Posted on 06/13/2002 5:56:54 AM PDT by SJackson
The problem is you don't play proportional response football and you don't fight an enemy that way either. Unfortunately not many of our leaders or generals have played football.
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The problem is, one you get subversives in, it takes years to find them and get them out. By the time Nexon came into office the situation was unsalvageable.
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About four yeas ago on another forum a guy who had been a nave enlisted man in a critical position in Washington bragged about sending copies of secret documents and photographs to the New York Times and otther places to aod in the so-called anti-war effort. It was everywhere.
Exactly right. LBJ's ego came first, before everything else. The War was just something that promised to screw it all up, and if he played it straight and asked for articles, he knew old Everett Dirksen, the minority leader, would ask for taxes to pay for the war (like Dick Nixon did with the 10% income-tax surtax), which would saddle LBJ with a burden to his popularity (he had actually tried to get 100% of the vote in 1964, remember), and Dirksen would also be able to defeat much of the Great Society program on the prudential ground that you don't do that kind of stuff in the middle of a war! Which is exactly what LBJ was going to do, come hell or high water.
And yes, I knew DIRTXPOTUS had been on Fulbright's staff.....and I thought at the time that Fulbright had to be one of those 40's socialists who was working for the Russians. I intensely disliked and distrusted him, he belonged in a special category that I suspected were either fellow-travelers or agents outright, either of influence or worse.
Let's get DIRTXPOTUS drunk and laid some time and then secretly load his drink with sodium pentothal. You do the interrogation, and I'll transcribe on a laptop and run the camcorder, and we'll find out just what the hell he was doing in Moscow. Deal? Plus, I don't think anyone ever discovered who placed the Soviet bug that fell out of a chair in a Senate committee room that time. We really ought to get Putin to dump the KGB's files on 1970's North American assets and clear all this up once and for all.
I can just see some archaeologists in the far-off 49th century, excavating LBJ's grave and wondering what the chemical stain on the bottom of the grave-marker is.....and then doing a chemical analysis and discovering.....urea! I'd love to see the look on their faces. Come to think of it, I'd love to see the look on LBJ's!
We all KNOW what he was doing in Moscow. Most people don't know this,but a couple of the things that he did was visit the North Vietnames and the North Korean embassies.
Another one I am saving some kidney space for.
Believe it or not,but he admitted to a PBS show about him a few years back that he purposely distorted and slanted the news because "it was best for America"! The interviewer nailed him about the reporting of Bull Connners and the "Freedom Marchers" in Alabama,and Cronkite admitted they were careful to edit the film footage to only show what they wanted shown. If you ever see these old newsreels again,notice how all the black marchers the dogs go after are wearing "church suits" without the jackets. Look at the white shirts and ties. Know why? Because they had taken their jackets off to slap the dogs in the face to get them to attack. They had film of this,but destroyed it because they wanted everybody to think the attacks were unprovoked racial attacks.
Sorry,it was much more than that to him. The Johnson family got rich off the war and the buildup. They owned the second largest (right behind PA&E) construction firm in VN,and he made a bundle from them building bases,paving roads,putting in water and septic systems,etc,etc,etc.
Check out A Bright Shining Lie." It's about John Paul Vann and Viet Nam. Great book.
I understand ladybird had considerable holdings in Bell Helicopter. Some even think that the switch from the Hughes LOH-6 to the Bell OH-58, in the middle of the war, had something to do with the Johnson's influence.
Remember that shoebox full of $100 bills that Sen. Herman Talmadge's wife threw out into open court during their divorce? Seems ol' "Hummin" had that box for years and years, it was the Senate's "walking-around" money. Now, where did he get that box? My guess is, he got it from Dick Russell when he died, and that Russell got it from LBJ when he became president. Robert Caro documents that LBJ invented the idea of "handy money" for campaigning with, that he got money from Brown and Root, from Sid Richardson and other Texas independent oil men, and spread it around (collecting favor-chits, of course) in the summer of 1940, saving the House of Representatives for Franklin Roosevelt, who'd been widely expected to lose the House after two full terms in office, with a Republican tide running in the country. LBJ's money turned the election around. I've no doubt that "Hummin" had that box from Landslide Lyndon himself, and that they relied for its replenishment on certain businessmen who were determined to be players. Like Earl Long said back in those same days in the 1950's, "early money buys consideration; late money buys good government".
