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The truth is often overlooked in a sea of lies and mischaracterizations. The truth is not someones opinion or away of looking at something, it is simply the truth. Gen. Giap planned and directed military operations against the French and defeated them in 1954 in the battle of Dien Bien Phu. The NVA under the command of Gen, Giap planned the now famed and offten lied about Tet Offensive against the United States in 1968. In his book Gen. Giap plainly shows that the NVA had few supplies and had been defeated in battle time and time again. The NVA...

There's a war going on, and Army Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale has a mission. But it's far removed from the captured Iraqi palace where he was once stationed. He fights his war now from an office on Wilshire Boulevard lined with movie posters chronicling conflicts real and imagined, from "Patton" to "War of the Worlds." Breasseale's desk is piled high with scripts, each marked with his name and stamped "confidential." It's his job to help decide which movies should get Army help. The mission is both harder and more important than it might appear. After the Vietnam War, movies...

John McCain has fielded the unlikeliest of endorsements -- from his former captor in the Vietnam War. Tran Trong Duyet, who was in charge of the so-called "Hanoi Hilton" where McCain was imprisoned for more than five years after his plane was shot down in 1967, told the British Broadcasting Corporation that he now considers McCain his "friend" and that if he had the chance he would vote for him for president. "If I were American, I'd vote for John McCain," Duyet, now 75, told the BBC. "I think he'd make a very capable president. He's done so much to...

Tran Trong Duyet - a sprightly retiree and amateur ballroom dancer - must rank as one of John McCain's more unlikely supporters.Four decades ago, during the Vietnam war, Mr Duyet was in charge of the notorious Hoa Lo prison - the place where Mr McCain says he was brutally beaten and tortured during five-and-a-half years as an American prisoner of war. "McCain is my friend," said 75-year-old Mr Duyet as he feeds the caged birds he now keeps in his garden in this coastal city. "If I was American, I would vote for him." Informal chatsNavy pilot John McCain was...

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of a U.S. serviceman, missing in action from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to his family for burial with full military honors. He is Lt. Cmdr. Ralph C. Bisz, U.S. Navy, of Miami Shores, Fla. His funeral arrangements are being set by his family. On Aug. 4, 1967, Bisz took off in an A-4E Skyhawk from the USS Oriskany to bomb an enemy petroleum depot near Haiphong, Vietnam. As he neared the target, his aircraft was struck by an enemy surface-to-air missile...

HIGHLY decorated war veteran and former head of the defence force General Sir Francis Hassett has died. The Defence Department said last night General Hassett died on Wednesday at the age of 90. "He was a fine man, warrior chief and remarkable servant of the nation," the department said in a statement. The soldier served in three wars and towards the end of a 42-year military career became head of the army and then chief of defence force staff in the 1970s. General Hassett fought in World War II and in Malaya, and is best known for his role in...

 Of the many personal accounts coming to light about the almost unbelievably cruel treatment accorded American prisoners of war in Vietnam, none is more dramatic than that of Lieut. Commander John S. McCain III — Navy flier, son of the admiral who commanded the war in the Pacific, and a prisoner who came in "for special attention" during 5½ years of captivity in North Vietnam.Now that all acknowledged prisoners are back and a self-imposed seal of silence is off, Commander McCain is free to answer the questions many Americans have asked:What was it really like? How prolonged were the tortures...

Have a kind of empty feeling? Sense that something has been missing these last couple of months? Me, too. Campaign 2008 is completing its fifth month, and we haven't had a vicious fight about the Vietnam War yet. Vietnam is the only war in American history never to end. The War of 1812 was contentious, especially in the Northeast, but no presidential election was fought over it beyond 1812. The Mexican War stirred great passions and slopped over into the 1848 election but has hardly been heard of since, except if you are taking a course in 19th-century America. World...

SEVEN Network boss Kerry Stokes will return a Victoria Cross awarded to one of the country's greatest war heroes to the Australian War Memorial. The media mogul and the South Australian Government were yesterday revealed as the mystery bidders of the medal, which sold at auction in Sydney for $488,000. It is the third Victoria Cross Mr Stokes has bought at auction and returned to the War Memorial since 2006, spending almost $2 million to save the pieces of Australia's history from being lost to the public. Carey Badcoe, daughter of Adelaide-born digger Major Peter Badcoe, was happy her father's...

A VICTORIA Cross medal from the Vietnam War has sold for $488,000 at auction in Sydney as part of a collection of 12 medals and memorabilia. The medal was awarded to Adelaide-born Major Peter Badcoe for a series of heroic actions during the Vietnam War in 1967. The Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth's highest decoration for gallantry, was sold to an anonymous buyer, but will remain in Sydney, the auctioneer said. Three bidders were in the race to buy the medals, with spirited bidding starting at $300,000 in Bonhams & Goodman's auction house in Double Bay tonight. Bonhams & Goodman chairman...

This needs to be widely distributed.I can't post the video clip so you will have to go the the link. It's a clip of John McCain appearing on Des Moines' WHO radio last July, when on-air talent Jan Mickelson played him Tom Harkin's comments from earlier that month, recorded on the floor of the Senate: And if we leave, there will be a bloodbath in Vietnam. All of the people who supported us will be slaughtered in the streets. Well, it didn't happen.

In a moving ceremony on Mount Pleasant in Canberra, His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffrey, AC, CVO, MC, Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, presented Army’s 102 Field Battery with the Australian Military’s first ever Honour Title. His Excellency the Governor General Michael Jeffery presents Lieutenant Colonel Craig Furini, the 102nd Field Battey RAA Honour title. The Honour Title 'Coral' was awarded to 102 Field Battery, Royal Regiment of Australian Artillery, in recognition of its actions during the Vietnam War. Head of Regiment, Brigadier Phil Winter CSC, welcomed the award on behalf of the Army and gave credit to the...

THE man who led Australian troops in the Battle of Long Tan more than 40 years ago should be awarded one of the country's top gallantry decorations, a federal review has recommended. The review by a panel of retired senior army officers was ordered by the Howard government on the eve of the election in October to investigate why the nominated awards for the heroes of the best-known battle involving Australian troops in the Vietnam War were downgraded or ignored. Senior Australian commanders, operating at the time under a quota for bravery awards allocated by the British imperial decorations system,...

McCain on lower right In August of 1968, a program of vigorous torture methods began on McCain, using rope bindings into painful positions and beatings every two hours, at the same time as he was suffering from dysentery.[84][79] Teeth and bones were broken again, as was McCain's spirit; the beginning of a suicide attempt was stopped by guards.[79] After four days of this, McCain signed and taped[94] an anti-American propaganda "confession" that said, in part, "I am a black criminal and I have performed the deeds of an air pirate. I almost died, and the Vietnamese people saved my...

There are some names in the obituary columns that say more than the voices of the living. Such is the name of Dith Pran, who died in New Brunswick, N.J., March 30 at age 65. He was the Cambodian photographer who somehow survived the collection of killing fields that his country became after the Americans abandoned it. And who somehow made his way to the United States to tell the world about it. Millions of his countrymen lost their lives after the Khmer Rouge swept into Phnom Penh and began rounding up unreliable types — i.e., just about anyone who...

Last Colorado Air Guard MIA Laid to Rest in Arlington Cemetery Story by Tech Sgt. Mike Smith Posted on 04.08.2008 at 01:43PM ARLINGTON, Va. - The remains of Colorado Air National Guard Maj. Perry H. Jefferson, who vanished during an observation flight 39 years ago over the jungles of South Vietnam, were at last laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery. Three days of events here were a high-profile attempt to put closure to a missing-in-action mystery, but what exactly happened to the intelligence officer and his Army Reserve pilot, then-1st Lt. Arthur Ecklund, during their fateful observation flight may...

"Does Ho Chi Minh have anything like this"-President Lyndon Johnson According to Texas writer Larry L. King (not the CNN guy) the earthy talking Lyndon Johnson made this comment in the White House to staff members with his pants down and his manhood on display. Regardless of the raw nature of Johnson's reported comments the administration's Vietnam War policy always aimed to be a repeat of the Korean War with some negoatiated ending. The "bombing" of North Vietnam was restricted when it came to the main conduit of North Vietnam's war supplies, Haiphong harbor. There was fear that Soviets on...

You need to see what the press did during the Vietnam war, to understand how they are manipulating us today. Our major news media are a disgrace and nothing but propaganda mills that only make the USA look bad. If the link does not work go to googlevideo and search for "Vietnam War - The Impact of Media" it's 56 min long. Vietnam War - "The Impact of Media" explores in detail the 'media distortions' due to television's misrepresentations during the Vietnam ... all » War. It rebuts the view promoted by PBS's 13-part documentary series, "Vietnam: A Television History"....

