Vietnam remembered.
 

"We had to destroy it in order to save it."


Pretzel logic --- indeed..:rolleyes:

This about summarizes my thoughts too. I was probably a little overreaching when I suggested that the war was more Nixon's than Johnson's.

I remember Tricky Dick's election ploy that he had a secret plan to end the war and I remember that he soon was talking of victory with honor and not letting our boys die in vain while another ten or fifteen thousand died for that lost cause.

I detested LBJ for expanding the war so much and detested Nixon for not ending it sooner.

Nixon and Kissinger were certainly skilled players of international diplomacy, though lacking in personal integrity of the sort that I expect in day to day interactions. I would put LBJ in that catagory as well.

How "OLD" was President Obama when the Vietnam war was going on?

Maybe he was just a little boy and too young to have learnt the lessons from it. (He should have read the history books at least.)


Because he is making the EXACT same mistakes the LBJ and Nixon did in Vietnam, right now in Afghanistan.

My heart goes out to all the US and "Allied" soldiers (and their families) who have been will be maimed and killed in this futile, unwinnable and endless war caper against those barbaric, brutal, opium growing, suicidal, religious, torturing, fanatics that abuse their own females and children and ignore the Geneva convention.

Damn Jim, really you can’t do better than regurgitating that worn totemic of the America hating left! One of the earliest fabricated quotes by none other than the thoroughly discredited CNN/ NBC/Saddam Hussein Propagandist/ Peter Arnett! Yeah that Peter Arnett the one who later also infamously fabricated the Operation Tailwind (US using SARIN gas to a exterminate a Laotian village containing American deserters circa 1970!) story that humiliated CNN, from which he was never again seen! NBC obviously considered all this sterling credentials and posted him to Bagdad! From which he was fired!

It didn’t happen! The town of 50,000, not a village of Ben Tre was not destroyed but heavily damaged, only a few Americans where involved in the fighting there. The New York Times ran Arnett’s AP dispatch with the fabricated quote to which Arnett attributed to an “unidentified officer”, it has to be noted that to this day Arnett has steadfastly refused to identify the source of his “fabriciquotation”

Pages 43 & 44
The quote verifier: who said what, where, and when
By Ralph Keyes

http://books.google.com/books?id=d6JZryGvfxYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=The+quote+verifier:+who+said+what,+where,+and+when+By+R alph+Keyes&cd=1&hl=en#v=onepage&q=&f=false

How so? Do explain?

Well, the gradual withdrawl accomplished nothing; they still "lost." They could have left at any time with the same result. Of course, if JFK/LBJ/RMN had paid attention to the french's experience (or the american experience in korea) they wouldn't have been there at all. I have to wonder if JFK would have gone down that path, or of he was just tweaking china a little when he sent the "advisors."

you have no idea do you - its all on a plane piece of white paper do this and all is well again

10s of thousands of people in Vietnam were looking foward to their freedom we had promised for there help and none of those lived after we had gone

not knowing the extent of what is involved in a army to do what is needed to end fighting in an entire country and the roots that have to be made in order to stop the killing of your own YOU have no idea

to sit in judgment at the TV and talking points of BIAS people do not give you a handle on the truth BTW you dont get it and never will and that is not OK

to even think you can just pick up and leave a day a year sooner still you would complain NOT what some of us thought we were doing AND not unlike what the WH is now doing to CIA AND Navy SEALS --- O for sure just like you dont get it --

His thoughts on the subject O are straight out of defete from with in, the fall of the roman empire, Reason too many book smart people with no knowledge of what it took in blood to get them as smart as they are, you wont get that as well - its called FREEDOM - but it has a price and some of us have made that stand -- jz

Arnett worked for AP during the Viet Nam war. CNN didn't exist at the time. Arnett later worked for CNN for 18 years, so your suggestion that CNN was "humiliated" and Arnett was "never seen again" is glaringly false.
According to your linked article, Army Major Phill Canella told Arnett "it was a shame the town was destroyed". Again your suggestion it didn't happen is just plain wrong.

While we are naming the men responsible for Viet Nam, don't forget the part played by the the ex-FoMoCo whiz kid, Robert McNamara. He contributed the body bag count as a measure of our "success".

McNamara is just one of the heavies in the kluster***k of the Viet Nam war.
The Viet Namese call it the "American War".

Yup, he was one of many who were in way over their heads. At least he admitted his mistakes in later life, others did not.

I honestly don't think these guys were evil, they just didn't understand what they were trying to do. This was the WW2 generation trying to run a limited proxy war without a rule book. The military leadership didn't understand what the goals were, and the political leadership thought this was "merely the continuation of policy by other means." For a while, I thought americans had learned a lesson.

Yeppers, I agree that was technically incorrect. The Democrat Vietnam mess was ultimately ended under Ford, not Nixxon.

Meds! Meds! Meds!

Just like I said!

"The New York Times ran Arnett’s AP dispatch with the fabricated quote to which Arnett attributed to an “unidentified officer”, it has to be noted that to this day Arnett has steadfastly refused to identify the source of his “fabriciquotation”

Uh, reading comprehension! Arnett's two producers where fired and Arnett's contract with CNN was not renewed after CNN had to apologise and correct the falsified story presented on air by Arnett.

"Yeah that Peter Arnett the one who later also infamously fabricated the Operation Tailwind (US using SARIN gas to a exterminate a Laotian village containing American deserters circa 1970!) story that humiliated CNN, from which he was never again seen!"

You should be ashamed and/or embarassed! The complete information from which you selectively quote an incomplete and out of context portion to support a delusional falshood is as follows:

“Their senior officer, army major Phil Cannella, later recalled telling Arnett that it was unfortunate that some of Ben Tre was destroyed in the course of its defense. Cannella thought he might have said at most “It was a shame the town was destroyed.” Cannella, who later turned against the war, believes Arnett may have embellished this comment by him.”

My statement!

"The town of 50,000, not a village of Ben Tre was not destroyed but heavily damaged"

Arnett is an exposed liar and fabricator, the defence offered is more of the same. It is not suprising.

You claim Ben Tre was heavily damaged. Your linked source says the town was destroyed. Here's a link to an article attributing the quote to another officer.
http://www.nhe.net/BenTreVietnam/
I'm not defending Arnett, I'm critcizing your mistakes and generalizations.

Yes, I constantly forget that Republicans had no participation in the Vietnam issue . . . :rolleyes: