McCain fears 'Tet Offensive' in Iraq

AP on Yahoo ^ | 2/12/07 | Bob Lewis - ap

[NormsRevenge]

RICHMOND, Va. - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain (news, bio, voting record) said Monday he fears an offensive by Iraqi insurgents similar to the Tet offensive by the Viet Cong that sent U.S. casualties soaring in Vietnam nearly 40 years ago.

McCain, a Vietnam war veteran who spent 5 1/2 years as a prisoner of war, said in an interview with The Associated Press that it's not the U.S. presence in Iraq that upsets voters but rather the number of casualties and the possibility those numbers could rise.

The U.S. death toll is more than 3,100 in the nearly four-year-old war.

In the GOP presidential field, McCain is one of the strongest proponents of President Bush's plan to increase the number of U.S. troops in Iraq by some 21,500.

"By the way, a lot of us are also very concerned about the possibility of a, quote, 'Tet Offensive.' You know, some large-scale tact that could then switch American public opinion the way that the Tet Offensive did," the Arizona senator said.

McCain made his comment in explaining why he did not believe the Bush administration should set a date by which it should deem Bush's troop increase a success or a failure.

"I think that it should be publicly open-ended because I think that if you set a date, that there's every possibility that the insurgents would just lay back and wait until we leave," McCain said.

Tet, a massive invasion in 1968 of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnamese, inflicted enormous losses on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and is regarded as a point where public sentiment turned sharply against the war.

McCain was in Richmond to address about 40 Virginia Republicans who could potentially support his 2008 presidential bid.

McCain said that while U.S. intelligence in the Middle East is better than the flawed information available before the 2003 Iraq invasion, it's still lacking as Iran continues its efforts to process nuclear material.

He said he has no doubt Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

"It is in my opinion that it is not whether they are developing nuclear weapons but when, and there is where opinion varies. Some say as short a time as two years, others as many as 10," McCain said.

[iceskater]

Richmond ping.

McCain was in Richmond to address about 40 Virginia Republicans who could potentially support his 2008 presidential bid.

The only 40 votes he should get from Virginia.

[Jeff Head]

Tet, a massive invasion in 1968 of South Vietnam by Communist North Vietnamese, inflicted enormous losses on U.S. and South Vietnamese troops and is regarded as a point where public sentiment turned sharply against the war.

...and to this day they use it to engineer protests when the facts were, by any calculation, that the Tet offensive was a horrific disaster for the NVA and the VC. They got a few dramatic pictures...but were entirely and thoroughly whipped and destroyed by our and the SV forces.

We beat the NVA and the VC in Vietnam...thoroughly...again and again.

But, we had politicians and a complicit group of left wing sappers here in this nation who submarined our efforts there and who were compromised, infiltrated, and completely and willingly used by the enemy...just like todays ilk are being used by the enemy in the same way, and, again, willingly so.

Despite all of that, Nixon bombed the NV to the negotiation table where they signed a peace treaty in 1972 that by any casual observation admitted thier defeat. When they abjectly violated that treaty and invaded the South two years later...and when we DID NOTHING ABOUT IT except to keep drawing down...that is when South Vietnam was lost. It was a gutless, spineless, political decision that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands...maybe a million...of our good friends.

When we did not respond to that violation...that betrayal and withdrawal is something that has haunted our political and military decision making ever since, and impacted the way our own allies and our enemies view us ever since.

[/end rant] ...but it's the truth.

[txhurl]

Italy foils 'arms for Iraq plot'

Italian police say they have broken up a major arms trafficking ring that was planning to supply thousands of weapons to insurgents in Iraq.

They say the group involved had connections in Malta, Russia, Libya and China and some of those arrested were wealthy businessmen working in exports.

This began as a routine drugs investigation.

But soon police in the central Umbria region realised they had stumbled across something far more significant.

So far they have arrested 16 people - 12 on suspicion of drug dealing but four on allegations they were intending to supply arms.

Police from the anti-Mafia unit say they were planning to move 500,000 AK 47 assault rifles and 10 million pieces of ammunition.

The weapons, they said, had been sourced in China during what looked like routine business trips.

[Corin Stormhands]

The only 40 votes he should get from Virginia.

