Michael Griffith

On 8/12/2023 at 5:40 PM, James DiEugenio said:

 

BTW, Fonda turned out to be a real businesswoman. She made a lot of money with her workout books, workout tapes and cook books. Just the tapes sold 17 million copies.

I'm sure that was comforting to all the American POWs who were being tortured by the North Vietnamese at the same time Jane Fonda was saying they were being treated exceptionally well. 

As she has said, she was simply opposed to that ghastly, godawful  war.  (Although she herself admits she should not have gotten into that anti aircraft battery.)

You mean the war that we fought to try to keep 18 million South Vietnamese from falling under Communist tyranny? That war?  

Yes, Fonda did eventually, finally apologize for posing with a North Vietnamese AA battery that was regularly firing at American pilots.

Did she express any regret when the Hanoi regime imposed what even a former Viet Cong leader called a "reign of terror" on the South Vietnamese?

Did she express any regret that after the war the side that she had cheered for, i.e., the Communists, executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent at least another 800,000 to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%?

Did she express any sorrow that 18 million people lost every basic right that we value, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of education, freedom from unjust imprisonment, the right of private property, etc.?

I think I have said this before but she actually visited my hometown of Erie Pa on a nationwide tour with some VAVW. The line at the college to get in to see her was blocks long.  And I did not get in.  But I talked to some people who did and they said one of the main points she and the vets were making was the kind of ordnance that was being used in the field.  How much of it was composed of projectiles that would explode and then scatter into little bits, same thing we are arguing about in Ukraine.

Oh my goodness. This borders on the obscene. First of all, fragmentation anti-personnel ordnance was used long before the Vietnam War, and by many nations. It was even used in a basic form in the Revolutionary War.

Second, did those cowardly vets and Jane Fonda complain about the North Vietnamese shelling of fleeing civilians, about the murder of thousands of school teachers and nurses and local officials by the Viet Cong, about the numerous Communist massacres, etc., starting in 1962? Did they happen to voice any complaints about those crimes?  

The owner of the newspaper, a guy named Ed Meade, was really angry with her visit and all the attention it got..  He devoted a whole column to trashing her.  Me and, according to him, many others, wrote letters protesting how unfair this was. I thought she did the right thing.  And she took a lot of heat for it.

Well, I guess if your version of "the right thing" is to be a cheerleader for the murderous Stalinist thugs who brutalized 18 million people after the war, after deliberately killing tens of thousands of civilians during the war, then, yeah, she "did the right thing." The tens millions of South Vietnamese who suffered for decades under the same Communist thugs that she cheered for did not think she "did the right thing."

Just imagine if she had been a cheerleader for the vicious North Korean regime during the Korean War. After all, every single argument that she made against the Vietnam War can be made against the Korean War. 

7 hours ago, Mervyn Hagger said:

Sandy, I am amazed at the sworn testimony that does exist and I get the impression that a lot people who comment do so off the too their head. Few do any reading beforehand. The research in many instances, has been done for them. I also get the impression that some have very fixed party political ideas which automatically rule out consideration of hard evidence that might undermine their own political beliefs.

I don't think party politics are the main problem. There are plenty of liberal Democrats who ardently defend the Warren Commission, and there are quite a few conservative Republicans who reject the lone-gunman theory. 

We should keep in mind that the three WC members who balked at the Commission's main conclusions were all conservatives (Russell, Boggs, and Cooper), whereas Warren was a devout liberal and Ford was a moderate whose centrist policies nearly cost him the 1976 GOP nomination.

On 8/11/2023 at 10:50 AM, Jonathan Cohen said:

You're making a big deal out of a made-for-TV fake trial. Who cares what Lopez said then? Gerry is correct that the Lopez report does NOT say Oswald never visited the Cuban consulate and Mexican embassy.

You clearly have not read the Lopez-Hardway report. Gerry's argument that "the HSCA" did not conclude that Oswald never visited the Soviet Embassy or the Cuban Consulate is a bit disingenuous. The HSCA's final report presented a number of conclusions that many of the HSCA's investigators rejected or doubted. Moreover, the Lopez-Hardway report was withheld from the HSCA's published volumes because it was among the materials that were sealed, so it was not used in the committee's final report. 

The Lopez-Hardway report notes, for example, that the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy spoke terrible Russian but that Oswald himself spoke fluent Russian. 

And I must say that it is surprising to see you and Gerry casually dismiss the fact that one of the HSCA's two main researchers on the Mexico City episode said none of the CIA surveillance photos taken at the Cuban Consulate and the Soviet Embassy showed Oswald, and that he believes Oswald was set up by the CIA with an imposter in Mexico City. The other main Mexico City investigator, Dan Hardway, likewise believes there was an Oswald imposter in Mexico City.

If the HSCA researchers who investigated Jack Ruby said they believe that Ruby had no meaningful Mafia ties and that Ruby's shooting of Oswald was nothing but a spontaneous act of rage, you guys would be trumpeting this from the rooftops.  Yet, you yawn when the HSCA researchers who investigated Oswald's time in Mexico City say that the "Oswald" who called the Soviet Embassy was not the real Oswald. 

Now why oh why oh why would anyone be impersonating this supposedly obscure, friendless, unstable loner in Mexico City shortly before the assassination and trying to make it seem like he contacted the Soviet Embassy? 

This next book recommendation deals with the liberal myth of massive drug use among our soldiers during the Vietnam War, a myth that has been repeated in this thread.

The book comes from an unlikely author and an unlikely publisher: Dr. Jerry Kuzmarov's book The Myth of the Addicted Army: Vietnam and the Modern War on Drugs, published by the University of Massachusetts Press in 2009. No one can accuse Kuzmarov of being an ardent conservative. In fact, he has written material for The Progressive. And, needless to say, the UMass Press is not known for publishing conservative works. I could not describe Kuzmarov's book much better than how the UMass Press describes it:

          The image of the drug-addicted American soldier—disheveled, glassy-eyed, his uniform adorned with slogans of antiwar dissent—has long been associated with the Vietnam War. More specifically, it has persisted as an explanation for the U.S. defeat, the symbol of a demoralized army incapable of carrying out its military mission.

          Yet as Jeremy Kuzmarov documents in this deeply researched book, popular assumptions about drug use in Vietnam are based more on myth than fact. Not only was alcohol the intoxicant of choice for most GIs, but the prevalence of other drugs varied enormously. Although marijuana use among troops increased over the course of the war, for the most part it remained confined to rear areas, and the use of highly addictive drugs like heroin was never as widespread as many imagined.

          Like other cultural myths that emerged from the war, the concept of an addicted army was first advanced by war hawks seeking a scapegoat for the failure of U.S. policies in Vietnam, in this case one that could be linked to "permissive" liberal social policies and the excesses of the counterculture. But conservatives were not alone. Ironically, Kuzmarov shows, elements of the antiwar movement also promoted the myth, largely because of a presumed alliance between Asian drug traffickers and the Central Intelligence Agency. While this claim was not without foundation, as new archival evidence confirms, the left exaggerated the scope of addiction for its own political purposes. (https://www.umasspress.com/9781558497054/the-myth-of-the-addicted-army/)

13 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

If you are not familiar with Hallin's theory, its called Hallin's Spheres.

It goes something like this.

