Michael Griffith

Yes, that is astounding. How someone can pretend that this doesn't change "the fact that she identified Oswald as the killer" is hard to comprehend. In any normal case, nobody would take her "identification" seriously. Anyway, yes, it seems rather obvious that Markham knew or strongly suspected that Oswald was not the man she had seen shoot Tippit. After all, she was at least 90 feet away. I believe the description of the killer that she gave in interviews was her genuine recollection: that the guy was a bit heavy and had dark bushy hair. It is very simple: It is hopeless trying to reason with you or to get you to deal credibly with evidence. If I say, as Benavides did of the killer's hair, that John Doe's hair "went down and squared off," that would logically mean that I could see his hairline; otherwise, how would I know if his hair "squared off" when it "went down"? How? How? X-ray vision? If I could not see his hairline because it was covered by a coat collar, I would have no idea how his hair looked when it "went down." If Benavides could not see the guy's hairline, one would logically think he would have said so and would have qualified his description of the guy's hair accordingly. This is just logic and common sense. Ah, but you can't go there because Oswald's hair was indisputably tapered in the back.

Once again, we see that when WC apologists cannot credibly, rationally explain an item of evidence, they usually fall silent after a few lame attempts to deal with it. So far, the only response has been the unserious, implausible suggestion that Dr. Young mistook CE 569 for a deformed bullet. Again, the bullet was found in a different part of the car than where CE 569 was found (in the rear, not the front); it was found by different people; and it was found at a different time. Plus, no one is going to describe a small, mangled fragment as a "misshapen bullet." People know the difference between a small fragment and a bullet. A bullet is not a small fragment, and a small fragment is not a bullet. To understand the degree of difference here, consider that CE 399 weighed 157.7 grains, whereas CE 569 weighed only 20.6 grains, or nearly eight times less than a WCC bullet. Dr. Young's account poses an especially thorny challenge for WC apologists because Young accepted the WC's version of the shooting; because he assumed that the bullet he saw was one of the three shots acknowledged by the WC; because he had no idea that his account posed a problem for the single-assassin scenario; because he was consistent in telling his account each time he told it; and because one of the surviving petty officers who found the bullet confirmed Young's account. This bullet destroys the lone-gunman theory. No version of the lone-gunman scenario can explain the finding of a deformed bullet in the rear of the limo. It means at least four shots were fired. It means there were two gunmen. It means that Dr. Humes, and perhaps other officials at the autopsy, suppressed the bullet's existence. This is why emotionally blinded or ideologically dominated WC apologists cannot bring themselves to admit that Dr. Young's account is obviously true.

I have always summarily dismissed the idea of shots from the storm drains. However, Gil's and Greg's posts provide some interesting food for thought and make the idea of storm-drain shots seem less dubious to me.

