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Walter Cronkite created Fox News. Cronkite's fundamental role as a "cultural artist" in creating Fox. one of the most notable moments of Cronkite's liberalism being unmasked in a highly visible fashion was his now famous series on Vietnam. But by this time conservative Americans were already well awake to the realization that this powerful new institution of television was being used in ways both subtle and not, to convey the message that there was no more enlightened or superior world view than modern American liberalism. Broadcast by broadcast it was increasingly apparent that those who disagreed or who challenged the...

Journalism: After the eulogies, the fact remains that "the most trusted man in America" betrayed that trust. He helped snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in Vietnam and tried hard to do the same in Iraq.President Obama on Friday praised Walter Cronkite as a journalistic icon, calling the CBS anchor the "voice of certainty in an uncertain world." More to the point, he was the father of advocacy journalism, the patron saint of media bias. He went from reporting news to recreating it in his own image. Far from the image of the patriotic war correspondent, Cronkite was a...

Sunday, February 1, 2009 First Vietnamese congressman leads Tet parade The O.C. community celebrated the lunar New Year with a vibrant parade in Little Saigon. By DEEPA BHARATH THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER WESTMINSTER – Anh "Joseph" Cao, the first Vietnamese American to be elected to the U.S. Congress, was one of the highlights of the annual Tet Parade in Little Saigon on Saturday morning. Local politicians and community organized a fundraiser for Cao, who represents Louisiana's Second Congressional District. "The Vietnamese communities in the rest of the country look to this community in California for leadership and guidance," Cao said.

British and Afghan forces repulsed an attempt by hundreds of Taleban fighters to attack the provincial capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, on Saturday night in the most audacious Taliban attack in the province since 2006. Up to 100 Taleban fighters were killed in a series of airstrikes and firefights around the city outskirts in fighting that began in the early evening as Taleban fighters were concentrating to attack the city of three sides and continued into the early hours of Sunday morning. It was the first time that the Helmand capital has been attacked. The Taleban plan appeared to be...

Click on image for the actual September 2, 2008, front pageAfter seven years of initial eligibility, Joseph Biden was removed from the military draft pool just when it was most likely he would be drafted and sent into the Vietnam War. The American death toll was rising rapidly -- 11,153 in 1967. Thousands more had died since the Tet offensive began in January, 296,000 men ages 19 through 25 would be drafted during 1968, Joseph Biden had run out of college deferments, and he would not be safe until November 20, 1968, his twenty-sixth birthday. During the Democrat Party...

On January 30, 1968, more than a quarter million North Vietnamese soldiers and 100,000 Viet Cong irregulars launched a massive attack on South Vietnam. But the public didn't hear about who had won this most decisive battle of the Vietnam War, the so-called Tet offensive, until much too late. Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes -- such...

"We had a false sense of security," said Larry Rosser, a Vietnam veteran who now resides in Quartz Hill. Rosser served as a signalman in the 4th Infantry Division and was stationed in Vietnam's central highlands, outside the town of Pleiku, when the attack came. "Between 1 and 3 in the morning, they started rocket and mortar attacks on our base camp," Rosser said. "It was the first time it had been attacked." Rosser said no one was prepared for the attack. In fact, just a few weeks before Tet, commanders at his camp, Camp Enari, had started locking up...

Forty years ago today the North Vietnamese and Vietcong launched the general offensive/general uprising, known to history as the Tet Offensive after the Vietnamese new year’s holiday during which it began. It was a last-ditch attempt at a quick win in a war the Communists knew they were losing. They thought that a series of attacks in South Vietnam’s urban centers would spark a civil uprising against the regime in Saigon, and the people would join them at the barricades. But within days it was clear the offensive had failed, and the general uprising was not forthcoming. By the end...

It was 40 years today that the film from the first day of the Tet Offensive (January 30th) made it onto our television screens. Back then there was no live satellite link from Vietnam so the newsfilm of the war was flown to Hong Kong or Tokyo for satellite transmission to the United States. I sat as a seven year old transfixed by the exciting pictures of the kamikaze style attack by the Vietcong on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Militarily speaking the attack was an utter failure, but visually speaking the attack was shocking to Americans sitting in their...

