Michael Griffith

Robert MacNeil (of the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour): "the president's driver slammed on the brakes." Mrs. Earle Cabell: The motorcade "stopped dead still." William Newman: "When I say 'stopped' I mean . . . like they hit the brakes." At least 40 witnesses, from all over the plaza, said the limo either stopped or visibly slowed. Yet, in the Zapruder film the limo maintains a steady speed throughout the shooting.

Prouty was a crackpot who associated with wingnut extremists and who peddled ludicrous theories that greatly damaged the case for conspiracy. If you still believe his stuff, you are the one who needs to do some remedial reading. Prouty's claim that Edward Lansdale played a leading role in JFK's assassination because of JFK's Vietnam policy is obscene and absurd. Lansdale opposed--O P P O S E D--the introduction of large numbers of combat troops in Vietnam. He also happened to admire JFK and was deeply saddened by his death. Pray tell, what "falsehoods" have I presented about WW II? WW II??? Are you saying you don't think the Soviets were just as brutal and murderous as the Japanese? FYI, the Soviets killed far more people than Germany and Japan combined. Do you have any clue about the gigantic atrocities that the Soviets committed in Manchuria and northern Korea alone toward the end of WW II? For that matter, Stalin and his henchmen murdered some 20 million of their fellow Soviets before WW II even began. As evil and murderous as Hitler was, Stalin was worse. Many, many Americans wondered why FDR could not reach some accommodation with anti-communist Japan while he coddled and aided the far more repressive and vicious Soviet Union, and many Americans also wondered why FDR chose to fight Germany instead of Russia when Russia was clearly a bigger threat to human freedom than Germany. Did you miss the news about the Iron Curtain, about the subjugation of tens of millions of Eastern Europeans under Soviet tyranny after WW II? Did you miss the news about what the Soviets did when Hungary and Czechoslovakia tried to free themselves from Soviet domination? Ever heard of Alexander Solzhenitsyn? Finally, I guarantee you that no one here has schooled me about the Vietnam War. The people who've responded to me on the subject appear to have done no serious reading on the war, and what little they know about it has obviously mostly come from looney far-left sources. Before I told them about it, not one of them knew anything about the historic information we've learned from North Vietnamese and Soviet sources about the Vietnam War, because the sources they've read ignore this information. Nor did any of them seem to have any clue about the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after the war, which included executing tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sending over 1 million others to concentration camps, where thousands more died from brutality and neglect. When I first mentioned this reign of terror, one of them said, "You must be talking about Cambodia." Anyone who thinks that the 1974 extremist propaganda film Hearts and Minds is a credible documentary on the war, much less "the best" documentary on the war, has no credibility and has no business talking about the subject in a public forum.

These facts must be included when we consider the theory that JFK's Vietnam policy was a major reason he was killed. What if someone proposed that another major reason that JFK was killed was that he was in the process of expanding the welfare state? Most people would say, "Well, wait a minute. Johnson expanded the welfare state far more than JFK had ever proposed. If LBJ knew of the assassination plot and approved of it, wouldn't the conspirators have demanded that he reduce or stop his welfare-state expansion? The only two alternatives are that (1) the conspirators were not powerful enough to persuade LBJ to do as they wished, or (2) most of the conspirators did not view the size of the welfare state as a reason to kill JFK." LBJ's horrible mishandling of the Vietnam War and the Joint Chiefs' feckless conduct under LBJ suggest that few if any top-level military officials were involved in the assassination plot. It is hard to fathom that any of the Joint Chiefs or the Vice Chiefs were involved in the plot, given the sheepish way they behaved while LBJ was sabotaging the war effort. Their feckless conduct is one of the main subjects of H. R. McMaster's award-winning book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam.