Three myths that have done great damage to the case for conspiracy in the JFK assassination, and that have drawn severe criticism from academics and journalists, involve JFK and Vietnam. These myths are (1) that JFK was killed because he was going to unconditionally and totally disengage from South Vietnam after the election, (2) that JFK never would have escalated the war the way LBJ did, and (3) that LBJ enthusiastically escalated the war as quickly as he dared after JFK's murder. Numerous facts refute these myths. Let us start with facts that refute the third myth, and then go backward from there. -- As literally hundreds of historians have documented from the LBJ White House tapes and memos and meeting minutes, until the Communist offensive in 1965, Johnson strenuously tried to limit the war effort because he feared that an expanded war would interfere with his domestic agenda, especially his Great Society legislation. -- Most of the Kennedy holdovers in the Johnson White House recommended deploying combat troops in response to Hanoi's enormous and unprecedented offensive in 1965, a situation that JFK never faced. The North Vietnamese army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC) had never launched an offensive of such magnitude against South Vietnam during JFK's presidency. In response to this escalation, JFK holdovers John McNaughton, Robert McNamara, William Bundy, McGeorge Bundy, and Dean Rusk advocated sending combat troops to South Vietnam. -- Even when Johnson felt compelled to send combat troops in response to the 1965 Communist offensive, he placed insane, reckless restrictions on U.S. ground, naval, and air operations, restrictions that needlessly cost the lives of many American pilots and soldiers. The Joint Chiefs' objections to these restrictions caused a bitter, deep rift between them and LBJ and McNamara. And, mind you, these were not the "fire-breathing/radical" Joint Chiefs of the JFK era. These chiefs were handpicked by LBJ and McNamara because they were known for being moderate and temperate, and because LBJ and McNamara believed they would be compliant with the administration's gradual-escalation, limited-war approach. For a time, the Joint Chiefs were compliant, but as American casualties mounted, they became increasingly vocal about calling for an end to the restrictions. -- Far from being chummy with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and far from rubber stamping the Joint Chiefs' requests, LBJ sidelined, attacked, manipulated, and misled the Joint Chiefs. Historian H.R. McMaster documents LBJ's war with the Joint Chiefs in painstaking detail in his best-selling book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. McMaster documents the devious methods that LBJ and McNamara used to mislead, sidetrack, and muzzle the Joint Chiefs and to either reject most of their recommendations or to approve only parts of their recommendations. -- Although JFK was adamant about wanting to avoid sending combat troops to South Vietnam, he was never faced with the situation that Johnson faced in 1965. Bobby Kennedy's 4/30/1964 oral history interview makes it clear that Bobby believed JFK might have used combat troops if he had been faced with the imminent collapse of South Vietnam. -- Given the fact that Rusk and the Bundy Brothers, and even McNamara and McNaughton, recommended using combat troops in response to the 1965 NVA-VC offensive, would not these men have given the same recommendation to JFK if JFK had not died and had faced a similar situation? -- The JFK White House tapes do not contain a single syllable of evidence that JFK intended to abandon South Vietnam after the election, as Dr. Marc Selverstone proves in his widely acclaimed 2022 book The Kennedy Withdrawal. (BTW, earlier this month, Selverstone's book was the subject of a roundtable review by several historians in Passport: The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Review [LINK]. One of the reviewers compares Selverstone's book to John Newman's book JFK and Vietnam, and finds Selverstone's book to be more convincing.) -- As I have documented in this forum on several occasions, JFK's public statements about the Vietnam War, even including two of his speeches during his November 1963 Texas trip, sharply contradict any suggestion that he was planning on abandoning the war effort after the election. In fact, in the months leading up to this death, he specifically criticized and rejected the idea of withdrawing from South Vietnam. -- Unfortunately, some researchers have uncritically run with the so-called "secret debrief" created by Robert McNamara shortly before JFK's death, to the point of including it in the 2021 documentary JFK Revisited. They failed to consider crucial facts that cast great doubt on the debrief's veracity. For example, not one word about this debrief is uttered on the JFK and LBJ White House tapes. Not a single JFK holdover in LBJ's administration said a word about the debrief. Not one of McNamara's adoring proteges/supporters, not even McNaughton, breathed a word about the debrief. Revealingly, McNamara himself did not even mention the debrief in his memoir, even though he argued in his memoir that JFK intended to withdraw from Vietnam by late1965. On one especially revealing LBJ White House tape, a phone call between LBJ and McNamara on 2/25/1964, we hear LBJ criticizing McNamara--and JFK--for having publicly talked about the 1,000-man withdrawal plan, going so far as to call such talk "foolish." You would think that if JFK had truly told McNamara he was determined to pull out of Vietnam after the election, McNamara surely would have mentioned this historic declaration to defend himself and JFK. And this is not to mention McNamara's known, documented willingness to falsify records, brazenly lie, and deliberately misrepresent the views of others. McMaster's book documents many cases of such conduct. Given McNamara's well-documented penchant for dishonesty and intrigue, did it not occur to the researchers who assisted with JFK Revisited that they should do some checking before running with McNamara's "secret debrief"? -- Part of the unconditional-withdrawal myth is the myth that the war was going badly in 1962 and 1963. According to this myth, JFK decided he had to get out of Vietnam because the war was going so badly. Even though this myth was soundly refuted years ago by disclosures from newly available/released North Vietnamese sources, among other sources, it still made its way into JFK Revisited. Dr. Mark Moyar's 2006 book Triumph Forsaken presents many pages of evidence, including evidence from North Vietnamese sources, that the war was going well in 1962 and 1963. If you read the 2010 roundtable compilation Triumph Revisited, you will see that the roundtable's liberal scholars did not even address most of the evidence that Moyar presents--they simply ignored it (but acted as though they were refuting Moyar's case). Needless to say, the fact that the war was actually going well in '62 and '63 belies the claim that military and civilian hawks in Saigon and Washington were feeding JFK false information about the war. It was JFK's liberal advisers who were feeding him false information about the war, especially Hilsman, Harriman, Forrestal, and Ball. The hawks, such as General Harkins, Ambassador Nolting, William Colby, and Walt Rostow, were the ones who were telling JFK the truth about the war effort. Simply put, the Vietnam War was not one of the plotters' motives. If the plotters were deeply concerned about the Vietnam War, they had far more reasons to be furious with LBJ than with JFK. If the plotters had been as powerful as some have said they were, and if they had killed JFK over Vietnam, they would not have allowed LBJ to impose ridiculous and suicidal restrictions on our military operations in Vietnam, would not have allowed LBJ to fail to respond to VC attacks on American personnel in South Vietnam in 1964, would not have allowed LBJ to implement his bungling gradual-escalation strategy, and would not have allowed LBJ to choose the dovish Hubert Humphrey as his VP.

