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Tickers in this Article: BP, TLM, COP, CVX, PXP The hunt for oil and gas resources is taking the exploration and production industry to all parts of the globe, as higher-risk exploration is needed to satisfy world demand for these resources. This need for newly discovered resources may become acute as the emerging economies industrialize and bring higher living standards to their citizens. IN PICTURES: How To Make Your First $1 Million Get Free Stock Analysis By Email Exploration In Vietnam Vietnam currently only has 4.7 billion barrels of proved oil reserves, and it had 19.7 trillion cubic feet of...

November 02, 2009, 4:00 a.m. A New Isolationism?A few months ago, Afghanistan was a “war of necessity.” What changed? By Conrad Black The Obama administration’s shilly-shallying in Afghanistan is a textbook case of how not to conduct a war, and how not to lead an alliance. In the 2006 and 2008 campaigns, the Democrats demanded the withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and accused the Bush administration of conducting an unnecessary war in that country while ignoring the original campaign in Afghanistan, where the 9/11 terrorist attacks were planned. As recently as two months ago, President Obama called Afghanistan a...

I support a phased withdrawal of U.S. and allied troops from Afghanistan, starting Jan. 1 and ending no later than Dec. 31, 2012. The Afghan people have suffered enough and the U.S. government should promote a negotiated settlement to the war. Afghanistan has been at war almost continually since 1979. We’ve been over there since 2001. At the end of 2012 we’ll have been there 11 years. That’s more than long enough to achieve our mission. And 32 years of war is too long for the Afghans. Afghanistan is an impoverished country. Sixty-eight percent of its population has never known...

Harry Stein What Mad Men Gets Wrong The fifties, a decade of forgotten loyalty, honor, and patriotism The ongoing frenzy over Mad Men, which recently landed the Emmy for best drama series for the second straight year, has me thinking about my father-in-law and his group of cronies in Monterey, California. I wrote a book about these guys some years back, called The Girl Watchers Club. For over 30 years, they got together every week to shoot the breeze about their jobs, their families, and the world at large and, invariably, to reminisce about the war in which they’d all...

Long-delayed Silver Star to be awarded Andrea Billups It wasn't American soldiers that Capt. Jack Nicholson went to rescue one night in December 1963. But it didn't matter to him that they were his Vietnamese allies.

HA NOI — Three Vietnamese banks will jointly provide a loan of up to US$51 million to the PetroVietnam Exploration and Production Corporation (PVEP) to exploit oil and gas in the Ca Ngu Vang (Gold Tuna) oilfield. Under a credit agreement signed in Ha Noi on Thursday with the Viet Nam International Commercial Joint Stock Bank (VIB), Asia Commercial Joint Stock Bank (ACB) and the Sai Gon-Ha Noi Commercial Joint Stock Bank (SHB), the PVEP would use the five-year loan to pay for the development and exploitation of oil and gas at the oilfield, located southeast of Viet Nam’s continental...

Does the Obama administration understand why we invaded Afghanistan? Does the Obama understand that we have no choice but to remain in Afghanistan until we can establish a stable government that will not allow the country to be a base for terrorism? The Christian Science Monitor has reported that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told CNN it would be "irresponsible" to send more troops into Afghanistan before the political situation is resolved. Actually it would be irresponsible to wait for the political situation to be resolved before committing sufficient troops to stabilize the situation. We invaded Afghanistan in...

Oct. 20: President Obama shakes hands with Capt. John Poindexter in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. For Army Capt. John Poindexter, being awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for heroism Tuesday marked an "opportunity to close a chapter" in his life. "The general feeling is a pretty intense level of excitement," Poindexter told Foxnews.com just before he and 85 other Vietnam veterans were honored at a ceremony in the White House Rose Garden. "It will mean to me that I've filled an important duty to the men who I literally owe my life to, men who...

Afghanistan: The president's decision to withhold more troops over the country's less-than-pristine election is nothing but stalling. For our soldiers, desperate for reinforcements, it's a slap in the face. No doubt, a legitimate government, complete with free and fair elections, would be good for Afghanistan. Its Aug. 20 vote was loaded with trouble because the Taliban sliced off purple-inked fingers to discourage voting and because a United Nations electoral watchdog found widespread voter fraud. Yes, correct the problems. But holding U.S. troop reinforcements hostage isn't the way to do it. Elections aren't why we have troops in that country. They're...

