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Vietnam Veterans Tribute This video I did for the Veterans Museum in Chehalis, WA for their Vietnam Vets tribute. I think the story shows the the medal of everyday Americans who serve our country and are put into difficult positions.

I was talking with a young man about his experience in Iraq and said I was of a different era the Vietnam War and we had the likes of Jane Fonda. He was did not have a clue as to Jane Fonda was and what she had done. This video I did several years ago very short yet conveys the feelings of many vets from my era with a little humor.

HANOI, Vietnam – Legendary Vietnamese Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap built his career on never backing down, even against seemingly impossible odds. Now, decades after ousting the French and later the Americans, he’s celebrating another major victory: his 100th birthday. Giap is revered by Vietnamese second only to former President Ho Chi Minh. Together, they plotted gutsy campaigns from jungles and caves using ill-equipped guerrilla fighters to gain Vietnam’s independence, eventually leading to the end of French colonial rule throughout Indochina. Two decades later, Giap’s northern Communist forces also wore down the U.S.

<p>One day, at the height of her fame in the mid-Seventies, Jane Fonda turned up on the doorstep of her ex-husband, Roger Vadim. She was lugging a bulging sack.</p> <p>Vadim’s glamorous new girlfriend let her in, thrilled to meet the movie icon at last. But her excitement soon turned to disbelief. The star of Julia, Klute and The China Syndrome had come to do her laundry. Why? Because her second husband, Tom Hayden, a Left-wing activist with a bulbous nose and acne-scarred cheeks, had forbidden her to have either a washing machine or dishwasher. Far too bourgeois.</p>

Forty years after they were famously leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, the Pentagon Papers will be officially released next month at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. The National Archives announced this week that it “has identified, inventoried, and prepared for public access the Vietnam Task Force study, United States-Vietnam Relations 1945-1967, informally known as ‘the Pentagon Papers’.” As a result, 3.7 cubic feet of previously restricted textual materials will be made officially available at the Nixon Library on June 13, the Archives said in a May 10 Federal Register notice. While any release of historical records is welcome, the...

Thousands of motorcycles poured into the D.C.-area today for Rolling Thunder, an annual event drawing motorcycle enthusiasts from across the country. The massive collection of motorcycle riders is descending on Washington in memory of the thousands of prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action from the Vietnam War.

www.catholicnewsagency.com Marine Corps foundation honors heroic Vietnam War priest By Marianne Medlin Marine Cpl. James Capodanno, stands next to the window dedicated to his brother. Credit: Marine Corps Heritage Foundation Triangle, Va., May 20, 2011 / 02:35 am (CNA).- Servant of God Fr. Vincent Capodanno, a chaplain who was killed in action while protecting U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War, was honored with a permanent tribute at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.“The Marines who served with Chaplain Capodanno remember him as the Chaplain who went wherever his Marines needed his comfort and guidance, no matter the personal...

Does being on the left mean never having to say that you are sorry?—If you are talking about the Vietnam War and who won it 35 years later, that very well may be the case. Regarding the real truth of the Vietnam War after the fall of Saigon, Laos and Cambodia, Senator Fulbright, D-AK, who was also the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee summed up the sentiment of the 94th Congress, “I am no more distressed than if Arkansas had lost the football game to Texas.” “That started the Southeast Asian genocide. You’re talking about one quarter of the...

The US Army has rejected a request for ethnic Hmong leader Vang Pao to be buried with full military honours in Arlington National Cemetery. Gen Pao led a 15-year CIA-sponsored secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War and, when it was lost, led tens of thousands of his people into exile. He died last month. The army's decision came as mourners attended the first day of a six-day funeral in California. Gen Pao's friends said they would appeal to the White House. "Obviously to everyone who is here today to honour Gen Vang Pao, this is very disappointing," said...

When Hornets Growl The new, supersonic face of e-warfare. By D.C. Agle Air & Space Magazine, March 01, 2011 No soft underbelly here: The EA-18G Growler hauls missiles, fuel tanks, and electronic warfare pods. Ted Carlson/Fotodynamics Two hours north of Seattle, Washington, at the eastern end of the Strait of Juan de Fuca, the entrance to Puget Sound is guarded by a citadel dedicated to the aerial mastery and manipulation of one of the universe’s fundamental particles—the electron. The site, Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, was originally envisioned as little more than a waypoint for patrol aircraft scanning the Sound...

The competition was tough. So many candidates, but there can only be one true Asshat. To tell the truth, there was someone else in mind for the honor and the article was almost complete when I was told of an article in a Canadian newspaper written by the eventual winner. While it is certainly nothing new to hear a leftwing nutjob slamming Canadian sports celebrity/broadcaster/conservative/favorite son Don Cherry, it is the background of the article's writer that made this an easy choice. Montreal Gazette sportswriter Jack Todd is this year's Asshat of the Year. Not for his condemnation of Cherry,...

F-111B - a victim of the air war over Vietnam By Greg Waldron on December 8, 2010 The retirement of Australia's F-111Cs last week ended the long story of a successful, and iconic, long range bomber. Many forget, however, that US Navy's version of the aircraft, the F-111B, was a failure. The F-111B was big like the F-111C, though it had a stubbier nose to make carrier landings easier. Conceived as pure fighter (the naval version of the Tactical Fighter Experimental) in the early sixties, it would not need a gun. The F-111B's AWG-9 pulse doppler radar and Phoenix missiles...

Lt. Gen. Hal Moore took his sword from its sheath Tuesday evening, raised it and said, “I’m going to cut this cake like a soldier.” The cake didn’t stand a chance. Moore sliced swiftly through the sugary goodness to help commemorate the 45th anniversary of the Battle of Ia Drang, where outnumbered American soldiers held off the North Vietnamese on Nov. 14-16, 1965. Several hundred visited Auburn City Hall in a tribute to Moore and veteran journalist Joe Galloway, who co-authored the book “We Were Soldiers Once … And Young.” Between slices of cake, Moore and Galloway spoke to the...

<p>A Puerto Rican veteran of the Vietnam War has been awarded the Silver Star for helping to rescue a company pinned down by enemy fire in 1965.</p> <p>Angel L. Cumba served as a gunner with the 229th Assault Helicopter Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division. He received the military's third-highest decoration Thursday during a Veteran's Day ceremony in the U.S. territory.</p>

“Since it’s generally accepted–but wrong–that Tet drove the American people against the Vietnam war, you have a class of commentators, and people in government too, who keep anticipating this kind of event–some grand event that will suddenly mark a sea change in the support of any military effort overseas, at which point people just turn against it,” says James S. Robbins, author of the new book "This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive."... To Robbins, the Vietnam narrative must be reclaimed from the “ruling class of hippies and leftists, who went from protests to the U.S. Senate in some...

Today is the publication date of This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive, by James Robbins. ... I vividly remember following news of the Tet offensive in 1968 and subsequently fell for virtually every element of the myth of Tet that Robbins exposes in this lucid, important book. The book thus rings a bell with me, as I suspect it will for many readers of this site. Robbins argues that the myth of Tet has lived on to do much damage.

Note: Photo included, Wanted poster included, audio file and transcript include, and a link to America's Most Wanted included. (See below.) # Note: The following text (minus the photos) is a quote: Headline Archives The aftermath of the attack on Sterling Hall at the University of Wisconsin 40 years ago this week. TERROR AT STERLING HALL 40 Years Later, Fugitive Search Continues 08/23/10 Where is Leo Burt? You can earn up to $150,000 by helping us find him. Forty years ago—on August 24, 1970—Burt and three other young men protesting the Vietnam War carried out a pre-dawn bomb attack at...

The Army has dropped the Vietnam-era name "psychological operations" for its branch in charge of trying to change minds behind enemy lines, acknowledging the term can sound ominous. The Defense Department picked a more neutral moniker: "Military Information Support Operations," or MISO. U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Ken McGraw said Thursday the new name, adopted last month, more accurately reflects the unit's job of producing leaflets, radio broadcasts and loudspeaker messages to influence enemy soldiers and civilians. "One of the catalysts for the transition is foreign and domestic sensitivities to the term 'psychological operations' that often lead to a misunderstanding...