That's the one the local hard-left idiot, Bob Buzzanco, goes on about in his over-the-air lecture series on the history of Vietnam, the last 2/3's of which he spends gloating over America's loss of the war. One of Buzzanco's favorite texts. Why do you recommend it to Freepers? To "convert" us to the Truth laid down by the Left -- in Fire in the Lake, or in Terzi's onanistic Communist victory-gloat?
Southerners were paranoid about the Northern press getting involved, they knew there was going to be a slant......but this is fresh to me. I never even heard that, and you say it was on PBS? It tends to prove what I later came to suspect, by the way, that the entire Civil Rights Movement was an exercise in "kick your sister" and bringing out the worst in people, not the best.
Thanks for that info, I never knew that.
Because it is a good book. Just because some lefty likes it doesn't make the book bad. The fact is that John Paul Vann was incredible officer and early on (1962) saw what was going wrong with the war in Vietnam. Basically there was the widespread corruption among the ARVN and many South Vietnamese officials. On top of that, there was the pollyannish attitudes of the American military at the top, especially by the top U.S. commander there, General Harkins, who would brook no criticism of the South Vietnamese. It is possible that the war was winnable but such a possibility slipped away due to allowing widespread corruption among South Vietnamese officials and ARVN officers (they actually permitted the Viet Cong to constantly slip away because Diem considered the army's primary purpose to protect him), the lack of understanding of the War by the U.S. military command at the top (General Harkins had little connection with what was going on in the field), and the incredible arrogance of Robert STRANGE McNamara.
I suggest you read this incredible book instead of condemning it based on who liked it.
I always heard his family was a major stockholder.
Remember that shoebox full of $100 bills that Sen. Herman Talmadge's wife threw out into open court during their divorce?
No,this is the first I ever heard of it. Thanks for informing me,though.
Yeah,it was one part of a series by PBS that was titled something like "The Media in the 20th Century",or some such nonsense. Cronkite had a whole segment devoted to him because he had the tag of "the most trusted man in America",and the PBS show was out to set the record straight.
It tends to prove what I later came to suspect, by the way, that the entire Civil Rights Movement was an exercise in "kick your sister" and bringing out the worst in people, not the best.
What it really boiled down to was a family fight within the Dim Party between who was going to control it (and the country),the left or the right. Since MOST southern Dims were WAAAY to the right of most of what we laughingly call Republicans today,it was neccessary for the Dims in the northeast and their running mates to demonize the STRONG southern Dims. They used the power of gooberment and the media to do this. Watch the movie the left ranted and raved about "Mississippi Burning" for a good belly laugh. The Dims were over the roof about how "real" it was,yet what it really did is show their lies and slander. One part has the Feeb sent to look for the missing civil wrongs workers talking to the local sheriff about them being missing,and the local sheriff says something about "maybe they went fishing?". The Feeb replies,"These men are both trained agitators,and they had orders to check in every day." One was a obvious Jew with long hair and a beard,and the other was a black man.BOTH were riding around in Missippi and Alabama in a brand new car with plenty of money to spend,trying their damndest to stir up trouble. Basically,the Feebs SENT them there to be murdered. This does NOT excuse their murders in any way,but it's obvious wnat was going on.
Later the head Feed sends a flunkie off to rent them motel rooms,and the flunkie comes back and says "Nobody will rent us rooms". The head Feeb says "Buy the motel. We have a unlimited budget from Washington".
BTW,I will ALWAYS believe it was the FBI behind the church bombings and other nonsense. I don't believe they did it,but I will always believe FBI agents whispered the ideas into the heads of the mental defectives they found there,and those guys went out and did it.
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