Oh, sheesh. Can you guys ever just go where the evidence leads? So even though Benavides said the killer had a blocked haircut in the back of his head, since Benavides did not specify that "the hair was cut above the collar," maybe the killer's haircut was really tapered but just looked blocked because of the jacket's collar! IOW, even though, according to your theory, Benavides supposedly could not see the hairline because of the collar, he merely guessed that the hair was squared off. Is it not much more likely and logical that Benavides could see the hairline and could see that the hair was blocked? Oh, but you can't go there because Oswald undeniably had a tapered haircut. Obviously, if you could not see a person's hairline because of his coat collar, you couldn't see whether he had a blocked or a tapered haircut. Naturally, therefore, you would not just guess about what kind of haircut he had. You'd say, "As for his hair style, I don't know because I couldn't see his hairline, so I don't know if his hair was blocked or tapered." This is just common sense. The answer to this silly question is self-evident. Do you really need someone to explain to you why the facts regarding her "identification" of Oswald raise serious questions about the validity of that "identification"? Let's review those facts: The fact that she was at least 90 feet away. The fact that she described the killer as a bit heavy and with dark bushy hair. The fact that she admitted to the WC that she did not "identify" Oswald based on his face but on how he made her feel when she looked at him. The fact that the lineups were grossly rigged to make Oswald the only possible choice to "identify." The fact that she said she spoke with Tippit for several minutes after he was killed. Don't you think it's misleading and disingenuous to keep saying that Markham "identified Oswald as the killer" given these facts?

Wow. This is important. Thanks for sharing this.

You can't be serious. Surely you know it is misleading--grossly misleading--to simply claim that Markham "identified" Oswald on the day of the shooting. Surely you know that such a claim would have been destroyed under cross examination in a trial. For example, in her press interviews, Markham described the gunman as short, a little chunky/kind of heavy, and with bushy black hair. Oswald was 5’9”, downright skinny (if not almost anorexic), and had thinning brown hair. She told the WC that she did NOT identify Oswald by his face but because he gave her the "chills." Shall we mention that Markham was at least 90 feet away when the shooting occurred, and that she said that after the killer fled, she spoke with Tippit for several minutes? Tippit, of course, was quite dead when the killer fled. Shall we mention that the one guy who was actually close to the shooting when it occurred, Domingo Benavides, said that the gunman had a squared-off (blocked) haircut that ended on the back of his neck above his "Eisenhower" jacket, and that photos taken on 11/22/63 clearly show that Oswald’s hair was tapered in the back and would have extended below the neckline on a similar jacket? And on and on we could go.

