Michael Griffith

Why don't you show a picture of people celebrating in North Korea and pretend that things turned out just fine in North Korea and that it wouldn't have been so bad if North Korea had won the Korean War? It's really sad that you would minimize the very real human suffering of millions of people in South Vietnam, and that you would make light of the reign of terror that the Communists imposed on them right after the war, rather than admit that liberal Democrats sided with evil during the war and betrayed an entire nation to tyranny. Even a former high-ranking Viet Cong leader, Truong Nhu Tang, was so shocked by the brutality that he witnessed that he eventually left the country. You should read his book A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1985). Asia scholar Jacqueline Desbarats’ chapter in the 1990 book The Vietnam Debate presented some of the results of her research into the bloody aftermath of the Vietnam War. Among other findings, she concluded that about 65,000 South Vietnamese were executed by the communists, and she added that this was probably an “underestimate.” Here is a portion of her chapter, which was titled “Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation”: Careful examination of public records does indeed supply evidence that there was an execution program after 1975. It also supplies evidence that the execution program was political in its intent rather than merely concerned with dealing with the crime wave that swept South Vietnam after the liberation. Who, then, were the victims of these summary executions? Among the victims brought to my attention were a number of government officials of the former regime: province chiefs, district chiefs, mayors, members of the police, high ranking members of the army, and members of the intelligence community. The victims also included a handful of members of the compradore bourgeoisie, a few leaders of popular, ethnic, or religious groups, including a couple of Hoa Hao, a number of people who tried to escape from the country, and a large number of people who tried to escape from reeducation camps. But by far the most widespread alleged reason for those executions was "antigovernment resistance." This reason alone accounted for forty nine percent of all the executions, including both armed resistance and passive resistance, such as refusal to register for reeducation. The empirical data collected in the interviews allows one to look at the pattern of executions over time and space. Two thirds of the executions occurred in 1975 and 1976, at which time the number of executions seems to have tapered off. A secondary peak occurred in 1978 at the time of the nationalization of commerce and business in South Vietnam. Over geographic space, we also find a rather clear pattern. Almost two thirds of the reported executions occurred in the Saigon and the Delta areas, and those were mostly executions that took place very soon after liberation. Subsequently, there is a geographic diffusion phenomenon, whereby executions started to spread to the areas north of Saigon. Those coastal areas became especially important after 1976. We also find a pattern in the kinds of reasons given for the executions. For instance, the executions motivated by anti­ government resistance were practically ubiquitous, as we find them everywhere, though mostly after 1976. On the other hand, executions of high­ranking officers are essentially found in the Mekong Delta area and occurred very soon after liberation, most of them in 1975. Executions of people who tried to escape from reeducation occurred mostly in the areas north of Saigon, and those are also widely spread over the ten year period examined. What are the numbers involved in extrajudicial executions? Looking only at deaths that were due to active willful acts rather than passive neglect, and using highly conservative coding and accounting procedures in the study's sample estimation, I came to an estimate of approximately 65,O00 persons executed.[9] I suspected all along that this probably was an underestimate. But I am more convinced now that it is an underestimate because the computations are based in part on the assumption that no more than one million people were processed through reeducation camps. As a matter of fact, we know now from a 1985 statement by Nguyen Co Tach that two and a half million, rather than one million, people went through reeducation. The change in statistical parameters resulting from that recent admission would indicate that, in fact, possibly more than 100,000 Vietnamese people were victims of extrajudicial executions in the last ten years. (Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (reaction.la)) Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguyen puts the number of executed South Vietnamese at 65,000, and this isn’t counting the untold thousands who died in the reeducation camps (Detention Camps in Asia, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022, p. 160). Of the one million-plus South Vietnamese who were imprisoned in these camps, we have the oral histories of thousands of them, and those histories describe the brutal conditions in most of the camps, and they also describe numerous cases of prisoners being killed by various means, ranging from beatings and forced mine-clearing to malnutrition and deliberate deprivation of medical care (Detention Camps in Asia, pp. 158-172). A prisoner in one camp remembered having “to bury one or two prisoners every day” (Detention Camps in Asia, p. 170). Three other sources on the horrors of the reeducation camps are Tran Tri Vu’s Lost Years: My 1,632 Days in Vietnamese Reeducation Camps (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), Nghia Vo’s The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), and Nguyen Van Canh’s Vietnam Under Communism, 1972-1985 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983). Do you just not care that every single human rights organization continues to rank Communist Vietnam as one of the most repressive regimes on the planet?

Oh, I didn't think I was being inflammatory to note that he was expressing far-left views about the Vietnam War. I thought I was just accurately describing his views. I wasn't trying to agitate him. I wasn't aware that I was having an argument with Joseph McBride, and I didn't know anything about his complaint until I stumbled across it in a different thread.

Another problem posed by the white patch is that there no image on the A-P x-ray that even comes close to corresponding to it. The OD measurements show that if that patch is authentic, there should be bone going from the patch to nearly the other side of the skull.

20 minutes (and 41 minutes): Tunheim says that while the Secret Service destroyed documents while the ARRB were in existence, the ARRB already had copies of these documents and therefore nothing was lost when the Secret Service did this destruction. I'm not sure that's true. Why weren't those records included in the ARRB releases, if the ARRB had copies of them? 42 minutes: Tunheim saw George Joannides personnel file and there was nothing on it Tunheim thought relevant. I don't think Tunheim has enough knowledge about the case to make that call. There may well be things in that file that Tunheim did not realize were significant. I would trust John Newman to make that judgment, but not Tunheim.

