Operation Withdrawal Scam
by Norman Solomon

Bush administration officials, and their enablers in the news media, say that Iraqis will take up burdens now being shouldered by the occupiers. Such "Iraqization" could change just the style of carnage - like the Vietnamization that occurred in the last several years of the Vietnam War.

During a much-heralded visit to Guam in July 1969, President Nixon announced that the US government would "furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility for its defense."

Such proclaimed doctrines of replacing American soldiers with natives are real crowd-pleasers in the USA. But such measures may do nothing to reduce the amount of blood on Uncle Sam's hands. Three years after Nixon's mid-1969 pronouncement, the US troop levels in Vietnam had fallen to 69,000. Yet during the three-year withdrawal of nearly half a million American soldiers, the tonnage rate of US bombs falling on Vietnam actually increased.


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