Michael Griffith

Seriously? This is obscene Russian propaganda. This is the garbage that Putin says. That's like saying that England "provoked" Germany by promising to defend Poland if Germany invaded. Only an aggressive tyranny cares if a neighboring country joins a purely defensive alliance. I have dear friends in Ukraine, so this issue is very personal for me. My wife and I hosted a Ukrainian exchange student, a teenage girl, for a year in 2018 and visited her and her family in Ukraine in 2019. Her father, though in his 40s, has joined the Ukrainian army to help defend their country. It just makes me sick to see someone get on a public forum and blame America for Russia's attempted rape of Ukraine.

Wow, he was murdered for asking who runs America? That's rough! Talk about rotten luck!

Here's what I wonder: I wonder how anyone in 2022, after all we now know, can get on a public forum and defend the single-bullet theory, especially with such utterly erroneous, ridiculous material. The back wound was shallow and had no exit point. The bullet that struck JFK's back was traveling at a slightly upward trajectory, and JFK was never leaning far enough forward to make any vertical SBT trajectory possible. JFK and Connally were never aligned in a way that would make the SBT possible. There was no hole through JFK's tie and no nick on the edge of the tie. The holes in the front of JFK's shirt were slits made by one of the nurses. Only by assuming a far-fetched bunching of both JFK's coat and his shirt in nearly perfect millimeter-for-millimeter correspondence can one put the back wound where the WC placed it. JFK is clearly, clearly, clearly reacting to severe external stimulus before Connally even begins to turn to his right--anyone who denies this is either blind or is dissembling. There is no path from the back wound to the throat wound that would not have done severe damage to the spine, as Dr. Mantik has proved. CE 399 was planted and looked nothing like the bullet that was "found" at Parkland Hospital. Etc., etc., etc.

Well, humm, I admit that Biden has done a lot more to oppose Russia's rape of Ukraine than a Bernie Sanders or an Elizabeth Warren would have done. I give him full credit for that much. But, I think his utterly spineless response in the weeks leading up to the invasion, after he knew the Russians were massing to invade, led Putin to decide to go ahead and launch the invasion. Putin began massing troops on Ukraine's border a few weeks after Biden took office. By no later than October 2021, Biden knew that Putin was preparing to invade Ukraine. In a pitiful display of incompetence, Biden went running to the Chinese and begged them to talk Putin out of invading. Biden even shared with the Chinese our intel on Putin's invasion plans. And, leaving Biden shocked and angered, China promptly shared that intel with the Russians! It's jaw-dropping that Biden was surprised by China's treachery. Anyway, whoever is blowing up the pipelines, God bless them.

Rather than ask what the conspirators' motives were, I thought I'd approach the issue from a different angle: What did JFK do that caused certain powerful people to conspire to have him killed? Here is my list of JFK's actions that led to his death: -- His refusal to send in American forces to support the Bay of Pigs invasion. -- His refusal to authorize a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis. -- His refusal to attack Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. -- His firing of Allen Dulles and his attempt to reduce the power and scope of the CIA. -- His war on the Mafia. I think these were the main actions that enraged the conspirators to the point that they decided to have him killed. I suspect there were a number of other reasons, but I think these were the main ones. I used to include in this list JFK's refusal to intervene in Laos, his opposition to sending regular combat troops to South Vietnam, and his conditional plan to withdraw most/all American advisors from South Vietnam by late 1965, but I'm no longer convinced that these actions were as objectionable to the conspirators as the actions listed above. I believe that some of the conspirators cared little or nothing about our Vietnam policy, although some others probably cared a great deal about it.

Good for Mrs. Perry. Humes was a disgrace to his uniform, to his country, and to basic decency.

I should clarify that there are many scholars who do not completely fit into either of these two positions but who fall somewhere between them. For example, Max Boot argues that the Vietnam War might have been won if we had adopted the pacification/counter-insurgency tactics advocated by Robert Thompson and Edward Lansdale, and if we had not deployed large numbers of regular combat troops to South Vietnam, and if we had been more judicious in our use of force. Max Hastings acknowledges that North Vietnam’s government was worse than South Vietnam’s government, and, to his credit, he discusses North Vietnamese atrocities in great detail, but he concludes that both sides were so bad that neither deserved to win. Conservatives got a chuckle out of the mainstream news media’s reaction to Hastings’ book. Liberal reviewers gave the book glowing reviews but apparently did so without actually reading the entire book; they apparently did not realize that Hastings included an extensive discussion on NVA/VC brutality and atrocities and that Hastings acknowledged that South Vietnamese and American forces behaved better than did the NVA and the VC. Larry Berman--in No Peace, No Honor--presents a curious third position that contains some liberal elements, some conservative elements, and some other elements. Berman does not whitewash North Vietnam and admits that North Vietnam’s victory was a brutal tragedy for the South Vietnamese. Berman fixes most of the blame on Nixon, partly because Nixon promised Thieu that he would fiercely bomb North Vietnam if Hanoi launched another invasion after the Paris Peace Accords. Berman debunks the “decent interval” theory, pointing out that Nixon had no intention of letting South Vietnam fall. Berman explains that Nixon believed that Congress would only support more bombing if there were a peace treaty and if North Vietnam then violated the treaty and invaded again. Berman notes that Nixon was willing to bomb North Vietnam until the end of his second term (1976) if necessary. But, notes Berman, Watergate made it impossible for Nixon to keep his promise to Thieu to provide air support. Berman correctly notes that Thieu would not have agreed to the Paris Peace Accords if Nixon and Kissinger had not repeatedly assured him that the U.S. would respond with devastating bombing raids if Hanoi invaded again. In addition, there are varying points of view on some issues even among scholars who agree that the war was honorable and winnable. For example, Andrew Wiest, who is probably the foremost authority on South Vietnam’s armed forces, agrees that the war absolutely could have been won, but he disagrees with Harry Summers about how it could have been won. Lewis Sorley and George J. Veith both agree that the war was honorable and winnable but disagree about the level of support that we should have given to South Vietnam and about the degree of America’s and South Vietnam’s culpability for South Vietnam’s fall. H. R. McMaster agrees that the war was honorable and winnable but argues that the Joint Chiefs of Staff deserve more blame than anyone else for losing the war, a view that most other conservative scholars reject.