One, your claims about JFK's withdrawal plans are not credible, as I've documented in the thread on Stone's recent documentaries and the Vietnam War. You're relying mainly on the withdrawal claim in McNamara's "secret debrief," a claim that McNamara himself did not even repeat in his memoir (not even when he was arguing that JFK intended to remove all U.S. forces from South Vietnam by the end of 1965). Two, Bobby said JFK intended to provide air support if needed. Three, our senior MACV commanders were recommending the deployment of combat troops in response to North Vietnam's major offensive in 1964. Four, LBJ was not anxious to send large numbers of troops to South Vietnam, and, according to his aides, he did so reluctantly only after senior MACV commanders had been urging this step since the 1964 NVA offensive and only after North Vietnamese torpedo boats then attacked one of our destroyers. (Yes, the second attack most likely did not happen, but the first one certainly did.) Five, your arguments do not address the central point of the thread: that if the plotters viewed JFK's Vietnam policy as a major motive, why did they not compel LBJ to change his horrible handling of the war? Either they were too weak to do so or they did not care how he handled the war.

Really? What sources do you have to support that claim? Which plotters are you talking about?

If you want to advance that theory, that's fine, but that's not the theory put forward by Oliver Stone et al in JFK and in Stone's two recent documentaries. One big problem I see with your theory is that LBJ certainly did not "give the generals the war they wanted." The generals were furious with LBJ for all the senseless, suicidal restrictions he was placing on our air and ground operations--giving the NVA huge sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos, refusing to hit NVA supply and massing points in the DMZ, refusing to mine Haiphong Harbor, refusing to allow our pilots to fire at MIG bases until MIGs took off from the bases and fired at them first, refusing to allow our fighters to hit SAM sites until the sites fired SAMs at them, placing hundreds of key logistical and infrastructure targets off limits, etc., etc., etc. Admiral Sharp spends over 200 pages documenting and discussing these insane restrictions in Strategy for Defeat: Vietnam in Retrospect.

I did not say that Asians "as a whole" have been harmed by AA, but some have. Go read the legal briefs that have been submitted on the case. I again repeat that even the deep blue states of California, Michigan, and Washington have done away with race-based college admissions, as have several other states. This is not a strictly left-vs.-right issue. Plenty of sensible liberals and moderates see a problem with applying AA in a way that only benefits certain minorities and discriminates against other minorities just because those other minorities tend to do better in school. And, FYI, in the last eight presidential elections, the Asian vote has gone heavily for the Democratic candidate (usually by at least 65% to 35%). The bottom line is that the case now before the Supreme Court is not some nefarious right-wing attempt to deny certain minorities a chance to attend college, and it is certainly not a right-wing attempt to "erase another JFK policy." I seriously doubt that JFK would view the plaintiffs' case as an attack on his civil rights or education policies.

Conservatives have many times proposed over the years that instead of race-based affirmative action, we try income-based affirmative action, and most liberals--not all, but most--have rejected the idea. This has been debated in Congress and on many talk shows. If you've watched some of the recent debates on TV about the upcoming Supreme Court case, you've seen some conservatives argue for an income-based approach. I think an income-based approach would be the fairest approach because it would be race-neutral and would help those who truly need help. However, I have no problem with most forms of race-based affirmative action. I think AA has done a great deal of good, and that we still need laws that will ensure that minorities have a fair, equitable opportunity to get a good education. I think income-based AA would accomplish that goal just as well as race-based AA. But, again, I support most forms of AA is it now exists.

If you want to share your far-left views about the Vietnam War, this is not the thread to do so. Chomsky is an abject loon. Anyway, we're talking about the point that if the plotters viewed the Vietnam War as a major motive to kill JFK, it is very hard to understand why they let LBJ so horribly mismanage the war effort. So, there are two possibilities: (1) Vietnam was not a vital issue for the majority of the plotters, or (2) the plotters were not powerful enough to control LBJ's handling of the war effort. I've answered many of your claims about the war in my "Oliver Stone's New JFK Documentaries and the Vietnam War" thread. Quote Joseph McBride Members 1.1k Gender:Male Posted Tuesday at 04:55 PM (edited) Note to Moderators: Michael Griffith is telling me I can't share my political views on this thread. Naturally I will keep doing so, as I always do, everywhere I am. But I object to his attempt to stifle free speech on this forum. What will the moderators do about that? Edited Tuesday at 06:06 PM by Joseph McBride What???? I wasn't trying to "stifle free speech." I simply noted that the topic of the thread was not the merits of the Vietnam War and that the thread was not the place to argue about the war itself. I even told you about a thread where that discussion would be entirely appropriate. I did not tell you that you could not share your political views in the thread. I have no such power anyway. How would I stop you from doing so? It's just common courtesy not to inject your political views when those views have nothing to do with the topic of the thread. It seems like you are the one who is trying to stifle free speech by making the phony complaint that I was telling you what you could and could not say, when I did no such thing (and have no power to do any such thing anyway).

I would direct our attention to page 12 of Mantik's "JFK Autopsy Materials: A Current Summary," available here. He shows the lateral JFK skull x-ray and has the white patch outlined with a red line and also notes the location of the petrous bone. Here is a good diagram that shows the location of the petrous bone in the temporal bone. It seems undeniably clear that the white patch is behind/left of the petrous bone (viewer's left), that about half of the white patch is several inches behind/left of the petrous bone, and that part of the white patch extends into the rear parietal region. Two points about this: One, the white patch appears to cover part of the parietal area of the "right occipital-parietal/right parietal-occipital" wound that many witnesses described. Two, there is no way that the white patch is the bone flap over the ear seen in the autopsy photos, because most of the white patch is clear well behind/left of the ear.

