Michael Griffith

When U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Thomas White retired in early 1961, JFK named General Curtis LeMay as his replacement, which of course made LeMay one of the Joints Chiefs of Staff. LeMay assumed the office in July 1961. Just because LeMay had been the Vice Chief of Staff did not mean that Kennedy had to appoint him as Chief of Staff. He could have picked someone else. 

However, I understand that a new, young president would have risked a lot of discord with the Air Force by passing over a famous general such as LeMay for the Chief of Staff position, but I am surprised that JFK did not fire LeMay after LeMay's rude and insubordinate comments to him during the Cuban Missile Crisis and on other occasions.

Personally, I think LeMay qualified as a war criminal for his atrocious, barbaric bombing campaign against Japan in 1945. He bombed over 60 cities, most of which did not even come close to qualifying as valid military targets, and in the process killed, at the very least, 250,000 civilians. When asked about his bombing of Japanese cities, LeMay famously replied, "There are no innocent civilians."

Now, I am no shrinking flower when it comes to rules of engagement during war. I understand that sometimes you have no choice but to kill civilians because your enemy is using them as human shields and is placing heavy weapons among them to fire at your troops, at your vehicles, or at your planes. I also understand that sometimes you have to bomb certain factories, POL depots, power plants, shipyards, and other facilities that directly support your enemy's war effort, and that many times those facilities are located in or near civilian areas. But, even in those cases, you should make every effort to minimize civilian deaths. LeMay made no such effort, with the sole exception of his order to avoid bombing the Imperial Palace in Tokyo. 

When I get to heaven and have a chance to learn the whole story about the JFK assassination, I will not be a bit surprised if I find out that LeMay knew about the plot and warmly approved of it, or even that he was one of the plotters.

On 9/1/2022 at 7:57 PM, Paul Jolliffe said:

Mike,

The Taylor McNamara report was only partly approved by President Kennedy.

Which was the only part he specifically approved in NSAM 263?

I B (1-3)

B. Recommendations.

        We recommend that:
        1.   General Harkins review with Diem the military changes necessary to complete the military campaign in the Northern and Central areas (I, II, and III Corps) by the end of 1964, and in the Delta (IV Corps) by the end of 1965. This review would consider the need for such changes as:

        a. A further shift of military emphasis and strength to the Delta (IV Corps).
        b. An increase in the military tempo in all corps areas, so that all combat troops are in the field an average of 20 days out of 30 and static missions are ended.
        c. Emphasis on "clear and hold operations" instead of terrain sweeps which have little permanent value.
        d. The expansion of personnel in combat units to full authorized strength.
        e. The training and arming of hamlet militia to an accelerated rate, especially in the Delta.
        f. A consolidation of the strategic hamlet program, especially in the Delta, and action to insure that future strategic hamlets are not built until they can be protected, and until civic action programs can be introduced.

        2.   A program be established to train Vietnamese so that essential functions now performed by U.S. military personnel can be carried out by Vietnamese by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.
        3.   In accordance with the program to train progressively Vietnamese to take over military functions, the Defense Department should announce in the very near future presently prepared plans to withdraw 1000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963. This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.

So in NSAM 263, prepared for President Kennedy on October 2, discussed and verbally approved on October 5, and formally approved on October 11, 1963, our plan was to withdraw from Vietnam.

That Kennedy directed that his policy be enacted in a low-key manner proves that he knew he faced ferocious opposition from his own National Security State (and likely from members of his own cabinet, not the least of whom was McGeorge Bundy . . . )

Mike, 

This is not new. Revise all you like, but it won't work. Quoting self-interested parties decades after the fact blaming our debacle on the "anti-war" crowd or Congressional Democrats is incredibly weak sauce. 

This has been discussed for decades - Kennedy was getting out, regardless of whatever was happening in Vietnam. You can cite as many ambiguous campaign statements by Robert Kennedy in the spring of 1964 as you like, but there is no substitute for the official U.S. policy under President Kennedy: read it and weep.

Under President Kennedy's policy in 1963 at the moment of his murder, we were getting out.

I am not revising at all. You are ignoring plain evidence that refutes the total-disengagement-no-matter-what view. For example, look at recommendation number 2, which you quoted. Look at the conditional wording, and notice that it didn't say "all U.S. personnel" but "the bulk of U.S. personnel":

. . . by the end of 1965. It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel by that time.

Again, note the "should be possible," not, "we're leaving by then no matter what." And notice that it said "the bulk," not "all" but "the bulk," which is consistent with Taylor's point that it might be necessary to leave behind a small force of trainers.

And look at recommendation number 3, which you also quoted. It stated this "long-term" program to replace U.S. personnel with Vietnamese would be done "without impairment of the war effort":

This action should be explained in low key as an initial step in a long-term program to replace U.S. personnel with trained Vietnamese without impairment of the war effort.

"WITHOUT IMPAIRMENT OF THE WAR EFFORT." This was all conditional on the situation on the ground. This was a "long-term program" that would not impair the war effort, because JFK had no intention of totally disengaging until South Vietnam was secure and militarily viable.

