Vietnam was the last time national leaders in the Democratic and Republican parties acted together in the nation's best interest.
By teh end of the Vietnam War, liberals decided that America should not use its military for its own nation interests. Liberals now think the military should be exclusively used when America's national interests are not at stake (Kosovo, Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti).
This and the Koreran War, another Democrat blunder, for some reason get left out of any discussion about the great Truman.
Excerpt from: Nixon thought Kerry was a phony..thread here at FR.
Kerry relied upon phonies and wannabes for support. His prominence has allowed current phonies and wannabes to continue the unsubstantiated allegations made all those years ago and which Kerry appears to condone even today. For example:
Elton Mazione, claiming Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) credentials, Kerry's original organization, along with his friends, John Laboon, Eddie Swetz, and Kenneth Van Lesser. They claimed to kill children and remove body parts as part of the notorious Phoenix program. They were neither in Phoenix nor in Vietnam.
Kerry's VVAW leader friend from 1971, Al Hubbard, lied about being an officer, Vietnam Veteran, and sustaining war injuries. Michael Harbert, another VVAW crony of Kerry, lied about his Vietnam service.
Frank Dux: He charged many recognizable Vietnam vets with using techniques bordering on war crimes. Dux was a fraud and non Vietnam Veteran.
Yoshia K. Chee claimed we in Vietnam routinely resorted to the most hideous forms of torture, threw people out of helicopters, and decapitated prisoners. He was a phony.
Mike Beamon, an alleged SEAL and Phoenix assassin, was never in the military.
The Senator's own VVAW and similar groups relied upon people like: K. Barton Osborn, a Vietnam veteran and testifier of atrocities to Congress. He told of prisoners being thrown out of helicopters, a woman starved to death, a prisoner being killed by a six inch dowel pushed through his ear. Osborn was not in Phoenix, refused to name names, and provided no documentation.
Lieutenants Francis Reitemeyer and Michael J. Cohn. Both sought conscientious objector status because of Phoenix. Reitemeyer testified to being assigned to Phoenix as an adviser and maintained a kill quota of fifty bodies a month. They became famous as My Lai hit the news. Neither served in Vietnam, in Phoenix, or had any first hand information. Reitemeyer later denied receiving any assassination training. Both were at Ft. Holabird when I underwent my intelligence training there.
26 posted on 01/20/2004 2:30:55 PM PST by Light Speed
Nixon did manage (despite the 5th column) to negotiate a peace that may well have held if Congress had not undermined it and abandoned our obligations to South Vietnam, but Nixon was faced with a nearly impossible strategic situation, and the above passage illustrates why: North Vietnam was ensconced in Laos and Cambodia, which gave them nearly unrestricted access to insert supplies for their insurgents, and/or North Vietnamese troops or agents, almost anywhere along South Vietnam's entire Western border.
Eisenhower understood how untenable this would be, and informed Kennedy during the transition that defending Laos was the strategic key to defending the rest of Indochina. Arguably Kennedy lost the war -- or made it virtually unwinnable -- nearly eight years before Nixon came to office, by refusing to defend Laos (where strong indigenous anti-Vietnamese sentiment would have made the kind of insurgent war conducted against us in South Vietnam nearly impossible). Kennedy then compounded his error by refusing to commit the forces his generals told him were necessary to win the insurgent war.