The conventional wisdom is created by government sources communicating with the major news outlets, e.g. Ny Times, NBC etc.

There is some debate allowed, e.g. over the invasion of Cambodia.

Then this creates the paradigm of the CW, which is pretty much iron clad.

Matters of key importance, no matter how crucial, no matter how truthful, are not allowed in the tent.  For instance, should America had ever been in Vietnam in the first place?  Or  why was DIem chosen and how was he kept in power?

These types of basic questions are kept off the board. Since they would undermine the whole CW.

And BTW, I forgot something Hallin included:

In the sphere of exclusion it does not matter if what is excluded is true or not.

If the CW does not allow it, its out.

For example, many people knew Diem's elections were rigged and he had little grass roots support.  But yet the story was the USA was supporting democracy in South Vietnam.

This is why Donald Duncan was such a big story for Ramparts.

So are you just going to keep repeating liberal talking points, while ignoring facts that refute them and refusing to read the other side of the story? A few facts:

We were in fact supporting democracy in South Vietnam. It was a fledgling and imperfect democracy, but it was far more democratic than North Vietnam. As I have personally documented for you in previous replies, the South Vietnamese enjoyed far more freedom than the North Vietnamese. The Saigon government allowed far more freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of education, local control, and private property rights than did the Stalinist Hanoi regime.

It is very odd that you will never, ever, ever talk about the brutal, repressive nature of the Hanoi regime--the total lack of freedom of the press and lack of freedom of speech, the use of the military to crush civilian uprisings, the regime's killing of tens of thousands of North Vietnamese who made the mistake of expressing opposition to Communist rule, and especially the horrific reign of terror that the regime imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, etc., etc.

Diem did in fact enjoy widespread grass roots support. He did not need to rig his election. Even if he had done nothing, he would have won by at least 15 percentage points. He was running against the French-selected puppet leader Bao Dai, who did not even live in South Vietnam. Yes, that's right: Bao Dai did not even live in the country--he lived in France. Bao Dai was not even interested in the job of governing; he preferred to let Diem do all the work while he, Bao Dai, indulged in his indolent lifestyle in France, which is one reason that Diem decided to challenge Bao Dai. 

The "invasion" of Cambodia??? The only invasion of Cambodia was done by the North Vietnamese. They invaded Cambodia in 1965 and took control of a large strip of eastern Cambodia in order to create sanctuaries where they kept huge supply depots and from which they launched literally hundreds of attacks on South Vietnam. The limited and temporary American incursion into eastern Cambodia in 1970 was an attempt to neutralize those sanctuaries. 

As for whether we should have been in Vietnam "in the first place," the answer is an obvious Yes. If we had not helped South Vietnam, the country would have fallen under Communist tyranny in just a few years, since North Vietnam was receiving massive economic and military aid from the Soviet Union and Red China. One of the points hammered home so convincingly in Dr. Christopher Goscha's recent book The Road to Dien Bien Phu is that the Viet Minh would have lost their war against the French without the massive aid they received from Red China.

Donald Duncan again? He was part of the Winter Soldier fraud. Every war has its Donald Duncans. Duncan represented a very small minority of Vietnam veterans, but you never mention this fact. Nor do you ever mention that repeated surveys, both government and private, showed that the overwhelming majority of Vietnam veterans were proud of their service and believed the war was honorable.

Check out the websites that are run by Vietnam vets--you will find that the vast majority of them defend the war. Read the books written by Vietnam vets--here, too, you will find that the vast majority of them defend the war.

Why don't you ever talk about the numerous genuine heroes of the Vietnam War, especially exceptional heroes such as John Ripley, Mike Novosel, John Levitow, Tim Lowry, Jamie Pacheco, William Pitsenbarger, and Rocky Versace?

Two recent sources that I have not yet mentioned on the Vietnam War are a documentary and a book about South Vietnam's first president, Ngo Dinh Diem, and the first three years of the war. 

Last year, Ignatius Press released an excellent documentary on Diem titled Liberator of Asia: The True Story of Ngo Dinh Diem. This is the first English-language documentary that defends Diem. The documentary also provides important information about the Vietnam War from 1961 to 1963. Links:

https://watch.formed.org/videos/liberator-of-asia-the-true-story-of-ngo-dinh-diem (streaming)

https://www.amazon.com/LIBERATOR-ASIA-STORY-SOUTH-VIETNAM/dp/1621645975 (DVD)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGfMiLC6hRU (trailer)

The Catholic streaming website Formed, which carries the documentary, says the following about it:

          There is arguably no political assassination in history as consequential as the ill-fated November 1, 1963, CIA-backed coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem of Vietnam. His tragic murder led to a series of failures that ushered in the Vietnam War, and contributed to the major societal upheavals of the 1960s. Cast as a despot and autocrat in order to justify the actions of misguided policymakers, Diem receives a stunning new appraisal in this provocative and expertly crafted new film.

          Liberator of Asia: The True Story of Ngo Dinh Diem masterfully weaves together interviews with leading contemporaries and relatives of Diem, military historians, Vietnamese leaders, rare archival footage, and groundbreaking new evidence to present an altogether different portrait of Diem. He possessed the Confucian "Mandate of Heaven," a moral and political authority that was widely recognized by all Vietnamese. Diem was a figure of rare political courage and integrity, and unwavering Catholic faith, a patriot who strove to defend his country from Communism while fighting off Western attempts to undermine his governing authority.

The recent book that I recommend is Vietnamese scholar Dr. Duy Lap Nguyen's The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam, published in 2020. Dr. Nguyen is an associate professor of world cultures and literature at the University of Houston and specializes in Vietnamese studies. 

Dr. Keith Taylor, a renowned Asia scholar and a professor of history at Cornell University, praises the book in his lengthy review of it. Here is a small portion of his review:

          The military officers who murdered South Vietnamese president Ngô Đình Diệm in 1963 and the Americans who urged them on subsequently propagated a view of this man that has become a cliché in virtually every book written about the Vietnam War: he was a tyrant with obscure and self-absorbed ideas whose autocratic and repressive policies provoked an insurgency against his own government—he was the architect of his own demise. This idea served the purposes of nearly everyone: the rulers of North Vietnam, the Americans, and the South Vietnamese who justified their rule by having overthrown him. 

          During the past twenty years, scholars have published studies that portray Ngô Đình Diệm in a somewhat less dismal light. But the thoughts and aims of both the man and his domestic critics have remained elusive—until now. In The Unimagined Community: Imperialism and Culture in South Vietnam, Duy Lap Nguyen has dissolved the entrenched stereotype of Ngô Đình Diệm and developed an analysis of his thought, aims, policies, and opponents that is fresh and convincing, meanwhile subverting prevailing interpretations of modern Vietnamese history. He also develops a fresh analysis of American and South Vietnamese relations in the post-Diệm era.

          This book will be disdained by those committed to the caricature of Ngô Đình Diệm that was retailed by the military officers who overthrew him and that remains in fashion among people who write about the Vietnam War. This book’s arguments, while grounded in historical evidence, are informed by philosophy and cultural criticism, which may deter some historians. Nevertheless, the importance of the book is bound to be increasingly understood as the encrusted stereotypes of the war gradually fade. (https://networks.h-net.org/node/22055/reviews/6291358/taylor-nguyen-unimagined-community-imperialism-and-culture-south)

A bit more info on Dr. Taylor: He is the author of the Cambridge University textbook A History of the Vietnamese (Cambridge University Press, 2013). He is also the author of the classic study The Birth of Vietnam (University of California Press, 1991). And, yes, Dr. Taylor is the same Keith Taylor who wrote a favorable review of Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Forsaken in the collection of reviews titled Triumph Revisited: Historians Battle for the Vietnam War.