First, let me quote what a former Viet Cong colonel, Pham Xuan An, had to say about the North Vietnamese Communists and Communist Vietnam decades after the war, and then I’ll discuss more problems with McNamara’s “secret debrief.” Colonel Pham Xuan An: All that talk about “liberation” twenty, thirty, forty years ago, all the plotting, and all the bodies, produced this, this impoverished, broken-down country led by a gang of cruel and paternalistic half-educated theorists. (Lewis Sorley, Review of A. J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975, Simon & Schuster, 2000, in Parameters: U.S. Army War College Quarterly, Autumn 2001, p. 169) In addition to the strong evidence that JFK had no intention of abandoning South Vietnam regardless of the consequences, I see other problems with the claim in McNamara’s “secret debrief.” For example, why didn’t McNamara repeat the claim in his memoir? If JFK had truly told him he was going to withdraw even if it caused South Vietnam to fall to the Communists, you’d think that McNamara would have mentioned this monumental revelation in his memoir. But he says nothing about it therein, not even in the segment (in the appendix) where he argues that JFK planned on withdrawing all of our troops by the end of 1965 (In Retrospect, p. 399). You'd think that he would have mentioned JFK's alleged statement to bolster his argument. Not only is there no mention of McNamara’s doubtful claim in his own memoir, but his ideological soul mate and primary deputy, John McNaughton, said nothing about the claim in his diary. In fact, not a single one of McNamara’s devoted “whiz kids” ever mentioned hearing McNamara claim that JFK had told him he was going to withdraw regardless of the consequences. There is also the fact that there is no trace of any evidence that McNamara ever raised this issue with LBJ or with LBJ’s advisers. You would think that if JFK had truly said to McNamara what McNamara claimed he said, McNamara would have at least once argued, “Hey, JFK told me he intended to pull out even if South Vietnam was ‘going to be defeated.’ So how can we abandon that policy? Shouldn’t his former vice president honor that policy?” Certainly one would expect that during McNamara’s famous/infamous recorded phone call with LBJ when LBJ criticized JFK and McNamara for having announced the 1,000-man withdrawal, McNamara would have replied, “Hey, look here. JFK told me that he was going to withdraw from South Vietnam no matter what. He didn’t just want to withdraw 1,000 troops. He wanted to withdraw all the troops, no matter what happened to South Vietnam after that.” Of course, JFK was much closer to Bobby than he was to McNamara, and Bobby clearly knew nothing about any intention to abandon South Vietnam regardless of the consequences. In fact, Bobby denied there was any such plan in his April 1964 oral interview. The idea that JFK made such a crucially important statement to McNamara but never told Bobby is simply not credible. The problem is that so many of my fellow conspiracy theorists have created this huge myth that JFK was killed because he was going to abandon South Vietnam no matter what. This was one of the key claims in Stone's 1991 movie, and, sadly, it is repeated in Stone's recent documentaries. It is hard to retract a major claim that you've made for decades, but if you care about the facts and about accurately portraying JFK's views and legacy, it must be done.

Yes, this is a problem. There are several programs, state and federal, that offer teachers bonuses if they will teach in schools in black communities. The two programs I have any knowledge of don't offer large enough bonuses, in my opinion. Part of the problem in attracting teachers to such schools is that there are often security issues at those schools and teachers don't feel safe. But this is not just a money-teacher problem. It is also an attitude/cultural problem. Barack Obama caught a lot of flak in 2008 for saying that too many blacks viewed education as a waste of time, that too many blacks thought it was uncool to do well in school. I'm paraphrasing, but that's pretty close to what he said. On a hot mic, Jesse Jackson was caught saying that he was so upset at Obama for saying this that he wanted to cut off his genitals. I admired Obama for saying it, because it is true in too many cases. Peer pressure can be a powerful thing, and when so many of your peers think it's dumb to waste time on school, that can be a hard thing to deal with. Perhaps one solution would be to offer black and Hispanic students in historically poor-performing schools a full-ride two-year scholarship to a community college if they could graduate with a C and pass a very basic aptitude test in math, English, and reading comprehension. Something like that. Another problem is that we need to figure out a way to enable more blacks and Hispanics to live in good school districts. Poor counties tend to have substandard schools, but many minorities cannot afford to live anywhere else. Busing is certainly not the answer, since that violates two basic rights. But I would be open to federal home loan guarantee program for minorities who could meet basic credit qualification criteria so they could buy homes in better counties. If nothing else, states and the federal government simply need to spend more money on schools in low-income areas, including the provision of greatly enhanced security at the schools to enforce discipline and protect teachers.

Wait a minute. Wait just a minute here. The white patch is not in the temporal-parietal area of the skull, and it is certainly not in the same location as the red flap above the ear in the autopsy photos. I don't need to be a medical expert to see that, and to see it clearly. Any expert who has concluded otherwise either had an agenda or did not study the x-rays carefully enough. The white patch is clearly behind the ear, and its posterior edge comes close to the occipital region, so there is no way it is the flap above the ear in the autopsy photos. I again refer interested readers to Dr. Mantik's reply to Pat Speers on this matter: JFK Autopsy X-rays: David Mantik vs. Pat Speer (kennedysandking.com)

Anyone who doesn't know that the Asian community is upset over how AA has been applied to Asian students needs to broaden their news sources or at least visit some Asian-American rights websites. In my state, Asian parents filed a lawsuit against a county run by woke liberals because the school board changed the admission process to an elite high school in a way that discriminated against Asian applicants. The school board scrapped a long-standing standardized test that was used to determine admission to the high school, using the justification that few blacks or Hispanics were getting good scores on the test. As a result, many Asian students who would have been admitted to the high school were rejected. How about we try that approach for medical school applicants? "Nah, don't worry that you couldn't get a high enough score on the medical qualification test. We'll just scrap the test." That's going too far. The way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating for or against people based on their race or ethnicity. Denying Asian kids entrance to top schools in order to admit more kids from other minorities is discriminatory and unfair. AA should apply to all racial/ethnic minorities or to no racial/ethnic minorities. Personally, I believe that, sadly, we still need AA because, sadly, there is still too much racism in our society. But AA cannot be used to single out one or two minorities for favorable treatment and to disadvantage other minorities in the process.

That raises a curious question: Why did the FPP members, all of whom were forensic pathologists, need to ask an Irish doctor about the behavior of FMJ bullets when they strike heads? If firearms expert Howard Donahue knew that FMJ missiles don't leave a lead snowstorm in skulls, how did the FPP members not know this? And, just for the sake of accuracy regarding Bloody Sunday, some of the Irish protestors were armed IRA members who were firing at soldiers. Also, many of the protestors threw stones and bottles at the soldiers before any of the soldiers began firing. Yes, most of the soldiers' retaliatory actions were unjustified, but the lawless elements in the crowds stoked the fires to begin with by hurling rocks and bottles at the soldiers.

