Thomas Cadmus, national commander of the 2.7-million-member American Legion, made some pretty astounding comments in August of 2005.

“We had hoped that the lessons learned from the Vietnam War would be clear to our fellow citizens. Public protests against the war here at home while our young men and women are in harm’s way on the other side of the globe only provide aid and comfort to our enemies.”

You know, it might have been really good and wise if the legion had also “hoped that the lessons from the Vietnam War would be clear” to our government.

Resolution 3, which was passed unanimously by 4,000 delegates to the annual event, states: “The American Legion fully supports the president of the United States, the United States Congress and the men, women and leadership of our armed forces as they are engaged in the global war on terrorism and the troops who are engaged in protecting our values and way of life.”

This is oxymoronic. You can support the President, OR you can support the men and women and leadership of our armed forces, but you cannot do both, because they are at odds. No president who wants to cut veterans benefits during a war is in any remotely conceivable way supporting the troops. The key point that is being conspicuously ignored in this statement is that the “global war on terrorism” and the invasion of Iraq serve different, and more importantly, conflicting, purposes.

Cadmus advised: “Let’s not repeat the mistakes of our past. I urge all Americans to rally around our armed forces and remember our fellow Americans who were viciously murdered on Sept. 11, 2001.”

One more time for those who have been too willfully thick to bother informing themselves:
1. Saddam’s regime had NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with the attacks on September 11.
2. There were NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION in Iraq when we invaded.
3. The Bush administration KNEW that objective intelligence analysis did not support their claims that Saddam had WMD
4. The Bush administration had warnings from the FBI and other government personnel that there was an attack being planned by Al Qaida. The Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) on August 6, 2001 is ample evidence of this.
5. After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration pretended that the attack was unpredictable, just as they have recently done when they President Bush claimed that the effect of a major hurricane on the New Orleans levee system was unpredicted, despite warnings of just such a result, and pleas from the region not to take money out of the infrastructure budget for the region and divert it to Iraq.

If the “American” Legion doesn’t know all of this, they need to stop making public policy statements, and start reading something other than the National Review and Reader’s Digest. Their pronouncement is absurd. Time to protest outside their doors, and to publicly condemn them. They should have taken a lesson from Operation Truth, the VFW, and the VVA.

Ed Lacy
UnCommon Sense TV