Great post. It highlights the flimsy nature of the case against Oswald in the Tippit shooting. 

On 8/7/2023 at 12:31 PM, Paul Rigby said:

Japan Strikes North: How the Battle of Khalkhin Gol Transformed WWII

27 Aug 2019

Military.com | By Joseph Micallef

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/08/27/japan-strikes-north-how-battle-khalkhin-gol-transformed-wwii.html

Joseph V. Micallef is a best-selling military history and world affairs author, and keynote speaker. Follow him on Twitter @JosephVMicallef.

Eighty years ago, this month, Soviet and Japanese forces clashed on an obscure river along the border between Mongolia and Manchuria (Manchukuo) called Khalkhin Gol. The battle was the climax of a six-year-long conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union.

The Soviet-Japanese war, 1932-1939, gets scant mention in accounts of World War II. Yet it had a profound effect on Japan's strategic doctrine and paved the way for Tokyo's decision to attack Great Britain and the United States.

Had Japan continued prosecuting its war with the Soviet Union, the war in the Pacific would have taken a dramatically different turn. Indeed, it probably would never have happened.

Japanese Strategic Doctrine, 1890-1945

Ever since Japan emerged as an East Asian power in the late 19th century, its strategic doctrine revolved around two contesting views. One group, mostly centered around the Japanese Imperial Army, proposed a Northern Expansion Doctrine or Northern Road (Hokushin-ron). A second group, mostly based in the Imperial Navy, advocated for a Southern Expansion Doctrine or Southern Road (Nanshin-ron).

The Northern Road group believed that Manchuria and Siberia should be the focus of Japan's imperial ambitions and that Russia, and later the Soviet Union, was Japan's greatest threat. The Southern Road Group believed that southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands should be the focus of Japanese expansion and that the United States was Japan's principal enemy.

Significantly, the Northern Road was the initial focus of Japanese imperialism. Between 1890 and 1939, Japan fought two wars with China (1890, 1931); fought and defeated Czarist Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904); invaded and seized German colonies in China and the North Pacific (1914); and participated in the Allied intervention in Siberia during the Russian Civil War (1918).

In the process, it took possession of the Korean peninsula; Taiwan; Tsingtao; the Mariana, Caroline and Marshall Islands; and Manchuria. During the Russian Civil War, Tokyo even considered seizing all of eastern Siberia, east of Lake Baikal. During this period, Japanese strategic doctrine called for "defense in the south and advance in the north." To that end, Tokyo aligned itself diplomatically with Great Britain and, to a lesser extent, the U.S.

The Imperial Defense Plan of 1936, the genesis of Japan's "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," tried to reconcile the conflicting doctrines by proposing to seize the natural resources of Siberia by attacking the Soviet Union via Manchuria, while also targeting the resource-rich colonies of the Dutch, British and French in southeast Asia, especially the petroleum fields of the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia).

The Japanese seizure of Manchuria, a region where Czarist Russia once had wide-ranging interests, led to growing tensions between Tokyo and Moscow. The Sino-Japanese war, an undeclared conflict, lasted from 1932 through 1939, and came to a dramatic climax at the Battle of Khalkhin Gol.

The Soviet-Japanese War, 1932-1939

Disputes over the demarcation of the border between Manchuria and Mongolia were the initial cause of the conflict. Japan believed the border ran along the Khalk river (Khalkhin Gol in Mongolian). The Soviets and the Mongols believed the border was 10 miles further east, at the village of Nomonhan. Between 1932 and 1939, both sides accused the other of hundreds of border incursions. The Soviets were also concerned that Japanese troops in Manchuria were within easy striking distance of the Trans-Siberian Railroad, its only reliable link to the Soviet Far East.

Starting in 1935, the cold war between Japan and the Soviet Union began to heat up dramatically. Between 1935 and 1939, there were a total of 108 incidents when both sides exchanged gunfire. Both parties steadily built up their military forces in the area, while relations between the two countries steadily worsened.

In July 1935, the Seventh Comintern Congress declared Japan to be a "fascist enemy" of the Soviet Union. The next year, in 1936, Japan and Nazi Germany signed the anti-Comintern pact, in which they agreed to consult on how to respond to "safeguard their common interests" should either be attacked by the USSR.

After Japan invaded China in July 1937, the USSR supplied the Chinese government with ammunition, military equipment and supplies, including 82 tanks; 1,300 pieces of artillery; 65,000 rifles and machine guns; 225 aircraft; and more than 1,500 trucks and tractors. Between 1937 and 1941, only the Soviet government provided substantial military aid to Chiang Kai-shek's forces.

Moscow also provided 3,665 military advisers and volunteers as part of the Soviet Volunteer Group, along with loans totaling $250 million. By 1941, more than 1,200 planes had been sent to China. Roughly half the planes were flown by Soviet pilots, ostensibly volunteers, wearing Chinese military uniforms.

When the Soviet aid began, the Chinese air force consisted of 100 antiquated planes and were outnumbered 13 to 1 by the better trained and equipped Japanese.

Soviet volunteers conducted the only Chinese air raid of Japanese territory, on Feb. 23, 1938, when they attacked the main base of the Japanese air force on Taiwan. Between 1937 and 1941, Soviet pilots shot down 625 Japanese aircraft. The Soviet volunteer squadrons were withdrawn in 1941 when Japan and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact. In desperation, China turned to the United States. The Roosevelt administration promptly authorized the creation of the First American Volunteer Group, known as the Flying Tigers.

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol

Japanese-Soviet hostilities reached a climax between May and September 1939, in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol on the Mongolian-Manchurian frontier. The conflict began with a series of border skirmishes in May and June and would ultimately involve more than one hundred thousand men.

The battle occurred at a time when Europe was moving inexorably toward war amid a flurry of diplomatic activity between the British and French governments, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Both the British and French governments, on the one hand, and the Soviets, on the other, were looking to negotiate a nonaggression pact with Germany. On Aug. 23, 1939, the world was stunned by the announcement of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a nonaggression treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union.

As Stalin was negotiating the details of the German-Soviet Pact, he was also pouring additional troops into eastern Mongolia. In 1938, a 42-year-old corps commander who had distinguished himself during the Russian Civil War named Georgy Zhukov had been put in command of the First Soviet Mongolian Army Group.

By the summer of 1939, Japanese strength was estimated at around 80,000 soldiers, 180 tanks and 450 aircraft. Soviet strength had reached approximately 50,000 soldiers, supported by 498 tanks and armored vehicles and 581 fighters and bombers.

In July 1939, Japanese forces moved across the frontier with Mongolia and, inflicting heavy losses on Soviet and Mongolian troops, occupied the disputed border region.

On Aug. 20, 1939, upon the signing of the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, Zhukov launched an attack on Japanese forces in Mongolia. Using his artillery and infantry to pin Japanese forces in place, Zhukov sent his tanks to attack on both flanks of the Japanese position. The attack encircled the Japanese Sixth Army and ultimately crushed it. Roughly 75 percent of the Japanese frontline troops were killed in action. The fighting ended on Sept. 16.

