Major Ben Connable Is a GOP Tool

Connable wrote an article for the WaPo this morning called “The Truth On the Ground”. A note at the bottom of the article says he’s a Major in the Marine Corps. What the note doesn’t say is that he’s a foreign-area officer and intelligence officer with the 1st Marine Division and he’s been writing propaganda pieces for the Pentagon since he was a Captain. He writes well but he always says the same thing. Like…“64 percent of U.S. military officers think we will succeed if we are allowed to continue our work”. That part I believe because officers have a vested interest in keeping us in Iraq. It’s their living. But it’s the troops getting killed and wounded while their families are starving on a non-com’s pay that I take seriously. And the troops tell us the Pentagon has not supplied them with proper equipment, the war has been fought on the cheap and they are not sure we should be in Iraq at all. Their words on what’s going on in Iraq is a better gauge of the truth than a professional military toady's pretty prose. Sure, officers are in the line of fire…but they are management. You can’t believe management. Management invariably ends up lying to grunts, whether it’s in industry or the military. Management covers its ass. Management protects management. And it’s management that sends the workers out to fight its battles. Connable says, “We know the streets, the people and the insurgents far better than any armchair academic or talking head. As military professionals, we are trained to gauge the chances of success and failure, to calculate risk and reward. We have little to gain from our optimism and quite a bit to lose as we leave our families over and over again to face danger and deprivation for an increasingly unpopular cause. We know that there are no guarantees in war, and that we may well fail in the long run. We also know that if we follow our current plan we can, over time, leave behind a stable and unified country that might help to anchor a better future for the Middle East.” What a load of crap. When the tin-soldier Marine Majors leave their families, they leave them with benefits, a place to live and an on-going salary. When the Privates and other non-coms leave their families, the wives and moms have to fend for themselves. And now we hear that when these soldiers come home in a coffin, it’s sent as freight, not as the honored remains of an American hero. Connable keeps flogging the notion that he is a professional. We the people are know-nothings. We hear only the horror stories. And war correspondents are know-nothings. We should only believe what the propaganda tin-soldiers tell us. Connable says, “For every vividly portrayed suicide bombing, there are hundreds of thousands of people living quiet, if often uncertain, lives. For every depressing story of unrest and instability there is an untold story of potential and hope. The impression of Iraq as an unfathomable quagmire is false and dangerously misleading.” Well Major Connable, I think you have sold your soul to the warmongers and that you are a dangerously misleading propaganda flack. You are a press agent for the GOP’s unnecessary war in Iraq and you should be ashamed of yourself.