Originally Posted by strelnik

Let it go before I rant.
This was a war I was in the tail end of as a kid, watching the chaplain comes down the street to peoples' houses once a month or just often enough so you couldn't forget it.

Buddies of mine were in Saigon during Tet, I happened to be training the ARVN later.. The real shock of it all is how it clashed with the reality we had known to that point, from the 50's and 60's . And how it clashed with the generals' assumptions. Why do you think Mac Namara went? He didn't know what to do and couldn't admit it to anyone.

As bad as Iraq has been, the DEATH toll of VietNam was FIFTEEN times the toll in Iraq!. The WW2 tactics which people used would not work, nobody even knew what low-intensity asymmetrical warfare was in those days except the Brits, because their colonies used that strategy on them to gain independence.

Go put on a uniform for a few years and then you can be an armchair general. Otherwise,... never mind, this is pointless.