Stanley Johnson returns to Vietnam four decades after the offensive that shattered American confidence in the war — but reflects that the US went on to win the cultural battle For the last few days they have been putting the flags and bunting up in the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in preparation for the nationwide celebrations which will mark the Lunar New Year or Tet. Forty years ago, on the night of 30–31 January 1968, the Liberation Army, as it is now known here, launched its famous Tet offensive with a series of co-ordinated surprise attacks...

US signals intelligence during the war came up short in major turning points, according to an NSA history. WASHINGTON -- US signals intelligence – the much-vaunted ability of American military and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications of an adversary – failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort. The 10,000 cryptographers and other signals personnel in Southeast Asia at the time did not predict the start of the Tet offensive on Jan. 31, 1968. Prior to that, signals intelligence may have actually...

Sometime within the next six months or so, al-Qaida or Saddamist terrorists will attempt a Tet offensive. No, Middle Eastern mass murderers don't celebrate the Vietnamese festival of Tet, but trust that America's enemies everywhere do celebrate and systematically seek to emulate the strategic political effects North Vietnam's 1968 attack obtained. This spring marks the 40th anniversary of Hanoi's offensive (yes, 40 years, two generations). It will also mark the umpteenth time American enemies have attempted to win in the psychological and political clash of an American election what they cannot win on the battlefield. In the course of Tet...

Fred Barnes, Editor of The Weekly Standard, in a little noticed press release, claims that: "Last Monday Bush was briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, sketched it for him during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House. The president's reaction, according to a senior advisor, was "very positive." Authored by Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute the plan ...envisions a temporary addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrilla fighters attacked an Iraqi government ministry in central Baghdad on Thursday with mortars and machineguns in one of the most dramatic shows of force by militants in the capital since the U.S. invasion. A deputy minister in the Shi'ite-run Health Ministry and a police source said about 30 unidentified gunmen were involved. "Terrorists are attacking the building with mortars, machineguns and we can even see snipers. Any employee who leaves the building will be killed," Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said from his office. Reuters Pictures Photo Editors Choice: Best pictures from the last 24 hours....

President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations. Mr Bush's refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family...

If it’s any consolation, this is not the beginning of the end of Western civilization. It is the end of the beginning… of the end of Western civilization. Three years ago, I wrote a screed called Tet II in which I predicted that American liberals would once again turn victory into defeat – this time in Iraq. But Bush did not crack, and I found myself actually daring to hope that our Captain MacWhirr would, out of sheer unimaginative stubbornness, tame the coolies in the hold and outlast the typhoon. [Read Conrad’s masterpiece and experience the first six years...

It becomes pretty obvious why comparisons of recent escalated violence in Iraq to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam fall short. Here’s what the Press Secretary Tony Snow said to a reporter from CNN yesterday: “Well, your network has shown pictures of snipers hitting Americans, which was used as a propaganda tool.” Back when the networks were more respected than they are today, the free press could get away with something like this. So influential was the Mainstream Media in the days of Vietnam, Walter Cronkite could express the War as a failure, and then cause an American president to...

October 20, 2006, 7:36 a.m. Tet? Not YetVictory by association. By James S. Robbins When President Bush said that there might be some parallels between the Iraq and Vietnam wars, you would think he had declared unilateral surrender, judging from the press reaction. He mildly agreed with Thomas Friedman’s assertion that the recent uptick in violence in Iraq (during Ramadan, note) could be the “jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive,� and the frenzy began. It may have been a first for the President, but the Tet analogy is nothing new. Arthur Schlesinger touted Tet with reference to Fallujah in...

Sorry it has been five months since my last update, but then, we have been busy. Let me give you the bottom-line up front (BLUF), and then catch you up on things. Feel free to forward this to whomever, since we still can’t seem to get the press to tell folks what is going on. This is how the fight is going from my foxhole, and it is much more than the bombings, US casualties, and rumors of civil war the press seems to be focused on.