A few more facts about Linebacker I and II, the Paris Peace Accords, North Vietnamese propaganda and the anti-war movement's parroting of that propaganda, and the Democrat-controlled Congress’s betrayal of South Vietnam: -- Historian James Warren describes the devastating effects of Nixon’s Linebacker I bombing campaign to halt the NVA’s 1972 Easter Offensive: Probably the most effective interdiction campaign in military history up to that point, Linebacker destroyed huge quantities of war materiel and production facilities in North Vietnam, including power plants, supply depots, and barracks. Communist antiaircraft efforts were stymied by electronic jamming. The Ho Chi Minh Trail was severely damaged by precision attacks against bridges, roads, and railroads with laser-guided bombs, used for the first time in history, and Haiphong Harbor was mined, sealing off the flow of seaborne Soviet high-tech weapons and desperately needed war materiel. The PAVN [aka NVA] official history makes it clear beyond all doubt that Linebacker effectively stanched the flow of troops and supplies to the battlefield. (Warren, Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013, p. 229) Operation Linebacker I initially caused Hanoi’s leaders to resume peace negotiations and made them anxious to obtain a ceasefire agreement (Phillip Davidson, Vietnam at War, Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 719-723). But, counting on the American anti-war movement to continue screaming on North Vietnam’s behalf, the North Vietnamese decided to see what the Democrat-controlled Congress would do and began to stall, since, in spite of Nixon’s landslide win over McGovern, the Democrats still held huge majorities in Congress (56-44 edge in the Senate, 242-192 edge in the House). When Nixon realized that Hanoi was stalling again, he ordered Operation Linebacker II. Warren’s description of the results of Linebacker II is too brief, but it conveys some sense of the operation’s devastating effects. He notes that it was the “most destructive” air operation of the war, which means it was even more destructive than Linebacker I. Says Warren, In an effort to bring the North Vietnamese back to the table, Nixon once again unleashed US airpower over North Vietnam in the most destructive attacks of the entire air war. Operation Linebacker II wreaked havoc on Hanoi’s war-making facilities and transport grid. It depleted its surface-to-air missile (SAM) inventory to the point where the country was rendered almost defenseless against further attack. (Warren, Giap, p. 233) Sir Robert Thompson, the renowned British expert on Southeast Asia, argued that Linebacker II won the war and left North Vietnam prostrate: In my view, on December 30, 1972, after eleven days of those B-52 attacks on the Hanoi area, you had won the war. It was over! They had fired 1,242 SAMs; they had none left, and what would come in overland from China would be a mere trickle. They and their whole rear base at that point were at your mercy. They would have taken any terms. And that is why, of course, you actually got a peace agreement in January, which you had not been able to get in October. (The Lessons of Vietnam, New York: Crane, Russak, & Co., 1977, p. 105.) If Nixon had not had to worry about a pro-North Vietnam U.S. Congress poised to cut off all funding for the war if a peace treaty were not achieved, he surely would have been able to insist on better terms in the Paris Peace Accords. The Accords were hardly perfect and contained some bad provisions; however, they also contained enough concessions that South Vietnam could have survived if Congress had provided the military aid permitted in the Accords. Yet, instead of honoring the Accords, Congress shamefully cut military aid to South Vietnam by over 60% after the Accords were signed. Even though Congress disgracefully reduced are aid to Saigon, it took the fully supplied NVA over two years of hard fighting to conquer South Vietnam. -- Warren also acknowledges that North Vietnam violated the Paris Peace Accords right after they were signed, noting the massive amounts of weapons and troops that Giap moved into South Vietnam in the 12 months following the signing of the Accords: Initially, Communist forces in South Vietnam operated at a disadvantage because they were exhausted and depleted by the Easter Offensive and were heavily outnumbered by Saigon’s armed forces, which numbered about 300,000 ARVNs and 600,000 Regional and Popular Force troops. Yet in the year following the signing of the accords, Giap infiltrated 120,000 regulars into the South, acquired hundreds of replacement tanks and artillery pieces from China and the Soviet Union, and methodically built up the Ho Chi Minh Trail in preparation for another major conventional attack. In 1973 alone, PAVN shipped 27,000 tons of weapons and 6,000 tons of petroleum products to the south. (Warren, Giap, p. 235) -- North Vietnam’s Politburo waged a propaganda campaign to attempt to prevent the U.S. from defending South Vietnam after the Paris Peace Accords, and American anti-war activists and many Congressional Democrats actually repeated this propaganda. In addition, the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress even passed legislation based on this propaganda. Military historian Phillip Davidson: The Politburo’s propaganda arm within the United States had three objectives: 1. Reduce American support to the RVN [Republic of Vietnam, i.e., South Vietnam], particularly military and economic aid; 2. Make sure that United States forces did not reenter the war; and 3. Build up the credibility of the PRG [Provisional Revolutionary Government, which was North Vietnam’s political arm in South Vietnam] as a legitimate government. The program’s main effort was devoted to the simple, but lethal, theme that the RVN did not deserve American support. Hanoi launched a systematic campaign to show that the RVN had consistently and aggressively violated the terms of the Paris Agreement. . . . It was Communist disinformation, but it worked. . . . The next charge the Communists used to attack the RVN was the accusation that the South held 200,000 political prisoners. The charge was grossly exaggerated. . . . So effective was this propaganda thrust that Congress passed a law in late 1973 that read: “no assistance furnished under this part . . . will be used for support of police or prison construction or administration within South Vietnam.” The third charge the Communists leveled against the Thieu government was that it obstructed the process of political accommodation called for in the agreement. This is another falsehood. In fact, neither side wanted “reconciliation and concord.” The Communists wanted victory, and Thieu wanted to survive. . . . The Politburo’s program to ensure that United States forces did not reenter the war was more muted. After all, the United States Congress had done most of that job for them. Nevertheless, Hanoi tried to buttress its American anti-reentry supporters by a campaign reciting the terrors of aerial bombing, the most likely form of United States retaliation. Horror stories (which were untrue) of the “carpet bombing” of Christmas, 1972, were revived and promoted by Hanoi and its supporters in America. (Davidson, Vietnam at War, pp. 745-746) -- North Vietnam’s political arm in South Vietnam, the PRG (Provisional Government of Vietnam), along with the NVA, committed 15,000 acts of terrorism in 1973 alone: Communist propaganda drummed out the message that the PRG wanted “concord and reconciliation” and an end to bloodshed and strife. This in spite of the fact that the PRG and NVA had carried out 15,000 acts of terrorism in 1973 alone. (Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 747) -- In July 1973, the Democrat-controlled Congress, once again appearing determined to help North Vietnam and betray South Vietnam, passed a law that prohibited all “direct or indirect” combat operations “over, on, or near” North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia after August 15, 1973. As Davidson notes, this gave North Vietnam a big green light to attack South Vietnam: With this bill, Congress freed the Politburo’s hand to strike the RVN [South Vietnam] whenever it so desired. (Davidson, Vietnam at War, p. 741) In a sad display of their brainwashed condition, some American college students, such as students at Tufts University, publicly cheered North Vietnam’s conquest of South Vietnam. Senator William Fulbright, a longtime critic of the war, expressed the feeling of many Congressional Democrats when he said he was he was “no more depressed” about the fall of Saigon “than I would be about Arkansas losing a football game to Texas.” Yet, these same students and Congressional Democrats expressed no regret when the Communists began executing tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sending 1-2 million more to concentration camps, where many thousands more perished from harsh conditions and abuse. Yes, a few Democrats did say they were surprised and saddened by the brutality, but they hastened to make the inexcusable claim that they “had no idea” the North Vietnamese would do such a thing. But most Democrats either said nothing or claimed the reports of post-war atrocities must be exaggerated (actually, it turned out the reports understated the degree of brutality). To this day, many Democrats continue to deny or minimize the “reign of terror” that the Communist North imposed on the South Vietnamese. They also seek to minimize or ignore the tyrannical nature of Vietnam’s government in our day. Vietnam remains one of the most oppressive regimes on the planet, according to every major human rights group. It is scary and troubling to contemplate the fact that 10-20 years ago, Vietnam was even worse than it is now. Neocon Republicans still won’t admit that the Republican-driven 2003 invasion of Iraq was a travesty that led to the needless killing and wounding of thousands of American soldiers. Similarly, liberal Democrats (and a few liberal Republicans) won’t admit that the liberal betrayal of South Vietnam was a travesty that caused the deaths of tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and caused the incarceration of 1-2 million others in concentration camps.