SATURDAY, February 4, 1967, was a difficult day at the office for Major Peter Badcoe. .... "When I said, 'Well, now you are done, let's get in there and clean it out', they still refused to go in ... All the advisers were ropeable. We called the Rgt Cmd (regimental commander) and the APC (armoured personnel carrier) commander cowards to their faces." Two months later, Badcoe, 33, was killed by enemy fire in the Huong Tra District. The man who was scathing about the allied napalm attack on a central Vietnamese village, and who had dared to call his commanders...

AN Australian army team is in Vietnam following leads in the search for the remains of Private David Fisher, one of three Australian servicemen still missing from the Vietnam war. One rumour being investigated is that he might have been taken alive by enemy forces. The latest investigation follows the recovery of the remains last year of Lance Corporal John Gillespie, killed in a helicopter crash in April 1971, and Lance Corporal Richard Parker and Private Peter Gillson, both killed in fighting in 1965. Still missing are Pte Fisher, as well as Pilot Officer Robert Carver and Flying Officer Michael...

Why aren't the Vietnamese more grateful to Tom Hayden? Recently, he returned for the first time in 36 years to the country that he and his then-wife Jane Fonda tried to save from American domination in the Vietnam war. The trip disappointed him. As he writes in the March 10 issue of The Nation, Vietnam has turned capitalist. Was that what he fought for? Absolutely not. He remains capitalism's enemy, still the same lefty who helped found 1960s student radicalism. This week, another celebrated American liberal, playwright David Mamet, declared that he's abandoned the ideology he shared with Hayden. Mamet,...

In 1944 with his chips down Adolf Hitler made a big gamble to try to defeat the Western Allies and force them out of World War II. The Nazis launched a desperate offensive in the Ardennes Forest hoping to cut the Allied armies in two. Covering the Battle of the Bulge was a reporter for the United Press named Walter Cronkite. Just over 23 years later Cronkite, now America's most popular television newsman, would visit Vietnam to witness the another desperate offensive against American forces. This time it was launched by the Vietnamese Communists and was called the Tet Offensive....

by Richard Lawrence Poe Tuesday, February 26, 2008 ArchivesPermanent Link FORMER CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite is 91 years old and ailing. Poor health prevented him from accepting his Lifetime Achievement Award in person on January 19. At such a moment, I would prefer to speak charitably of Cronkite. But the times call for candor. Cronkite's intrigues have cost the lives of countless American soldiers. Even worse, it appears that our Central Intelligence Agency assisted Cronkite in his betrayals. Americans need to know why. Born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, Cronkite grew up in Kansas City and Houston, Texas. He dropped...

Inside the Vietnam War [TV-14 LSV Ratings N/A] Monday, February 18, 2008, at 08P Inside the Vietnam War takes you inside covert operations, gives you a seat at the military strategy table and lets you witness the emotional toll of war through the eyes of the soldiers and the pilots who undertook dozens of death-defying missions. Woven together with testimonials from more than 50 Vietnam veterans, archival audio and video footage, and never-before-seen photos, the special features the harrowing firsthand accounts of the brave men and women who lived through the war. 5 minute preview video...Battle at Ia Drang

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...

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...

I was seven years old in early 1968 watching lots of television on a black and white picture set in my bedroom. One of my favorites was the "Batman" series on ABC with Adam West in the title role and Burt Ward as Robin. One of the guest villains on the program was "Catwoman" Eartha Kitt, whose entertainment career blossomed in the 1950's. Kitt, was black and a woman, which clearly qualified her for an invitation to the White House for a ladies luncheon in January of the election year, 1968. The First Lady, who was known by her nickname...

About 11:30 Central Time (History Channel) As my wife was sitting in our study grading papers I happened to walk in. On the TV was a show about the Vietnam war and it immediately struck me when some self proclaimed expert stated that the “Domino Theory” which was used as a justification for continuance of intervention was hand waved away and the pundit literally stated: “As we all know today, that didn’t occur.” Excuse me? Does this guy have a clue about what happened in Cambodia? What happened in Laos? Or who attacked Thailand? Who has naval bases in Vietnam...

Homework. I don't know the details off the top of my head. My son needs sources for "the rest of the story".

I heard recently on the Rush Limbaugh show this quote. "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battles of TET. You defeated us! We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender....