List of countries are not allowed issuing Vietnam Visa: Iran Algieria Cameroon Afghanistan Iraq Nigiria Saudi Arabia Pakistan Jordan Bangladesk United Arab Emirates Lebanon Sri Lanka Malawi Palestin Tunisia Turkey Guinea- Bissau Quatar Triniad and Tobago Ghana Haiti Zimbawe Somali Namibia Xudan Nepal Yemen Kenya Jamaica Oman Rwanda

WASHINGTON, Oct. 20, 2009 – President Barack Obama today paid a long-overdue tribute to the Vietnam War-era soldiers of Alpha Troop, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, in a ceremony at the White House Rose Garden. Obama awarded the Presidential Unit Citation, the nation’s highest award for a military unit, for the troop’s actions March 26, 1970, in Vietnam. Eighty-six former soldiers who served in Alpha Troop then were on hand for the ceremony, and although it’s been nearly four decades since many of them served, Obama said, the heroism they displayed will never be forgotten. “Welcome to a moment...

President Barack Obama, flanked by members of Troop A, First Squadron, 11th Armored Combat Regiment, speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, Oct. 20, 2009, during a ceremony honoring their service with the Presidential Unit Citation for their actions during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo/Haraz N. Ghanbari) From the NYTimes at the beginning of this month: SANTA CLARA, Calif. — On the day Ray R. Moreno came home from Vietnam, the day antiwar protestors called him a baby killer, he decided to pack away his Army uniform for good. Memories and nightmares still intruded,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Nearly 40 years after members of a U.S. cavalry unit put their lives in peril to save 100 fellow soldiers trapped under blistering enemy fire in Vietnam, they received the Presidential Unit Citation on Tuesday. It's an honor their captain says is long overdue. President Obama awarded the citation for extraordinary heroism and conspicuous gallantry to 86 members of the Army's Troop A, First Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. "These soldiers defined the meaning of bravery and heroism," Obama said at a White House reception honoring the group's heroics. "It's never too late. You can never say...

AS President Obama and his advisers contemplate a new course for Afghanistan, many commentators are suggesting analogies with earlier conflicts, particularly the war in Vietnam. Such comparisons can be useful, but only if the characterizations of earlier wars are accurate and lessons are appropriately applied. Vietnam is particularly tricky. While avoiding the missteps made there is of course a priority, few seem aware of the many successful changes in strategy undertaken in the later years of the conflict. The credit for those accomplishments goes in large part to three men: Ellsworth Bunker, who became the American ambassador to South Vietnam...

Following Vietnam’s property market collapse earlier this year, luxury apartment prices have fallen sharply, with a 30% drop in places like Phu My Hung and as much as 60% in other areas. The slump has been particularly hard in the luxury segment. Independent financial expert, Bui Kien Thanh, said local developers had focused too highly on luxury properties. He said the luxury segment is set for more trouble since customers have raised complaints about the quality of the apartments they have bought. Former deputy minister of natural resources, Dang Hung Vo, said that property prices would continue to fall if...

The 'clear and hold' strategy of Gen. Creighton Abrams was working in South Vietnam. Then Congress pulled the plug on funding. More than 30 years have passed since North Vietnam, in gross violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, conquered South Vietnam. That outcome was partly the result of greatly increased logistical support to the North from its communist backers. It was also the result of America's failure to keep its commitments to the South. Those commitments... --snip-- By the time of the enemy's 1972 Easter Offensive virtually all U.S. ground troops had been withdrawn. Supported by American airpower and...

In his memoir subtitled "Death In The Dark: Vietnam 1968-1972" Master Chief Thomas Keith, a self-described "Navy brat," tells readers how he embarked on his chosen career as a SEAL. Evolving from the underwater demolition teams of World War II, the Navy SEALs were formally established in 1962 as a "small, elite maritime force to conduct ... clandestine, high-impact missions." The name comes from the fact that they are trained in all environments (sea, air and land), but Keith writes, "historically SEALs have always had 'one foot in the water.' " As involvement in the Vietnam War grew, the U.S....

An Article Published in the October/09/ 2009 by newspaper DanTri in Hanoi indicated police arrested two suspects as they committed assault other people are journalist Tran Khai Thanh Thuy and her Husband . http://dantri.com.vn/c20/s20-355166/tran-khai-thanh-thuy-bi-bat-ve-toi-co-y-gay-thuong-tich.htm The photo which shown an injured man Nguyen Manh Diep in the hospital (Anh Nguyễn Mạnh �iệp bị đánh vỡ đầu) actually a fake photo . The photo was taken in 2005 and later photoshop the date imprinted on the photo to Oct/09/2009 In order to make it looks genuinely as the recent date . The said photo above could be opened by using wordpad to...