Air University Review, November-December 1978 The Press and the TET Offensive a flawed institution under stress Captain Donald M. Bishop The Tet offensive of 1968 must surely be regarded as one of history's chameleon campaigns. When the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops assaulted targets throughout the Republic of Vietnam at the end of January 1968, they expected to trigger an uprising of the South Vietnamese people against their government. Despite some spectacular early successes, the attacks failed. The South Vietnamese did not embrace the cause; thousands of sappers, assault troops, and cadres met their deaths before overwhelming allied counterattacks; and...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version March 15, 2006, 7:41 a.m. Baghdad Tet How the bad guys can win. It is a scenario reminiscent of the Trojan Horse. Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr revealed that Iraqi internal security had broken up a plot to place 421 al Qaeda fighters as guards controlling access to Baghdad’s International or “Green” Zone. Once in position, the terrorists planned to storm the U.S. and British embassies, take hostages, and wreak havoc. They were “one bureaucrat’s signature away” from implementing the plan when it was uncovered. Imagine if the aforementioned pen...

KARBALA, Iraq -- The governing council of Karbala province said Monday it was suspending contact with U.S. forces over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago. The decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq. Karbala provincial spokesman Abdel Amir Hanoun complained that U.S. soldiers brought dogs inside the building when their commander visited provincial Gov. Aqeel al-Khazraji, considered an insult by the council.

A great deal has been written about the battles of Tet 1968 and the political firestorm that resulted from them. Less has been written about the danger, turmoil, chaos, confusion, contradictions and outright lunacy that confronted individual units as they responded to VC attacks on the morning of January 31. This is the story of one rifle company, and what it faced on that decisive day. Mainly it is the story of some of the finest solders to ever wear the uniform of the U.S. Army and how they reacted not only to fierce combat, but also to the fog...

The Legacy of Tet By J.R.DunnDecember 20th, 2005 It was with Tet '68 that the American media first knew sin. Anyone seeking to understand the character of consistently negative media coverage of the Global War on Terror must understand Tet. The Tet offensive of February 1968 is widely regarded as one of the turning points of the Vietnam War – though not for the customary military reasons. Tet had its origins in the plans of North Vietnamese commander Vo Nguyen Giap, a competent general given to flights of overconfidence. Giap decided to throw all available assets, both PAVN (People's Army...

All my life, said Voltaire, "I have never made but one prayer. ... 'Oh Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it."George Bush must have been praying the same way lately.In his "Plan for Victory" address to the Naval Academy, the president declared: "Against this adversary, there is only one effective response: We will never back down. We will never give in. And we will never accept anything less than complete victory."This is what one expects of a commander in chief in wartime, speaking to the patriotic young midshipmen, who roared approval.To which Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean...

Apparently, it means you'll have to think: Clooney, who has just directed Good Night and Good Luck, which is about CBS television news in the 1950s, said he grew up with three network broadcasts, all professional operations that allowed him to judge what was going on in politics and in Vietnam. Now, with the onset of cable television and "130 different channels", the quality of news was "fractured", with each network, like Fox, playing to audiences with "specific belief patterns". Viewers had to switch channels continually to discover what was going on in the world. You mean like when the...

...Predictably, the most convenient comparison the doubters and doomsayers on Iraq can find is the Vietnam War.... That said, it is more illuminating and relevant to look at some of the genuine similarities. First, during the wars in both Vietnam and Iraq, the American people have retained their common sense and consequent sense of commitment far longer than the elites who claimed to lead or represent them.... Second, in the case of Vietnam, the war was lost less on the battlefield than on the home front.... Third, the clearest lesson of all from Vietnam is that commitments cannot be abdicated...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. ...................................................................................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel...

Washington -- When retired Gen. William Westmoreland (Ret.) died this week in Charleston, S.C., the press erupted with reminiscences, mostly about him and the Vietnam War, mostly permeated with the myths of the Kultursmog , the politically-polluted culture of our elites, our liberal elites. After Vietnam the general spent the rest of his life refighting the war. He never learned that it was a war we could not win. He was a failure. These are three of the foul thoughts that pollute the liberals' culture and were repeated in many of his obituaries. I knew Westmoreland later in life, not...

During hostilities in Vietnam, U.S. casualties were fewer than 10,000 at the end of 1967 and the beginning of 1968. From those days of the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam, to the close of hostilities in 1975, nearly 48,000 more American service personnel died. During that same post-Tet period, anti-war sentiment reached a fever pitch back in the United States. These statistics stand firm as a stark reminder of how a populace of an uninformed or misinformed nation can kill their own citizen soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen. During this same post-Tet period, the senior North Vietnamese Commander, General Giap,...