Remember, too, that another member of the Clark Panel, Dr. Russell Fisher, told Howard Donahue that the panel believed the 6.5 mm "fragment" must have been a ricochet fragment. Of course, we've known for years from Dr. Mantik's and Dr. Chesser's optical density measurements that the 6.5 object is a fabrication, a fake image ghosted, via double exposure, over a small amount of genuine bullet fragment material. The idea that any fragment would "shear off" from the bottom part of an FMJ bullet as it entered the skull at a downward angle is ludicrous and contrary to everything we know about the behavior of FMJ missiles. This is not to mention the fact that the 6.5 mm object is 1 cm/0.39 inches below the revised entry site on the skull. Even assuming the impossible scenario of a fragment shearing off an FMJ missile from the missile's bottom side with the missile entering the skull at a downward angle, how in the world would the fragment end up nearly half an inch below the alleged shearing point? How? Did it come alive and crawl 1 cm before deciding to stop?

In his endorsement of the book, radiation oncologist Dr. Greg Henkelmann summarizes the matter well when he says, Dr. Mantik's optical density analysis is the single most important piece of scientific evidence in the JFK assassination. Unlike other evidence, optical density data is as "theory free" as possible, as this data deals only with physical measurements. To reject alteration of the JFK skull x-rays is to reject basic physics and radiology. Dr. Mantik's optical density measurements are hard scientific proof that the skull x-rays have been altered. This historic evidence has been published for well over a decade, but lone-gunman theorists continue to ignore it and continue to pretend that the skull x-rays are pristine and reliable. Similarly, lone-gunman theorists continue to ignore the hard scientific evidence that the impossible white patch on the right rear of the skull in the lateral skull x-ray must be a fabrication. They have yet to find a single other skull x-ray that shows such an impossibly white patch. Of course, the white patch conveniently covers part of the area that over 40 witnesses said contained a large wound.

Well, anyway, I will most likely get Wiesak's book, because the first two chapters, leaving aside the two issues I've discussed, are worthwhile and credible. I don't throw out the baby with the bath water, but I know that many readers will dismiss her book when they see her quoting Prouty, and that's unfortunate. I was impressed with her section on the letters that JFK and Joe Sr. exchanged about American intervention and so-called "appeasement" in WW II. I was especially interested to see that JFK appeared to support his father's position, urging him to frame his argument in such a way that his critics could not call him an appeaser without indicting themselves as "war mongers." Wow, that's some controversial stuff! I'll be curious to see if she develops this issue later in the book. This issue opens up the very touchy can of worms of FDR's handling of WW II, the issue of whether we should have considered the far more brutal Soviet Union as our main enemy and dealt with the Soviets first, and then turned our attention to toppling Hitler, and the issue of why FDR refused all Japanese peace offers (some of which were very reasonable) yet bent over backward to befriend the Soviets, who were every bit as brutal as the Japanese, if not more so.

Wow, somehow I had overlooked this part of Witt's testimony! Thank goodness I've never commented on Umbrella Man in my articles or books, because this segment of his testimony leads me to believe that Witt may well have been Umbrella Man and that his explanation for his strange actions, as silly and far fetched as it seems to be, may in fact be true.

Yes, Colby was one of the good guys in the CIA. I don't know if his death was accidental or deliberate, but he was one of the decent and straight-shooting people in the agency. If his death was not an accident, perhaps it was simply a delayed revenge killing for his having revealed so many agency misdeeds in earlier years. Part of me wonders if some of the plotters killed JFK out of sheer spite and revenge, not because they thought he posed an existential threat to their power or interests. Perhaps the rogue CIA elements did not care, or maybe did not know, that JFK planned to overthrow Castro with a carefully orchestrated coup that was scheduled to occur in early December. The coup would have involved a high-ranking and popular Cuban general (General Almeida), who had agreed to participate. Certain Mafia leaders, on the other hand, certainly had every reason to view JFK as an existential threat.

I agree completely. I just know how unfair and disingenuous our critics can be when it comes to judging things like this.