It is not a matter of liberal books. John Newman is not a liberal. The vast, overwhelming majority of scholars who support your view of the war are liberals, while the vast, overwhelming majority of the scholars who support my view are conservatives. John Newman is not a liberal, but does he agree with your view of the war? I've read his book JFK and Vietnam, but that book does not say much about the war itself; it's mostly about JFK's goals and intentions in South Vietnam. The very idea that somehow DIem was on the verge of some great success is such utter nonsense that it is out of the Wizard Of Oz. I do not think you have not read enough about the war to be making such categorical statements. I would again point out that we know from North Vietnamese sources that at the time Diem was murdered, Hanoi did not think the war going very well. In your liberal echo chamber, this fact may seem "out of the Wizard of Oz," but such a comment only shows how one-sided your reading has been. Are you saying that Hanoi's leaders didn't know how their own war effort was going? In late July of 1963 even Dean Rusk was taken aback by what Nhu had done with the Buddhist persecutions. Consider the following State Dept message: "On the basis of information from Saigon, it appears that the Government of the Republic of Vietnam has instituted serious repressive measures against the Vietnamese Buddhist leaders. The action represents a direct violation by the Vietnamese Government of assurance that it was pursuing a policy of conciliation with the Buddhists. The United States deplores repressive actions of this nature." As a result, Nhu ordered the American Embassy's phone lines cut. As Newman notes, at this point the Vietnamese generals "went to the embassy and asked if the US would support a coup." (Newman, p. 349, 2017 version) Meanwhile Madame Nhu was telling the press that the embassy had tried and failed to shut her up and she called for stronger actions against the Buddhists. (David Kaiser, American Tragedy, p. 222) What was shocking about these raids is that Roger Hilsman was in the country at the time. He was the undersecretary for the Far East. He deduced that Nhu was going to try and crush the Buddhists in the interval between Nolting leaving and Lodge arriving as the new ambassador. (Kaiser, p. 223) It was like the Nhu brothers were giving the State Department the finger. Hilsman commented that the outgoing ambassador, Nolting, looked physically ill over the betrayal. On August 15th, two more Buddhists took their own lives. Three days later the Catholic rector at the University of Hue and 47 faculty members resigned in protest. (Kaiser, p. 226) In late August DIem ordered martial law. Yes, yes, I've read these same arguments many times in liberal sources. These arguments represent very selective cherry-picking. Are you aware of what the UN found when it investigated Diem's treatment of the Buddhists? Are you aware that 80% of the officials in Diem's administration were Buddhists? Are you aware of what we know from North Vietnamese sources about the Buddhist protests? Why don't you read chapters 4 through 11 of Dr. Mark Moyar's book Triumph Forsaken and chapters 1, 10, and 11 of Dr. Geoffrey Shaw's book The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, and then deal with the evidence presented therein? By the way, would you care to discuss how the Buddhists were treated in North Vietnam? What do you suppose would have happened to North Vietnamese Buddhists who staged the same kinds of protests in North Vietnam that some South Vietnamese Buddhists staged in South Vietnam? As Halberstam and Sheehan observed in The Making of a Quagmire, after this, things got worse. And by about late September, the Viet Cong attacks had now spread from the country into the cities. Did you forget the fact that we now know that Halberstam and Sheehan were unwittingly getting a good chunk of their "news" from Communist agents? And, yes, the Vietcong did manage to carry out attacks in some cities. Do you know what happened in those attacks? Do you know what they accomplished? Again, did Hanoi's leaders just not know how well their own war effort was going? If you're serious about learning about the war, break down and read at least three books that give the other side of the story, and then let's talk. In fact, Saigon's Secretary of State was trying to get out of the country. Nhu was actually creating fake coups in order to fortify his own position. Yet, even Rusk--a hawk until the end-- thought that Nhu had to go. (Newman, p. 389) So where was the great victory in all this? Again, lots of cherry-picking here. If you leave out half or more of the story, you can seem to make a good case for almost any position. As I've said many times, South Vietnam's government was far from perfect, but it was a whole better than the Hanoi regime. Much of the information that JFK, Rusk, etc., were receiving about Diem, Nhu, etc., was distorted, selective, and lacked context. And much of that information was provided by leftist diplomats and officials who were determined to demonize Diem and Nhu. Have you done any reading about the South Korean government during the Korean War? We can thank God that the American officials and journalists who demonized Diem and Nhu weren't in a position to demonize the equally flawed South Korean government during the Korean War. Finally, an interesting piece of information: In a Veterans Administration survey done among Vietnam veterans a few years after the war, 92% agreed with the following statement: "The trouble in Vietnam was that our troops were asked to fight in a war which our political leaders in Washington would not let them win."

Actually, it's not at all hard to imagine how we could have won the Vietnam War without devastating the civilian population, because we proved this could be done with Operation Linebacker II in December 1972. Linebacker II brought Hanoi to the verge of collapse in just 11 days and with minimal civilian casualties (and with only moderate damage to civilian buildings in Hanoi). Also, North Vietnam's civilian population was not "already plenty devastated." Whatever suffering North Vietnam's population endured was inflicted almost entirely by their own government, not by us. Are you aware of what happened to the population of South Vietnam after our Congress, the Soviet Union, and China enabled North Vietnam to win? The Communists executed at least 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent another 1-2 million to concentration camps, where thousands more died from abuse and harsh conditions. Some scholars put the death toll from the camps at over 100,000. In addition, tens of thousands of other South Vietnamese, if not over 100,000, died trying to flee, many by boat. I'd call these crimes very shameful. Nobody had any excuse to be "surprised" by North Vietnam's post-war brutality. The North Vietnamese murdered over half of the 11,000 French POWs captured at the battle at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Of the 11,000 French troops who surrendered to the North Vietnamese, over 7,000 were killed. Many of those 7,000 died on forced marches that rivaled the Bataan Death March for cruelty and savagery. The North Vietnamese treated American POWs brutally more often than not. 15% of American POWs died in North Vietnamese POW camps, most from torture, forced labor, or neglect. And the North Vietnamese tortured many other American POWs. South Vietnamese POWs were treated even worse by their NVA captors. The death rate among South Vietnamese POWs was nearly 30%, and most of those prisoners who were eventually released looked like Holocaust survivors. In contrast, the overwhelming majority of NVA and VC POWs were treated humanely in South Vietnamese POW camps, so much so that when it came to for the POW exchanges mandated by the Paris Peace Accords, thousands of NVA/VC POWs opted to remain in South Vietnam.

