[tanknetter]

Here’s the really funny and amusing (in a sad/pathetic sense) thing about Walter Cronkite: he did his fair share to help the US get INTO Vietnam and keep it there, prior to his abrupt about-face following Tet.

I took a class in college on the politics of the Vietnam War. Professor was a raving Lib, but HATED Cronkite ... calling him an opportunist and propagandist for the military industrial complex and someone who’s switch on the war was too little/too late.

As evidence he showed a pre-Tet news segment where Cronkite went on a bombing mission with a B-57 Canberra unit deployed to Vietnam. Uncle Walt was giddy as a frikkin’ schoolgirl climbing out of the back seat of the aircraft, gushing about how much of a rush the mission was for him ... (especially since, iirc, the pilot actually let him toggle the switch to drop the bombs).

[tanknetter]

To add, I think I found part of the transcript of Cronkite's post-game commentary on that B-57 mission here:

WALTER CRONKITE: B-57s -- the British call them Canberra jets -- we're using them very effectively here in this war in Vietnam to dive-bomb the Vietcong in these jungles beyond Da Nang here. Colonel, what's our mission we're about to embark on?

AIR FORCE COLONEL: Well, our mission today, sir, is to report down to the site of the ambush seventy miles south of here and attempt to kill the VC.

WALTER CRONKITE: The colonel has just advised me that that is our target area right over there. One, two, three, four, we dropped our bomb, but now a tremendous G-load as we pull out of that dive. Oh, I know something of what those astronauts must go through. Well, colonel.

AIR FORCE COLONEL: Yes, sir.

WALTER CRONKITE: It's a great way to go to war.

[Yardstick]

Maybe Cronkite was catching flak on the cocktail party circuit for being too gung ho early in the war. Maybe his defeatism towards the end was a way of proving that he had “evolved”.