Since Jim has posted a video about modern Vietnam, I thought I would post some videos about modern Vietnam's brutality and suppression of human rights. The first video is a portion of a UN Watch meeting held a few weeks on why Vietnam should not be granted a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. The second video, produced earlier this year, is a Human Rights Watch video on the treatment of human rights activists in Vietnam. The third video is another Human Rights Watch video on the treatment of activists in Vietnam. The fourth video is a brief speech given in 2007 by Democratic Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez on the state of human rights in Vietnam at the time. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmPm8smE0QU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ygjwww4qLvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMjxhlvyHlQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo2q1J0MYYI

Are you going to discuss the much more numerous war crimes committed by North Korea? Or do you only care about war crimes committed by anti-communists? I won't ask if you are trying to suggest that it would have been better if North Korea had won the Korean War, since any sane, honest person can see that the people of South Korea were far better off than the people of North Korea, and that modern North Korea is a giant gulag while modern South Korea is a thriving democratic state. And, it goes without saying that if the Communists had not taken over China in 1949, there would have been no Communist Chinese army to cross the Yalu River and reimpose communism on North Korea during the Korean War. If the Chinese Communists had not intervened, the people of North Korea would be vastly better off today. Liberals show themselves to be disconnected from historical fact when they mock the Domino Theory and claim that somehow it was disproved. In fact, North Korea would be a much better place today if the Communists had not conquered China in 1949, and Laos and Cambodia would not have fallen under Communist tyranny in 1975 if we had conducted Linebacker-II-like air operations against North Vietnam during any 9-12-month period between 1965 and 1973. In so doing, our troop losses would have been reduced by at least 90% and North Vietnam would have been forced to surrender on terms that would have made it impossible for them to resume aggressive military action.

Yeah, you'd think it would be generating at least some major news coverage when a former Moscow CIA station chief is voicing his reasons for believing that rogue CIA elements played a role in JFK's assassination. It's too bad that he mistakes Helms for Dulles as the official fired after the Bay of Pigs. This is the kind of mistake that critics will pounce on and will use as an excuse to ignore the rest of what he says.

Oh, wow. Uh, are we talking about the same Gamal Abdel Nasser who banned all political parties except his own after he took power, who recommended the obscene anti-Semitic screed Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, who later tried to legitimize his dictatorship by winning 99% of the vote in a clearly bogus election (even Diem and Thieu never claimed such an amazing margin of victory), who began sending terrorist teams into Israel in 1954, who signed arms deals with the Soviets and the Czechs in 1955 (which caused even the very pro-Arab Dwight Eisenhower to pull U.S. funding for the Aswan Dam), who claimed in a 1960 speech to the UN that Israel's independence was an "error," who closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships in 1956, who condemned Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba in 1965 for daring to suggest that Arab nations should recognize Israel and explore a political solution, who closed the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ships again in May 1967, who publicly declared in that same month that "our objective will be to destroy Israel," who demanded that the UN peacekeeping force leave the Sinai in 1967 and then proceeded to blockade Israeli ships from the Gulf of Aqaba and moved an extra 45,000 troops into the Sinai in preparation for a full-scale attack on Israel (but whose aggression was foiled when the Israelis detected his invasion preparations and stopped them with preemptive strikes that virtually wiped out Egypt's air force), who also dragged Egypt into a war with Yemen, who murdered political opponents, etc.? Is that the Nasser you're talking about? Sheesh, is there no murdering thug you won't defend if that thug was pro-communist? And what exactly was "smart" about getting out of Vietnam? (JFK did no such thing, but the Democrat-controlled Congress did this in 1973.) Was it handing over 18 million people to Hanoi's tyranny? Was it the "reign of terror" that the North Vietnamese Communists imposed on the South Vietnamese? (I'm using quotes for "reign of terror" because that's the term that a former Vietcong leader used to describe the brutality that the Communists imposed on the South after Saigon fell.) Was it the 60,000-plus executions that the Communists carried out? Was it the sending of 1-2 million South Vietnamese to concentration camps? Was it the killing of tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese in those concentration camps through abuse and inhumane conditions? Was it the abolition of basic freedoms such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, freedom of religion? Was it the shutting down of all private schools? Was it the confiscation of all the property and life savings of hundreds of thousands of South Vietnamese? Was it Communist Vietnam's well-documented repression and brutality in the decades that followed the war? Is it the fact that even today, in 2022, Communist Vietnam is ranked by even the most liberal human rights groups as one of the worst, most oppressive regimes on the planet? You slander JFK by praising him for "getting out of Vietnam." He did no such thing, and there's not a shred of credible evidence to support your theory that he planned on totally abandoning South Vietnam regardless of the consequences after he was reelected. Even James Galbraith, a fierce advocate of the case for JFK's intention to withdraw, admits that under JFK's plan, aid to South Vietnam would continue after 1965 and 1,500 support troops would remain after 1965.