Really? Just because she recalled seeing the stretcher in the hallway and not in the ER when she saw a bullet on it? She came forward with her story in 2013, 10 years ago, and now Landis says he put the rear-seat bullet on JFK's stretcher. That's one heck of a coincidence.

I doubt that you really believe this. I doubt that you genuinely believe that the small, mangled tail fragment is the object that Dr. Young described as a "misshapen bullet." The tail fragment is CE 569. Anyone can look at photos of CE 569 and see that, at most, it is only 1/2 inch in height, if that. Moreover, it has no lead, only copper. Now, come on: no one is going to describe such a fragment as a "misshapen bullet." It's not a bullet--it's a small fragment with no lead in it. Deep down, no sensible, rational person is going to buy the idea that two military men looked at CE 569 and viewed it as a "misshapen bullet." Also, the deformed bullet was found in the rear of the limo, but the nose and tail fragments were found in the front of the limo and were found by different people at a different time.

Dr. Young didn't find the bullet. Two Navy NCOs found it during the autopsy and brought it to the autopsy room, where Dr. Young received it, examined it, and then passed it along. The tail-section fragment is noticeably smaller than a bullet, as is the nose-section fragment that was also found in the limousine. Have you seen the pictures of the nose and tail fragments? Could you imagine anyone, even a child, looking at one of those and calling it a "deformed bullet"? A fragment is just that: a fragment. A bullet, whether intact or deformed, is not a fragment but a bullet. Plus, the nose and tail were found in the front of the limo, whereas the Navy NCOs found the bullet in the rear of the limo. Dozens of medical personnel, including two neurosurgeons, knew the difference between a wound over the right ear and a wound 3-4 inches farther back on the head, and Dr. Young would not have a mistaken the small tail fragment for a deformed bullet.

So I guess the argument is that Landis is either imagining the finding of the bullet or is lying. Never mind that he insists that he has purposely withheld the finding of the bullet until now and that he says he is disclosing it because he believes it should now be made known. And never mind that a former Parkland nurse has now come forward and reported that she saw a bullet on JFK's stretcher.

