Free Republic

After his military career, Rockhold worked as a defense contractor, operating mostly in Africa. He first returned to Vietnam in 1992 to work on a program to help economic refugees. He settled in Vietnam in 1995, the same year the United States and Vietnam normalized relations. He married a Vietnamese woman in 2009. In fact, he liked it so much that he persuaded his mother to move to Vietnam from Santa Maria, Calif., also in 2009. She came for the wedding, and decided to stay,” he said with a laugh. She lived in Vietnam until her death in 2015 at...

Military historian Max Boot's new book asks if the Vietnam war could have been won if CIA operative Edward Lansdale's advice had been heededI was with an acquaintance who had participated in the agency’s secret air operations in Laos during the 1960s. After exchanging cards, my friend popped a question: Did Colby think that history could have been changed and over a million deaths averted if the US had accepted Ho Chi Minh’s offer of an alliance at the end of World War II? Colby, who oversaw a CIA counter-insurgency program in Vietnamese villages that killed upwards of 40,000...

Vietnam has been forced to devalue its currency, the dong, for the third time since June 2008. The country's pegged exchange rate will shift to 17,961 dong per dollar vs. 17,034 previously. The Vietnamese central bank will also hiking interest rates to 8% from 7% in an attempt to control inflation.

John Kerry’s latest tactic of accusing a sitting President of hiding plans to increase the strength of our military presence in Iraq is simply another illustration of the pacifist tactic of bringing about a military defeat by inciting fear in the American people to weaken their resolve to commit the resources needed for victory. He did it in Vietnam and he is doing it in Iraq. There is substantial evidence that Kerry’s testimony before the Senate encouraged the North Vietnamese in their strategy to win the war by attrition, and their belief that the American public would not have the...