No, I am not a neocon. I thought I had made that abundantly clear, but I guess it went in one ear and out the other. Why do you continue to spread Communist propaganda? Nixon's bombing in Indochina was not "bombs away" but was carefully targeted to keep civilian casualties as low as possible. I see you are still holding to the bizarre, really obscene, line that the Communist takeover of Vietnam was not really all that bad and that things are not really all that bad in Vietnam today. This is from a report on Vietnam jointly issued just a few weeks ago by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Article 19, and the ICJ: Since announcing its candidacy for the HRC on 22 February 2021, Viet Nam has detained, arrested, or sentenced at least 48 journalists, activists, and NGO leaders for arbitrary crimes ranging from ‘abusing democratic freedoms’ to ‘propaganda against the State’ to ‘tax evasion’, articles 311, 117 and 200 of the Criminal Code. Two emblematic cases of the recent trend are Pham Chi Dung, former president of the Independent Journalists Association of Viet Nam, who was sentenced to 15 years in prison in January 2021, and Pham Doan Trang, a prominent independent journalist and human rights defender, who was sentenced to 9 years imprisonment also on propaganda charges in December 2021. Viet Nam has pledged to raise awareness of human rights among the public, but any such measures are undermined by recent decrees aiming to control NGOs, many of whose core activities are education programs that raise public awareness of human rights. On 31 August 2022, Viet Nam introduced Decree 58, which regulates foreign NGOs. Viet Nam has also drafted the Regulations on the organization, operation and management of associations aimed at regulating domestic NGOs. Both regulations allow for the termination of NGOs on vague grounds such as ‘national interest’ and ‘social order’, providing the Viet Nam authorities with almost indefinite scope to silence their critics and those engaging in disfavoured expression. This scope is worsened in the draft decree for local NGOs, which prohibits the ‘[u]ndermining’ of the State under article 11(1). Viet Nam has pledged to carry out legal reforms to further incorporate provisions of international human rights treaties into national laws. But these recent decrees allow the State to punish NGOs for what may amount to publicly voiced criticism. They are non-compliant with Viet Nam’s obligations to respect and ensure the rights to freedom of expression and association provided for in articles 19 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) to which Viet Nam is a State-party. The authorities have long used the law to attack anybody in Viet Nam who speaks out in defense of their and others’ human rights. This includes articles from the Criminal Code, especially Article 117, which criminalises ‘making, storing, distributing or disseminating information, documents and items against the Socialist Republic of Vietnam’, and Article 331, which criminalizes ‘abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the State’. In particular, the UN Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression previously stated that Article 117 is “overly broad and appears to be aimed at silencing those who seek to exercise their human right to freely express their views and share information with others”. Our organizations have documented the use of these charges, and similar charges, by Viet Nam to arrest and threaten more than 100 human rights defenders and activists since 2019. While Viet Nam has pledged to conduct legal reforms aimed at enhancing its institutional, judicial, and policy foundation related to human rights, the continued abuse of critics brave enough to speak out against the Vietnamese government since the pledge was made demonstrates they do not intend to honour it. (Vietnam: Human Rights Council candidacy demands human rights progress - ARTICLE 19) You don't want to admit the ugly truth about the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese Communists imposed on the South Vietnamese after Saigon fell, and about the brutal regime that Vietnam's government continues to be, because you don't want to admit that the anti-war liberals supported the forces of evil guys in the Vietnam War and betrayed the good guys.

