Nixon ready to 'cut off head' of South Vietnam leader

AFP ^ | June 24, 2009

[Tailgunner Joe]

WASHINGTON - Despite pleges to protect South Vietnam, former US president Richard Nixon privately vowed to "cut off the head" of its leader unless he backed peace with the communist North, tapes released Tuesday showed.

The tapes appear to confirm charges by South Vietnam's late president, Nguyen Van Thieu, who tearfully accused the United States of breaking its word to protect Saigon when the southern capital fell in 1975.

The National Archives released more than 150 hours of new tapes from Nixon, who notoriously recorded his conversations. Nixon is heard railing against the media and Congress for allegedly undercutting the war effort in Vietnam.

Hours before his second inauguration in January 1973, Nixon telephoned top aide Henry Kissinger and urged him to press Thieu to back the Paris Peace Accords which ended most US military involvement in Vietnam.

Nixon asked Kissinger to tell the South Vietnamese -- truthfully or not -- that the US Congress would cut off aid to the Saigon government unless it supported the accords.

"I don't know whether that threat goes far enough or not but I'd do any damn thing that is -- or cut off his head if necessary," Nixon said.

Kissinger indicated it would be easy to strong-arm South Vietnam's foreign minister, Tran Van Lam, who was in the French capital for the talks.

"The foreign minister is an ass and he won't be able to do anything," said Kissinger, then Nixon's national security adviser, who sealed the agreement in Paris three days later with top diplomats from the two Vietnams.

But Nixon met the foreign minister later that month at the White House and promised to do "everything that we can" to assist South Vietnam, according to another tape released Tuesday.

"Your independence -- your ability to keep the communists (inaudible), your ability to keep South Vietnam under your control, the opportunity to have an international agreement of their own choice -- this for me is very important," Nixon said.

"The main thing to remember: we know who our friends are," Nixon said.

North Vietnamese troops seized Saigon in 1975, after Nixon had resigned in the Watergate scandal.

Thieu in a bitter farewell address called the United States an "inhumane ally," saying the Nixon team forced him to sign the Paris Peace Accords under false promises to assist South Vietnam.

[tet68]

Of course, all George Bush’s fault.

[nmh]

If you figuratively “cut off the head” of your opposition, it tends to make them less powerful. Of course in today's political climate, Nixon will be made out to be an AQ terrorist.

[Lurker]

Talk about your revisionist history...

[SWAMPSNIPER]

My opinion of Nixon changed when I discovered his disdain for the 2nd amendment.

[Eagles6]

"Nixon is heard railing against the media and Congress for allegedly undercutting the war effort in Vietnam."

And well they did. These tapes are released at this time for a specific reason. This article blatantly lays the blame for the loss of South Vietnam on Nixon when it was the dem congress that hung them dry, pure and simple.

[21twelve]

“Karzai, in a bitter farewell address called the United States an “inhumane ally,” saying the Bush team forced him to sign the Peace Accords under false promises to assist Afghanistan.”

Fast forward to 2039 when tapes about Karzai and the fall of Afghanistan in 2011 are released.

[JRandomFreeper]

They aren't over Nixon yet?

We should go back to Johnson's tapes.

/johnny

[ETL]

Related...

"Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg
_____________________________________________________________

"As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young under John Ehrlichman's supervision created the 'White House Plumbers,' which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Fallout
_____________________________________________________________

So what is Daniel Ellsberg up to these days? Well, for one thing, he is an endorser of the Revolutionary Communist Party's "World Can't Wait" movement...

Click on the 'World Can't Wait' link just below and see: "Endorsers of the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime Include" You may recognize a few other names as well, including the democrat chair of the House Judiciary Committee, John Conyers Jr. Conyers' name appears right after Ward Churchill's.
http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2538&Itemid=2
_____________________________________________________________

Endorsers of the [World Can't Wait] Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime Include:

James Abourezk, Aris Anagnos, Rocky Anderson, Anti-Flag, Edward Asner, Russell Banks, Ed Begley Jr., Harry Belafonte, St. Clair Bourne, Gabriel Byrne, Margaret Cho, Ward Churchill, Paulette Cole, US Rep John Conyers Jr., John Densmore, Jesse Diaz Jr., Michael Eric Dyson, Steve Earle, Niles Eldredge, Daniel Ellsberg, Eve Ensler, Laura Flanders, Jane Fonda, Martin Garbus, Senator Mike Gravel, Andre Gregory, Sam Hamill, Suheir Hammad, Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Jr., Mumia Abu-Jamal, Rickie Lee Jones, Sarah Jones, Brig. Gen. (Ret) Janis Karpinski, Jonathan Kozol, Rabbi Michael Lerner, US Rep. Cynthia McKinney, Robin Meyers, Mark Crispin Miller, Tom Morello, Viggo Mortensen, John Nichols, US Rep. Major Owens, Grace Paley, Harvey Pekar, Sean Penn, Michelle Phillips, Harold Pinter, Michael Ratner, Mark Ruffalo, US Rep. Bobby Rush, Susan Sarandon, Richard Serra, Jeff Sharlet, Rev. Al Sharpton, Cindy Sheehan, Martin Sheen, Nancy Spero, Gloria Steinem, Lynne Stewart, Serj Tankian, Sunsara Taylor, Studs Terkel, Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, Naomi Wallace, US Rep. Maxine Waters, Cornel West, Ann Wright, Howard Zinn, and thousands more who have already joined us.

http://worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2538&Itemid=2
_____________________________________________________________

World Can't Wait--Drive Out the Bush Regime is a Maoist-revolutionary movement organized by the Revolutionary Communist Party. (scroll down the list that appears (after clicking link) to find the World Can't Wait organization --rwor.org is the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party):
http://rwor.org/a/rwlink/links.htm
_____________________________________________________________

From David Horowitz's FrontpageMag.com /DiscoverTheNetworks.org:
Profile: World Can't Wait (WCW)

*Revolutionary communist movement that stages protests against the Bush administration

*Organizes college and high-school students

*Founded in June 2005 by Charles Clark Kissinger, a longtime leader of the Revolutionary Communist Party

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/groupProfile.asp?grpid=7213
_____________________________________________________________

The RCP calls for the armed overthrow of the U.S. government...

From the website of the Revolutionary Communist Party (revcom.us or rwor.org) :

"Create Public Opinion, Seize Power: We are preparing minds and organizing forces for the time when there is a major crack in the system, whenever it comes and wherever it comes from: an opening that makes it possible to bring the future Revolutionary Army of the Proletariat (R.A.P.) into the field and wage a revolutionary armed struggle that actually has a chance of winning.

And we have said that building our party itself is the most important part of organizing forces for revolution. This is true now, and it is true looking forward to the creation of that future R.A.P. and the waging of that armed struggle.":

http://revcom.us/a/v20/1000-1009/1000/barw.htm

[CORedneck]

Looking back on Nixon, he was another liberal. There is one thing he did on the domestic front, gave us the cursed 55 mph speed limit which took 20 years to finally get rid of.

[Buffalo Head]

Don't forget his wage and price controls implemented in the early 1970’s by Executive Order, freezing everyone’s wages.

[DakotaRed]

Thjis just confirms what many of us said all these years, we sold out hte Vietnamese and threw them to the wolves of Communism.

Even with what Nixon said, it pales in comparison to Kerry, Fonda and the rest of that ilk back then.

[Intolerant in NJ]

Nixon asked Kissinger to tell the South Vietnamese -- truthfully or not -- that the US Congress would cut off aid to the Saigon government unless it supported the accords...nothing new here - in his "Triumph Forsaken", Mark Moyar details how US officials including especially Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge routinely used the threat of withdrawal of US aid to try to influence South Vietnamese policies and actions - Lodge in particular worked to try to get the Diem administration to do what he thought was best for the country, and when Diem resisted used the same kinds of threats to get Diem's opponents to eventually push him from power - trouble was, Lodge and most other Americans didn't really understand the Vietnamese culture; they didn't appreciate how a strong, independent and at times ruthless leader such as Diem was valued by the Vietnamese - he was too autocratic for their taste. But after he was deposed and assassinated, the war effort in the South deteriorated badly - had they not interfered, it's likely that Diem could have continued consolidating his power and control over the political situation which might have helped avoid the eventual full-scale war which erupted.......

[Tainan]

...comments from Westminster...aka...Little Saigon?

...bkmark.

[taxesareforever]

I’m waiting for the release of Johnson’s and Kennedy’s tapes. I’m getting sleepy..........

[Red Dog #1]

Well be reading stories like this someday about how Obama sold out Israel.