I seriously doubt that JFK would agree with you on this case. You realize that the plaintiffs in this case are Asian parents and Asian college students who have been denied entrance to a few top universities (in this case Harvard and UNC) because of how affirmative action has been applied, right? You realize that some states have already banned using race as a factor in university admission, including the deep blue states of California, Michigan, and Washington, right? Furthermore, education and legal scholars have noted that even if the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiffs, most college admissions will not be affected. Personally, I support most forms of affirmative action, but when AA is applied in such a way that only certain minorities benefit, then it is discriminatory and violates the core idea that promoted AA in the first place. Many people from all across the spectrum have suggested using income as a key factor in college admissions, such as requiring that a certain percentage of students be from low-income households, but the radical left insists that AA must be exclusively race-based and must only benefit certain minorities to the exclusion of other minorities. You keep trying to twist JFK's record to make it seem like he shared your far-left views, and in so doing you are doing a disservice to his legacy and are misrepresenting his views.

But the plotters did know that the Dallas motorcade would drive down Main Street, which is just one block over from the TSBD and within visual shooting range of the top two floors of the TSBD. Once we understand this, then we need to look at the evidence on how the motorcade got needlessly routed to go by the TSBD, in violation of standard security procedure. Vince Palamara provides an important examination of this fatal routing in Survivor's Guilt. The HSCA's report on SS protection in Dallas contains much revealing information and concludes that the security arrangements "may have been uniquely insecure." As for Ruth Paine, I am intrigued by her phone conversation with her husband on the afternoon of 11/22/63 in which he was overheard by an operator to say "we both know who is responsible." I am agnostic about whether Ruth and Michael realized they were being used to set up Oswald. Finally, I note the fascinating parallels between how Oswald was given a job that put him at the shooting scene in Dallas and how Thomas Arthur Vallee was given a job that put him at a potential JFK shooting scene in Chicago.

I think this is a good point to summarize some important facts and to introduce some facts I haven't discussed yet: -- In 1957, the Soviet Union proposed that both South Vietnam and North Vietnam be admitted to the United Nations. -- There would have been no Vietnam War if North Vietnam had been willing to let South Vietnam remain independent. There would have been peace in Vietnam the moment North Vietnam decided to stop trying to conquer South Vietnam. As none other than Adlai Stevenson pointed out in a magnificent speech to the UN in 1964, North Vietnam was the aggressor and South Vietnam was the victim. -- South Vietnam never sent large forces into North Vietnam, but North Vietnam sent large forces into South Vietnam year after year, starting in 1964, along with thousands of tons of weapons and supplies. Hanoi began sending forces into South Vietnam in 1960, but did not send large forces to the South until 1964. -- When asked about the claim that JFK planned on an unconditional withdrawal from South Vietnam, JFK’s Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, said, I talked with John Kennedy on hundreds of occasions about Southeast Asia, and not once did he suggest or even hint at withdrawal. Kennedy liked to bat the breeze and toss ideas around, and it is entirely possible that he left the impression with some that he planned on getting out of Vietnam after 1965. But that does not mean that he made a decision in 1963 to withdraw in 1965. Had he done so, I think I would have known about it. (Frederik Logevall, Choosing War, University of California Press, 1999, p. 71; Greg Olson, Mansfield and Vietnam, Michigan State University Press, 1995, p. 118) -- If JFK had planned on abandoning South Vietnam, surely Bobby Kennedy would have known about it. Even Greg Olson, author of Mansfield and Vietnam, admits that “If Kennedy had really committed to withdrawal after reelection, it seems likely that Robert would have known” (p. 118). Yet, Bobby, in an April 1964 oral history interview, flatly rejected the idea that JFK had planned on pulling out of Vietnam. Bobby added that JFK intended to continue aiding South Vietnam and that he was even willing to provide air support if needed. What’s more, Bobby made it clear that the option of large-scale escalation, as much as JFK wanted to avoid it, was not off the table. -- We now know that North Vietnam, China, and the Soviet Union suspected that the 1956 elections stipulated in the Geneva Accords might not occur because they suspected that South Vietnam would collapse before then, making the election unnecessary. And, Pham Van Dong told a fellow diplomat that “You know as well as I do that there won’t be elections.” Revealingly, when South Vietnam repeatedly called for elections after the U.S. withdrew, North Vietnam refused. -- North Vietnamese Communist leaders were a gang of murderous, cruel thugs who used every form of violence and oppression to gain and keep power. They were not the legitimate rulers of northern Vietnam but gained control through terror and subterfuge, and with the help of Chinese and Soviet assistance. -- In 1956, Hanoi’s leaders found it necessary to use the army against their own people. Historian Lien Nguyen notes in her award-winning book Hanoi's War, "By 1956, however, the North Vietnamese people, who were subjected to the wave of terror in the countryside, rose up against the excesses of the campaigns, prompting the government to send its armed forces to quell the demonstrations” (p. 34). That’s putting it diplomatically. -- The Hanoi regime imposed a police state on North Vietnam that made the Saigon regime look mild in comparison. While the Saigon regime allowed some freedom of the press, the Hanoi regime allowed none. While the Saigon regime allowed private schools, allowed local authorities some discretion in education curriculum, and usually respected the right of private property, the Hanoi regime banned all private schools, rigidly controlled education curriculum, and placed all property under the control of the state. While the Saigon regime held legislative elections that produced a vocal opposition block in the national assembly, the Hanoi regime tolerated no public opposition from any quarter. While the Saigon regime allowed opposition leaders to hold press conferences, to speak with journalists, to speak with foreign diplomats, to hold meetings, etc., the Hanoi regime allowed no such public opposition. -- Every argument that can be made against South Vietnam and the Vietnam War can be made against South Korea and the Korean War. The South Korean war resulted in more civilian deaths as a percentage of the population than did the Vietnam War. South Korea’s regime was arguably worse than the Saigon regime. South Korea was ruled by an autocratic government well into the 1980s. Yet, no sane person disputes the fact that the South Korean regime was far less oppressive than the North Korean regime. Similarly, the Saigon regime was far less oppressive than the Hanoi regime. And no sane person wishes that North Korea had won the Korean War, nor does any sane person deny that South Korea is a much freer, more tolerant, and more prosperous place than North Korea. -- After 1962, if not a bit earlier, Ho Chi Minh was a figurehead because he was pushed aside by the far more radical Le Duan. As bad as Ho Chi Minh was, Le Duan was worse. Ho, to be sure, could be vicious and despotic, but in some cases Ho tried to curb government abuse of the people, and he opposed the shift to large-scale conventional warfare against the U.S. Le Duan preferred to let Ho be the face of North Vietnam to the world, but Ho had little influence on major decisions after 1962. Similarly, General Giap was largely sidelined after Le Duan seized power, since Le Duan disliked and distrusted Giap. Giap opposed both the Tet Offensive and key aspects of the Easter Offensive, and did not lead either operation but was out of the country while they were carried out. These facts are discussed in great detail in Nguyen’s book Hanoi’s War. -- In terms of its willingness to sacrifice its own troops in staggering numbers to achieve war aims, the Hanoi regime may well have been the most barbaric despotism in the modern era. The Hanoi regime’s willingness to use its troops as cannon fodder rivaled that of Japan’s militarist-dominated 1932-1945 regime, if not exceeded it.