There seems to be a disconnect in Michael's thinking. My household was one of many (probably a majority of) American households that were against the war, but had no illusions about the North Vietnamese military. Yes, they were commies. Yes, they were brutal. Then your household was in the minority in the anti-war movement. The anti-war folks, even many of them who were in Congress, repeatedly parroted North Vietnamese propaganda, such as the claims that South Vietnam was the aggressor, that North Vietnam would negotiate if only South Vietnam would get rid of Diem and then Thieu, and that North Vietnam's army (NVA) committed no war crimes. But many if not most Americans (certainly most by the end of the war) did not understand why we should send our young men to die in Vietnam, or bomb civilians so we could win. We sent our soldiers to keep North Vietnam from imposing communist tyranny on South Vietnam. We did not "bomb civilians so we could win." Far, far more North Vietnamese civilians were killed by the Hanoi regime than were ever killed in U.S. bombing raids, and we never targeted civilians in our bombing raids. We wanted South Vietnam to be another South Korea and Taiwan, not the Communist horror show in North Korea, North Vietnam, and Communist China. If the South Vietnamese army couldn't win the war without us, then so be it. So just never mind that North Vietnam was getting massive shipments of weapons and supplies from the Soviets and the Chinese? Never mind that South Vietnam merely wished to be left alone? In other words, "We should just let South Vietnam get conquered and brutalized if the South Vietnamese army can't win without us against a Communist army equipped with tons of Soviet and Chinese weapons! Tough luck for them!" As I've said, thank God that the liberals of the 1960s and 1970s weren't adults during the Korean War or else the entire Korean Peninsula would be under the despotic, brutal rule of the North Korean government. That was the American attitude. I think that's a severe exaggeration and over-simplification of the American attitude at the time. Kennedy himself expressed this attitude. Another distortion. The best evidence indicates that JFK intended to provide South Vietnam with ample military and financial aid and was even willing to provide direct air support if needed. And no, we weren't the good guys. This is demonstrated by what happened at My Lai. Hundreds of civilians were lined up and murdered. I find that argument obscene. You are smearing an entire army based on the actions of a tiny, tiny fraction of its soldiers. Our war crimes were few and far between, whereas the NVA's and the VC's war crimes were far more numerous and severe. And yet many Americans--including Nixon--were upset that the soldiers who'd orchestrated this mass slaughter of women and children were vilified. It was kinda like that Michael Douglas movie, where he suddenly realizes where his rampage is heading. He asks "I'm the bad guy?" That was America after My Lai. And a big chunk of America was like "No, don't blame our boys--the widespread slaughter of women and children was just a tactical mistake. Stuff happens. Oh well." (The same evil nonsense being spewed in Russia today, no doubt.) This is grossly unfair and exaggerated. My Lai was a one-off, the rare and worst exception in an otherwise honorable combat record. And there was no "widespread slaughter or women and children" by American forces in South Vietnam. That is a revolting Communist lie that some liberals still repeat. I notice you said nothing about the Hue Massacre, which dwarfed the My Lai Massacre in ferocity and size. In any event, I would be curious to know what Michael thinks would have happened should we have stayed. I know he thinks the North Vietnamese government was gonna collapse. Uh, we KNOW the North Vietnamese government was on the verge of collapse during Operation Linebacker II. This isn't speculation. The problem is you've only read far-left sources on the war, so you are unaware of this fact. But what would this have looked like? Would the South Vietnamese Army have raced up north with little opposition and the North Vietnamese government have just surrendered? Seriously? If we had continued Linebacker II for a few more weeks, the Hanoi regime would have collapsed and surrendered. South Vietnam had no intention of ever trying to conquer North Vietnam, nor did we. When the Hanoi regime collapsed, senior Politburo members would have stepped in to take over, just as happened when Ho Chi Minh died. North Vietnam probably would have remained communist for a long time to come. South Vietnam would have remained free and most likely would have developed into the same kind of thriving democracy that South Korea and Taiwan came to be. Would the CIA have then helped the victors with death lists of commies to be executed? Or would NV terrorists funded by China and Russia continue to fight the good fight from the jungles for decades to come? Are these really serious questions? Do you honestly believe these things had any chance of happening? Clearly you have read nothing but far-left sources on the Vietnam War. Anyway, see above. Please provide a rough estimate of the amount of death and carnage should we have stayed in comparison to that which occurred after we left... Uh, first off, the death and carnage never would have begun if North Vietnam had not invaded South Vietnam. You keep ignoring this central fact. The death and carnage would have stopped very quickly if we had simply continued Linebacker II for a few more weeks. With Haiphong Harbor mined, the flow of Soviet and Chinese weapons into North Vietnam slowed to a trickle. The NVA could not replenish their SAM batteries, which left them defenseless against B-52 bombing. The power grids in and near Hanoi were disabled. Their transportation hubs were crippled. We could have done this in 1965 and ended the war in a matter of weeks or a few months at the most. We most certainly were the good guys. We were on the side of the government that, for all its faults, allowed far more freedom than the Hanoi regime allowed. The people of South Korea and Taiwan can just thank God that people with your views were not adults in the early 1950s, or else both nations would be under Communist tyranny today.

