Page 16 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • June 25, 2014 Back to Baghdad The war drums are once again pounding as the United States contemplates the response to the Sunni victory over the Shiites in Iraq. The horrible stories and scenes may make us forget for a moment that, after more than 5,000 Americans were killed in action, we were told this war had ended in triumph. Remember Operation Desert Storm? At the beginning of the campaign, we were told the Iraqis who invaded Kuwait had ripped Kuwaiti babies out of their incubators to send the incubators home to Iraq and leave the babies to die. That never happened. The “nurse” who told the story turned out to be the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat and not a nurse at all. Remember the 2003 invasion of Iraq in search of “weap- ons of mass destruction” that turned out not to have existed? Jessica Lynch, a 19-year-old soldier, was part of a convoy that took a wrong turn into Basra, was “ambushed,” and shot to pieces. Stories said Lynch fought heroically, and that she was raped and tortured. Some years later, Lynch, now a civilian, went public with a new story: She had never fired her weapon, was not raped or tortured, and the Iraqi hospital staff took good care of her and told her American rescuers where to find her. One Iraqi nurse even sang for her to cheer her up. Rape sells newspapers and books, and inspires ven- geance. Such was the intention of the “Rape of Belgium,” made famous 100 years ago by British newspapers that wanted to whip up the Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the Atlantic to destroy “German militarism” and stifle Germa- ny’s commercial threat to Britain. In 1914, the Germans offered Luxemburg and Belgium neutrality and post-war reparations if both indefensible countries sat out a German invasion of France. Luxemburg accepted and the Germans passed through Luxemburg with- out incident. Belgium actually declared war on Germany. The story centered around mass rapes of Belgian women and girls by German soldiers, babies being tossed around on bayonets, children having their hands cut off, nuns being used as the clappers of church bells -- and made no sense except as a reversion to sheer barbarism by the people who had given the world Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, the gasoline engine, and the cures for diphtheria and syphilis. What actually happened? Most of the Belgian army’s reservists had not received their uniforms and turned out with their weapons in civilian clothes, joined by civilians, to shoot at the German invaders. The Germans retaliated and shot anybody who fired on their troops. Belgian and British propaganda turned this into a massacre of inno- cents. The neutral powers had eight correspondents with the German army and Thomas Fleming reports in “The Illusion of Victory” that the correspondents sent out a joint telegram: GERMAN ATROCITIES GROUNDLESS... UNABLE REPORT SINGLE INCIDENT UNPRO- VOKED REPRISAL...NUMEROUS INVESTIGATIONS PROVED GROUNDLESS. Clarence Darrow arrived in Belgium a year later and offered $1,000 (about $20,000 today) to any Belgian child who could show him the stumps of lopped-off hands. There were no takers. James Bryce, a respected British historian, wrote a report in which he affirmed that many of the German atrocities were real. But nobody could find a victim who would talk or had seen a baby on a bayonet. Bryce ended a respected career by being posthumously exposed as a blatant propagandist. The Germans lost 900 soldiers marching through Bel- gium and 108 of these Germans were killed or wounded by shotguns -- civilian weapons banned on the battlefields. When a German officer found two of his men accosting a Belgian woman, he arrested them. They each got six months in prison. No private German diaries admit to shooting women unless the women were shooting at them. Some Belgian women may have been shot while clinging to their husbands. The next outrage was “The Crucified Canadian.” A dead Canadian officer was reportedly found in 1915 pinned to a wooden door by eight bayonets. Accounts, however, sometimes described three soldiers, sometimes a sergeant rather than an officer, sometimes an Englishman rather than a Canadian, and described the body in three or four different locations -- including one site never occupied by the German army. When a British war art display featured a sculpture of “The Crucified Canadian” in 1920, the Ger- mans told the British to provide plausible evidence of the crucifixion or withdraw the sculpture. The British with- drew the sculpture. Another crucifixion was depicted by the Dyess Report, published in 1944. William “Ed” Dyess, a Bataan Death March survivor, reported seeing an American soldier cru- cified on a barbed-wire fence between two crucified Fili- pino soldiers. Dyess was an American fighter pilot flying over Bataan. He survived the march, served with the Filipino guerillas, and escaped to the United States by submarine. Dyess was flying a twin-engine fighter plane over suburban Los Angeles in 1943 when one engine burst into flames. Rather than bail out and have the plane crash into Burbank, Dyess tried to ride out the fire. The plane crashed and Dyess was killed. The twist of the Dyess crucifixion story is that there was only one road out of Bataan -- and no other American of the thousands on the march seems to have mentioned the crucifixion scene. Americans reported that any American caught with Japanese money, Japanese family photographs, or sou- venirs plausibly looted from a dead Japanese citizen was instantly beheaded. Americans who could not keep up with the march were murdered. Nobody else saw a crucifixion. When the Dyess report first hit print after Dyess died, casualties from the march were listed as 5,200, with cho- reographed cries for the total extermination of the Japanese as a race. The real documented