Free Republic

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...

Robert McNamara died Monday at the age of 93. Not a lot will be written about him because he is reviled by the left for his role in the Viet Nam war, and reviled by others for his mismanagement and failures. I am one of the latter. McNamara throughout his career held himself in higher regard than those around him did. He felt his intelligence trumped all, even when he was barking up the wrong tree. Prior to being tapped by Jack Kennedy for Defense Secretary, he was President of Ford. He came to Ford as one of a dozen...

Rather than absolving him of his sins, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s pseudo-mea culpa, “In Retrospect: Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” is a self-indictment. His lesser crime is self-indulgence. His arrogance and duplicity during the Vietnam conflict is echoed throughout his book as he recounts his mismanagement of the war. If as he admits, ignorance was his guiding light, then, it has grown to be a beacon today, proving that he has learned little about Vietnamese communism in the almost three decades that it took him to write his book. Besides the war, another tragedy is that McNamara seems...

Michael Jackson dies and it's 24/7 news coverage. A real American hero dies and not a mention of it in the news. The media has no honor and God is watching Ed Freeman You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in. You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you...