Michael has implied several times that if JFK had withdrawn from Vietnam in ‘65 it would have doomed the South to the exact same magnitude of brutality imposed by the North after the fall of Saigon. Okay, so you are apparently another person who has not read any of the sources that I've linked or recommended. Before the war even heated up in 1965, the Hanoi regime killed at least, at a bare minimum, 110,000 North Vietnamese to consolidate and then maintain their power. Hanoi's terrorist arm in South Vietnam, the Vietcong, murdered untold thousands of people. The Hanoi Communists were killing large numbers of innocent people long before we deployed sizable combat forces in South Vietnam. Like Pat said, yes the North Vietnamese were commies and yes they were brutal, but is it possible that all the executions, camps, etc. were to some extent retaliation for a war in which an unconscionable number of North Vietnamese were killed as a direct result of American military involvement, including hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians - some that were literally massacred by American troops? Gosh, this is just surreal. First of all, not one North Vietnamese soldier would have died in combat if North Vietnam had not invaded South Vietnam. You guys keep ignoring that key fact. South Vietnam was perfectly willing to let North Vietnam go its own way, but North Vietnam was unwilling to let South Vietnam go its own way. Two, the North Vietnamese army (NVA) did indeed lose an unconscionable number of soldiers in their invasion of South Vietnam because their barbaric commanders often used them literally as cannon fodder in human wave attacks. Toward the end of the war, the NVA was conscripting teenagers, some as young as 14. About 99% of NVA soldiers were draftees for much of the war. If an American or European general had used his soldiers in such a barbaric manner, he would have been relieved of command and regarded as a war criminal. Yet, Giap and other NVA generals frequently--not always, but frequently--used their soldiers as cannon fodder throughout the war, especially in some of the final attacks in March and April 1975. It is a long-debunked Communist myth that "hundreds of thousands innocent civilians" were killed because of American involvement. Far fewer North Vietnamese civilians would have been killed if the NVA had not used civilians as human shields. The NVA put SAM batteries near heavily populated areas and at civilian airfields. They used city streets for POL storage. They would strap dozens of civilians onto a key bridge, knowing that U.S. and South Vietnamese pilots would not strike the bridge if they saw the civilians strapped to it. They would force hundreds of civilians to march around and among their columns to discourage air attacks. And on and on I could go. Even Stanley Karnow, who visited Hanoi soon after the war ended, was surprised by the moderate damage that our Linebacker I and II bombing raids had done to Hanoi. Given the wild stories he had heard in our news media and from the Hanoi regime about those raids, he expected that most/all of Hanoi would be in ruins. He was honest enough to admit that the damage to the city was surprisingly moderate. Yes, we most certainly were the good guys, and it is sad to see any American say otherwise. It just seems like a hell of an assumption to think that the behavior of the North toward the South would have been identical under such wildly different circumstances. Surely there would have been some executions and many people would have been taken prisoner, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario with less overall loss of human life than if JFK had gotten out in ‘65. Tell that to the 100,000-plus North Vietnamese who were killed by the Hanoi regime before we even showed up. Tell that to the untold thousands of South Vietnamese who were murdered by the Vietcong long before Johnson deployed regular combat troops to South Vietnam. It sounds like you think it would have been acceptable if there had been "some executions" and if "many people" had been "taken prisoner" if we had abandoned South Vietnam in 1965.

Among some people, the desire to avoid the disturbing fact that JFK was killed by a powerful conspiracy is so strong that they talk themselves into accepting the ludicrous single-bullet theory (SBT). They know that without the SBT, there can be lone-gunman scenario.

Vince's research has convinced me that some members of the Secret Service deliberately stripped JFK of protection in Dallas. I don't know if they were led to believe there would be a staged assassination attempt or if they knowingly aided the conspiracy to kill him, but it seems obvious there was a deliberate stripping of security in Dallas.

When visitors peruse this forum, what do we suppose many of them are going to think when they see the JFK case associated with UFOs and when they read that some CIA guy said that JFK was killed because of the "alien question"? Just thinking out loud here.

I think it boils down to this: If we want more people to realize that JFK's murder was a despicable, vile act of treason committed by powerful immoral people, we cannot insult a large chunk of our audience. No matter how much one wants to twist and distort JFK's statements and record, the fact of the matter is that he was conservative on some issues, moderate on some issues, and liberal on some issues. But the more important point is that his murder would be just as vile and unacceptable if he had been a Goldwater Republican or a Eugene McCarthy Democrat. Honest, ethical prosecutors do not let a murder victim's politics determine how vigorously they prosecute his killers.

A few more facts to get straight: -- Following the end of WW II, the North Vietnamese Communists used intimidation, propaganda, and violence to consolidate their power in northern Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh tasked General Giap, who was arguably one of the worst war criminals in world history, with the job of consolidating Vietminh power, and he did so with a “campaign of terror and intimidation” that resulted in the murder of several thousand people. Historian James Warren, who is no conservative and who adheres to the orthodox version of the war: While negotiations stalled, Ho and Giap worked feverishly to consolidate their power as the only voice for the people of Vietnam. The task of neutralizing potential nationalist rivals fell to Giap. How could this task be accomplished? Through the tried-and-true Communist method: discredit, discourage, and eliminate rival parties through any means necessary. The chief rivals of the Vietminh were the VNQDD and the Dai Viet parties. Until spring 1946, they had been protected by the Chinese occupiers, who had hoped to use them for their own purposes. Now that their protectors had departed, Giap launched a vicious and decidedly effective campaign of terror and intimidation against these groups. Specially trained Vietminh security units—in effect, Giap’s secret police force—pounced on rival nationalist political figures and their chief adherents, killing several thousand and forcing others to flee north to China. The revitalization campaign cemented Giap’s growing reputation for ruthlessness in the quest to consolidate Communist power. In Giap’s eyes, dissenters, even if they were sincere patriots, were by definition traitors to be silenced for the good of the Revolution. (James Warren, Giap: The General Who Defeated America in Vietnam, Palgrave-MacMillan, 2013, p. 3) Gee, could this be part of the reason that 2-3 million North Vietnamese tried to flee to South Vietnam during the open-borders period mandated by the Geneva Accords from July 1954 to May 1955? (Only about 1 million made it to South Vietnam because the Vietminh used violence, intimidation, and other coercive methods to prevent people from leaving.) -- Ho Chi Minh and his Vietminh by no means enjoyed universal support from the Vietnamese people when the Vietminh seized power after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, although they claimed to speak for all Vietnamese. In fact, there were large segments of the population, even in the North, that opposed the Vietminh (William Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, Westview Press, 1981, pp. 96-102). In August 1945, the Vietminh seized power in much of Vietnam, but certainly not most or all of Vietnam. Even then, their seizure of power was mostly the result of the chaos and confusion that reigned in the country after Japan’s surrender. The Vietminh’s authority in Vietnam was “shaky at best,” and most of their supporters did not yet realize that the Vietminh leaders were Communists, notes William Duiker, who spent years in Asia as a U.S. Foreign Service officer and later became a professor of East Asian Studies at Penn State University: During two frenetic weeks in August the Communists, behind the mantle of the Vietminh Front, had seized political power in much Vietnam. To keep it, however, would be quite another matter, for their victory was more a consequence of the chaos at the end of the war and the temporary disorientation of their rivals than it was a testimony to their power and influence in Vietnam. . . . Furthermore, the new government’s authority in Vietnam was shaky at best. Although the struggle that had led to the revolutionary takeover had been engineered by the Communists, they had seized power in the name of a board nationalist alliance linked to the Allies’ victory elsewhere in Asia. The Party itself was small. . . . The mass base of the Vietminh Front was broad but shallow, for the Communist coloration of the leadership was not as yet directly evident to the vast majority of supporters. (Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, p. 107) -- Although North Vietnam put on a great public show of appearing to welcome the 1956 elections stipulated in the 1954 Geneva Accords, Vietminh Prime Minister Pham Van Dong confided to a foreign diplomat that “You know as well as I do that there won’t be elections” (Duiker, The Communist Road to Power in Vietnam, p. 172). -- The North Vietnamese government’s “land reform” program in 1956 resulted in the death of approximately 100,000 peasants due to “drumhead trials” and “hasty executions,” notes military historian Phillip Davidson: The program was carried out with excessive zeal and spread terror among the people with its irresponsible accusations, drumhead trials, and hasty executions in which 100,000 peasants were killed. It paralyzed agricultural production, which fell to disastrous levels. Since Ho Chi Minh and the Communist regime could not take responsibility for the failed program, Ho designated Chinh as the scapegoat and Giap as the “hatchet man” to chop him down publicly. (Phillip Davidson, Vietnam at War, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 10) -- In his famous study on “democide” (murder committed by government) titled Statistics of Democide (University of Virginia, 1997), R. J. Rummel determined that North Vietnam killed approximately 216,000 people. Rummel discusses some of the war crimes that Communist forces committed: North Vietnamese troops or their guerrilla Viet Cong surely committed more democide than that for which I have been able to find estimates. Throughout the guerrilla period and during the war they shelled and attacked civilians in strategic hamlets and refugee camps, attacked refugees fleeing on the roads in order to create chaos, shelled civilians in most government-controlled cities and towns, and purposely mined and booby-trapped civilian areas (as of mining roads traveled by civilian buses). Moreover, thousands or tens of thousands were abducted to disappear forever, but are not included here under assassinations and executions. The sources give no estimates of these killings and to leave it at this would thus create a large hole in the total democide. Accordingly, I will assume that the additional deaths from these North Vietnam/Viet Cong atrocities and terror amounted to at least 200 a month over the twenty-one years from 1955 to the end of the war. This seems consistent with both sympathetic and unsympathetic descriptions of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong tactics and actions during the war. (Chapter 6) Rummel explains why he treats North Vietnam’s atrocities in South Vietnam was foreign democide: As a result of the 1954 Geneva Agreements that formally ended the Indochina War, Vietnam was officially split into North Vietnam and South Vietnam, all be it until Vietnam wide elections were to be held. As the possibility of these elections receded and both Hanoi and Saigon took on all the domestic and international functions of permanent governments, South Vietnam was also diplomatically recognized by a number of countries and carried out formal diplomatic interaction. Moreover, in the Paris Agreement of 1973 signed with the United States, North Vietnam officially recognized the sovereignty of South Vietnam. Thus, North Vietnam's democide in South Vietnam is treated as foreign democide, not domestic. (Chapter 6) -- The old Communist claim that the Vietnam War was really just a civil war and that we made things worse by intervening is so absurd that it does not deserve serious discussion. For one thing, this argument ignores the meaning of the term “civil war” itself. A civil war is when two factions fight for control of the same government and/or the same country. But South Vietnam never tried to conquer North Vietnam, nor did South Vietnam ever seek to take sole control of a national Vietnamese government, because there was no such government. There was no Vietnamese-run national government in Vietnam before the Vietnam War began, just as there was no Korean-run national government in Korea before the Korean War began. In both cases, the Communists claimed to run the only legitimate government in the country, but their claim was false and dishonest.