The next day, Soviet troops invaded Poland.

The Soviet military and diplomatic offensive stunned Japan. The conflict was occurring on the heels of the Great Purge, carried out between 1936 and 1938, which had decimated much of the senior leadership of the Soviet military. The Japanese consequently had a low opinion of Soviet commanders. The nonaggression pact left Japan diplomatically isolated from its German ally. Faced with the prospect of dealing with the Soviet Union on its own, Japan moved quickly to de-escalate the conflict.

The Battle of Khalkhin Gol was the largest tank battle hitherto fought. Zhukov's battle tactics and his use of armor at Khalkhin Gol presaged the blitzkrieg tactics that the Wehrmacht unleashed in Poland. For his success, Zhukov was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union, the first of four. The next year, he was made a general in the Soviet Army.

The defeat at Khalkhin Gol discredited the proponents of the Northern Road Strategy in the Japanese Imperial Army and tipped the balance to the proponents of the Southern Road Strategy and the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Aftermath: The Soviet-Japanese Nonaggression Pact of 1941

On April 13, 1941, Japan and the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression pact. They also agreed to respect the territorial integrity of Mongolia and Manchukuo (Manchuria). At the time the agreement was signed, Japan was certainly aware that Germany was preparing to invade the Soviet Union. By signing the pact, Japan was able to ensure that the Soviet Union would not threaten Manchukuo, freeing itself to pursue the Southern Road Strategy.

When German forces invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Tokyo opted not to renew hostilities with the USSR, despite Berlin's urging to invade. Instead, three months later, Japanese forces invaded French Indochina.

The Roosevelt administration responded by placing an embargo on exports of scrap iron and petroleum, among other things, to Japan. Deprived of critical raw materials, Tokyo set in motion plans to seize European colonies in Southeast Asia and to strike against the one force it believed could stymie Japanese ambitions: the U.S. Navy.

Japan did keep its options open, especially in light of German's initial successes on the Eastern Front. In July 1942, Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, the Tiger of Malaya, was dispatched to Manchuria, ostensibly to organize Japanese troops there for a potential invasion of Siberia. By then, however, Japan was irrevocably committed to the Southern Road Strategy.

Had the Japanese been victorious at Midway and had the German 6th Army succeeded in taking Stalingrad, it's possible that Japan might have invaded Siberia.

Japan's decision not to invade the Soviet Union allowed Stalin to transfer 18 divisions, 1,700 tanks and 1,500 aircraft -- some of which included the veterans of Khalkhin Gol -- to the Eastern Front during the critical Battle of Moscow in December 1941.

Zhukov's Siberian divisions helped turn the tide, stopping the German advance within sight of Moscow, and participated in the subsequent Soviet counterattack. It's unlikely that the Soviet Union could have withstood a two-front war against both Germany and Japan in 1941.

Had Japan opted to venture north instead of looking south, it's also likely that the U.S. would have continued to supply Japan with the critical war materials, especially scrap iron and petroleum, on which Japan was dependent.

In the end, the most likely alternative history of the Pacific war is not one in which Japan emerged victorious, but one in which a Pacific War was never fought. Had Japan opted to follow the Northern Road Strategy, the history of WWII and America's role in it would have taken a very different trajectory.

Micallef is right about the importance of the battle, but he is egregiously wrong in believing that FDR would have supported a Japanese drive to the north, and that such a drive would have avoided the Pacific War. I'm baffled as to how Micallef could believe such a thing, given FDR's obsessive determination to preserve the Soviet Union and his hostility toward the Japanese. The Japanese actually floated the idea of attacking the Soviet Union as an ally of the U.S., and FDR summarily and adamantly rejected it.

The best book on the Khalkhin Gol battle (more accurately Nomonhan) is Stuart Goldman's work Nomonhan, 1939: The Red Army's Victory That Shaped World War II. Goldman provides much more detail on the fighting than Micallef could provide in an article, and he also presents an informative look at Japanese policy in China at the time. Goldman also covers an area that most Americans have no clue about: the Soviet drive to annex a large chunk of northern China, and Japan's prolonged efforts to prevent that drive. 

As I discuss at length in The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor, Japan had valid interests and a credible claim in Manchuria. FDR's refusal to recognize this fact and his deeply flawed and biased view of Japan's war with the Chinese (actually, some Chinese) led to tragic consequences that could and should have been avoided.

1 hour ago, Roger Odisio said:

I view the theory of blanks being fired as an interesting possibility-it does open the way to consider more shooters--but certainly not crucial to any conclusion about who killed RFK.

Actually, positing that Sirhan fired blanks makes a lot of sense because at least one of his first few shots should have hit RFK or a bystander, given how close Sirhan was to RFK.

20 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

Michael

I found Dr. Veith's article interesting ... as a physicist, I liked his opening statement:

When it comes to the Vietnam War, we face almost the same situation that we do with physics: there’s really no “grand unified theory” among either scholars or the public. The staggering complexity of that conflict resists any conclusive definition of what, precisely, it was about.

Veith was too young to have fought in the Vietnam War and has never been to the Southeast Asian country; his book "Black April" was sponsored/supported by Henry Kissinger and impressively based on interviews with 50 former South Vietnamese military. His work with the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia is commendable ... amazing that there are still 1,579 Americans listed as missing and unaccounted-for from the Vietnam War.  I also agree with his view that "the war was never black and white, but shades of grey reflecting multiple variations of truth.”  His list of myths and falsehoods that exist in the public understanding of the Vietnam War is also revealing, although I'm not sure that I would agree with his reasoning in all cases:

1. Myth 1: The US had no reason to be involved in Viet Nam
2. Myth 2: The Vietnam war was illegal and immoral
3. Myth 3: Ho Chi Minh was a nationalist and a benevolent leader 
4. Myth 4: The South Vietnamese government denied the people a free election on unification 
5. Myth 5: The Viet Cong were an idealistic nationalist group, just like the American Minutemen
6. Myth 6: The rationale for US intervention in Viet Nam was based on a fraud
7. Myth 7: The US military routinely used inhumane tactics on the people, while the VC were benefactors
8. Myth 8: The great majority of villagers were VC sympathizers, so no counterinsurgency programs ever succeeded
9. Myth 9: The Tet Offensive was a devastating blow to the US and SVN forces and a victory for the communists
10. Myth 10: Media coverage of the war was balanced and accurate and contributed to appropriate US policies

Gene

I did not say that Veith served in Vietnam or that he has spent time in Southeast Asia. He is, however, one of the most thorough Vietnam War scholars around. BTW, Dr. Christopher Goscha, a noted Canadian scholar on Southeast Asia and author of the recent widely acclaimed book The Road to Dien Bien Phu, praised Veith's research in Vietnamese sources in a recent Wilson Center roundtable discussion involving Veith, Goscha, and McHale:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5XnGSjqFk (1:17:30)

As for Kissinger's role, Veith sent Kissinger a copy of the final manuscript of Black April. Kissinger was so impressed with it that he arranged to meet Veith in person and then arranged for Encounter Books to publish the book. 