post-war number was 600 to 650. One awful wartime secret was the fact that some Army enlisted men on the death march were delighted when the Japanese slugged American officers for “disrespect,” as reported in “Death March” by Donald Knox. Some younger soldiers, according to death march survivor Colonel Irvin Alexander, in “Bataan and Beyond,” refused to help U.S. officers they disliked and left the sick, tottering older men for the Japanese “buzzard squad” that finished off strag- glers. Every last U.S. Marine survived the march because the Marines stood by their officers and stuck together. None of the 77 American nurses died, and not one was raped. Colonel Alexander’s book was bad for U.S. propaganda. He wrote it in 1949 and it was not published until 2005. Dyess became a propagandist without knowing it because he had died a hero’s death before his report hit print - - apparently doctored by somebody in the Office of War Information who thought a crucifixion would add a nice touch to a war with heavy racial implications on both sides. When the truth is bad enough, why make it worse? Was it to justify the subsequent mass bombings that killed 800,000 Japanese women and children? Americans need to learn that lying is acceptable in most of the world. They also need to understand that the kind of political stability we were able to impose and foster in post- war Germany and post-war Japan relied on the heritage of constitutional monarchy where people were accustomed to voting and where human rights in the past had been taken for granted. We obviously failed to find Germany’s Konrad Adenauer (Catholic, Christian Democrat) or Japan’s Shigeru Yoshida (secret Catholic, received the last rites on his deathbed) in Iraq. We might be wise not to waste another 5,000 Ameri- can lives looking for someone like them in Iraq. He could be as elusive as the weapons of mass destruction we went looking for the first time. Letters to the Editor Appreciates Memorial Day volunteers Dear Editor: I would like to express my sincere appreciation to the many volunteers who assisted at the Wyckoff Memorial Day Parade. It is because of these dedicated individuals that we are able to have two memorial services and a parade to honor our veterans. A special thank you is extended to all of the corpo- rate sponsors who generously donated toward the parade expenses. Many thanks to the Wyckoff Police Department and Fire Police for their assistance with the traffic detail; the Wyckoff Community Emergency Response Team for their help at the staging area and along the parade route; the Wyckoff Fire Department for their assistance in setting up, cleaning up, and for the use of their facilities; the Wyckoff Fire Department Ladies Auxiliary for cooking and serving hot dogs for the enjoyment of township residents; the staff of the township clerk’s office for their efforts in preparing for the parade; and the Midland Park/Wyckoff VFW Post 7086 for their invaluable support and assistance every year. All of your efforts are very much appreciated. Finally, I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to the members of the Wyckoff Memorial Day Parade Com- mittee for their tireless efforts in making our Memorial Day celebration a successful event every year. It takes the work of many hands to continue to honor our veterans who made the supreme sacrifice so that we might enjoy the freedom we have today. Nick Ciampo, Parade Chairman Wyckoff Residents appreciate diversity Dear Editor: As new residents of Midland Park (less than two years), we are appalled by what we are reading from those opposed to a mosque opening in town. The perceived change in the character of the community and a resulting decrease in property values are all based on prejudicial, intolerant, and uneducated views. Some comments from those opposed. “I’m concerned about this new group, not about religion. Previous churches were built to serve a religious need in the community. This group is from the outside. Let’s go back to where neighbors matter.” “You could have offered tax breaks to a developer. Look at other options. The town is not going in the right direction.” “The mosque will bring more traffic and speed- ing.” “Why didn’t the governing body help the Korean con- gregation with its tax problems?” “We want nice neighbors who pay taxes.” “We moved here for the blue collar feel of the town.” Our responses to these comments: If taxes are the issue why would the town offer a tax break to a developer? The town is not going in the right direction? Which direction is that north, south, east, or west? A developer building a bunch of townhomes or McMansions on 2.8 acres would most certainly increase traffic, noise, and require additional police, fire, and EMS protection. Locals already speed on Irving Street, we know, we live there. The town did try to help the Korean church but the church failed to provide the appropriate documentation. However, it was ok that there was a Korean congregation (from out of town) not paying taxes but not a mosque. Residents already have nice neigh- bors who pay taxes now they will have nice neighbors who don’t pay taxes. Please tell us how a mosque is going to change the blue collar feel of the town? As a family we have not found a house of worship in Midland Park that we plan to attend and are looking elsewhere. But maybe the residents of that town will not be accepting of us because we don’t belong to the “neighborhood” we are outsiders. We would like to know where are the religious leaders of Midland Park? Why are they so silent? We teach our children acceptance, tolerance, and diver- sity and this outcry of opposition is against our beliefs and teachings. So if people are really opposed to the opening of a mosque, then they should sell their home. No one is stop- ping them. We’re sure we will get new tax-paying neigh- bors who are accepting and tolerant. (continued on page 18)