I've already answered this lame argument twice now. Who cares what the lying, dissembling, deceiving, conniving, disgraced, and discredited McNamara said? How can you get on a public board and with a straight face cite McNamara as a reliable source on this issue of all issues, particularly given the information about him in McMaster's book Dereliction of Duty? You might also read what Admiral Sharp had to say about McNamara in Strategy for Defeat. Bobby knew nothing about any plan to totally abandon South Vietnam regardless of the consequences. He said nothing of the kind was planned and added that JFK was going to continue aid and would even provide air support if needed. Even James Galbraith agrees that JFK intended to continue giving South Vietnam aid and was going to leave behind a residual force of supply troops after 1965. Ted Sorenson knew nothing about a total disengagement plan either. Nor did Arthur Schlesinger. Nor did Dean Rusk. Nor did Walt Rostow. And every 1963 statement that we have from JFK himself, including remarks he made on the Texas trip and the remarks he was going to make at the Trade Mart on 11/22/63--every one of those statements indicates his determination to keep South Vietnam free. But you brush aside all of this and cling to McNamara's last debriefing and the hearsay claims of a handful of other anti-war Democrats. As for your arguments in another of your barrage of replies about the alleged chances for peace in Vietnam, I would simply refer interested readers to my previous replies on the subject. You just keep repeating the same leftist claims and keep ignoring the information we have from North Vietnamese and Soviet sources and from other primary materials. You could start with Dr. George Veith's book Drawn Swords in a Distant Land and Nghia Vo's book The ARVN and the Fight for South Vietnam, both of which include an excellent review of the events that preceded and followed the Geneva Conference, North Vietnam's violations of the Geneva Accords (they dwarfed South Vietnam's violations), China's massive aid to the Hanoi regime, the Hanoi regime's violent/coercive actions to prevent more North Vietnamese from leaving during the Geneva-Accords-mandated freedom-of-movement period, North Vietnam's (failed) propaganda efforts in the South (which dwarfed Lansdale's psyops campaign in the North), etc., etc. Finally, as for your attacks on Ngo Dinh Diem in another reply, (1) much of what you say about Diem is wrong or exaggerated, and (2) it's just amazing how you refuse to discuss the far more egregious brutality and far more numerous atrocities committed by the Hanoi regime. I've covered some of these crimes in previous replies. Veith and Vo discuss more of them in their books, as does Dr. Geoffrey Shaw in The Lost Mandate of Heaven. Shaw's book is also one of the best defenses of Diem in print.