General McChrystal has stated that the US is risking disaster without additional troops In Afghaistan. Is he talking about defeat or is he talking about an American base being overwhelmed; while Obama and Pelosi try to force a public option down America’s unwilling throat, our brave troops may be living within the realm of disaster. Winter is fast approaching, despite Global Warming, our troops will be conducting missions in sub-zero cold. Can a unit become isolated in the North and be overwhelmed? Is this what General McChrystal is pointing out to the American people? Some argue that this isn’t the...

President Obama kicked off his reconsideration of strategy in Afghanistan by questioning on national television whether the United States needed to keep supporting the Afghan government and army. But the alternatives the president appears to be considering do not depart so radically from the plan proposed by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Obama told congressional leaders that he did not intend to reduce U.S. troop levels or limit U.S. operations to drone attacks on al-Qaeda. Nor, according to his national security adviser, would he give up on building the Afghan government and army. The White House's Plan B would mainly amount...

TAPPER:  Would the White House be comfortable with parts of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban as long as they were not hosting -- providing safe haven for Al Qaida?   GIBBS:  Well, I hesitate to get into hypotheticals, what if, what if.  The president is going to have a top-to-bottom assessment to ensure that we have a strategy that meets our goal, the goal that the president has outlined many times.   TAPPER:  Does the Taliban pose a threat to the United States?   GIBBS:  I think there's no doubt that many believe that them controlling a large amount of area in a...

The men of Bravo Company have a bitter description for the irrigated swath of land along the Arghandab River where 10 members of their battalion have been killed and 30 have been wounded since the beginning of August. “Like Vietnam without the napalm,” said Spc. Nicholas Gojekian, 21, of Katy, Texas. A prime agricultural area of vineyards and pomegranate orchards, the 18 miles of valley that the 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment patrols includes Taliban insurgents, booby traps and buried explosives... ...So far, the Army mission has been an uneasy mix of trying to woo elders with offers of generators,...

It took 43 years, but Marine Pfc. Daniel Hernandez finally got his medal... "His immediate and fearless actions, while himself painfully wounded, undoubtedly saved many lives," said Marine Lt. Jim Lupori, reading from the Silver Star medal citation that, because of lost paperwork, was never awarded to Hernandez by the secretary of the Navy after he left Vietnam in the late 1960s. The four-decade wait only made the honor more meaningful to Hernandez, 63, as several hundred relatives, friends and fellow veterans gathered for a ceremony in his honor at the Hollenbeck Youth Center. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger... and a host...

On June 24, 2009, President Obama made the following statement on an ABC Obama Infomercial, “Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but just taking the pain killer.” This is the wise counsel of a man who has never known life and death on an intimate level. This comes from a man who has led a sheltered existence and never considered serving his country other than a partial term in the senate and a few months in the White House. Are you prepared to have this spoiled untested man make life and death considerations for your loved ones. Life...

Amid all the heady global diplomacy at the United Nations and the G20 last week, one issue was conspicuous by its absence - Afghanistan. The reason is clear. Afghanistan is now Barack Obama's war, a war other world leaders want to distance themselves from, and a war over which Obama is paralysed. His administration is looking for any good ideas on what to do next and invited Australia's Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, to Washington yesterday to hear his thoughts. Smith may have been more forthcoming in private, but his public remarks were devoted to stressing that the US didn't ask...

Further proof that the Church is alive and thriving in the South: word that a new Benedictine monastery is being established in the Lone Star State. From the Dallas Morning News: Here in cow country about 70 miles southeast of Dallas, amid scattered pecan trees and sloping fields of milkweed, six monks have come to live and pray. They came from a monastery in New Mexico and, before that, from Vietnam. "It's Buddhist, isn't it?" said 65-year-old Charlie Jock, who lives several miles away, making him one of the new monastery's closest neighbors. He'd heard of it, but hadn't gone...

The United States is threatening to launch airstrikes on Mullah Omar and the Taliban leadership in the Pakistani city of Quetta as frustration mounts about the ease with which they find sanctuary across the border from Afghanistan.

A U.S. president is engaged in an unpopular long-term counterinsurgency effort, ground commanders are asking for more troops, a skeptical Congress is pushing back. Haven't we been here before?