Musta misplaced my invite...

[DocH]

RINO mcinsane fears a Tet Offensive for two reasons:

1. He THINKS it's STILL 1968.

2. He's forgotten (or he's as whacko as we think he is), that we actually KICKED NVA/Viet Cong ASS in the TET offensive.

[iceskater]

Yeah, mine too....

[smoothsailing]

Myth The Tet Offensive Was a Communist Victory
The 1968 Tet offensive was a total and complete miltary disaster for the North Vietnamese Communists no matter how you look at it. If you measure victory by territory gained or enemy killed, the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong failed dismally in their attacks.
The NVA and VC had counted on a "People's Uprising" to carry them to victory, however there was no such uprising. They did exactly what the American military wanted them to do. They massed in large formations that were incredibly vulnerable to the awesome fire support the U.S. Military was able to bring to bear on them in a coordinated and devastating manner.

The NVA and VC attacked only ARVN installations with the exception of the US Embassy in Saigon. Despite reports to the contrary by all major television news networks and the print media, the VC sapper team of 15 men never entered the chancery building and all 15 VC were dead within 6 hours of the attack. They caused no damage to any property and managed to kill 4 US Army MPs, and one Marine guard. The South Vietnamese Police tasked with guarding the Embassy fled at the first sound of gunfire.

The NVA/VC launched major attacks on Saigon, Hue, Quang Tri City, Da Nang, Nha Trang, Qui Nhon, Kontum City, Ban Me Thout, My Tho, Can Tho, and Ben Tre. With the exception of the old imperial city of Hue, the NVA/VC were forced to retreat within 24 hours of the beginning of the offensive. In the process they suffered devastating losses among the southern VC cadres. Using the southern VC as the spearhead of these attacks was an intentional device on the part of the North Vietnamese politcal leadership. They did not want to share power with the southerners after the war, so they sent them out to what was inevitable slaughter. The NVA mainforce battalions were held in "reserve" according to Vo Nguyen Giap, in order to "exploit any breakthroughs".

In the first week of the attack the NVA/VC lost 32,204 confirmed killed, and 5,803 captured. US losses were 1,015 KHA, while ARVN losses were 2,819 killed. ARVN losses were higher because the NVA/VC, reluctant to enter into a set-piece battle with US forces, attacked targets defended almost exclusively by South Vietnamese troops.

Casualties among the people whom the NVA/VC claimed to be "liberating" were in excess of 7,000, with an additional 5,000 tortured and murdered by the NVA/VC in Hue and elsewhere. In Hue alone, allied forces discovered over 2,800 burial sites containing the mutilated bodies of local Vietnamese teachers, doctors, and political leaders.

Only the news media seemed to believe that in some way the Communists had achieved a "victory". To put this in perspective, the news media would have reported the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler's last ditch attempt to stop the allied forces in Europe, as a "disaster" for the Allies. They would have said that "despite Allied efforts, the enemy still has the means to mount a major offensive, and therefore the war in Europe is unwinable". Sound goofy? Well, that is exactly what Walter Cronkite said on national TV after the 1968 Tet offensive. He did not say this in WWII, mostly because the news media operated under strict war time secrecy laws that discouraged any negative reporting. For example, in WWII it was expressly forbidden to show the bodies of dead American soldiers in any newsreel footage or photograph. Any photos or film that did so were simply confiscated by military censors. When was the last time you saw a history book that had photos of dead GIs? Find a newspaper photo in the New York Times morgue that depicts a dead American soldier in WWII. Would there have been pressure on the home front to end our involvement in WWII had the media been permitted to show live pictures of GIs who had lost both legs to a German mine? Or photos of the thousands of Marines who were dying to capture islands no one could even find on a map? Islands which we gave back after the war.

In Vietnam however the media operated under no such restrictions and were free to go wherever they wanted and film and photograph whatever they wanted. Despite this the overwhelming majority of the media never left the comfort of Saigon. The film clips of Morley Safer, Charles Kuralt, and others which seem to depict raging firefights in the background are very likely staged events. If you look closely at these film clips you will notice that the people in the background are acting rather nonchalant for people in a firefight. Only the reporter seems to be crouching low to avoid being "hit". Keep in mind that by carefully composing a scene, a camerman can make a small crowd of people look like a mob of thousands. So too can a couple of people firing M-16s be made to appear as if a firefight is in progress.