Here are some of the hundreds of articles about Communist Vietnam’s persecution and oppression of religious groups just within the last 10 years—many of the events discussed in the articles happened within the last two to five years: The Forgotten Genocide: Hmong And Montagnards Face Violent Religious Persecution — Human Rights Pulse Embassies in Vietnam Release Statement Condemning Religiously Motivated Violence | Persecution Catholics in northern Vietnam seek help to end persecution - UCA News Vietnamese Catholics Blocked from Fencing Off Religious Statue | Persecution Vietnam - Open Doors USA - Open Doors USA Vietnam - United States Department of State Vietnam's religious groups face state persecution, church leaders say — Radio Free Asia (rfa.org) The Cost of Following Jesus in Vietnam - Radical Persecuting “Evil Way” Religion: Abuses against Montagnards in Vietnam | HRW What’s Up With Buddhist Persecution in Vietnam? – The Diplomat Hmong Christians suffering severe persecution in Vietnam | World News (christianpost.com) VIETNAM – Church In Chains – Ireland :: An Irish voice for suffering, persecuted Christians Worldwide VIETNAM Hmong family in Nghe An persecuted for converting to Christianity (asianews.it) Vietnam: Persecution of Ethnic Montagnard Minorities « World Without Genocide - Making It Our Legacy Persecution in Vietnam: a Christian human rights lawyer's story (christiantoday.com) VIETNAM: Persecution Increasing - Dubbo's 94.3 (943.com.au)

I wanted to come back to this statement because it's a curious argument for a JFK conspiracy theorist to make. Surely you realize that in the eyes of academia, in the eyes of most "mainstream" historians, we JFK conspiracy theorists are "revisionists." As we both know, when a "mainstream historian" who accepts the official/orthodox version of the JFK case is presented with, say, post-1990 evidence of conspiracy, such as evidence that the autopsy x-rays have been altered and that the brain that Finck examined was not JFK's brain, he is usually incredulous and dismissive, because all the books he has read on the case either ignore this evidence or summarily and condescendingly dismiss it. The problem, of course, is that such scholars have only read one side of the story. You are in exactly the same boat when it comes to the Vietnam War. You've only read one side of the story. Before we began to discuss the issue, I suspect you were unaware of the massive body of scholarship that rejects the liberal view of the war. It seems apparent that you were unaware of the mass of important new information revealed by North Vietnamese sources. And speaking of whose view is the "revisionist" view, one could make a good case that your view is, in fact, the revisionist one. Only in the land of academia is your view the dominant view. Five U.S. Presidents have rejected the claim that the war was wrong and unwinnable (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush I, and Bush II). Official U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine histories of the war reject the view that the war was wrong and unwinnable. Numerous surveys show that the vast majority of Vietnam veterans did not/do not believe the war was wrong and unwinnable. Just some food for thought.