Congressman Phil Hare (IL, 17th District) is the perfect example of the sort of congressman no one should want. He's arrogant. He's dismissive. He's self-important. He's easy to anger. And worst of all he has disdain for his own voters. The man is simply a creep. In April we had video of this arrogant cuss saying that he didn't care about the U.S. Constitution in the Obamacare fight. Apparently that darned old rag of paper is meaningless to this powermad pol. This time we have Congressman Hare intimidating a voter and demanding that this Vietnam vet supply the congressman with...

This Dick Blumenthal even looks a little like Eliot Spitzer. And now it turns out, as somebody said yesterday, even Jane Fonda spent more time in Vietnam than he did. We’re talking about Connecticut Atty. Gen. Dick Blumenthal - you can call him “General.” .....

Christopher Shays of Connecticut found it puzzling: over time, his friend Attorney General Richard Blumenthal kept revising how he talked about his military service during the Vietnam War. Mr. Shays, a conscientious objector who avoided the Vietnam War, has his own theory about Mr. Blumenthal’s evolving descriptions of his service: “I think that it was a way that he quickly bonded with people I am sure he admired and respected.” When Paul Kingman, a Navy veteran who lost feeling in his feet after chemotherapy, called Mr. Blumenthal’s office in 2007, he was trying to get a hearing for disability payments...

As the New York Times has reported, Connecticut Attorney General and Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal remained stateside during the Vietnam War thanks to five deferments he obtained, the last of which enabled him to take a job in the Nixon White House. During research for my book The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate (Doubleday 2008), I uncovered some documents that showed Blumenthal, then a staff lawyer for Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a key domestic policy adviser to the president, had aroused the suspicions of Attorney General Mitchell. The year was 1969, and the country was wracked by...

America won the Vietnam War. You hadn't heard? Then check out "The Politi- cally Incorrect Guide to the Vietnam War," Phillip Jennings' new entry in the popular Regnery series. Mr. Jennings wrote the book with a specific purpose: "To settle scores with the pernicious mythmakers of the Vietnam War." These include journalists, politicians and academics, who both created the myths of Vietnam and profited from them. For this group, Mr. Jennings has three words: "Shame on you." Mr. Jennings' book is a well-researched, brisk review of the central myths of the Vietnam War, set in historical context. It is not...

Ultimately, South Vietnam became a casualty of American domestic politics: Watergate, the oil crisis and a general crisis of national confidence. The 1973 Paris Peace Agreement was a flawed deal forced on Saigon with promises of future support that were soon broken. President Nixon was hounded from office. The emboldened Democratic Congress cut aid to South Vietnam and left the Paris Peace Agreement unenforceable. President Ford was too weak politically to force the issue, even if he had wanted to. Hanoi seized the opportunity in the spring of 1975 and invaded the South. The South Vietnamese mounted a spirited defense...

WASHINGTON — Col. Robert L. Howard, an Army veteran from San Antonio and one of the Vietnam war's most highly decorated soldiers, was laid to rest Monday at Arlington National Cemetery as friends and family looked on. A survivor of five tours in Vietnam, he received the Medal of Honor for directing a counterattack when 250 enemy troops almost overwhelmed his platoon in December 1968 when he was a sergeant first class in the U.S. Army Special Forces. Wounded by grenades and unable to walk, he continued to command and was the last to board a helicopter that took his...

"Daniel Ellsberg (born April 7, 1931) is a former American military analyst employed by the RAND Corporation who precipitated a national political controversy in 1971 when he released the Pentagon Papers, a top-secret Pentagon study of government decision-making about the Vietnam War, to The New York Times and other newspapers."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg _____________________________________________________________ "As a response to the leaks, the Nixon administration began a campaign against further leaks and against Ellsberg personally. Aides Egil Krogh and David Young under John Ehrlichman's supervision created the 'White House Plumbers,' which would later lead to the Watergate burglaries."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg#Fallout _____________________________________________________________ So what is Daniel Ellsberg...