Predictably, WC apologists have reflexively rushed to reject former Secret Service agent Paul Landis's bombshell disclosure that he found and removed a bullet lodged in the limo's back seat and put the bullet on JFK's stretcher, even though a former Parkland Hospital nurse has reported that she saw a bullet on JFK's stretcher. Lone-gunman theorists stress the fact that Landis's initial statements contradict his disclosure, even though we have a number of examples of other witnesses who withheld important information from their initial statements because they felt pressured to do so or because they feared the information would spark controversy and criticism, e.g., Kennedy O'Donnell and Dave Powers regarding shots from the grassy knoll. WC apologists also note that when interviewed in 1983 and 2010, Landis said he found a fragment on the back seat, not a bullet, although they don't address the fact that this fragment is not recorded in the official record and that it poses a severe problem for the lone-gunman theory. They also, naturally, refuse to see Landis's 1983 and 2010 statements as an attempt on his part to partially reveal what he found. Anyway, if WC apologists reject Landis's disclosure, what excuse do they have for rejecting Dr. James Young's accidental 2001 disclosure about the finding of a deformed bullet in JFK's limousine on the night of the autopsy? During the autopsy, a deformed bullet was found in Kennedy's limousine by two Navy chief petty officers who had been ordered to search the limousine. Dr. Young was a Navy doctor at the autopsy. He examined the bullet after the two chief petty officers brought it to the autopsy, and the bullet was then given to Dr. James Humes, the chief autopsy doctor (Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, “Navy Medicine and President Kennedy’s Autopsy: Recollections from a former White House Physician,” Washington, D.C.: Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, 2013, pp. 9-11; Milicent Cranor, “Navy Doctor: Bullet Found in JFK’s Limousine, and Never Reported,” WhoWhatWhy website, 10/6/2017, https://whowhatwhy.org/politics/government-integrity/navy-doctor-bullet-found-jfks-limousine-never-reported/). I call Dr. Young's disclosure "accidental" because he had no idea he was disclosing anything that contradicted the WC's version of the shooting. For years, Dr. Young assumed that the bullet had been discussed in the Warren Report. Years later, Dr. Young discovered that there was no mention of this bullet in any of the Warren Commission’s records. When he realized this, he tried to find out why the bullet had been ignored and why it had vanished. In an attempt to find out what had happened to the bullet, on December 27, 2000, Dr. Young wrote a letter to former President Gerald Ford, a former member of the WC. He also contacted former WC member Arlen Specter about the bullet. In 2001, Dr. Young discussed the finding of the bullet with the Navy’s Office of Medical History. His interview was not published until 2013 when the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery published it in a paper titled “Navy Medicine and President Kennedy’s Autopsy.” What makes Dr. Young’s account so compelling and credible, aside from the fact that Chief Mills confirmed it, is that Dr. Young was an ardent believer in the WC’s version of the shooting. He had no idea why the deformed bullet found in the limousine was ignored and why it had vanished. He assumed the bullet was one of the three shots acknowledged by the WC. And he had no idea that his account destroyed the WC's version of the assassination. The 2021 documentary JFK: Destiny Betrayed includes an excellent segment on this historic disclosure. What excuse do WC apologists have for not accepting Dr. Young's account? They ignore it and reject it only because it refutes the lone-gunman theory. The few times I've been able to get WC apologists to discuss the subject, they've offered the lame argument that Dr. Young "simply made an honest mistake" and was "sincerely mistaken." Never mind the fact that Chief Mils confirmed the finding of the deformed bullet, and never mind that Dr. Young said he actually handled the bullet. How exactly would one "misrecall" handling a deformed bullet and talking about it with one of the petty officers who found it? I discuss Dr. Young's account in more detail in my article "Extra Bullets and Missed Shots in Dealey Plaza."

Yup, as I've said many times, there are many conservatives who do not buy the lone-gunman theory.

I can't see Connally being caught dead in a strip club, much less attending a meeting in one. He was, after all, the governor of the state. In the 1960s, a governor taking the risk of being seen in a strip club was unthinkable. The much more logical place for such a meeting would have been in a private home or in a hotel room.

I find this part of Estes's story very hard to believe. Connally was straight-laced. Also, if Connally were going to hold such a meeting, he certainly would not have held it in Ruby's club.

Finding a bullet lodged in the back seat is a very specific event that does not seem to lend itself to being imagined. Also, the fact that Landis privately shared this with Clint Hill, and that Hill advised him--in an email--against revealing it because it would cause too much controversy, indicates that Landis is telling the truth. I don't think this bullet was the bullet that hit JFK's back. I think it was just missed shot, perhaps even the bullet that came through the windshield. However, the shallow back wound is firmly established by the ARRB materials and other disclosures. As I have documented in this forum, the record is clear and compelling that on the night of the autopsy, the autopsy doctors were absolutely, positively certain that the back wound had no exit point.