Family, government representatives, veterans and current Defence Force members gathered at RAAF Base at Point Cook in Victoria where a ramp ceremony was held to officially welcome Lance Corporal John Gillespie home, after nearly 40 years missing in action. The remains of Lance Corporal Gillespie, a medical assistant, formerly of 8th Field Ambulance, were repatriated from Hanoi to Australia today. In recent times, a group of former servicemen formed an organisation, Operations Aussies Home (OAH), dedicated to finding and repatriating the remains of the six Australian servicemen left in South Vietnam after Australia withdrew from the country. So far, OAH,...

American liberals have promulgated a standard account of our experience in Southeast Asia and its lessons for today. That account is a myth.

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of two U.S. servicemen, missing from the Vietnam War, have been identified. They are Maj. Robert F. Woods, of Salt Lake City, Utah, and Capt. Johnnie C. Cornelius, of Maricopa County, Ariz., both U.S. Air Force. Cornelius was buried with full military honors on Nov. 10 in Moore, Texas, and Woods’ burial is being set by his family. On June 26, 1968, Woods and Cornelius were flying a visual reconnaissance mission over Quang Binh Province, Vietnam, when their O-2A Skymaster aircraft crashed in a remote mountainous area....

Flying low over the dangerous and impenetrable Laotian jungle on a bombing mission against the Viet Cong, U.S. Air Force Colonel Eugene Deatrick saw a lone figure waving to him from a clearing below. He continued on his flight path, but ten minutes later - puzzled that a native in this hostile terrain would try to attract his attention - he decided to turn back for another recce. This time, he saw the letters SOS spelt out on a rock. Beside them stood an emaciated man dressed in rags, waving the remains of a parachute over his head and signalling...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 — Throngs of veterans gathered on Sunday under a clear sky on the Mall to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, a stark symbol of a war that bitterly divided the nation. In a poignant reminder of that tumultuous time, the veterans wept, prayed or reminisced at the stone memorial inscribed with the names of 58,256 Americans killed or missing in the Vietnam War.

Sergeant First Class Arno J. Voigt was killed by friendly fire near Khe Sanh, Republic of Vietnam on June 4, 1970, and like all friendly fire accidents it was one of those things that shouldn’t have happened but did. A Pink Team consisting of an OH-6 Cayuse Light Observation Helicopter (Loach) and three AH-1G Cobra Gun Ships from the 2d Squadron 17th Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division mistook Arno Voigt and a company of ARVN Airborne Rangers for a company of NVA and fired on them, killing Arno Voigt along with two Rangers and wounding an additional twenty Rangers. This is...

WASHINGTON — John Lazarczyk was waiting to hear a name. He knew he might have to stand in the chilly November darkness for a couple of hours, but that wasn't important. He was there to honor a man he had never even met. As volunteers lined up in front of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and took turns reading the names of some of the 58,256 Vietnam War dead Thursday night, Lazarczyk spoke about James Daniel Williamson, an Army Spec. 4 who was a gunner on a UH1D helicopter that was shot down over Laos on January 5, 1968. Rescue and...

Mclean, VA - Today on the steps of the State House in Columbia, SC, surrounded by numerous veterans, Senator Fred Thompson was joined by Major General James Livingston and Lieutenant Colonel Joe Repya to launch Veterans for Fred Thompson. Major General James Livingston, a 33 year veteran of the United States Marine Corps, will serve as the National Co-Chair of Veterans for Fred Thompson. On May 2, 1968, while serving as the Commanding Officer, Company E, 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, he distinguished himself above and beyond the call of duty in action against enemy forces and earned the Congressional Medal...

The most moving tribute to our fallen Vietnam Servicemen I've ever seen or heard. George Jones provides the background music to this emotional slideshow. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/singingman7/TNOTW.htm

Sunday marks the 50th anniversary of the death of U.S. Army Capt. Harry G. Cramer, who depending how you look at it, can be seen as the first U.S. combat death of the war in Vietnam. Cramer was leading a team of advisers from the 1st Special Forces Group -- the Green Beret unit his son, Hank, would later serve with during his active-duty and reserve Army career. He retired in 2004 as a reserve lieutenant colonel. Hank Cramer and his wife, Kit, who are from Winthrop (WA), and other family members will lay a wreath Saturday at the Vietnam...