One of many cataclysmic changes brought about by the digital revolution is additional difficulty for that ancient problem of distinguishing perception from reality. It is now possible with a keyboard touch [the flicker of an iris or, soon, a brainwave] to create “virtual reality”. Bombarded with the misinformation revolution [as well as information superfluity], judgments about the world and the U.S.’ role become even more difficult. There are, at least, a dozen circles where American interests are critically paramount but where outcome is – perhaps as always — unpredictable: Iraq-Vietnam. Is the reality the constant stream of bloody media stories...

If you wanted to see the perfect example of the ethical and moral collapse of the Mainstream Media, you could not do better than a long article in the New Yorker of May 23, 2005. The article is entitled, "The Spy Who Loved Us." Written by a teacher at the University of Albany, named Thomas Bass, it's about a man named Pham Xuan An. Now very old, An was -- among many other things -- a correspondent in Saigon during the Vietnam War for Time magazine. He was apparently considered a particularly brilliant and well-informed correspondent and very well liked...

<p>Al Qaeda is desperately trying to produce an "Iraqi Tet" -- a Middle Eastern repetition of the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong 1968 offensive in South Vietnam. On April 2 and again on April 4, the terror gang led by Al Qaeda's Iraq commander, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, launched "military-style attacks" on the Abu Ghraib prison complex in Baghdad. In the April 4 assault, U.S. forces took 44 casualties (most of them minor wounds). The terrorist gang, however, took 50 casualties, out of a force estimated at 60 gunmen. On April 11, the gang attacked a Marine compound at Husaybah near the Syrian border. As I write, terrorist casualties are unconfirmed, but the assault flopped. While bomb attacks on unarmed Iraqi civilians continue (particularly against Shiites), public opinion now matters in Iraq, and the thugs' public slaughters have killed too many Iraqi innocents. January's election dramatically lifted public morale and changed the media focus -- suddenly, democracy looks possible, and an Arab Muslim democracy is Al Qaeda's worst nightmare. Hence the "Tet gamble." Bombs haven't cowed the Iraqi people -- but perhaps the American people will lose heart and buckle if Al Qaeda concocts a military surprise. U.S. forces, however, are "hard targets" -- unlike civilians standing in line to vote, U.S. troops shoot back. Since 9-11, Al Qaeda has never won a military engagement at the platoon level (30 men) or higher. Coalition forward operating bases are heavily fortified. But the Tet fantasy is so compelling. Though Tet was by most measures a disaster for the communists, as a media and hence political event, Tet snuffed "the light at the end of the tunnel." The Johnson administration had told the American public Vietnam had reached a turning point -- "the light" -- but Tet demonstrated that North Vietnamese Army (NVA) regulars and Viet Cong (VC) guerrillas were still capable of potent action. NVA General Vo Nguyen Giap planned for maximum psychological and political impact. Communist forces simultaneously hit cities and military bases throughout the south. Though they took huge casualties, Giap's real target was President Johnson. Communist attackers managed to break into the U.S. embassy compound in Saigon. The assault was repelled, but the moral damage -- and dramatic photos -- energized Sen Eugene McCarthy's "peace candidacy." Political support for LBJ and the Vietnam War withered. Iraq, however, is no Vietnam. The Vietnam War was strategic defense, a bitter Cold War "battle of containment." The War on Terror is a strategic political and military offensive directed at the dictators and theocrats who rule by death squad and export terror -- and it's a war we are winning. With Iraq's democratic political process gearing up, Zarqawi has decided the risk of facing U.S. troops is worth the reward in headlines. Hitting the Husaybah Marine compound is supposed to generate media echoes of Lebanon 1983 and the U.S. Marine barracks terror bombing that led to American withdrawal. U.S. Navy Capt. Hal Pittman, CENTCOM's senior spokesman, told me Tuesday that the terrorists seek media coverage of these attacks "to empower their cause, break the momentum of representational government (in Iraq) and dissuade the coalition to continue its support." Zarqawi's gang "used a fire truck at Husaybah as a car bomb. That's theatrics if you've ever seen theatrics," Pittman said. "They're trying to create a spectacular event, overrun a patrol or border outpost somewhere, an event with huge media value that would promote their cause and make them seem more powerful than they are." At Abu Ghraib and Husaybah, Zarqawi failed militarily. He didn't get his scare headlines, either. Short of detonating a nuclear weapon in Baghdad, a ground attack on the Green Zone that succeeds in cracking the U.S. embassy and taking hostages is the only "Tet" card Zarqawi has. The Green Zone, however, is Iraq's hardest target.</p>

THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war's end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute. The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is that the defeat was a result of American policy makers' cold-war-driven misunderstanding of North Vietnam's leaders as dangerous Communists. In truth, they argue, we were fighting a nationalist movement with great popular support. In this view, "our side," South Vietnam, was a creation of foreigners and led by a corrupt urban elite with no popular...