Many people will, unfortunately, judge a book by reading a single chapter, much less two chapters, if that chapter cites and quotes a fringe, discredited fraud who has made crazy claims. You appear to have misread my comments about Wiesak's statements on the Arab-Israeli conflict as saying that JFK was anti-Israeli. No, I do not believe that JFK was anti-Israeli. But, Wiesak seems to harbor an anti-Israeli bias. Since she is an ultra-liberal, this is not shocking, since an increasing number of radical liberals are turning against Israel and, incredibly and shamefully, are painting Israeli Jews as the aggressors and the Palestinians as the victims. I was an Arabic and Hebrew linguist in the military; I have lived in Israel; and I have been researching the Arab-Israeli conflict for nearly 40 years. As you have done in your research on the Vietnam War, you appear to have gotten most of your information on the Arab-Israeli issue from extremist, unreliable sources. The only way anyone can paint Israel as the aggressor and the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors as the victims is to ignore a massive body of facts. Nearly all liberal Democrats used to strongly support Israel because Israel bent over backward to try to live peacefully with her hostile Arab neighbors. Most Democrats still do support Israel, because Israel has never stopped making every reasonable effort to achieve peace with her neighbors, but as the liberal wing of the Democratic Party has become increasingly nutty and rabid, a growing minority of liberals have become anti-Israeli.

This is not to mention the fact that LBJ, taking McNamara's idiotic advice over the advice of the Joint Chiefs and the CINCPAC, imposed absurd, suicidal restrictions on our military operations in Vietnam. For example, according to LBJ's insane rules of engagement, our jet fighters could not attack a MIG airfield unless the MIGs took off and fired at them first. Our fighters could not attack SAM sites unless the sites fired at them first. When we saw the SAM sites being constructed, our military leaders naturally asked for permission to knock them out before they became operational, but LBJ refused. LBJ allowed the North Vietnamese army (NVA) to maintain huge sanctuary areas in Cambodia and Laos, sanctuaries that the NVA used to mass weapons and supplies and troops, and to which they safely retreated whenever they wanted to disengage from our forces. LBJ refused to mine Haiphong Harbor, through which North Vietnam received a large portion of its weapons and supplies, and refused to hit vital logistical targets north of the 20th parallel, and in so doing prevented our forces from cutting off most of the weapons and supplies that entered North Vietnam and that were then transported to South Vietnam via the sanctuaries in Cambodia and Laos. If Westmoreland had been allowed to assault those sanctuaries, as he dearly wanted to do, NVA operations in South Vietnam would have been drastically curtailed, and there would have been no Tet Offensive, because the NVA and the VC would have received at least 70-80% fewer weapons and supplies than they had been getting. So, yes, it is absolutely valid and fair to say that LBJ horribly mismanaged the war.

But, how can you think this about Oswald given all that we now know about him? How? Oswald's IQ was "in the upper range of bright, normal intelligence." He mastered the very difficult language of Russian. And Oswald's intelligence connections are too well documented for rational disputation. "Lone assassin"? Even now, in 2022, after the new information that has come to light about Oswald's whereabouts during the shooting, not to mention his mediocre marksmanship skills, etc., etc.? The lone-gunman tale is a comfort lie, a lie that some people embrace because the idea of an assassination conspiracy is too unsettling and disturbing for them. It is so much easier to believe that JFK's public execution was just the act of a lone, nutty gunman, and not the result of a powerful conspiracy that involved elements of the CIA, the Mafia, and anti-Castro Cubans.

What is especially disappointing about this propaganda book is the number of endorsements it has received from scholars who should know better, including Mark Updegrove, author of Incomparable Grace: JFK in the Presidency, and Mark Kramer, the director of the Cold War Studies Project at Harvard University. The fact that scholars such as Updegrove and Kramer would endorse this work of trash just shows the huge disconnect between academia and factual history.