The memory of the Vietnam War is holding an increasingly powerful sway over President Obama and his White House team as they explore ways to avoid the surge of troops into Afghanistan urgently being demanded by the US military. Mr Obama and his foreign policy circle have begun openly to use language born of the Vietnam disaster, such as “mission creep” and “quagmire”. It is a clear sign that the President harbours doubts about a deeper military commitment in Afghanistan. Vice-President Biden is leading calls for a change of plan, with a scaling back of troops in Afghanistan and a...

The patient in Room 328 had diabetes and hypertension. But when Va Meng Lee, a Hmong shaman, began the healing process by looping a coiled thread around the patient’s wrist, Mr. Lee’s chief concern was summoning the ailing man’s runaway soul. “Doctors are good at disease,” Mr. Lee said as he encircled the patient, Chang Teng Thao, a widower from Laos, in an invisible “protective shield” traced in the air with his finger. “The soul is the shaman’s responsibility.” At Mercy Medical Center in Merced, where roughly four patients a day are Hmong from northern Laos, healing includes more than...

Congressional Democrats may yet find a way to abandon the Karzai government to an ignominious fate while minimizing the damage to Mr. Obama's presidency, but the message to the world would be the same as it was in 1975: The United States cannot be trusted, and Washington is willing to abandon vulnerable allies because of short-sighted domestic political score-settling. The shame of Vietnam is still with us, and we may yet see Americans being helicoptered from Kabul rooftops ahead of advancing Taliban forces. There are some things you can step in twice.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – US President Barack Obama rejected comparisons between the deepening US involvement in Afghanistan and the Vietnam war in an interview with the New York Times published Tuesday. Some commentators have suggested that Obama could suffer the same fate as 1960s Democratic president Lyndon Johnson who saw his reformist administration eventually consumed by an entanglement in a war half a world away. But Obama, who is aiming to enact a hugely ambitious domestic agenda while dealing with multiple crises abroad, rejected the comparison. "You have to learn lessons from history. On the other hand, each historical moment is...

08/05/2009 08:01 VIETNAM Anti-Catholic violence designed to hide crisis and graft in Vietnam’s Communist Party by J.B. An Dang The persecution of Christians in Vinh is intended to divert attention from internal party divisions but it is also a sign of the profound contempt it is capable of, and of its willingness, in line with new economic ideas to sell out the country to its traditional enemy, China. The Church, which plays a role in raising consciousness, and Montagnard converts are condemned to disappear. Hanoi (AsiaNews) – On July 20, 2009 police in Quang Binh province launched a surprised attack...

The single most damning story about President Obama so far is one we know courtesy of his national security adviser, Jim Jones. Visiting the newly installed military commanders in Afghanistan in late June, Jones told General Stanley McChrystal that if he requested more troops any time soon, Obama would have a "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" (i.e., "What the f--") moment. Jones then, in an interview, made the claim--denied by everyone else involved--that military leaders had agreed that when the president earlier sent 21,000 troops to Afghanistan, "there would be a year from the time the decision was made before they would...

I have a good friend who fought in the 1968 Vietnam Tet Offensive. He talks about how, in the battle’s aftermath, he and his buddies patrolled the streets of Hue City, site of some of the most intensive fighting. He describes walking on the bodies of dead North Vietnamese and Viet Cong soldiers piled several layers high in the strategic provincial capital, and is also quick to remind me that Tet was a stunning military victory for the United States; that in fact, the US did not lose a single military encounter for the rest of the war. Yet, most...

Media Bias: Veteran reporter, author and commentator Bernard Goldberg reports that when CBS News did its fake National Guard story on George W. Bush avoiding service in Vietnam, it knew it was a lie.It's a liberal urban legend that Bush used the influence of his father and his father's friends to land a cushy position in the Texas National Guard to avoid service in Vietnam. The Democrats would run John Kerry as a hero in the war, and CBS News was all too eager to help with Mary Mapes producing a "60 Minutes II" segment in September 2004 charging exactly...

We all know what happened in Rather Gate. Dan Rather went on 60 minutes with documents that were fake. These documents were obviously not properly vetted prior to them being aired because they were fake and they wound up on the air. These documents purported to show that Bush used political influence to get into the guard to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. They also showed him to be lazy. Of course, none of it was true. Dan Rather wound up losing his job and so did Mary Mapes.

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Phuket 'Scene of FBI, North Korean Arms Dealings' By Alan Morison Monday, August 24, 2009 SOME remarkable meetings take place on Phuket, and we are not talking Asean summits, even though it was good for the island to have US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drop by in July. This particular meeting, reported for the first time today, is a different kind of gathering, more reminiscent of the one involving a Vietnamese lawyer who now stands accused of plotting to overthrow his country's leaders after meeting other alleged ''conspirators'' on Phuket. Let's call it the Uncle Sam Sham Scam. This...