As the U.S. Marine Corps helicopter lifted from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon at daybreak on April 30, 1975, I thought about the carnage that would result from a heat-seeking missile fired by Vietnamese Communist forces gradually encircling the besieged capital of the dying Republic of Vietnam. Exhausted by a lack of sleep for the previous week, I no longer felt fear, only curiosity. Tears welled up in my eyes, perhaps due in part to the anguish of witnessing the tragic events unfolding before me, but also from caustic smoke belched out of rooftop incinerators glowing cherry-red...

THE Vietnam War is universally regarded as a disaster for what it did to the American and Vietnamese people. However, 30 years after the war's end, the reasons for its outcome remain a matter of dispute. The most popular explanation among historians and journalists is that the defeat was a result of American policy makers' cold-war-driven misunderstanding of North Vietnam's leaders as dangerous Communists. In truth, they argue, we were fighting a nationalist movement with great popular support. In this view, "our side," South Vietnam, was a creation of foreigners and led by a corrupt urban elite with no popular...

Hugh Hewitt has posted a challenge to bloggers and others to offer up suggestions on how CBS can pull itself -- and by extension the other dying dinosaurs of the Old Media -- out of its likely fatal ratings spiral. In order to solve a problem, of course, one must first understand what the nature of that problem is. At CBS and the rest of the Old Media the problem is not one of cosmetics but rather one of philosophy and therefore it is not something that can be quickly fixed with a new set or by promoting of the...

...The object of U.S. action in South Vietnam was to stabilize Asia in general and Southeast Asia in particular. At the time, Asia was anything but stable. The former British colonies Malaysia and Singapore were under siege by Communist guerillas. The No. 2 political party in India was the growing Communist party, and Pakistan and India were still at one another's throats. Taiwan expected an assault from Red China at any moment. And China itself was suffering from Mao's "Great Leap Forward" industrialization that led to a famine that killed more than 30 million. Indonesia under Sukarno was headed toward...

MANY myths and half-truths about the Vietnam War whipped up by the communist propaganda machine have been allowed to persist unchecked in discourse about Iraq. Today, on the eve of the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, perhaps some lessons can be learned from this painful chapter in history. A point of view held by the anti-Vietnam War movement in the 1960s and still taken as fact by some people today is that the Vietnam War was a civil war, not one fomented or directed by the communist north, which, in turn, was being instructed by China. With that...

Lord, Keep our Troops forever in Your care Give them victory over the enemy... Grant them a safe and swift return... Bless those who mourn the lost. . FReepers from the Foxhole join in prayer for all those serving their country at this time. .................................................................. .................... ........................................... U.S. Military History, Current Events and Veterans Issues Where Duty, Honor and Countryare acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated. Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should...

Some of us went and fought and bled. Some died. Some stayed home and cried out against our fight. Some, with heads draped in hooded cloaks of shame and fear, went to Canada, most claiming disdain and loathing for that far-off war, not admitting actually succumbing to an inner fear of death or of wounding in a foreign land. We won every major battle, in the tradition of our forefathers at St Mere E’Glise, Normandy, San Juan Hill, and we left our virgin naiveté in those steaming emerald jungles of fear, or in the muddy larvae-laden waters of the lowland...

The New York Times and the Associated Press, (two news agencies whose work in Andean Latin America is suspiciously similar) are at it again. They say that since our ally Colombia is fighting a terrorist war on a heated battlefield, the sky must be falling. They seize on Colombia's recent battlefield losses, as well as local complaints, as proof the nation is overwhelmed, the terror war is lost, and its president doesn't know what he's doing. As far as they are concerned, Colombia might as well surrender to the communists. And their gloating subtext? Another Bush defeat. In the U.S.,...

