[Lakeshark]

Where the JFK-LBJ administration spent eight years putting 535,000 U.S. troops into a war they could neither end nor win, Nixon withdrew all U.S. troops in four years, brought home the POWs, and left every provincial capital in South Vietnamese hands.

A very strange statement. He seems to have forgotten the video of the last helicopters leaving the embassy, all the boat people in the harbor, the mass killings, and the takeover of the South by the North, all in less than a year.

To suggest this was a Nixonian triumph is a bit much.

[VerySadAmerican]

What you just described was a result of the democrats cutting off all funding and Ford going along with it.

I know South Vietnamese pilots who said they would only get enough fuel to fly to the target and back home. The NVA would move the target out of range. A pilot told me he could see the target but didn’t have enough fuel to make it there and back home.

And don’t forget those brave men on the bridge who fought to the death with nothing but their hands because they had ran out of ammo.

[ExTxMarine]

To suggest this was a Nixonian triumph is a bit much.

I am sorry, but you are incorrect. Nixon did, in fact, end the Vietnam war, and left the country in control of the South Vietnamese.

However, the Democrat controlled Congress passed laws that forbade any further US involvement or cost in Vietnam. This was a sign to the North Vietnamese that they could then re-attack South Vietnam without the threat of US armed forces.

In other words, at the point of the boat lifts and fall of Saigon, Nixon's hands were TIED and there was NOTHING that he could have done - legally - to support South Vietnam. Nixon left with clean hands - the death and massacre that followed was because of the Democrat controlled Congress!

[Ditto]

He seems to have forgotten the video of the last helicopters leaving the embassy, all the boat people in the harbor, the mass killings, and the takeover of the South by the North, all in less than a year.

It was more than two years. The cease fire (Paris Peace Accords in Jan, 1973.
Nixon resigned (Aug., 1974).
The radical left (Watergate Class)took over congress (Jan. 1975) and cut off all funding and air support for South Vietnam.
Saigon fell (April 1975.)