Matthew, You made some very thoughtful comments. Very refreshing. Here's my reply: I personally don't think Gary Dean living in Vietnam 40 years later means much about the war. It wasn't just sunshine and roses once America left. I'd be curious to know what Gary Dean say about the mass executions, the concentration camps, the suppression of basic human rights that occurred after Saigon fell. As more and more Asia scholars, especially Vietnamese Asia scholars, have done research among South Vietnamese refugees and among southern Vietnamese in Vietnam, we have learned a lot more about the reign of terror that the Communists imposed after they took power. I've enjoyed reading your debate. Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think either of you two have mentioned the Vietnam Sino war that follow the US withdraw. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War Yes, in 1979, China and Vietnam came to blows, and Vietnam repelled the Chinese incursion. I've included another very interesting article about how the war may have been fought by China to remove the Soviet backed Vietnamese to create a "Neutral" Vietnam https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/china-and-fall-south-vietnam-last-great-secret-vietnam-war I cited this article myself in an earlier reply. FYI, the author of that article, George Veith, is one of the finest Vietnam War and Asia scholars in the world, and is the author of the superb book Black April, which is the best work published so far on the fall of South Vietnam. Anyway, the very real and intense North Vietnamese-Chinese tension is an interesting subject. Lien Nguyen's must-read book Hanoi's War, based on previously unused or unavailable North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese sources, sheds a lot of light on the subject. Frankly, in spite of all the reading I'd already done on the war, I was not aware of the depth of hostility and mutual distrust between North Vietnam and China until I read Nguyen's book. Nguyen also sheds important light on the conflicts between Cambodia and North Vietnam, such as the fact that Sihanouk actually detested North Vietnam and deeply resented the NVA's occupation of his eastern border area and then later, after we expelled the NVA from the border region, the NVA's occupation of northeastern Cambodia. The funny thing is I half agree with both of you, Kennedy was getting out, and the Vietnam war could have been fought better and with some better decisions into a stalemate similar to Korea. (Which I think Kennedy got that and didn't think the human cost was worth it.) Even the limited Rolling Thunder operations in mid-1966 and 1967 proved that our air power could cripple North Vietnam in less than a year. We could have forced North Vietnam to surrender and recognize South Vietnam if we had just kept up even that limited level of air operations. As of mid-June 1967, 85% of North Vietnam's total electrical capacity was inoperative because of Rolling Thunder bombing. Of course, we now know that Hanoi's leaders decided to launch the Tet Offensive because they believed that they were losing the war and that time was no longer on their side. The 600lb gorilla in the room that both of you are missing IMO is: After the Cuban Missile Crisis JFK and Khrushchev had changed their relationship and were beginning to work with each other. There wouldn't have been an escalation like we saw in Vietnam if the Assassination had not happened. I think it's very unlikely that the Chinese could have used kicking out Khrushchev as a condition to back the war like they did. The missed opportunity was that these TWO men were removed when the conditions for deescalation in Vietnam had been created. They had already worked with each other in Laos for a neutral Laos because both men didn't really have the heart to put up a fight there. I fear this is based mostly on wishful thinking and counter-factual history. Kennedy's deal with the Soviets in Laos was a disaster. The Soviets did not give up in Laos (nor did the Chinese), and North Vietnam quickly occupied the southeastern edge of Laos and made it into a key junction in the Ho Chi Minh trail and built large supply and troop bases there. The Joint Chiefs were absolutely correct when they warned JFK that failing to at least secure eastern Laos would make defending South Vietnam vastly harder. As vital as the NVA bases in eastern Cambodia were, the NVA bases in Laos were even more vital to North Vietnam's war effort. From Vienna to Gulf of Tonkin event some very major events changed the context of the war and who was making the decisions. Both the participants of the Vienna meeting were removed from power, China getting the Nuke changed the context of the war because the original deterrent wasn't there anymore. Lyndon Johnson who was now telling audiences 'we seek no wider war' was creating a wider war that no longer had it's original deterrent. From that point forward the more we escalated the more China aided and escalated with Soviet support. But the didn't matter much to the Daddy War Bucks who were literarily and figuratively making a killing from the undeclared war. China signaled early in LBJ's second term that they would not intervene in the war unless we attacked Chinese territory. When Nixon launched Linebacker I and II, which dwarfed any previous bombing raids and included strikes on key rail lines within a few miles of the Chinese border, neither the Soviets nor the Chinese intervened. The CIA told LBJ repeatedly that the Soviets and the Chinese would not intervene unless perhaps we tried to install a pro-Western regime in North Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs said much the same thing. But, LBJ chose to listen to McNamara, Clifford, McNaughton, and Rusk instead. Diem being executed is problem imo for the Kennedy getting out people narrative because as Michael has said and I also agree. JFK wasn't going to cut and run and do a Biden Afghanistan style embarrassing withdrawal. But, I don't JFK would have had to do that with Khrushchev in power because they would have most likely worked toward a neutral Vietnam like they did with Laos, this is during the Sino Soviet split after all. Yes, it is clear that JFK had no intention of totally disengaging from South Vietnam regardless of the situation on the ground. He was determined to keep South Vietnam free, and he deserves praise for that position. Deposing Diem was a catastrophic error that set us back at least two years. JFK never should have appointed Lodge as ambassador in the first place, and he certainly never should have green-lighted the coup. Lodge was arguably the worst person he could have picked. Lodge knew nothing about the situation, made no effort to learn, and was overly sensitive to the anti-Diem reporting coming from American journalists (many of whom were being fed their stories by Communist agents). JFK's weakness and lack of leadership in the Diem affair is very disappointing, and had tragic results. However, I blame Lodge more than JFK. Also, to be fair, we should keep in mind that JFK never intended that Diem be killed; he thought he would just be exiled. I really recommend that you read Nguyen's Hanoi's War. I think you'll see that it is unlikely that Khrushchev could have pushed North Vietnam to stand down. If Khrushchev sincerely wanted a neutral Laos (and perhaps he did), the Soviet army certainly did not agree. Plus, and this is a key point, the Laotian Communists (Pathet Lao) got most of their aid from the Chinese, not the Soviets, and the Chinese never curbed their aid or activities after neutrality was declared. Also, until literally the last few weeks of the war, the Chinese were utterly determined to see South Vietnam fall, which is why they did all they could to enable the NVA to occupy southeastern Laos. The Chinese were the ultimate hardliners in the Vietnam War. They were furious with Hanoi for agreeing to negotiations in 1968. The Chinese even temporarily scaled back their aid to show their displeasure. When the Chinese changed their mind about South Vietnam and made backroom efforts to create a neutral South Vietnam in the last days of the war, it was too late. It was an odd love-hate-love-hate relationship.

I see. Well, I think you're the one who is wrong about this. I find your arguments about the "wing" as an explanation for the white patch far-fetched, not to mention that they ignore the OD measurements. When you find a pristine x-ray of a human skull that shows a similar white patch, a patch 1,000 times brighter than it should be, let me know. I am starting to conclude that you are one of those people who feels compelled to attack everyone else's research.