I just finished watching this segment. Another very sad and rather odd segment. Newman accuses Taylor of having been a trojan horse who was pushing for a larger war in Vietnam. This is a misleading claim. Yes, for a time, Taylor did advocate deploying a modest number of combat troops to South Vietnam for defensive purposes only--even then he opposed having U.S. troops do the bulk of the fighting. However, after Taylor went and stayed in South Vietnam as the U.S. ambassador (and the head of military operations in country), he became one of the leading opponents of sending any combat troops to South Vietnam, in any capacity. Taylor was so strident in his opposition to sending combat troops that even LBJ's JFK-holdover aides urged that he be replaced as ambassador. This fact is profusely documented in H. R. McMaster's widely acclaimed, award-winning book Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam. It is worth noting that the situation was so bad in South Vietnam in early 1965, because of the large-scale Communist offensive ordered by the Hanoi regime, that even former JFK advisers McGeorge Bundy and John McNaughton recommended to LBJ that combat troops be deployed to South Vietnam. The 1965 NVA-VC offensive was the largest aggressive action ever undertaken up to that time--it was much larger than any previous Communist offensive. This gets back to the key point that JFK was never confronted with such a massive Communist escalation, and that when this situation arose in early 1965, even most of JFK's former advisers who then worked for LBJ recommended introducing combat troops into the fight. It is rather surprising that Newman fails to mention any of these important facts.

Landis has come forward with his disclosure about finding a bullet lodged in the back seat because he knows he is nearing the end of his life and wants this information to be revealed before he dies. It is close to being tantamount to a death-bed confession. Given the situation that existed in the hours and days after the assassination, it is perfectly understandable why Landis decided not to reveal his finding of the bullet. Look at Kenny O'Donnell's very belated disclosure to Tip O'Neill that he was certain some shots had come from the grassy knoll. That's not what O'Donnell said in his WC testimony. He told O'Neill that he did tell the FBI about hearing shots from the knoll, but that they told him he "must have been imagining things," and so O'Donnell chose to testify "the way they wanted me to." Yet, years later, he finally revealed the truth to his good friend Tip O'Neill, and Dave Powers, who rode in the follow-up car with O'Donnell, confirmed O'Donnell's account.

I think Garrison may have feared Marcello, since he was smack dab in the middle of Marcello's territory. I agree that it is possible that Garrison was compromised by Marcello; if so, I think fear would have played a role in his being compromised. But I think it is also quite possible that Garrison simply believed that the main force behind the assassination was the CIA and other intelligence entities, and that he should focus his attention on them.

The continued refusal of WC apologists to admit what their own eyes can see in the Zapruder film is further proof that they are too emotionally committed to the lone-gunman myth to acknowledge the plainly visible reality seen in the film. It is a waste of time arguing with them on the subject. The fact that JFK starts to react at around Z200, and that Jackie starts to react to his reaction almost immediately, is as plain as day. That's why she's staring intently at him when she emerges from behind the road sign. Yet, starting in Z226, we see JFK suddenly knocked powerfully and visibly forward. And Connally. The man survived, studied blowups of the Zapruder film, and adamantly insisted he was not hit before Z231. This is self-evidently obvious in the film. Yes, of course he has a concerned look on his face and his body is tensed when he emerges from behind the road sign--that's because he has just heard gunfire. But WC apologists tell us the fantasy that by Z225 Connally has had a bullet tear through his chest, shattering several inches of rib bone, pulverize a wrist bone, and plant itself in his thigh, and just never you mind that the man who actually experienced the wounding said he wasn't hit before Z231! And the powerful slamming down of Connally's right shoulder that starts in Z238? Well, uh, it's either an optical illusion or a delayed reaction to the bullet strike, according to WC apologists!!!

It's very simple: Landis is nearing the end of his life, and so he's decided it is time to reveal something that he has always known would be a bombshell revelation. Landis undoubtedly recognized right away that the bullet he found embedded in the back seat must have been fired from the front. He also undoubtedly recognized that revealing the finding of the bullet would cause a gigantic firestorm because it would prove there was more than one shooter. Within a few hours of the assassination, the dominant story on TV and radio was that there had been a single gunman and that he had been arrested. There was virtually no talk about multiple gunmen, four to seven shots, etc., etc. Thus, it is totally understandable why Landis chose to stay quiet about finding the bullet.