Veith's list of Vietnam War myths is similar to the list I have on my Vietnam War website. Regarding his myth #9, even most liberal scholars, including Edwin Moise, have long admitted that Tet was a military disaster for the Communists, although you still find some liberal amateurs repeating the myth in online discussions. 

Finally, anyone who denies that news media coverage of the war was misleading needs to deal with the examples that Braestrup cites in his book on the subject, as well as with the examples cited by other scholars, such as those cited by Charles Wiley and Dolf Drodge in their presentation "The Culpability of the Media" (LINK).

The case that nuking Japan was immoral and unnecessary is powerful and compelling, but making that case can be difficult because many people believe the Japanese "had it coming" due to the Japanese army's barbaric conduct.

Many of these folks do not realize that the Japanese army's hardliners (the militarists) held a strong grip on the government and hated the Japanese moderates almost as much as they hated Westerners. Most of Japan's civilian leaders were disgusted by the army's barbarism but were unable to stop it. Even some Japanese senior officers (e.g., Homma, Suzuki, and Yamashita) opposed the army's brutal conduct but could not stop it. 

This mistake of seeing all Japanese as militarists, and also not understanding how the Japanese government worked, played a role in FDR's refusal to reach a peace deal with Japan in 1941. His draconian sanctions and rejection of all Japanese peace offers crippled the moderates and enabled the hardliners to determine Japan's reaction. Ambassador Grew and other Japan experts told FDR and his advisors that the last two Japanese peace offers were as far as the moderates could go without provoking an outright coup by the militarists, but their input was rejected.

To get some idea of how brutal the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was, I recommend reading Paul Maruyama's book Escape from Manchuria (2017). Born in Japan, Maruyama was a Lt. Col. in the U.S. Air Force. He and his family were trapped in Manchuria when WWII ended, and the Maruyamas were not repatriated to Japan until January 1947.

14 hours ago, K K Lane said:

https://rumble.com/v35tae6-the-cias-secret-role-in-the-robert-f.-kennedy-assassination-the-truth-final.html

The fact that Sirhan was clearly hypno-programmed points unmistakably to elements of the CIA as the culprits.

For those who would rather watch a video than read a book or long article, here is a good video that makes extensive use of North Vietnamese sources and that deals with the last three years of the Vietnam War, Congress's betrayal of South Vietnam, and ARVN's performance. It is a presentation by Dr. George Jay Veith given to the Marines' Memorial Association in 2013:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zuxksqqoz8E&t=972s

Dr. Veith discusses some of the information contained in his 2013 book Black April: The Fall of South Vietnam, 1973-1975, as well as information from Communist sources that became available after the book was published. Veith interviewed nearly 50 former South Vietnamese military members and arranged for Merle Pribbenow to help translate newly available North Vietnamese sources. 

Dr. Veith is a former Army officer who earned his doctorate in history from Monash University in Australia. He is the author of four books on the Vietnam War. He is also the executive director of the National League of POW/MIA Families.

Dr. Veith is the scholar who, just last year, exploded the old liberal myth that during the 1968 presidential campaign Richard Nixon used Claire Chennault to persuade South Vietnam's President Nguyen Van Thieu not to attend the Paris peace talks. Veith, using newly available sources and interviews, has proved (1) that Nixon did no such thing, (2) that South Vietnam's Ambassador Bui Diem did not serve as an intermediary for Chennault, (3) that Chennault used the South Vietnamese charge d'affaires in Taiwan as her intermediary, and (4) that Chennault acted at the behest of Taiwan's President Chiang Kai-Shek, not Nixon. It should be added that Thieu hardly needed any convincing that it would not be in South Vietnam's best interests to attend the Paris talks at that time. Here is Dr. Veith's article on the subject:

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/anna-chennault-affair-south-vietnamese-side-wars-greatest-conspiracy-theory

And, for those who might be interested, here is Dr. Veith's review of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 2017 documentary The Vietnam War:

https://lawliberty.org/burns-and-novick-on-vietnam-a-neutral-film-or-a-rifle-butt-to-the-heart/

22 hours ago, David Cooper said:

If the article by Ward Wilson in Foreign Policy posted by Paul Rigby is correct that the Soviet Union's entrance into the war with Japan was the actual motive for their surrender, it implies that three controversial and costly geopolitical strategic decisions by FDR actually led to the resolution of WWII. 

1) Douglas Horne's book, "The McCollum Memorandum" documents the unknown story of FDR's geopolitical understanding of the situation facing the US in 1940-41. The original documentation Horne uncovers argues that FDR realized that the Nazis could not be defeated if the Soviets were not able to fight them. Had the Japanese attacked the Soviets in coordination with the Nazis in 1941, then their military strength would be divided and they would lose. FDR recognized that the Japanese faced a major strategic choice of their own, whether to go north and attack the Soviets or go south and attack the other countries in the Pacific (primarily Dutch East Indies) to assure their supply of oil. By cutting off their oil supply he pushed them to choose the southern Pacific choice. (Horne shows that nothing indicated that FDR suspected they would attack Pearl Harbor (surprise attack holding radio silence across the Pacific) but he knew they would attack our bases in the Philippines and our ships in the Pacific.) 

2) FDR made the difficult choice for "unconditional surrender" for the Germans and the Japanese, knowing full well that this would prolong the war and prevent peace parties and moderates from ending the war with some of their previous governments in place. He was well aware that Dulles was negotiating Waffen-SS General Karl Wolff violating his orders about this, and even corresponded with Stalin about this situation on the last day of his life. (FDR intended to bring Dulles and his corporate supporters and bankers to trial for treason after the war, but his death prevented this from happening--see Talbot, "The Devil's Chessboard" and Loftus, "The Secret War Against the Jews"). The choice for "unconditional surrender" was made against Churchill's wishes to insure that Stalin would stay allied to us for the duration of the war (and FDR hoped into the following peace) and not believe we were looking for ways to undermine our alliance with the Soviets. FDR was also aware, and may have instigated, secret negotiations by James Forrestal and Admiral Ellis Zacharias with the Japanese in the Aleutian Islands to quietly find a way to end the war in the Pacific, suggesting that he might have been more open to a different solution in the Pacific after the war in Europe was concluded. This also may indicate that FDR was not sure that the atomic bomb would bring about the results some in our military and government believed it would...FDR's controversial policy was not foolish or unconsidered, but rather, he believed, necessary, in order to bring about a real resolution to the wars in Europe and Japan, end future colonialism, and form a better basis for future peace (Soviet and Chinese support in the United Nations, for example.) In this sense, JFKs policies were a continuation of FDR's policy directions. 

3) FDR's greatest success at Yalta was getting Stalin to agree to attack the Japanese soon after the war in Europe ended. If this is what pushed the Japanese to actually surrender, rather than Truman's decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then FDR's agreement with Stalin was critical to end the war. Truman made his decision at the urging of James F. Byrnes and some of the top US military advisors. Contrary to FDR, Truman's advisors believed that war with the Soviets was inevitable, maybe even desirable, and wanted to make a point to the Soviets about the bomb. They cynically did not believe that the bomb was necessary to force the surrender of Japan despite what they told Truman. If you are going to call someone immoral then blame Truman's advisors. Truman ultimately learned how he was misled by them and by Dulles and the intelligence people... 