This page is dedicated to all US Military Police killed or wounded during the 1968 Tet Offensive. May they never be forgotten. During the TET Offensive, the 716th Military Police Battalion became involved in the Battle of Saigon: the fiercest battle in which a military police unit has ever been engaged. At approximately 0300 hours, 31 January 1968, Viet Cong elements launched attacks within the Saigon area on such key targets as the United States Embassy, BOQ #3, the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) Annex Area, the Embassy Hotel, and in the vicinity of the race track on Plantation Road....

You all know what the Tet Offensive was and why it was so important, in Vietnam and in America. The NLF and the NVA lost around 35,000 men killed, 60,000 wounded and 6,000 POWs for no military success. The US and ARVN dead totalled around 3,900 (1,100 US). But this was not the conflict as the US public saw it. US media reports of the battles shocked both the American public and its politicians. Apparently the depth of the US reaction surprised even the North Vietnamese leadership.With the election upcoming, the Iraqi resistance would be absolutely stupid not to make...

On Hannity and Colmes tonight, Alan Colmes, again, tried to make the point that the anti-war protestors somehow 'shortened the Vietnam war'. I had always understood that NorthVietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap had written in his 1985 memoir that, because the 1968 Tet Offensive had been such a disaster for the VietCong, he was ready to sue for peace and end the war. However, because the anti-war demonstrations were truly getting massive in the US at that point, it gave Hanoi just enough hope that if he continued fighting, Hanoi would eventually win [with the help of the anti-US/pro-Hanoi demonstrations,...

The Washington Times www.washingtontimes.com A mini-Tet offensive ?By Arnaud de BorchgraveTHE WASHINGTON TIMESPublished April 16, 2004 Any seasoned reporter covering the Tet offensive in Vietnam 36 years ago is well over 60 and presumably retired or teaching journalism at one of America's 4,200 colleges and universities. Before plunging into an orgy of erroneous and invidious historical parallels between Iraq and Vietnam, a reminder about what led to the U.S. defeat in Southeast Asia is timely.     Iraq will only be another Vietnam if the home front collapses, as it did following the Tet offensive that began on the eve of...

FORWARDED MESSAGE FROM IRAQ: Subject: : Is Failure Now an Option? From a retired Marine LtCol (Intel) buddy of mine. Good information. This "In Country" assessment is provided by my son who is serving with Task Force Olympia. For many of us it's "deja vu" all over again. Semper Fi, Gil Dad, I don't know if you still have it, but if you remember an email that I sent back in late January/early February time frame. I specifically stated that we (the military) knew that within a couple of months, that the insurgents were going to try their version of...

So the Shia and Sunni uprisings in Iraq turn out not to have been the Mesopotamian equivalent of the Tet offensive - the Viet Cong assaults of 1968 that led the American political elite to conclude that the war in Indochina was unwinnable. President Bush, unlike Lyndon Johnson, has not opted to retire in an election year and even Tony Blair (who is far more vulnerable on this issue) remains as determined as ever to see the campaign through to a successful conclusion. At the military level, too, this phase of the insurgency has not triumphed. After initial reversals, Allied...

Baghdad, Iraq – The media hailed the recent battles in the Sunni Triangle and the coordinated attacks orchestrated by radical Shia cleric Muqtada Al Sadr’s militia as evidence of a new crisis in Iraq. The Guardian, for example, referred to the conditions in Iraq as being "[o]n the brink of anarchy," and the New York Times opined that "the events in Falluja[h] and the other cities on Sunday appeared likely to shake the American hold on Iraq more than anything since the invasion…" It wasn’t long before Senator Ted Kennedy waded into these deep political waters, declaring Iraq to be...

<p>Last September, Sen. Edward Kennedy attributed the decision to go to war in Iraq to "a fraud" that "was made up in Texas." In January, Mr. Kennedy pegged the decision to go to war in Iraq to a "gross abuse of intelligence" — intelligence that convinced the world Saddam Hussein was in breach of 17 U.N. Security Council resolutions — and an "arrogant disrespect for the United Nations" — before whom the administration made the case for enforcing those resolutions for more than a year. He has recklessly and variously impugned President Bush's morality for using the war as a political scheme to pick up congressional seats, his honesty for clandestinely "bribing [other countries] to send in troops" and his judgment for undertaking "a war of choice, not necessity."</p>