I read the first two chapters (because they're available free of charge as a sample of the Kindle version). I would give the chapters a B-. I'm concerned about the apparent anti-Israeli bias and one-sidedness in Wiesak's comments about the Israeli-Palestinian issue. She chose not to mention the fact that the Jews accepted the 1947 UN partition plan for Palestine but that the Palestinians and their Arab neighbors rejected it and instead tried to annihilate the Jews. The partition plan gave the Palestinians a homeland, gave them the West Bank, gave them a large chunk of northern Palestine, gave them the Gaza Strip, and gave them the majority of the most fertile areas. The partition plan also made Jerusalem an international city controlled by neither the Jews nor the Palestinians. But Palestinian leaders were so certain that their Arab brethren could easily "wipe the Jews into the sea" that they rejected the partition plan and invited five Arab armies to attack the newly formed Jewish state. Naturally, when the Jews miraculously won the war, they were in no mood to be generous to the people who had just tried to facilitate their destruction. The Palestinians were lucky the Jews didn't drive every one of them out of the country after their treacherous conduct. Until relatively recently, virtually all liberals were staunchly pro-Israeli. But, in recent years, as the Left has become increasingly radicalized, a growing minority of liberals have turned against Israel. Wiesak seems to be in that camp. If I am misreading her views on this issue, I will be happy to admit my error. I'm also concerned that Wiesak quotes Fletcher Prouty. Seriously? In 2022? After all we now know about Prouty, his nutty claims, his disastrous and revealing ARRB interview, his fringe/extremist associations? Every journalist and scholar who reads her book is going to see her use of Prouty as a red flag and is going to question her credibility and scholarship because of it. Oliver Stone's heavy reliance on Prouty's crazy claims in his 1991 movie JFK was the main problem that scholars had with the movie. If Wiesak had not quoted Prouty and had been more even-handed on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, I would give the two chapters an A. I try not to throw out babies with the bath water, but in 2022 there is just no excuse for any conspiracy theorist to be quoting Fletcher Prouty, and one would think that any person claiming to be "liberal" would be very sympathetic to the state of Israel.

Good grief, Paul, it is incredible that you would say this, given all that has been known on the subject for decades. LBJ and McNamara micromanaged the war to a degree never seen before or since in the history of American warfare. Presidents are not supposed to do that, but that's exactly what LBJ did, and that was a big part of the problem. I'm just wondering how anyone can be unaware of this fact in 2022. I take it you haven't read such books as H. R. McMaster's award-winning 1997 work Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, among others that could be cited. LBJ and McNamara went so far as to usurp from local commanders the choosing of tactical-level bombing targets and the setting of time frames for bombing operations without consideration of the weather and changing circumstances. LBJ did not just mismanage the war, he mis-micromanaged the war. He and McNamara were making tactical operational decisions that they had no business making, that they were not qualified to make, and that were normally made by corps- and division-level commanders.