A few points:

Horne is wrong about FDR not knowing Pearl Harbor would be attacked. I have written a book on this subject (The Real Infamy of Pearl Harbor). The bomb-plot messages alone clearly indicated that Pearl Harbor was being reconnoitered for an air attack (the Japanese did not obtain bomb-plot information about any other American port). Congressman Dies later revealed in his memoir that FDR's Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, told him that FDR was aware of Japan's preparations to hit Pearl Harbor. 

FDR's decision to provoke Japan to attack us was criminal and tragic. Japan made very reasonable peace offers, offering FDR virtually everything he said he wanted, but FDR was determined to provoke war with Japan. Japan was willing to attack the Soviet Union, but FDR was fanatically determined to preserve the Stalinist gulag state.

Japan would have surrendered before the Soviet invasion of Manchuria if Truman had simply given private assurance that the emperor would not be deposed, and the Japanese moderates would have had a much easier time bringing about a surrender if FDR had not announced his unconditional surrender policy. 

The Soviets literally raped Manchuria, so I fail to see how FDR should be praised for allowing Stalin to do this. The Soviet devastation of Manchuria caused enormous death and destruction among the civilian population. It is the one of the most overlooked atrocities of the 20th century.

Allowing Stalin to enter the Pacific War led to the creatin of the Stalinist state of North Korea and the Korean War, among other tragedies. 

FDR's refusal to even talk with the German resistance was inexcusable. His unconditional surrender policy directly led to thousands of needless American casualties in Europe and to unspeakable Soviet atrocities against the civilian population in eastern Germany. 

There was absolutely nothing positive about the results of the unconditional surrender policy. It was a senseless, cruel policy. It was the result of FDR's hatred of Germans, his racist attitude toward the Japanese, and his perverse desire to aid the Soviet Union. The fact that we now know that several of FDR's aides/advisers/officials were Soviet spies or Soviet sympathizers probably contributed to his pro-Soviet handling of the war.

An excellent documentary on the Vietnam War is Ride the Thunder: A Vietnam War Story of Triumph and Honor, the 2015 film based on Richard Botkin's 688-page book by the same title.

The documentary is actually about 60% movie and 40% documentary. The movie is the true story of American military legend John Ripley and South Vietnamese war hero Le Ba Binh. In between every scene or two, there are interview segments with military experts and video clips that were televised during the war. One of the clips shows Jane Fonda assuring America that our POWs were not being tortured and that the North Vietnamese were treating our prisoners exceptionally well. Another clip shows John Kerry being confronted by a fellow veteran who served in the same area where Kerry served and challenging Kerry to name officers who committed atrocities and to state when and where the atrocities occurred. Another clip shows a liberal college professor insisting that the South Vietnamese had nothing to fear from a Communist takeover. Here is a link to the documentary:

https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Thunder-Vietnam-Victory-Betrayal/dp/B077K8KGWB

Botkin's book Ride the Thunder was published in 2009 and received great reviews from numerous Vietnam veterans and Vietnam War scholars. Here are a few examples:

General Anthony C. Zinni, USMC (Retired): “Richard Botkin has written a brilliant account of the bravery and skill of a small group of American Marine advisors and the courageous Vietnamese Marines who fought to the end.  For those of us who served as advisors to these Marines, it is a moving, personal story magnificently told.  It is a must-read for all who want to understand the true nature of the Vietnam War.”

General Carl E Mundy, Jr., USMC (Retired), 30th Commandant of the Marine Corps: “Richard Botkin places the reader in the middle of the war through the experiences of several U.S. Marine officers who served as advisors to the Vietnamese Marines—a Corps that, like our own, was one of the elite units of the Vietnamese armed forces.  The resulting story gives the reader a personal view of the men from both Corps who fought so nobly together, and a glimpse of true heroism, sacrifice, and overcoming challenges few are familiar with.”

Rear Admiral Jeremiah Denton, US Navy (Retired): “Ride the Thunder by Richard Botkin is a great contribution toward correcting the myths that still prevail about the Vietnam War.  This is a powerful book, one that every veteran and patriotic American should read.”

As for Botkin himself, he is a former Marine Corps officer. He made nine trips to Cambodia between 1998 and 2007 and four trips to Vietnam, including one with his main Vietnamese character, Le Ba Binh, to do research for Ride the Thunder.

https://www.amazon.com/Ride-Thunder-Vietnam-Story-Triumph/dp/193507105X

On 8/4/2023 at 1:00 PM, Michael Griffith said:

I agree that Allen Dulles can be called a Nazi collaborator, but I am not sure we can say this about John Foster Dulles. 

On 8/4/2023 at 8:52 PM, Benjamin Cole said:

Expand

I am not convinced that John Foster Dulles was a Nazi collaborator. I find the evidence that is cited for this claim to be unconvincing. Foster Dulles publicly advocated establishing a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine in 1944, and he played an important role in getting a plank in the Republican Party platform that called for a Jewish commonwealth in Palestine. I cannot imagine a Nazi collaborator doing these things. 

Yes, Foster Dulles briefly became critical of Israel in the 1950s as Ike's Secretary of State, but he soon abandoned his criticism of Israel after he dealt with Arab leaders, especially Nasser of Egypt, and realized they were fanatically unwilling to compromise with Israel, even unwilling to officially acknowledge Israel's existence. 

Kinzer cites the fact that in the early and mid-1930s, Foster Dulles supported investments and business dealings with Germany and, for a time, held a positive view of Hitler. This is a weak basis for calling him a Nazi collaborator. Quite a few Western politicians and businessmen initially viewed Hitler positively and supported doing business with Germany.

We must remember that Kristallnacht did not happen until late 1938, and the Holocaust did not start until after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941.

When Hitler revealed himself to be an evil monster, Foster Dulles changed his mind about him and became as anti-Hitler as anybody else; he also condemned the Nazi government even before the war started. 

10 hours ago, Mark Knight said:

16 hours ago, Paul Rigby said:

ARGUMENT

An expert's point of view on a current event.

The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan. Stalin Did.

Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie?

A very insightful article, Paul.

My website on the Pacific War and the Atomic Bomb includes numerous articles that show that nuking Japan was unnecessary and immoral. 

The Pacific War and the Atomic Bomb (google.com)

Here is the subpage with article links on the unnecessary and immoral nuking of Japan:

unnecessary.pdf - Google Drive

This horrible tragedy may not have occurred if FDR had not committed the U.S. to the policy of "unconditional surrender." This foolish policy played right into the hands of the militarists in Japan and made it much harder for the moderates to bring about a surrender. In Germany, the anti-Hitler plotters lost considerable support after FDR announced the unconditional surrender policy. 

2 hours ago, Paul Bacon said:

If you don't know why "Biden" will not negotiate, you haven't been paying attention.  The Ukrainians don't want to negotiate--they want their land back!  What's Biden supposed to do, force a negotiation?!

Thank you. Yes, of course. What in the devil is there to "negotiate"? Russia invaded a peaceful, liberal democracy in a naked act of aggression. It is just bizarre to see ultra-liberals attacking Biden and/or Ukraine for not negotiating with Putin. It's like arguing that a woman who is resisting an attempted rape should "negotiate" with her rapist. 

It is sad to see the lack of moral clarity and the lack of a basic sense of right and wrong that some liberals exhibit when it comes to Ukraine. 

