America’s Independence Day Hypocrisy

Thursday, July 4, 2013
By Paul Martin

By: Stephen Lendman
Market Oracle
Jul 04, 2013

Ron Kovic’s an anti-war activist. He was born on July 4, 1946. Vietnam combat left him paralyzed. He’s wheelchair-bound.

His memoir titled “Born on the Fourth of July” became an Academy Award-winning film. Oliver Stone directed it. Tom Cruise played Kovic.

An updated 2005 book introduction said in part:

Vietnam’s “disastrous war” changed his life. It affected countless “others of (his) generation profoundly and forever.”

Back then was “a lifetime ago.” He was 18. He has photos of how he looked. Recalling them shakes him badly. He can’t do it without experiencing nightmares.

He can’t face the uninjured young man he once was. His trauma still runs deep. His “beautiful body (was) destroyed, defiled and savaged.”

His Vietnam experience left him “physically and emotionally haunted.” It pursues, threatens and overwhelms him.

He still experiences “nightmares, constant anxiety attacks, severe heart palpitations, and a powerful, almost obsessive feeling that I would not live past my thirtieth birthday.”

He lives each day like his last. He reflected on Bush wars. He envisions “another Vietnam unfolding.” Today’s America is far worse than then.

Washington “pursues a policy of deception, distortion, manipulation, and denial, doing everything it can to hide from the American people” its true agenda.

Flag-draped coffins return. So do “paraplegics, amputees, burn victims, the blinded and maimed, shocked and stunned, brain damaged and psychologically stressed.”

They fill VA hospitals. Record numbers of active military and veteran suicides go unnoticed. Nearly two dozen vets alone die daily this way.

Doing so reveals America’s dark side. Most people don’t know. Little gets reported. Broken lives don’t matter. War is hell. Who’s knows if people aren’t told. Those living it know best.

“To kill another human being, to take another life out of this world with one pull of a trigger, is something that never leaves you,” said Kovic.

The Rest…HERE

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