In 1964, none other than liberal icon Adlai Stevenson, our UN ambassador at the time, set the record straight about the Vietnam War in a statement to the UN Security Council. Stevenson, who had twice been the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee (1952 and 1956), pointed out that North Vietnam was the aggressor, that South Vietnam was the victim, that the war was no civil war, that Communist China was backing North Vietnam’s aggression, that the Vietcong were controlled by Hanoi, and that the Vietcong were torturing and murdering children, medical workers, priests, and teachers, among other civilians, and were targeting hospitals and schools and other civilian facilities: It is the people of the Republic of Vietnam [i.e., South Vietnam] who are the major victims on armed aggression. It is they who are fighting for their independence against violence directed from outside their borders. It is they who suffer day and night from the terror of the so-called Viet Cong. The prime targets of the Viet Cong for kidnapping, for torture, and for murder have been local officials, school teachers, medical workers, priests, agricultural specialists, and any others whose position, profession, or other talents qualified them for service to the people of Vietnam--plus, of course, the relatives and children of citizens loyal to their government. The chosen military objectives of the Viet Cong--for gunfire or arson or pillage--have been hospitals, school houses, agricultural stations, and various improvement projects by which the Government of Vietnam for many years has been raising the living standards of the people. The government and people of Vietnam have been struggling for survival, struggling for years for survival in a war which has been as wicked, as wanton, and as dirty as any waged against an innocent and peaceful people in the whole cruel history of warfare. . . . The United States Government is currently involved in the affairs of the Republic of Vietnam for one reason and one reason only: because the Republic of Vietnam requested the help of the United States and of other governments to defend itself against armed attack fomented, equipped, and directed from the outside. . . . Aggression is aggression; organized violence is organized violence. Only the scale and the scenery change: the point is the same in Vietnam today as it was in Greece in 1947 and in Korea in 1950. The Indochinese Communist Party, the parent of the present Communist Party in North Vietnam, made it abundantly clear as early as 1951 that the aim of the Vietnamese Communist leadership is to take control of all of Indochina. This goal has not changed--it is still clearly the objective of the Vietnamese Communist leadership in Hanoi. Hanoi seeks to accomplish this purpose in South Vietnam through subversive guerrilla directed, controlled, and supplied by North Vietnam. The Communist leadership in Hanoi has sought to pretend that the insurgency in South Vietnam is a civil war, but Hanoi's hand shows very clearly. Public statements by the Communist Party in North Vietnam and its leaders have repeatedly demonstrated Hanoi’s direction of the struggle in South Vietnam. . . . The International Control Commission in Vietnam, established by the Geneva Accords in 1954, stated in a special report which it issued in June 1962, that there is sufficient evidence to show that North Vietnam has violated various articles of the Geneva Accords by its introduction of armed personnel, arms, munitions, and other supplies from North Vietnam into South Vietnam with the object of supporting, organizing, and carrying out hostile activities against the Government and armed forces of South Vietnam. Infiltration of military personnel and supplies from North Vietnam to South Vietnam has been carried out steadily over the past several years. The total number of military cadres sent into South Vietnam via infiltration routes runs into the thousands. Such infiltration is well documented on the basis of numerous defectors and prisoners taken by the armed forces of South Vietnam. Introduction of Communist weapons into South Vietnam has also grown steadily. An increasing amount of weapons and ammunition captured from the Viet Cong has been proven to be of Chinese Communist manufacture or origin. For example, in December 1963, a large cache of Viet Cong equipment captured in one of the Mekong Delta provinces in South Vietnam included recoilless rifles, rocket launchers, carbines, and ammunition of Chinese Communist manufacture. The United States cannot stand by while Southeast Asia is overrun by armed aggressors. (“Statement by the Honorable Adlai E. Stevenson, United States Representative to the United Nations, Before the Security Council of the United Nations, on the Cambodian Complaint,” May 21, 1964, available online at https://dolearchives.ku.edu/sites/dolearchive.drupal.ku.edu/files/files/historyday/originals/hd11_vietnam25.pdf) Amen. Amen. And Amen.

I just got it in the mail two days ago. It is fantastic.

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.

That scenario strikes me as unlikely and unrealistic. If the plotters were Cold War hawks and therefore viewed Vietnam as a vital issue, I seriously doubt that any of them wanted a war in Vietnam merely to make money and did not care if South Vietnam fell to the Communists. That sounds far-fetched and out of character for Cold War hawks. If the argument is that the majority of the plotters were not Cold War hawks, then we're back to my point that that is not what I am talking about. I am talking about the common assumption among most conspiracy theorists that the plotters viewed JFK's Vietnam policy as a major reason to kill him because they were Cold War warriors who were determined to keep South Vietnam free.

I think we're missing the forest for the trees here. The point is that IF the plotters' viewed JFK's Vietnam policy as a major reason to kill him, then they were not powerful enough to prevent LBJ from bungling the war effort. When I say "the plotters" I'm referring to most or all of them, not to just part of them. Obviously, if only a minority of the plotters considered Vietnam policy to be a crucial issue, this would explain the plotters' failure to control LBJ's handling of the war. But, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm certainly open to the idea that the majority of the plotters did not view Vietnam as a key issue. I think that's a distinct possibility, given what happened after JFK's death. If this is the case, then many of my fellow conspiracy theorists need to revise their theory of the assassination, since many of them believe that Vietnam was one of the plotter's main motives, if not their main motive, for wanting JFK dead. But, again, this is not what I'm talking about.