Anyway, as I have mentioned, there are several hawkish statements in the American University speech (the peace speech), and JFK delivered the very hawkish Berlin and Fort Worth speeches after the peace speech. 

One gets the feeling that certain ultra-liberals here would stop caring about the JFK assassination if they were forced to face the fact that JFK was not a peacenik liberal but a right-leaning centrist who favored massive across-the-board tax cuts, fiscal restraint, a balanced approach toward labor issues, a strong national defense, and the containment of communism. 

Regarding the unlikelihood of Chinese entrance into the war and ARVN’s effectiveness, lately I have been reading the second edition of Stanley Karnow’s famous book Vietnam: A History (1997), which contains some useful information on these issues. PBS used the first edition of the book as the basis for its 1983 documentary Vietnam: A Television History.

In the second edition of his book, Karnow announced that he had changed his mind on some issues based on new information, so there are some notable differences between the first edition (1984) and the second edition (1997). In the 13 years between the first and second editions, Karnow conducted numerous additional interviews with former North Vietnamese Communists, former Viet Cong members, and American officials and military personnel. Also, in the second edition, he sparingly used some of the newly available North Vietnamese sources.

Lo and behold, we see that Karnow supported the conservative argument that China had no intention of entering the war. China was willing to give military and economic aid, and even to provide some support troops to help with logistics, but Mao Tse Tung (aka Mao Zedong) had no intention of entering the war. In describing the situation as of 1963, Karnow said the following:

          But the Chinese camp was uncomfortable for the Vietnamese Communists. . . . Fresh in their mind as well was China’s betrayal at the Geneva conference in 1954. Now they resented the pressures being put on them by Chairman Mao Zedong to wage war in Vietnam according to his formula. He urged them to conduct a protracted conflict. . . .

          Mao’s advice concealed an ulterior purpose. He had not forgotten the Korean War, in which a million Chinese had died, among them his own son, and he was eager to avert a major conflict in Southeast Asia that might again pit China against overwhelming U.S. technology.

          He was then also contemplating a showdown against adversaries with his own Chinese Communist party, and he intended to use the Chinese army as his instrument for that enterprise rather than in an external venture. . . .

          The Vietnamese Communists were never blind to Mao’s duplicity. Out of necessity, though, their propaganda during the early 1960s proclaimed their bonds with China to be “as close as lips and teeth.” It was not until much later, after the war, that they uncorked their real feelings—with a vengeance. As we chatted in Hanoi in 1981, Vietnam’s Prime Minister Pham Van Dong delivered a tirade against Mao, saying: ‘He was already read to fight to the last Vietnamese.” (pp. 394-395)

And Karnow noted that Mao’s position had not changed as of 1965:

          Mao was then preparing to launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, his devastating purge of the Chinese Communist party, and he needed his army to help him carry out the political campaign at home. Also, a big war in Southeast Asia would compound the threat to Chinese national security at a tie when the Soviet Union was building up its forces along China’s northern borders. He wanted to avoid a conflict like the one in Korea, in which China had sustained horrendous casualties. (p. 467)

Yet, American liberals constantly argued that making full use of our air power and attacking the sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos would cause China to enter the war. Military and CIA analysts, noting China’s internal situation, argued that Mao would not intervene, but LBJ believed the liberals. He frequently cited his fear of Chinese intervention as his excuse for rejecting the Joint Chiefs’ and Westmoreland’s repeated requests that we hit the sanctuaries and make full use of our air power in North Vietnam.

As I have noted before, when Nixon finally approved massive bombing of North Vietnam and mining Haiphong Harbor in 1972, China did not enter the war, even though we bombed facilities right next to the Chinese border and even destroyed some Chinese ships.

In short, conservative scholars such as Mark Moyar are right on this key point and liberals are still wrong on it. Walt Rostow and many others were right to propose a large-scale ground movement into North Vietnam from 1964 onward. Mao bluntly stated for the record in 1964 that China would not enter the war unless Chinese territory were attacked. And the Soviets certainly were not going to enter any war in Southeast Asia.

Regarding the effectiveness of South Vietnam’s army (ARVN, pronounced ar-vin), Karnow noted that one reason the Hanoi regime refused to withdraw their troops from South Vietnam in 1969 was that the Viet Cong were “no match for the Saigon government army.” In speaking of North Vietnam’s reaction to a Nixon peace proposal in mid-1969, Karnow said,

          The response from the North Vietnamese was predictably negative, as it would be again and again on the same point. They were not going to redeploy their troops to the north, since the Viet Cong alone were no match for the Saigon government army. (p. 610)

Huh, so as of 1969, the Viet Cong were “no match” for ARVN. That is not what we hear from nearly all liberal scholars to this very day. It is certainly not what we heard from the anti-war movement, from Hanoi Jane, from John Kerry, and the rest of that ilk, who constantly portrayed South Vietnamese soldiers as being cowardly, unwilling to fight, incompetent, etc., etc.

I agree that Allen Dulles can be called a Nazi collaborator, but I am not sure we can say this about John Foster Dulles. 

19 hours ago, Gene Kelly said:

 

Wiley and Droge's 2004 interview didn't much impress me ... the former makes apologies for the Gulf of Tonkin chicanery and the latter wasn't really a journalist, but rather a government employee who worked for the Agency for International Development.

I notice you did not address any of the many examples of biased and/or inaccurate reporting that Wiley and Droge discuss. Peter Braestrup discusses many more examples in his book The Big Story.

BTW, Droge also worked for the U.S. Information Service and spent years on the NSC's Vietnam Information Group, so he was in an excellent position to talk about news media coverage of the war. 

Are you denying that there was an attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2, 1964? I agree that the reported August 4 attack was a case of jittery nerves, a rookie radar operator, and pressure from Washington to provide a quick confirmation or denial, but no credible scholar denies that the North Vietnamese attacked our ships on August 2. 

I did come across a 2020 paper by Brock J. Vaughan, Wilfrid Laurier University that examines the role that media played in coverage of Vietnam, and its effect in shaping the ultimate outcome of the Vietnam War.  Entitled "War, Media, and Memory: American Television News Coverage of the Vietnam War", it references quite a few sources and writers on this subject. Here is a link:

https://scholars.wlu.ca/bridges_contemporary_connections/vol4/iss1/5 [SNIP]

Yes, I have read Vaughan's article. It is one of many attempts by liberal scholars to deny that the major news media behaved badly during the war. Did you notice that Vaughan does not address a single one of the examples of biased and/or inaccurate reporting discussed by Wiley and Droge, not to mention the examples documented in Braestrup's seminal book?

In fact, Vaughan does not even mention Braestrup's massive book. How can any article that pretends to discuss the issue of media bias during the Vietnam War not even mention, much less fail to address, Braestrup's 630-page work on the subject?

I do give you credit for being willing to read the other side of the story. However, if you read the other side with a determination to disbelieve it no matter what, the value of the effort declines considerably. 

Speaking of sources available online, I should mention The Boston Manifesto, written and published in 2004 by the Vietnam Veterans for Factual History (formerly known as Vietnam Veterans to Correct the Myths) (LINK). Several noted Vietnam War scholars helped write the 186-page book, including Dr. Peter C. Rollins, Dr. Robert F. Turner, and Stephen Sherman.