The ARRB did not play "dirty pool" with Prouty. Give me a break. They asked him perfectly valid questions and gave him every opportunity to explain his previous claims. In response to the valid, respectful questions they put to him, he back-peddled all over the place--about his role in presidential protection, about his trip to Antarctica, etc.--and he claimed he no longer had the notes he had supposedly made of his conversation with the MI unit that he claimed had been told to stand down for the Dallas motorcade. He was lucky that the ARRB interviewers did not press him on this issue--I certainly would have. I would have asked, "What do you mean you no longer have those notes? Why would you discard such historically important documentation?" You can't seriously, seriously believe Prouty's obscene claim that Edward Lansdale was a/the mastermind behind the assassination because he was angry over JFK's Vietnam policy. If you would do any reading on Lansdale in non-loon/non-wingnut sources, you would discover that Lansdale strongly opposed deploying large numbers of combat troops to South Vietnam. Heck, he even thought that we started bombing North Vietnam too soon, and he (correctly) believed that during Westmoreland's tenure we were using too much firepower in rural areas. Prouty's work on the Vietnam War itself is ridiculous, just ridiculous. If you ever decide to do some balanced reading on the war, you might start with responsible liberal books on the war, such as Karnow's book or Hasting's book or Daddis's book. I disagree with many of their conclusions about the war, but at least their research includes information that debunks the reckless claims made by the likes of Chomsky, Prouty, and Zinn. Then, you might read at least two conservative/South Vietnamese books on the war, such as those written by Mark Moyar, Lewis Sorley, Ira Hunt, Phillip Davidson, James Robbins, Geoffrey Shaw, Dale Walton, Leonard Scruggs, Grant Sharp, George Veith, Mark Woodruff, Bruce Palmer, Phillip Jennings, Robert Turner, Nghia Vo, Bui Diem, and Nathalie Nguyen. Prouty was is no position to have inside knowledge about the CIA. FYI, Lansdale fired Prouty because he was so paranoid about the CIA. Finally, the importance of JFK's comments on his father's position on intervention in Europe in WW II appears to have escaped those who have criticized my remarks on the subject. I know you folks worship FDR and blindly rubber-stamp his horrible handling of the war, but that there were many, many millions of patriotic Americans who believed that it was a mistake to side with Stalin and that it was not an either/or situation regarding Stalin and Hitler, i.e., that opposing Stalin did not mean excusing Hitler. Many Americans felt that we should let the Germans chew up the Soviet Union and then deal with Hitler by, among other measures, supporting the substantial German opposition to Hitler. But, FDR refused to lift a finger to help the German opposition, though he was happy to give Stalin, one of the worst mass murderers in history, billions of dollars of weapons, supplies, and financial aid.

I think you are overstating matters. Here's some of what Dr. Mantik himself says in one of his replies to your critique of his research on the white patch: No, it does not – nor could it even do so in principle. First, these are two distinctly different areas, as should be obvious from the right lateral X-ray – the White Patch is much more posterior than the overlap area. See my image of the White Patch in Assassination Science 1998, p. 160, or slide 5 in my Dallas lecture, or my Figure 5 just below. . . . In his image (my Figure 6 here), Speer locates the "Actual tip of ‘wing'," presumably meaning its most posterior tip (although his syntax is fuzzy). Even if that unreasonably far posterior location is accepted, it is still far too anterior to match the posterior border of the White Patch. The location of the White Patch, especially its posterior border, has repeatedly been confirmed by the OD data – it does not depend on the human eye (although it does match what the eye sees); in fact, the whitest area lies immediately anterior to the inner table of the occipital skull, well posterior to anyone's location for the "wing." (JFK Autopsy X-rays: David Mantik vs. Pat Speer (kennedysandking.com) I think Dr. Mantik shows, in his always-polite way, that on most issues regarding the skull x-rays, you simply do not know what you are talking about. Most of the back-of-head witnesses said the large wound was in the right "occipital-parietal" area, so part of the wound was on the right side of the head, not just on the back of the head. I should not have said that the patch covers "most" of the area described by witnesses. I should have said "part," and I've corrected my previous reply accordingly. To my non-professional eyes, the white patch appears to be in a location that would cover at least a small part of the anterior edge of the wound described by the the witnesses. One thing is certain: The white patch has no corresponding image on the A-P x-ray, but it should if both x-rays are pristine. If the white patch is not an artifact that was placed on the lateral x-ray, then the A-P x-ray should contain an image of bone that corresponds to the white patch, but it does not.

