Posted on 02/27/2008 5:55:50 AM PST by Nextrush
In 1944 with his chips down Adolf Hitler made a big gamble to try to defeat the Western Allies and force them out of World War II.
The Nazis launched a desperate offensive in the Ardennes Forest hoping to cut the Allied armies in two.
Covering the Battle of the Bulge was a reporter for the United Press named Walter Cronkite.
Just over 23 years later Cronkite, now America's most popular television newsman, would visit Vietnam to witness the another desperate offensive against American forces. This time it was launched by the Vietnamese Communists and was called the Tet Offensive.
Cronkite never came to the conclusion that World War II was a "statemate" because of the Battle of the Bulge and we should seek an "honorable peace" with Hitler.
But those were the conclusions he would draw in regards to Vietnam's Communists in a commentary at the end of his documentary "Report From Vietnam."
The show aired 40 years ago today on February 27th, 1968. I watched the show mainly for the action since I was only 7 years old, but I vaguely remember the comments and the impression they left with my father.
The Cronkite comments were careful by today's cable news standards, but they carried a message that the war that wasn't going right and something needed to be done about it.
Cronkite later said he thought President Johnson was drawing the same conclusions he did in regards to the Vietnam War.
Official US policy was to fight a limited war in Vietnam that didn't bomb the head of the supply line for the North Vietnamese war effort (Haiphong Harbor). There was fear that Russians would get killed and World War III with nuclear weapons would begin.
The goal of the US effort in Vietnam was to use graduated military force to drive the start of negotiations and some sort of Korean War type armistice.
The idea of winning a war died with World War II and has really not been official US policy since.
Now with the Tet Offensive and in spite of their military defeat and massive casualties, the North Vietnamese were winning a propaganda victory with America's mainstream media driving President Johnson to begin "peace talks" from a weaker position that he intended.
As for Cronkite's politics, they seemed to have become more harsh, left-wing and critical in his "retirement" years.
Back in 1951 Cronkite was asked about the Soviet Communist system in a Washington television magazine interview (Cronkite has just started in TV in 1950).
He said the Soviet system was closed to the outside world because it was backwards economically but would open up when they improved their economy.
Of course, the Communist line was that "socialism" as practiced in Communist societies would eventually give way to the perfect economic system of "communism."
Did Cronkite really believe Communist economic systems could "improve?" Apparently so in 1951.
And as for Uncle Walter's "stalemate" and "honorable peace" comments, chances are he might have faced the firing squad like those Nazis dressed up as American soldiers that Cronkite reported on during the Battle of the Bulge.
Few people mean more to the aging baby boomers than their “Uncle Walter”. They really believed that he told it “as it was”. But it never was. People are easily duped when they want liberalism.
He is SCUM!
Back in the days of “Uncle Walter” you only had the three TV networks for TV news and radio was much the same. My parents refused to watch CBS news in the late 1960s because of Cronkheit’s obvious bias, but the other alternatives weren’t much better. Today viewers are flocking to Fox News because it isn’t giving them the patently biased BS that the networks serve. CBS News has tumbled from its lofty heights in the Cronkheit days to bimbo news dished out by perky Katie.
More than hundreds. By the Tet offensive we had lost 28,000 military personnel. The North was ready to give up until the phony Lib a-hole Cronkite convinced America that we lost. From 1968 to 1975 we lost 30,000 more troops. These 30,000 should all be laid on Uncle Walters tombstone. However, I’m not sure I want our brave kids to be associated with this anti American jerk.
So very true. In wars people die. With cameras around, that is never permissible.
I despise Walter Cronkite.
I remember him basically talking the US into pulling out of Vietnam and consigning millions of people to death at the hands of the communist bastards that took over the South.
Ed
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NEVER FORGET
.
The same WALTER CRONKITE who publically called our TET Offensive military victory a defeat during the Vietnam War...
...went to a Year 2000 London World Conference to publically call for America’s 11 Southern States to secede from our Union..!!
The same WALTER CRONKITE who has been working hard for the CLINTONS’ return to our precious White House in a new time of war, with our own Freedom directly at stake right here at home.
The same CLINTONS who were actively on the side of our Anti-Freedom Communist North Vietnam enemy during the Vietnam War.
For...
...the Enemy is now within,
...and always has been.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
WALTER CRONKITE =
..”The JOURNEY from the FALL”..
http://www.JourneyFromTheFall.com
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806248/posts
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
.
NEVER FORGET
.
Not to mention a couple million Cambodians.
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