The Boston Manifesto deals with the following issues, among others: 

-- John Kerry and the Winter Soldier Investigation

-- Operation RAW

-- Drug use among U.S. forces in Vietnam

-- Undermining efforts to get humane treatment for American POWs

-- Treasonous conduct by some leaders in the anti-war movement

-- The brutal, mass-murdering nature of the North Vietnamese and Cambodian Communists

-- How and why the Vietnam War started

-- The insane restrictions placed on our air operations during most of the war

-- The insane restrictions placed on our ground operations throughout the war

-- LBJ and McNamara's mistreatment of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

-- Hanoi's propaganda campaign and the American anti-war movement

-- The evidence that we had the war won in South Vietnam by 1972

-- The media's conduct during the war

-- The liberal myths about Ho Chi Minh

-- The issue of elections and the 1954 Geneva Accords

-- South Vietnam's government compared to North Vietnam's government

-- The Phoenix Program

-- The Domino Theory

-- The reign of terror imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war

On 4/30/2023 at 1:55 PM, Guest said:

 

It seems to me that ever increasingly on the forum that if Israel is implicated in any plot, whether it be the JFKA, USS Liberty attack or other, the poster is accused of being antisemitic or a holocaust denier. 

That is because the vast majority of those who attack Israel on these issues are anti-Semites and Holocaust deniers.

I came across an article last night which mentioned Mordechai Vanunu, who alleged that Israel was almost certainly behind the killing of President John F. Kennedy. 

https://zeenews.india.com/news/world/israel-behind-jfk-assassination-vanunu_169996.html

Oh, boy. Vanunu holds racist views against Ashkenazi Jews and has given bomb-making instructions to Hamas terrorists. 

Vanunu was a technician at the Dimona nuclear facility who turned whistleblower and spent not 18 years in prison after being kidnapped by Mossad in Italy. He is still forbidden from leaving Israel and is not allowed to talk to foreigners. 

He is lucky he was not hanged. He violated his oath. If he had committed similar treason in Russia or China, he would have been executed in short order. 

Muramar Gadaffi also accused Israel of giving the green-light in the killing of President John F. Kennedy. 

Oh, there's a great source! 

Did Israel have a strong enough motivation? They were desperate to achieve their nuclear ambitions. Their track record has an heir of fanaticism. The way they have treated the Palestinians, the kidnappings, the assassinations, the utterly ruthless behaviour. 

This is radical Islamic anti-Israeli propaganda and a total distortion of the historical record. If militant Jews in Egypt had done what militant Palestinians have done in Israel, the Egyptian army would have wiped them out long ago. Most Palestinians are not militants. Many Palestinians want to become Israeli citizens. Far more Palestinians have been killed by radical Palestinians than by the Israelis. 

Would Mossad have seen killing a US president as a step too far? Or did they see it as necessary for their survival? 

Did you post anonymously, as a guest, so you could float this anti-Semitic trash without attribution? 

14 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

Hi Michael,  I hope you will follow the updates and most recent deliberations on the original thread: Pierre Lafitte Datebook, 1963.

It's my understanding from Alan, as recently as last evening in fact, that he has no plans to spend time and energy on this forum on this issue. Perhaps he will change his mind at some point, but the authentication process has been my responsibility since Hank left us.

Leslie, can you just give us a brief summary (i.e., just a few sentences) of what has been done to authenticate the datebook? 

On 7/28/2023 at 4:36 PM, Gerry Down said:

Don't all presidents talk about peace? I mean, what person was ever elected president promising war?

To play devils advocate, wasn't Trumps visit to North Korea an attempt at peace? To cool down tensions with North Korea? Didn't Nixon reach out to communist China to ensure peace and he also ended the Vietnam war? Didn't Reagan reach out to Gorbachev to ensure peace (a follow on from JFKs peace speech promise)? Those were arguably real actions while JFKs peace speech was, well, a speech. 

Why is JFK portrayed as the only president that advocated for peace?

Gerry, you obviously have not gotten the JFKA research community memo that insists that all Republican presidents since the 1920s have been warmongers, tyrants, and robber barons (if not fascists).

If we read the American University speech with any care, we quickly see that it was not the hugs-and-kisses dovish speech that liberals paint it as being. Furthermore, liberals ignore the fact that JFK gave the very hawkish Berlin speech after the American University speech. They also forget the speech that JFK gave in Fort Worth hours before he was killed, which included the following statements:

          Three years ago last September I came here, with the Vice President, and spoke at Burke Burnett Park, and I called, in that speech, for a national security policy and a national security system which was second to none--a position which said not first, but, if, when and how, but first. That city responded to that call as it has through its history. And we have been putting that pledge into practice ever since. . . .

          In the past 3 years we have increased the defense budget of the United States by over 20 percent; increased the program of acquisition for Polaris submarines from 24 to 41; increased our Minuteman missile purchase program by more than 75 percent; doubled the number of strategic bombers and missiles on alert; doubled the number of nuclear weapons available in the strategic alert forces; increased the tactical nuclear forces deployed in Western Europe by over 60 percent; added five combat ready divisions to the Army of the United States, and five tactical fighter wings to the Air Force of the United States; increased our strategic airlift capability by 75 percent; and increased our special counter-insurgency forces which are engaged now in South Viet-Nam by 600 percent. I hope those who want a stronger America and place it on some signs will also place those figures next to it.

          This is not an easy effort. This requires sacrifice by the people of the United States. But this is a very dangerous and uncertain world. As I said earlier, on three occasions in the last 3 years the United States has had a direct confrontation. No one can say when it will come again. No one expects that our life will be easy, certainly not in this decade, and perhaps not in this century. But we should realize what a burden and responsibility the people of the United States have borne for so many years. Here, a country which lived in isolation, divided and protected by the Atlantic and the Pacific, uninterested in the struggles of the world around it, here in the short space of 18 years after the Second World War, we put ourselves, by our own will and by necessity, into defense of alliances with countries all around the globe.

          Without the United States, South Viet-Nam would collapse overnight. Without the United States, the SEATO alliance would collapse overnight. Without the United States the CENTO alliance would collapse overnight. Without the United States there would be no NATO. And gradually Europe would drift into neutralism and indifference. Without the efforts of the United States in the Alliance for Progress, the Communist advance onto the mainland of South America would long ago have taken place.

          So this country, which desires only to be free, which desires to be secure, which desired to live at peace for 18 years under three different administrations, has borne more than its share of the burden, has stood watch for more than its number of years. I don't think we are fatigued or tired. We would like to live as we once lived. But history will not permit it. The Communist balance of power is still strong. The balance of power is still on the side of freedom. We are still the keystone in the arch of freedom, and I think we will continue to do as we have done in our past, our duty. . . .

9 hours ago, Ken Davies said:

The mafia did not perform the autopsy, form the Warren Commision, stonewall the release of documents for 60 years, and manipulate the MSM for 60 years.

All true. However, most of our best evidence that points to suspects points to the Mafia. In many cases, the Mafia practically functioned as an arm of the CIA. It is reasonable to believe that the rogue government elements behind the assassination employed the Mafia as the tip of the spear, just as the CIA did with the plots to kill Castro. Also, Jack Ruby's silencing of Oswald clearly proves the Mafia played a major role in the plot, as do the Mafia killings of some key witnesses. Remember, too, that David Ferrie was closely linked to Carlos Marcello.