Closure after 40 years Local Vietnam veteran returns to Vietnam and Cambodia to put closure on the wounds of war after many years.    Suncrest residents Len Koolstra and his sons Dan and Jay recently returned from a trip to Vietnam and Cambodia. In every way, it was an eye-popping, life-altering adventure for the trio in the Far East, a place the younger Koolstras had never  been before. But for the father, it was a full circle, the end of a long emotional journey, a closure for a 40-year battle. In Oct 1968, Len Koolstra, then a 20-year old young sunny...

<p>Witter in New York, Rescorla used the same tactics to calm co-workers as he led them from their offices during the attacks on the World Trade Center.</p> <p>Rescorla survived battlefields in Southwest Asia, but he apparently was not so fortunate Sept. 11. Currently on the missing list, Rescorla was last seen in a 10th-floor staircase. He is credited with saving 3,800 colleagues, while sacrificing himself.</p>

YORK It took 41 years, but a York County airman missing in action since the Vietnam War has finally been laid to rest in Arlington National Cemetery after his remains were positively identified earlier this year. Melvin Douglas Rash, of Grafton, was buried with full military honors Dec. 7 at the revered Washington-area cemetery. He had been missing since 1968, when his Air Force C-130 airplane was presumably shot down over Vietnam. After years of dead ends, the plane's wreckage was finally positively identified in 2002 in a jungle area near the Laotian border. It took six years before military...

PHETCHABUN, Thailand – Thailand sent army troops with shields and batons to evict some 4,000 ethnic Hmong asylum seekers Monday and send them back to Laos despite strong objections from the U.S. and rights groups who fear they will face persecution. Under tight security, more than 1,000 of the Hmong were loaded onto covered military trucks and driven out of the camp toward buses waiting near the Lao border, Thai authorities said. Journalists kept at a distance from the camp could see many children inside the trucks. With the eviction under way, the United States called for it to stop....

Hovering in the shadows of President Barack Obama's decision last week to ramp up the nation's war effort in Afghanistan, even as he promises to bring it to a swift conclusion, are ghosts of another decision, made 44 years ago by a Texan in the White House. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them. Over the next three years, he would send hundreds of thousands more and launch a carpet-bombing campaign against...

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...

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...

Apologies for the tease (can you post pics here? I'm a FR noob...) but follow the jump for perhaps one of the rarest photographs in existence. Of the beloved Bella Pelosi. Prepare yourselves...

SHANE Herbert was 11 years old when his older brother Michael went missing on a night bombing mission in Vietnam. Yesterday, as a grown man, Shane wept as he spoke of his RAAF pilot brother whose life was cut short at 24, with his body lying in the jungle for the next 39 years. "We all lived in hope and believed no news was good news," Mr Herbert told more than 300 mourners gathered for his brother's state funeral. "My father and mother, who were younger than what I am now, I just don't know how you kept going," he...

AUSTRALIA'S last two servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam War have begun their final journey home. The remains of Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver, both lost in 1970, have been placed aboard a RAAF Hercules transport aircraft for the trip from Hanoi, Vietnam, back to Australia. Family members and former comrades of the RAAF's 2 Squadron observed the solemn ceremony at Noi Bai Airfield as their caskets were carried aboard the aircraft. The family members and former servicemen will accompany them on the journey home. Parliamentary secretary Dr Mike Kelly said the aircraft would fly...

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

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...

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...

Hollywood Hates America by: Brittany Fortier, August 11, 2009 Conservatives are a rarity in Hollywood, but director and producer Jack Marino is proud to be giving them a voice in the industry. Marino’s feature film Forgotten Heroes salutes the veterans of the Vietnam War and shows how the involvement of the Soviet Union impacted the conflict. Set in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia, the film tells the story of a group of “Kelly’s Heroes” who risk their lives to rescue a Russian general who has chosen to defect to America. Marino said that the idea for Forgotten Heroes came...