It is very easy to understand why Landis did not reveal that he found a bullet embedded in the limo's back seat: Obviously, that bullet was fired from the front, not from behind. It could not have been fired from the alleged sniper's nest, or from any other point behind the limo, and then made a magical U-turn to embed itself in the back seat. It came from a point in front of the limo. As we all know, literally within two hours of the shooting, if not sooner, the TV and radio airwaves were flooded with references to a single shooter who fired from behind the limo. Virtually all news reports spoke of a single shooter and a single suspect, Oswald. Landis would have caused an enormous firestorm if he had revealed that he had found a bullet lodged in the back seat of the limo. Landis undoubtedly realized this and chose to stay silent about it.

These attacks ignore the fact that Ferrie also had extensive CIA connections, and that in previous CIA assassination plots the Mafia had been the hired gun, not the other way around. Clay Shaw and Guy Banister were intelligence assets, not Mafia assets. Your attacks also ignore the many valuable, historic leads that Garrison developed, such as the Clinton-Jackson witnesses who saw Oswald with Ferrie and Shaw. I reject the idea that the Mafia was the main force behind the assassination. The Mafia could not have rigged the autopsy, suppressed medical evidence, altered the autopsy skull x-rays, removed Oswald's name from the FBI's watch list, suppressed Oswald's intelligence connections, impersonated Oswald in Mexico City, suppressed the existence of extra bullets (such as the one handled by Dr. Young), etc., etc. The Mafia certainly played a role, but not the leading role.

Clint Hill's 2014 email to Landis urging him not to speak out because his account would have "many ramifications" says volumes. When a few of the medical witnesses changed their descriptions of JFK's large head wound, WC apologists brushed aside the fact that their later descriptions of the wound contradicted their initial ones. But, oh, now they insist that Landis must be mistaken or lying because his disclosure about finding a bullet in the back seat contradicts his initial statements.

If you're unhappy that we used cluster munitions in Vietnam, then I'm sure you'll join me in roundly condemning the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese army (NVA) for the following actions during the war: -- Assassinating school teachers, nurses, doctors, mail carriers, clergy, and local/low-level government officials by the thousands. -- Shelling tens of thousands of civilians who were fleeing on crowded roads and highways. The NVA did this more than once. The Communists viewed fleeing civilians as traitors who were refusing to be "liberated." -- Sending children on suicide missions by giving them time bombs or other explosives and sending them to nearby American or South Vietnamese troops. When the bombs would fail to denotate, interviews with the children revealed that most of them had not been told they were carrying explosives. -- Drafting teens as young as 14 and forcing them to serve in the NVA. -- Chaining soldiers to their weapons or in their firing position so they could not flee. -- Booby-trapping corpses. -- Using claymore mines (an anti-personnel cluster munition) to blow up restaurants and hotels. The Viet Cong would repeatedly detonate claymore mines inside a restaurant or hotel, and would then wait until the survivors began to flee the building and then would detonate more claymores that they had positioned on the escape routes from the building. Criticizing Fonda and Vietnam vets for being sharp enough to realize [how wrong the war was]. . . . One, only a small minority of Vietnam vets criticized the war effort. The overwhelmingly majority did not. Two, Jane Fonda and the small minority of anti-war vets oddly said nothing about the above-listed actions. Nor did they have anything to say when the North Vietnamese imposed a "reign of terror" on the South Vietnamese, as one former Viet Cong leader described it, executing tens of thousands of people and sending nearly one million others to concentration camps, where the death rate was, as even Max Hastings admits, at least 5%. Fonda and the anti-war vets suddenly fell silent about their professed concern for "human rights" when news of the butchery and concentration camps in Vietnam began to reach the U.S. Nor did Fonda and the anti-war vets complain about the fact that Hanoi's tyrants broke their repeated promise to allow South Vietnam to govern itself under a neutral or friendly government. The breaking of this oft-stated promise was part of the reason that a number of Viet Cong officials defected and left the country. A few people in the anti-war movement did speak out about the brutality and oppression that the Communists imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, but Fonda, Hayden, Sutherland, Abzug, etc., were not among them.