to discharging their civic responsibilities. I had a long string of personal injury cases I tried for black plaintiffs before all white juries because in those days insurance company lawyers automatically challenged every black juror peremptorily and could get away with it. While cases were being tried in the County Building, civil rights marches and raucous demonstrations were constantly taking place outside the building and could be heard in the courtrooms.

Despite all of that, jurors were not at all affected by it and I personally found no cases of racial prejudice affecting verdicts. Most of my colleagues were of the same opinion. I think that attests to the strength of character of most Americans during periods of social unrest and difficulty.

*****

Generally that was true of juries in most but not all of the country. There was no way to voir dire participants in campus and urban strife as well as racist outrages to insure individual commitment to fairness.

Also, to a certain degree a civil jury in a tort case against a corporation, government or well-heeled defendant tends to like the truly harmed plaintiff more than the defendant and not tie that sympathy to any broader social consciousness.

And lastly, your clients had a master courtroom advocate-let's not be shy about that.

[Corlyss_D]

it was a tense time and for part of it I was very close to the center of government.

Wasn't it one of the most exhilerating times of your entire life? There was a snap in the air in DC that has never been equaled. I thought you were there in DC during the latter days of the Nixon administration.

*****

But exhilarating? Challenging and depressing and at times very, very scary.

Some of the most exhilarating experiences I've ever had were during litigation after about a month of 7day/wk 18-20hr/day. sleep-deprived, schedule out of whack, and exhausted. The period 1965-Aug 9 1974 was the most exciting I'd ever been thru. The war, the riots, the turmoil for different reasons rocking the nation coast to coast, the civil rights demonstrations, Kent State, the annual anti-war protest, Watergate. It was the politics of it all that made for the "snap in the air."

The Martin Luther King riot (like other urban riots) left wide swaths of Northwest D.C. in ruins

Ran the Jews out of their long established neighborhoods downtown. I talked with a colleague whose wife was a gradeschooler in DC during the MLK riots of April 68. He pointed out their synagogue near Chinatown, a beautiful late 19th Cen structure, now some kind of black church. He told me that the whole area was abandoned by the Jews as a result of the riots.

As a lowly contracting officer for the Military District of Washington, I used to rent the buses they used to ring the WH during the demonstrations.

[Ralph]

"White Flight," rarely Jewish but occasionally so, was common from the period of Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg when the Supreme Court directed lower federal courts to actually produce unitary school systems. By the time of major urban rioting much of the South had experienced both White Flight and resegregation.

Some riots had an immediate impact on the white populace where flight was directly related to both a crime wave and the very unusual but powerful sudden eruption of mass disorder. This happened in Newark, NJ in the early 60s, dramatically in Detroit after '67, in Washington following Dr. King's murder and elsewhere (Brooklyn's Bushwick section in '77 following the looting during the blackout).

While some episodes might have been exciting to me, that was because of the pressure and challenge of my M.I. duty. But exhilarating, never.

[Barry]

True Barry, that would be nice
But now you have more important things to do..
Like getting that needle out of your arm (G)

A man can dream, can't he?

[Ralph]

True Barry, that would be nice
But now you have more important things to do..
Like getting that needle out of your arm (G)

A man can dream, can't he?

*****

Absolutely, I dreamt last night about my Supreme Court confirmation hearing (I wowed Hatch).