[Nascar Dad]

Yes has the man really lost it? Running for prez with that goiter on his face?

[somemoreequalthanothers]

McCain fears 'Tet Offensive' in Iraq

McCain fears American victory in Iraq?

I went to public school, but even I knew tet was a victory for us. Jane Fonda be damned.

[Rummyfan]

Every time a terrorist sets off a carbomb and kills 70 peaceful Iraqi women at a food market, the left makes us feel as though America is doing something wrong, and the perverse solution is to turn Iraq over to the psycho terrorists that detonated the car bomb.

Exactly! Stupid bamboozled people! The murderers are responsible for the murdering!

[Rummyfan]

It was a gutless, spineless, political decision that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands...maybe a million...of our good friends.

Yes and yes. Almost two million in Cambodia / Kampuchea alone. It was despicable how we treated the South Vietnamese. We abandoned an ally and punished them, rather than the murdering VC and NVese. And the Dems and lefties want to do it again in Iraq! THEY ARE INSANE!!!!!!

[stumpy]

Hey McNutjob, We who were there then kicked their @sses all up and down the countryside. We do not have a communist walter cronkite currently on t.v. to say otherwise. Got others trying real hard to live up to his sorry @ss, but not at his level at the time. If we could have the ragheads live up to the V.C. attempt, and we had the same success, the country would finally be peaceful. We killed tens of thousands of them at that time and destroyed their ability to operate.

Semper FI, go troops.

[hosepipe]

[ I mean, physically. I don't think he has the health required for the 365x7x24 marathon of a presidential run. ]

LoL... Only the good die young...

[gov_bean_ counter]

I would like a little more symmetry in the face.

[Rummyfan]

Casualties among the people whom the NVA/VC claimed to be "liberating" were in excess of 7,000, with an additional 5,000 tortured and murdered by the NVA/VC in Hue and elsewhere. In Hue alone, allied forces discovered over 2,800 burial sites containing the mutilated bodies of local Vietnamese teachers, doctors, and political leaders.

Strange how the MSM never mentioned or mentions that.....

[Rummyfan]

But other than the goiter - or whatever it is - he seems to have aged a lot recently.....

[Red6]

McCain has mastered the fine art of using the war to his political favor without appearing anti-military.

The surge is an ingredient for failure, since it's "time" we need, not more troops. McCain advocated a policy which ran contrary to what commanders on the ground truly wanted, but who cares about that, right? In Washington personal political ambitions trump all else and McCain is no different.

Sick. This guy is a political ambulance chaser!

This is the man who proposed drug testing for baseball players, an anti torture bill, and a surge. He bends forwards and backwards reaching for topics to get him in the nightly news. I hope he fails as a Republican candidate!

[sam_paine]

I try to post this often from my profile page, on how frightening it would be for this nutter to have his finger on the nuke button every day if he won.

MR. RUSSERT: During--before you go, last week, you talked about people raising your temper as an issue. I read an interview you gave Fortune magazine, "You lose battles in politics. I do get good and angry. Really angry! By God, I'm not going to let them beat me again. I don't like to lose."
SEN. McCAIN: I was laughing when I said that and I was joking. I spend every day saying to myself, "Stay calm. Stay cool. Be passionate. But neither get angry nor personal." And that--those are two important lessons that I've learned over the years. I spent a lot of time burning bridges early in my political campaign, but--political life. Now I work to try to build bridges.

---John McCain, Meet The Press, April 2, 2006.

---

[VeniVidiVici]

I wish he would just shut-up. He doesn't do the nation any favors with his bogus prognostications.

[Nathan Zachary]

And here I thought McPain was going to allude to the FACT when Democrats in the senate turn the TET victory into defeat when they cut all funding to the South Vietnamese and took all the troops home, leaving south Vietnamese defenseless to the retreating NVA; who, upon hearing that American forces and funding were pulled out,(Possibly alerted by a traitor named John) turned around slaughtered hundreds of thousands of south Veitnamese.