You're citing Turse's book again???! Let me repeat what I said about Turse's book in a previous reply: -- Perhaps the best response to Nick Turse’s book Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam, is the 37-page critical review written by Vietnam War scholars Gary Kulik and Peter Zinoman. Here’s a brief excerpt from their review: Turse’s slipshod approach to the existing scholarship highlights more general problems with his research methods. “Only by combining veterans’ testimonies, contemporaneous press coverage, Vietnamese eye-witness accounts, long classified official-studies, and the military’s own formal investigations into the many hundreds of atrocity cases that it knew about,” he writes, “can one begin to grasp what the Vietnam War really entailed” (258). But Turse’s sloppy and tendentious use of sources represents the book’s most serious problem. A perusal of the notes indicates that he relies on an indiscriminate mix of credible and unreliable sources and that his agenda-driven selection and presentation of evidence frequently misleads. Gary Kulik’s “War Stories” (2009) uses the same military documents to examine the first American atrocity discussed at length in Turse’s book: the so-called Trieu Ai massacre. Comparison with Kulik’s much longer and more detailed account reveals a working method on the part of Turse marked by the cherry picking of data and the partisan framing of evidence. Eyewitness accounts of the incident that Turse collected in Vietnam in 2006 and 2008 raise more questions than they answer and point to problems with his use of this complicated source. Americans killed civilians at Triệu Ái, but Turse jumps to false conclusions about the circumstances that led to the killings, and he offers unqualified speculation about this episode as emphatic truth. As historians, we argue that Turse’s opposition to war atrocities does not excuse these mistakes. (https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/e-journal/articles/zinoman_kulik.pdf) Vietnam veteran Tom Equels, who was personally slandered in Turse’s book, had this to say about Turse’s work: I was personally defamed by Turse's disregard for truth. It is ironic that he talks about overkill and then with careless disregard for the truth trashes the reputations of honorable soldiers, having zero factual basis. Journalistic overkill at its worst. He interviewed no one regarding the incident and obviously did not even read the record he so liberally cites. I had to gather the official documents, gather witness statements, and then prove I was not within a hundred miles of the alleged incident to get a retraction/correction! (https://cross-currents.berkeley.edu/e-journal/issue-12/zinoman-and-kulik) To read more about Turse’s irresponsible handling of evidence regarding Tom Equels, see Agreement Reached to Retract Story that Decorated Vietnam War Hero Participated in Civilian Massacre -- Equels Law Firm | PRLog. Turse and his publisher were eventually forced to issue a formal retraction of his false claims about Equels. -- I have presented some of the evidence regarding the “reign of terror” (quoting former VC official Tang’s words) that the North Vietnamese army (NVA) imposed on the South after Saigon fell, which terror included executing tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sending 1-2 million others to brutal “reeducation” camps, where thousands more died from forced labor, starvation, neglect. Along this line, mention should be made of the fact that during the NVA’s final invasion of South Vietnam in March and April in 1975, the NVA killed thousands of civilians by shelling highways that were clogged with fleeing civilians. The NVA did the same thing in 1972 when they shelled Highway 1 during their Easter Offensive. I quote from an article on the subject titled “Appeasing the Spirits Along the Highway of Horror,” published on a website maintained by Vietnamese refugees: In contrast, the RVN government [South Vietnam’s government] (before it was defeated in 1975) claimed that the PAVN [another acronym for the North Vietnamese army] intentionally targeted civilians.[22] Bolstering the RVN’s assertion was the confession of PAVN Private Lê Xuân Thủy, who was serving as a radio operator for the 4th Battalion, 324th Division, when he defected on 31 July 1972.[23] At an RVN government-organized press conference on 8 September, Thủy revealed that his unit had been ordered to “maintain an ambush position along Route 1” for six days to allow other PAVN troops to capture Quảng Trị city.[24] Thủy’s commander had instructed his unit to shoot into the column of people fleeing Quảng Trị, even though it was clear that many civilians were present. The troops were told that the refugees were the enemy because they were opting to leave rather than stay. Troops were commanded to shoot at all vehicles, including civilian cars, buses, and bicycles. According to Thủy, this event shook his faith in the DRV [North Vietnam] and led to his defection. The testimony of one defector in state custody does not make for credible evidence. His assertion that the PAVN fired on civilians, however, corresponds with other contemporary reports and eyewitness accounts. Many observers reported that civilian presence on the road was clearly discernable during the attack. . . . The full extent of the attack was known only in July, after the ARVN [South Vietnam’s army] regained the southern parts of Quảng Trị province. As mentioned above, the two reporters who broke the story for Sóng Thần, Ngy Thanh and Đoàn Kế Tường, were among the first to return to the highway. Being members of the military force themselves, both reporters arrived with the troops on 1 July.[40] As the airborne headed toward Quảng Trị city on the western side of Highway One and the marines on the eastern side, the two reporters went on their own and found a way across the Bến Đá Bridge, which had been destroyed in late April. Because they arrived before the ARVN troops, Ngy Thanh and Tường were able to witness the scene before soldiers cleared the highway of vehicles and bodies to make it passable. According to Ngy Thanh and Đoàn Kế Tường’s article, published on 3 July, the 10-km stretch of highway southeast of Quảng Trị city was a scene of mass destruction. The road was obstructed by damaged tanks, buses, cars, and Red Cross vehicles with stretchers still inside. Motorcycles were abandoned with keys in the ignition. Strewn around and in these wrecks were hundreds of bodies; some were soldiers but most were civilians, including women and children.[41] Many more bodies could be found in the sandy banks along both sides of the highway, the soft sand acting as their grave. The reporters noted that because the corpses had been there since the end of April, a significant number had already begun to decompose. Other Vietnamese journalists reported equally horrifying sights along the highway when they returned in July.[44] War correspondents Vũ Thanh Thủy and Dương Phục recorded in their joint memoir the eerie and surreal sight that they encountered along this stretch of highway.[45] According to them, there were so many corpses that it was difficult for journalists to walk along the shoulders of the highway. They had to use walking sticks to help avoid stepping on corpses.[46] (Appeasing the Spirits Along the 'Highway of Horror' - DVAN) The NVA also used South Vietnamese civilians as human shields during the Easter Offensive by surrounding some of their positions with captured South Vietnamese refugees. -- Former Army Green Beret and veterans rights activist Ted Sampley discussed North Vietnamese war crimes in a 1997 article in U.S. Veteran Dispatch: North Vietnamese Army Regulars, on orders from Vietnam's infamous "war hero" General Vo Nguyen Giap, rounded up and marched the civilians to a dry river bed and summarily executed them with bullets, bayonets and clubs. Some were buried alive with their hands tied behind their backs. Their only crime — they believed in democracy or they were Christians. . . . The record is absolutely clear. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing until the fall of Saigon in 1975, communist leaders orchestrated as official policy the use of terror as a weapon targeted directly at the non-communist population of Vietnam. Communist terrorists blew up churches, schools and bridges, and murdered thousands of South Vietnamese civilian officials. In some cases, the communists murdered the wives, children, and even livestock and pets of the officials. . . . After North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace Agreements and took over South Vietnam by bloody military force, they murdered thousands more civilians. Those that were not executed were taken from their homes and jailed for years in forced labor concentration camps. Some are still being held today. There is no question about the intentional deprivation, beatings, torture and murder that U.S. and South Vietnamese prisoners of war were subjected to by the communist Vietnamese during the war. Many of the torturers are easily found today. They are still running the Vietnamese government. (Atrocities Committed by Vietcong (11thcavnam.com) And what did the likes of John Kerry and Bella Abzug have to say about these atrocities? Nothing. How about all the misguided, duped college students who had staged numerous angry protests when we attacked NVA positions in Laos and Cambodia? Surely they protested these war crimes, right? Nope. They had nothing to say either, not one word, not one protest, not one poster, nothing. These people were not really “anti-war.” Rather, they were against any U.S. military action against the NVA or the Vietcong. They said nothing when North Vietnam launched another full-scale invasion of South Vietnam in late 1974—not one peep of protest. Nor did they say anything about the Communists’ mass executions and their internment of 1-2 million people in brutal concentration camps after Saigon fell—not one word.