Posted on 07/30/2002 2:55:36 PM PDT by Ditto
Edited on 04/13/2004 2:02:32 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
Last Christmas, I went back to a village where I had fought 35 years ago. It is 400 miles north of Saigon, which is now called Ho Chi Minh City. The North Vietnamese also have changed the name of the village, to show who won the war.
(Excerpt) Read more at pittsburghlive.com ...
Tango India Mike Echo (tears in my eyes...)
Too young to have served, but kudos for the bravery and humanity of those who did.
What a valiant, wonderful effort, and what a tragedy that in the end we let down those who served, and the vietnamese people we fought for.
In Addition, the writer fails to point out that the Vietnamese government has said that had Nixon bombed for one more day during what was know as the Christmas Bombing, they would have given up un-conditionally.
The truth is the war was lost politically back here in the States, not militarily on the battlefields.
...Liberal Liar WALTER CRONKITE, who today is calling for the Secession of our Southern States from our Union, personally fooled America on Nightly TV into leaving behind the poor S.E. Asian Souls to their fate at the hands of invading Communist BULLIES.
...The same Democrats in Congress, who would later cut-off U.S. funding of Anti-Communist Forces fighting CASTRO-Backed Communists invading the Free Countries of Central America south of San Diego CA, also cut-off the funding to the Anti-Communist S. Vietnamese Forces fight against the Communist N. Vietnamese Invaders for replacement Grenades, Bullets, Rockets, Artillery Pieces, Artillery Shells, Jet Aircraft & Parts, Propeller Aircraft & Parts, Helicopter Aircraft & Parts, Bombs, Naplam...
...just as the then Communist Soviet Union gave North Vietnam $6 BILLION for its "Final Solution" in the South. And it thus came to be.
...Historians now say that while we could afford to prosecute the Vietnam War ...in the End the then Communist Soviet Union COULDN'T and it eventually help lead to its BANKRUPTCY and the Fall of the Berlin Wall.
...The Blood of many just drips from the Sleeves of one Anti-U.S. Liberal Liar ..WALTER CRONKITE.. =
...The most trusted Enemy Within in America.
Signed:..ALOHA RONNIE / Vet-Battle of IA DRANG-1965 / Landing Zone / www.LzXray.com
NEVER FORGET
That commie fellow traveler, Cronkite betrayed the American soldiers and The American country.
It was a war won against all prevailing "intelligent" opinion and lost because of political prostitutes.
May Cronkite, MacNamara, Rostow, and Johnson rot in hell.
May the putrided Kennedy Klan never enjoy the fruits of their perfidity.
Acheson, retired at the time, was a vocal supporter of our role in Vietnam.
With all due respect to Captain west, he needs to rent the movie.
It shows a US regiment landing on the headquarters of a NVA division and defeating it. The indomitable willpower was that of the Americans.
windcliff, TFTF.
Thanks for your service, then ALOHA RONNIE & Voter#537, and later fourdeuce82d.
I went back to Vietnam with my then 25-year-old daughter in APR 2000. We hit Saigon, most of central I Corps from Danang to Quang Ngai - including Chu Lai - and even Hanoi...still a big difference between North and South Vietnam.
Chu Lai is a sad reminder of our America's abandonment, even of ourselves, there. Where once bustled one of the busiest and largest bases and airfields in-country, all that's left now are lonely rows of long, arching, rusting, revetments that once housed hundreds of aircraft.
...Like ghost structures on cracking, weed overgrown former tarmacs....
But I was really glad to able to go back. I always loved that country, its people, its music. I believed in why I was there the first time. And I’ve always been proud that my daughter is proud that her dad is a Vietnam veteran. Thus, having been able to go back with her, is a satisfaction that I think few in life can even contemplate, no less realize. So have I been lucky, or what? Couple that to the fact that we stayed at the swankiest hotel on the old China Beach that I’ll likely ever flop in. My only regret about that is that I didn’t get a financial piece of the resort I always told the guys I served with that I knew would someday be there. Darn!
But I’ll always remember too, those who gave there lives so that I could live to return there, and truly deem my life a success. And I’d say to them, “But look who went back where, guys. It wasn’t the VC or NVA to America. That’s how I believe to a very real extent that we are yet winning the Vietnam War.