Here’s a burning question no one is asking: Whither John F. Kerry? He is his party’s most recent presidential nominee. He came tantalizingly close to winning. And yet no one is looking for him to put his stamp on the 2008 Democratic primary or wondering aloud who he’ll endorse — even though Al Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile says that in the early-state contests, “most of the voters would be thrilled to know who Kerry would back and why.” But the lack of an audible clamor for an endorsement by Kerry is more than a bit deceiving, as is the...

AMVETS National Commander John P. "J.P." Brown III announced today that AMVETS is offering a $5,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of those responsible for the Sept. 7, 2007 vandalism of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial. According to the National Park Service, an unidentified substance stained 14 of the memorial's 140 panels. For more information, visit the AMVETS website.

We shouldn't once again wait too long to admit our mistake and leave In the scheme of small protests, I suppose what I did the other day qualifies. I was in one of those little catchall stores, the kind that sells candles and clothes and cheap jewelry. It was a necklace that caught my eye. A tiny peace symbol suspended from a plain pewter chain. Oh, please, you say. How very Vietnam. I know. I mean, I really know. In 1970, I was a student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when the National Guard descended on the campus....

Dear Senators,Please do not instigate aKorean War Redux Truman's calamitous decision, to withdraw our troops from S. Korea by 1949, led directly to the loss of 30,000 American lives in Korea in the last 30 months of his presidency.As you can see from the following abbreviated overview, The situation in Iraq today is analogous to the post-WWII situation in Korea The comparison between the situations in Iraq and in Korea is stronger than the comparison between the situations in Iraq and in 1960's-70's Vietnam . This is especially true because political leaders like John Murtha tell us we can rely...

Anthony Giacchino had just started as a producer at The History Channel in 1996 and was looking for a topic for his first documentary film. During a chance meeting at a church service, his former high school history teacher told him about a group of anti-war activists who, 25 years earlier, were caught red-handed breaking into a draft board office in Camden. Remarkably, they won a rare and momentous legal victory for the anti-war movement. The teacher brought up the story because the pastor of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Camden, where Giacchino's parents worshiped, was the Rev. Michael Doyle,...

During a speech last month at the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Kansas City, President Bush hearkened back to the destructive legacy of self-perpetuated U.S. defeat in the Vietnam War as a warning to those who would effect the same outcome today in Iraq. In doing so, he tapped into a firestorm of criticism, particularly from liberals who were outraged that someone else was using the analogy they themselves have been pushing relentlessly since 9/11. Indeed, America's military response to the Islamic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 has engendered nothing but opposition from the keepers of the 1960s...

Speaking to veterans assembled in Kansas City last week, President Bush compared the Iraq war with the Vietnam war, something the loopy left has been doing since before coalition forces invaded in 2003. His thrust differed entirely from the quagmirists, but that didn't stop The Hartford Courant from giving it to him in stereo on Sunday. The first to go off on him was "columnist" Bill Curry, whose ties to the communist Vietnamese government are at least two decades old and whose anti-Americanism goes back to the communist-backed nuclear-freeze movement of the 1970s. Loaded with the talking points of the...

In a “Web-exclusive” commentary posted Thursday, Newsweek Senior Editor Michael Hirsh ridiculed President George W. Bush's warning that a precipitous pull-out from Iraq could lead to the humanitarian horrors that followed the American pull-out from Vietnam. Recalling a trip he made to Vietnam in 1991, Hirsh reported that he found a nation looking to the West and capitalism, adding that “today Vietnam remains” only “nominally communist.” He then snidely asserted: “This was the 'harsh' aftermath that George W. Bush attempted to describe this week when he warned against pulling out of Iraq as we did in Vietnam.” James Taranto, in...

The US President has called on a revisionist history of Vietnam to sell Iraq, writes Sarah Baxter WHEN US President George W. Bush invoked the memory of Vietnam to justify staying in Iraq, he was drawing on a new wave of revisionist history which maintains that America did not lose the war -- but the will to win. ''Three decades later there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,'' Mr Bush said in a speech to army veterans last week. White House insiders admitted it was a risky topic that had...

By the co-author if the June 7, 2007 NYT op-ed Defeat’s Killing Fields. "Not everybody would regard it as a badge of hon-our to be cited favourably by President Bush in a speech about Iraq, but it happened to me last week when Bush warned that the consequences of leaving Iraq precipitously could be a bloodbath even worse than happened in Indochina after the American defeat in 1975. Alas, I think he is right." ******************** "I have always thought that those of us who opposed the American war in Indochina should be extremely humble in the face of the appalling...