WASHINGTON — President Obama had not even taken office before supporters were etching his likeness onto Mount Rushmore as another Abraham Lincoln or the second coming of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yet what if they got the wrong predecessor? What if Mr. Obama is fated to be another Lyndon B. Johnson instead? To be sure, such historical analogies are overly simplistic and fatally flawed, if only because each presidency is distinct in its own way. But the L.B.J. model — a president who aspired to reshape America at home while fighting a losing war abroad — is one that haunts Mr....

The US army officer convicted for his part in the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says. "There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened," Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia. Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam. Cold blood "I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were...

COLUMBUS, Ga. - Speaking in a soft, sometimes labored voice, the only U.S. Army officer convicted in the 1968 slayings of Vietnamese civilians at My Lai made an extraordinary public apology while speaking to a small group near the military base where he was court-martialed

ANNIE Cowdroy and her family never expected to get the chance to properly farewell her brother, SAS Trooper David Fisher, who went missing in action during the Vietnam War in 1969. Trooper Fisher died during a “hot extraction” falling from a rope attached to a rescue helicopter called to evacuate his patrol, which was encircled by a superior force of North Vietnamese soldiers. The incident occurred in Cam My district in southern Phuoc Tuy province, where the Australian task force was based. For almost 30 years, that seemed destined to be the final chapter in Trooper Fisher’s story. But last...

Much has been done in six months to deal with the ongoing war in Afghanistan. We have restated that our aim is to eliminate the threat of Al Qaeda; built a new leadership team, including Special Representative Richard Holbrooke; reinforced our troop strength and adjusted our tactics; and have begun augmenting our force with synchronized diplomatic, political and economic efforts. But can we explain how all of this adds up to an effective strategy that will sustain American engagement in one of the world's least accessible regions? The American people are growing increasingly wary. In a new CNN/Opinion research poll,...

Obama Healthcare Logo Looks Like An Acid Trip! The logo makes a rather celestial plea for Obama’s health care reform plan. A stylized caduceus rises ethereally from the fields of Obama. Three heavenly stars grace its crown, while a faint bubble trembles above the silhouttes of expectant Americans. If Uncle Sam himself were tripping, this is probably what he would see... “Santana is going to bring a lot of joy, light, peace and happiness into a place that is basically based on illusion,” “We have to triumph, because we’re bringing the opposite of what Las Vegas is built on.” In...

Tears filled the eyes of some Vietnam veterans who were warmly greeted with cheers from their family and friends Sunday in an re-enactment of their original return from the war, when they were often met with angry demonstrators and harsh headlines. The ceremony was a first for the 101st Airborne Division and the Army, said Maj. Patrick Seiber, an Army spokesman based at Fort Campbell in Kentucky. "Our hope is that other units and other posts will follow our lead in having this type of ceremony," he said...

In sifting through the intellectual landfill upon which the American left has built its worldview, a researcher can find any number of artifacts to help decrypt the Obama presidency. Among the more illuminating is Weather Underground, a watchable 2002 documentary on the soi-disant Weathermen and their times.  Although superficially objective, the film allows the final comment of Weatherman Mark Rudd to stand as something of a thesis statement. "It was this knowledge that we couldn't handle," says Rudd, explaining the group's turn to violence.  "It was too big.  We didn't know what to do.  In a way I still don't...

In his recent appearance on the Roger Hedgecock Show, Richard Botkin, author of "Ride the Thunder," shares the heroic and largely untold story of how South Vietnamese warriors and their American counterparts almost won the Vietnam War. Hedgecock's nationally syndicated daily radio show can be heard in 75+ markets and on XM Satellite. His show streams live on WND from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern. Marine Capt. Botkin toured battlefields in Vietnam and has chronicled the Vietnamese military organization called TQLC, whose members, with their American advisers, "fought, bled, endured and triumphed against communism." Botkin's book tells a new...

VFW: Woodstock Wasn't the Only Thing Happening 40 Years Ago By Colleen Raezler (Bio | Archive) August 12, 2009 - 13:47 ET    While some in the media have been dusting off their love beads, bell-bottoms and broomstick skirts in an effort to wax nostalgic about Woodstock, the VFW has reminded its members that the world did not stop for those four days in August 1969. In fact, for 109 American soldiers, the world ended that weekend.VFW Magazine honored those soldiers in the August 2009 cover story, "While Woodstock Rocked, GIs Died." Much has been made over the "half...