...WALTER CRONKITE =
...HILLARY RODHAM's No. 1...
...TV Defender.
NEVER FORGET
Oliver North ExcerptsAsk yourself this: has anyone in this administration pushed for additional funds to prepare now for wounded troops and veterans from the planned Iraq War? My congressman in the second district of Washington, a Democrat, campaigned with a promise to pass concurrent receipt. As a member of a veterans affairs committee in the house, he kept his promise. Why won't Bush keep his? --Raoul, Vietnam-era veteran
America's soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, veterans and military retirees. The troops' lament: broken promises. Here's the problem. When he was campaigning for commander in chief, Bush habitually said things like: "To the veteran, we owe gratitude -- shown not just in words of tribute, but in acts of care and attention. ... As president, I will work with Congress to raise the standard of service -- not just for veterans, but for our military retirees. All of them must be treated with the care they have been promised and the dignity they have earned."
Gov. Bush spoke those words to the American Legion in Milwaukee, Wisc., on Sept. 6, 2000, and replicated them throughout his campaign. America's military and veteran families -- more than 26 million of them -- heard and believed. And overwhelmingly, they voted for him -- as was evident after dimpled chads and absentee ballots became big issues in Florida. Many military and veteran families believe that if it weren't for them, George W. Bush wouldn't be president. And they may be right.
To his credit, Bush continued his courtship of veterans after his inaugural. At a Memorial Day breakfast in the East Room on May 28, 2001, he said: "America's veterans ask only that government honor its commitments as they honored theirs. They ask that their interests be protected, as they protected their country's interest in foreign lands. In all matters of concern to veterans -- from health care to program funding -- [b]you have my pledge that those commitments will be kept[/b]. My administration will do all it can to assist our veterans and to correct oversights of the past." Great stuff. Too bad that this week the Bush administration's budget boss, OMB Director Mitch Daniels, made all those promises appear hollow.
The issue, like so much else in the federal government, is a little-known inequity with an arcane moniker: "concurrent receipt," a provision of law that prohibits retired military veterans from drawing full retirement checks if they also receive a disability payment. What it means is that those who suffer a disabling wound defending our country will be financially punished if they somehow manage to stay in the armed forces long enough to retire. Sound nuts? It is.
No one would dare to reduce retirement benefits for postal workers with hernias from hoisting mailbags. Nor would anyone in Congress have the temerity to suggest that Civil Service employees forfeit a portion of their retirement checks to pay for on-the-job injuries like carpal tunnel syndrome. Only those who do the dirty and dangerous work of defending this nation suffer this indignity -- the very ones who believed the president's promise that, "My administration understands America's obligations not only to those who wear the uniform today, but to those who wore the uniform in the past -- our veterans."
Unfortunately, the deficit hawks in Bush's Office of Management and Budget are now ignoring this "obligation" (his word, not mine) because fixing the problem is too expensive. The Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost approximately $2 billion in fiscal year 2003. Of course, bloated deficits haven't stopped Congress from padding its own payrolls or stuffing 8,341 pork-barrel projects, estimated by Citizens Against Government Waste at $20 billion, in this year's 13 appropriations bills.
What's worse, the Rumsfeld Pentagon doesn't seem to grasp that this punitive policy has an unquantifiable adverse effect on retention and combat effectiveness. Do we really want a military force led by risk-averse, desk-bound officers and NCOs who avoid the possibility of getting wounded because they don't want to financially punish their families? Bush has said, "Veterans are a priority for this administration." He had better make those in his administration believe it because veterans also believe that old axiom, "You can't just talk the talk -- you have to walk the walk."
Further, not only did congress never declare war, but they only authorized “all necessary measures” to fight in Vietnam because of the fraudulent claim that two U.S. navy ships had been attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Those attacks had never actually happened. Did this fraud by the Johnson administration legitimize the Vietnam war?
Not only that, Americans responded by taking the next available opportunity to vote for a president who promised to end the war. Nixon was elected on an explicit promise to end the war.
Bottom line? The Vietnam war was waged by criminals who used vote fraud to seize the executive branch of the US government, and who lied to Congress to prosecute a war that, judging by elections, Americans didn’t want. The criminal group that made the war possible was replaced, and the war ended. America DID win the Vietnam war, and we won it against the Johnson administration. What happened in Vietnam was only a sideshow.
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