Funny how your North Vietnamese sources essentially jibe with what the rightwing revisionists have been writing since the fall of Saigon. Yes, I pointed out this fact to you about two weeks ago, i.e., that the NV sources starkly contradict the liberal of the war and support the conservative view of the war. I'm guessing you still, still, still have not bothered to read any of the sources I've linked or recommended. The comments about China are like what MacArthur was saying before hundreds of thousands of them poured across the border in Korea. Huh? The Chinese and NV sources say that China was not going to intervene to save NV. Do you dispute this? How? I'm fairly certain you've read nothing about those sources, because liberal books either ignore them when it comes to issues such as this one. Furthermore, the situation between China and North Korea was very different from the situation between China and North Vietnam. One of the reasons the Chinese were not going to intervene directly in North Vietnam was that they had suffered such enormous losses in the Korea War. Even when Ho Chi Minh begged the Chinese to intervene at the outset of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, they refused. So after watching the massacre of the PKI take place in Indonesia, Bejing was going to let Hanoi then fall to the USA? See above. And therefore everyone that Clifford talked to was wrong, as was Newman in retrospect and after studying the subject for 6 years. ANd Newman studed the VIetnam War under Kennedy for ten years. Is this in response to my argument that Clifford's idea would have worked IF we had supported a ground assault with adequate air power? If the Chinese were unwilling to intervene directly with combat troops to help NV in the battle of Dien Bien Phu, they surely would not have been willing to do so post-1965 in the face of overwhelming American air power. China was in no condition to take us on at the time, and Mao knew it. To give you idea of what Moyar's book is about, here are some of the major points, summarized by a sympathetic commentator. . . . [SNIP] To give me an idea about Moyar's book??? I've read Moyar's book. 5. The US was on the verge of victory until the ouster of Diem. [one of the major points in Moyar's book] Yes, absolutely. This is one of the facts that has emerged from NV sources. We know from NV sources that just before Diem was killed, Hanoi thought the war effort was not going very well. It turns out that General Krulak's and General Harkins' 1963 assessments of the situation were correct. Most of us know about the famous incident when Krulak and State Department dove Joe Mendenhall returned from South Vietnam with very different situation reports, which led JFK to ask them if they had visited the same country. What most liberal books don't mention about this event is that Harkins then explained to JFK that Mendenhall had merely gone to three cities but that he, Krulak, had gone to the rural areas, where the war was actually being fought (see, for example, Sharp, Strategy for Defeat, pp. 21-23).

Sorry, but these are more claims that are 10-20 years behind the information curve. We know from Chinese sources and North Vietnamese sources that China was *not* going to intervene to save North Vietnam. Also, we know from Soviet sources and North Vietnamese sources that the Soviets made it clear to Hanoi that they would not intervene to save North Vietnam if it meant risking a military confrontation with the U.S., even if North Vietnam were on the verge of collapse, as was the case in December 1972 when we brought the Hanoi regime to its knees with Linebacker II. Numerous books discuss these facts, such as Dr. Moyar's Triumph Forsaken, but your reading apparently has not included any of them. Indeed, in a fascinating twist, it has come to light that China was actually wary of a North Vietnamese victory over South Vietnam. This is why China began to limit its aid to North Vietnam after 1965. After U.S. ground troops arrived in large numbers in South Vietnam, the Soviets complained to Hanoi that China was starting to limit how much war material it could transport over Chinese rail lines. China's lack of enthusiasm for a North Vietnamese victory is why most of the foreign aid that North Vietnam received after 1965 came from the Soviets. In an especially surprising twist, over the last 10 years or so, evidence has emerged that China actually explored trying to create a neutral South Vietnam to prevent Hanoi from conquering South Vietnam.

Let’s get a few other facts straight about South Vietnam: -- Under the Diem and Thieu governments of South Vietnam, there were opposition leaders, and these leaders were free to hold news conferences, to give interviews to local and foreign journalists, and to criticize government policies—and they did all three of these actions on many occasions. Such a thing was unheard of, not to mention illegal, in North Vietnam. The only opposition that was not allowed in South Vietnam was opposition that supported or defended communism, that supported Communist positions, and/or that excused North Vietnam’s aggression. -- Under both Diem and Thieu, there was a sizable opposition block in the National Assembly. Until the new constitution was instituted in 1967, the National Assembly was a single body. Under the 1967 constitution, the National Assembly consisted of two chambers: the Senate and the House. The opposition block in the National Assembly was able to publicly criticize government policy and even to accuse the administration of wrongdoing. There was no such oppositional representation in North Vietnam’s National Assembly. There was never any opposition that dared to risk publicly criticizing government policy in North Vietnam. -- Most of the cabinet and administrative officials in the Diem and Thieu governments were Buddhists. Approximately 80% of the Diem government was Buddhist. -- During Diem’s crackdown on Buddhists in 1963, most Buddhist facilities were not raided or shut down. The substantial majority of Buddhists were not affected by the crackdown. The crackdown was aimed only at Buddhist groups and facilities that had engaged in large-scale disruptive activity. We now know from North Vietnamese sources that most of the targeted groups had in fact been infiltrated by Communist agents (see, for example, Geoffrey Shaw, The Lost Mandate of Heaven: The American Betrayal of Ngo Dinh Diem, President of Vietnam, Ignatius Press, 2015, pp. 194-250. Shaw is a Canadian historian who spent years reviewing original sources and declassified U.S. documents while drafting his book). -- Although South Vietnam’s government, under both Diem and Thieu, did exercise some control over the news media, that control paled in comparison to the absolute, iron-grip control that the Hanoi government exercised over North Vietnamese news media. The news media in South Vietnam were essentially free to say whatever they desired, as long as they did not echo Communist talking points, such as calling for a coalition government or defending North Vietnam’s aggression, and as long as they did not reveal vital military information. South Vietnamese newspapers carried surprisingly frank accounts of battlefield defeats, government policy failures, and problems with corruption. Even in 1975, South Vietnamese newspapers carried detailed accounts of the disastrous collapse of the army in the Central Highlands, complete with interviews with some of the senior officers involved in the fighting. In that same situation, even many Western governments would have suppressed those stories in order to avoid the potential panic they might cause. But, the Thieu administration, though voicing its displeasure at the reports, did not censor them, nor did it take any action against the journalists who had written them. In contrast, North Vietnamese newspapers would not dare to print stories about battlefield defeats, unless the government’s information bureau told them to do so, which rarely happened (and when it did, the scale of the defeat was greatly minimized). Similarly, no North Vietnamese newspaper dared to print any stories about government policy failures or corruption—again, unless told to do so by the government’s information bureau, and this, too, was quite rare. -- South Vietnam’s government never tried to dictate or control what was taught in Catholic, Buddhist, or Chinese private schools. South Vietnam even allowed students in Chinese private schools to take their final exams through an education board in Taiwan, and the government did not enforce the regulation that required all instruction be given in Vietnamese: "Unlike in the communist North Vietnam, there were private schools run by the Catholic Church, nondenominational private schools, and those run by the Chinese community numbering more than 1,000,000 centered in Saigon's twin city, Cholon. Although the Chinese schools were officially required to teach only in Vietnamese, in practice, they did so only in Chinese. They followed the curriculum of the educational system in Taiwan and took examinations conducted by the education board there for graduation." (https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1674/Vietnam-EDUCATIONAL-SYSTEM-OVERVIEW.html) In contrast, private schools were illegal in North Vietnam. In North Vietnam, all schools were controlled by the government, and the curriculum was rigidly micromanaged. South Vietnam’s government allowed considerable flexibility in its public school system. Separate curricula were developed via significant input from private educators to adapt to the regional and cultural differences of the Mekong Delta, the Central Highlands, the coastal regions, and the capital region. After South Vietnam fell in 1975, the Communists abolished all private schools. -- South Vietnam’s judicial system, though badly flawed compared to the American model, was far better, far less severe and more equitable, than North Vietnam’s police state. South Vietnam’s Supreme Court voided some convictions and ruled some excessive laws unconstitutional. No semblance of a check-and-balance existed in North Vietnam’s police state. If you were accused of pro-communist activity or treason in South Vietnam, your case would probably have been heard by a special military court. Yes, sometimes those courts acted arbitrarily and on thin evidence, and issued unjust or questionable verdicts. But, even those special military courts found many defendants not guilty and released them. -- One indication of the difference in freedom and oppression between South Vietnam and North Vietnam is what happened when both sides released POWs to comply with the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. Very few South Vietnamese POWs opted to remain in North Vietnam. In contrast, thousands of North Vietnamese POWs opted to remain in South Vietnam. On many occasions, North Vietnamese POWs who wanted to remain in South Vietnam were intimidated by their fellow prisoners against doing so. In some cases, those POWs would wait until they were at an ICCS (International Commission for Control and Supervision) prisoner processing camp and would run over to an ICCS official or a South Vietnamese soldier and tell them they wanted to stay in South Vietnam, and then their fellow POWs would grab them and drag them over to the North Vietnamese side of the processing point. One such incident was captured on film. The “disloyal” NVA POW was grabbed by his fellow NVA prisoners, dragged to the NVA side of the processing camp, and then beaten in plain view of the cameras. When ICCS officials demanded that the prisoner be brought back to the central processing tent for an interview, Vietcong and NVA soldiers hovered over the clearly frightened and bruised POW to intimidate him into saying he had changed his mind and wanted to return to North Vietnam after all. A few hours later at the same ICCS processing camp, another NVA POW broke away from his group and declared his desire to stay in South Vietnam. This time, ICCS officers and ARVN soldiers immediately intervened and took the POW into protective custody, and then he repeated his desire to remain in South Vietnam. Again, all of this was captured on film.