Something truly astonishing appeared in a Washington Post column on July 25, 2009 (click here to view). It was written by Frank Mankiewicz, former press secretary to Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) and the man who is perhaps most widely remembered for announcing RFK's death in June 1968. Mankiewicz was also the political director of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern's losing 1972 campaign. The column contained a two-fold revelation about the just-deceased Walter Cronkite, the longtime CBS News anchorman. Here are the disclosures, in Mankiewicz' own words:

THE remains of the last two Australian servicemen missing from the Vietnam War have been found in the wreckage of their crashed bomber. An RAAF search team, which has been excavating the crash site near the Vietnam border with Laos, found human remains which have been identified as pilot Flying Officer Michael Herbert, 24, from Glenelg, South Australia, and navigator Pilot Officer Robert Carver, 24, from Toowoomba, Queensland. Both died when their Canberra bomber crashed while returning from a mission on November 3, 1970. Defence Personnel Minister Greg Combet said the recovery team found human remains near the crash site....

July 27, 2009, 4:00 a.m. McNamara’s FollyThe road to failure in Vietnam. By Conrad Black The recent death of former U.S. defense secretary and World Bank president Robert McNamara, at 93, has raised again, in editorials and obituaries, the hoary head of the Vietnam War. Geeky in his thick, rimless glasses and slicked-back hair, expressionless, desiccated, fast-talking, and mechanically confident, McNamara was at the cutting edge of the managerial revolution—a business administrator, statistician, and efficiency expert. He was a mesmerizing figure for a time, especially after the Kennedy public-relations apparatus confected the myth of calibrated crisis management in the...

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2009 – Nearing the end of his 42-year career in the Navy, Adm. Timothy J. Keating today reflected on those who served alongside him, giving special emphasis to troops whose fates remain unknown. Keating, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, addressed the National League of POW/MIA Families, a group that strives to account for the more than 1,750 veterans of Vietnam and other wars still missing. “We’re going to do whatever it takes, with appropriate support, to have you reach some sort of conclusion in your minds and in your hearts as to where your loved one...

I just heard the news that former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died. And perhaps I will be one of the few with the guts to be real and say it: I'm not sad to see this overrated liar go. Buh-bye. Cronkite enjoyed a long and glamorous life, unlike many of our late teen and 20-something American troops against whom he editorialized on a nightly basis. They died on the killing fields of Vietnam in no small part because he contributed to the video demoralization of America and the resulting lack of commitment to help our boys win the Vietnam War....

The famous hotel could be open for bids next week The Watergate Hotel made famous by a presidential scandal is expected to be on the auction block next week. Alex Cooper Auctioneers is announcing that it will take bids Tuesday on the Washington landmark. [snip] The Watergate complex was made famous by the 1972 burglary that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

As Ed "Too Tall" Freeman lay ill in a Boise hospital over the past few weeks, many came to pay their respects to the 80-year-old national war hero and former helicopter pilot. One unexpected visitor offered a very personal thank you to Freeman, a veteran of three wars and recipient of the highest military award -- the Congressional Medal of Honor -- for his actions on Nov. 14, 1965, at Landing Zone X-Ray, Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam.

Thomas’s Navy Cross citation states: “His deadly accuracy accounted for at least one enemy dead and held the aggressors at bay until an Army rescue helicopter landed.” It is assumed Thomas was given credit solely for the VC killed and witnessed at the rescue chopper. When a second Army rescue helicopter landed to retrieve the bodies of the dead co-pilot and gunner, the soldiers noted a plethora of VC dead all around the area. One was as close as three yards from Thomas’s shooting position, and the furthest was 150 yards. It was clear to those on the scene that...

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2009 – Bright blue skies above the National Mall today belied the solemnity of the ceremony commemorating the first two American combat casualties of the Vietnam War. U.S. Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis were the first two U.S. servicemembers killed in the Vietnam War. Their sacrifice was honored in Washington, D.C., Jyly 8, 2009, in a ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary of their deaths. DoD photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “On this date 50 years ago, two men lost their lives...