As far as I can tell, right now the book is only available from Barnes & Noble. I hope she plans on making it available on Amazon or on Smashwords. I prefer digital versions of books, but Barnes & Noble's Nook reader does not allow any kind of marking or note-taking, whereas Amazon's Kindle reader does, and Smashwords lets you download a PDF version, which you can mark and make notes on. Anyway, the book sounds interesting. If it doesn't show up on Amazon or Smashwords in a few weeks, I'll get the Nook version on the Barnes & Noble website.

The above situation is what Clifford faced after LBJ shoved McNamara out. This is the tactical and strategic option he was left with. You keep ignoring the fact that the Rolling Thunder bombing raids left dozens of key targets and entire regions untouched, not to mention the fact that they were intermittent, which gave North Vietnam ample time to recover and move assets. Admiral Sharp rightly called them "powder-puff" raids. That's why their effectiveness was modest at best. As I've noted before, the NVA moved many assets into the prohibited areas that LBJ-McNamara allowed them to have, including the sanctuaries in eastern Laos and Cambodia. When Clifford talked to LBJ after his 3 weeks at the Pentagon, he told him he should get out. He added: But if you stay in you have to expand the war into Cambodia and Laos, cut the supply lines coming in from China--therefore risking Chinese intervention like Korea-- and generally create a World War 2 operation out of a guerilla war. (Walt Rostow actually wanted to land American troops in North Vietnam and have them fight their way to Hanoi.) Clifford was nearly as bad as McNamara, and seemed to be just as clueless about even the basics of military operations as McNamara was. Rostow's proposal, provided that we had supported the ground assault with sound air support, would have worked in a matter weeks, judging from the effects that Linebacker II had in 1972. Linebacker II proved beyond any rational doubt that using legal and long-recognized standard air operations would have ended the war in months, if not weeks. I'll repeat again that we know from North Vietnamese records and memoirs that Linebacker II, in just 11 days, brought North Vietnam to the verge of collapse and caused the Hanoi hardliners to hurriedly agree to resume negotiations. Why? Because in Linebacker II, we mined Haiphong Harbor, which disabled the port where most of the Soviet aid entered North Vietnam. We hit valid-but-long-untouched targets in Hanoi and the surrounding regions, including transportation hubs, power plants, fuel storage depots, SAM sites (without having to wait to be fired on first), MIG airfields (without having to wait to be fired on first), communications centers, and weapons depots. Life in Hanoi and in several other parts of the northern half of North Vietnam literally ground to a halt due to the destruction of power plants and transportation hubs. Our multi-wave bombing raids on Hanoi overwhelmed Hanoi's air defenses. When Hanoi's leaders suddenly and urgently called for resumed talks, they were just about out of SAMs and their economy was teetering on total collapse. All of this in just 11 days. To Clifford, it just was not worth it. That's because he was incompetent and ignorant of even basic military strategy. It says volumes about his incompetence that he could conclude "it just was not worth it" based on the results of a hamstrung war effort that insanely left numerous crucial targets untouched and that, equally insanely, put several strategic entire areas off-limits. Now, if you look at the plans for Operation Duck Hook, under Nixon, that greatly resembles the option Clifford gave to LBJ and recommended against it. It was the massive student protests that took place in Washington DC that, Jeff Kimball notes, probably caused Nixon to call it off. Nixon's version included tactical atomic weapons. To the best of my memory, Clifford's did not. Tactical nukes were only posited as a last-ditch option if everything else had failed. Linebacker I and Linebacker II proved that no nukes of any kind were even remotely needed. Yes, Nixon, being human, did feel great pressure from the screams of the misguided, duped "anti-war" students, and from the howls coming from the news media and Congressional Democrats. Yet, these supposedly "anti-war" folks didn't seem to mind war at all when North Vietnam trashed the Paris Peace Accords and launched a massive invasion of South Vietnam in late 1974, not to mention the repeated probing and attrition attacks that the NVA began launching in late 1973. In fact, many, if not most, of these "anti-war" folks even repeated North Vietnam's obscene claim that they were merely responding to South Vietnam's "aggression" and "violations of the Paris Peace Accords." Nor did these "anti-war" folks have anything to say when the North Vietnamese began murdering tens of thousands of South Vietnamese and sent 1-2 million others to concentration camps after Saigon fell. The same "anti-war" liberals who were "morally outraged" when Nixon attacked NVA sanctuaries in Laos and Cambodia apparently didn't have any objections to the NVA's horrific crimes after South Vietnam collapsed.

Some people might be mistakenly using the word "dialect" when they are really referring to "accent." I'm talking about an accent. As someone noted in an earlier reply (and as I thought I remembered), Marina said Oswald had an Estonian or Lithuanian accent on his Russian. The fact that he spoke Russian so well when he met Marina is revealing.