You are ignoring all the other JFK statements that show he had no intention of completely disengaging from South Vietnam until South Vietnam was able to stand on its own. Bobby said the same thing. 

I should add that you are correct in saying that NSAM 263 only approved part 1 B (1-3) of the McNamara-Taylor report. However, JFK did approve paragraph 1 B 6.a of the report as well, although not in the NSAM, as I noted in my previous reply, in that he approved the policy statement in 1 B 6.a at the 10/2 NSC meeting. Also, 1 B 6.a was mirrored in 1 B 1 (2-3).

10 hours ago, Leslie Sharp said:

You're reviewing a book, Coup in Dallas, that is centered on Hank's investigation which exposed the direct role of SS Otto and Ilse Skorzeny in the assassination of President Kennedy.  How is avoiding mention of these SS n a z I s not suggestive of someone attempting to deflect from the Skorzenys because a racist, fascist ideology with roots in their own [the Skorzenys et al] is alive and well in America today?  

Are you really, seriously, actually suggesting that I didn't mention the Skorzenys in my brief review of CID because I was trying to "deflect" from the Skorzenys? Gosh, seriously? I also did not mention David Ferrie, Guy Banister, David Atlee Phillips, Alan Dulles, and Richard Helms. It was just a brief Amazon review. The names I included and omitted were not based on any ideological agenda.

So you believe that more than 1% of Americans buy into Skorzeny's virulent brand of fascism and racism??? Well, I feel sorry for you. I can tell you that as a Trump volunteer who got to talk with dozens of Trump supporters and got to hang around hundreds of others, I never heard one word that would suggest such thing. 

I can't fathom why anyone who shares Skorzeny's anti-Semitic views would support Trump, since Trump is ardently pro-Israeli, since part of Trump's family is Jewish, since Trump has many Jewish friends, since Trump has invested in Israel, since Trump was the only president who had the guts to move our embassy in Israel to its rightful place in Jerusalem, and since Trump (before he became president) even appeared in political ads in Israel endorsing Benjamin Netanyahu.

Anyway, regarding your follow-on reply, I appreciate the corrections on the info about Albarelli and the datebook, etc. I will correct my review accordingly.

We can learn much about the Vietnam War, and about the brutality that North Vietnam imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war, from the book A Vietcong Memoir: An Inside Account of the Vietnam War and Its Aftermath (San Diego: Harcourt, Brace, and Jovanovich, 1985), written by Truong Nhu Tang. Tang was a high-ranking Vietcong official and served as a leader in the National Liberation Front and as the minister of justice in the Provisional Revolutionary Government of South Vietnam (PRG). 

When Tang could no longer stomach the “reign of terror” (his words) that the North Vietnamese communists were imposing on the South, and when he realized that his protests against the brutality were pointless, he quit his position as the PRG minister of justice and eventually fled the country. 

What makes Tang’s book so important, and at times so annoying, is that he never stopped believing in the justice of the Vietcong cause, and that he remained an admirer of Ho Chi Minh for many years after he fled the country. He had met Ho Chi Minh as a young student in Paris and was mesmerized by him. Only years later, long after he left the country, was Tang able to bring himself to acknowledge the ugly truth about Ho Chi Minh, such as the mass executions and bloody purges that Ho carried out in the late 1950s in North Vietnam (pp. 298-302). 

Here are some of things we learn from Tang’s book: 

-- The North Vietnamese imposed a “reign of terror” on the South that included “outrages of every description” (pp. 280-281). 

-- These outrages caused Tang to realize that North Vietnam’s communists were not interested in a genuine national unity government but in “the ruthless consolidation of power” (p. 281). 

-- Tang said the communist terror included “a wave of arbitrary arrests that scythed [slashed] through the cities and villages” (p. 279). 

-- Tang said that at least 300,000 people were put into the "reeducation" camps, and he noted that this figure only counted the number of former government officers, state officials, and members of South Vietnam’s political party who were formally summoned for reeducation (p. 282). He added, 

This figure does not include people who were arrested in the sweeps by governmental organs and military authorities that terrorized both Saigon and the provinces during that period. (p. 282)

-- The “reeducation” camps were “vicious” and “destructive” (p. 274). Tang complained about the camps to the PRG president, Huynh Tan Phat, but was told that the camps were necessary and would continue (pp. 274-276). He even complained about the camps directly to North Vietnam’s prime minister, Pham Van Dong, but to no avail (pp. 280-282).

-- One reason Tang was so upset about the camps was that he had personally persuaded many former South Vietnamese officials, functionaries, and professionals to report to the camps on the basis of North Vietnam’s and the PRG’s assurances that they would only be there for 30 days (pp. 277-279). He even persuaded two of his own brothers, Bich and Quyhn, to report to the camps on the same assurance.

-- When Tang saw his brothers at the Long Thanh detention camp, he was distrubed that they were “pale and thin” and looked “frightened,” and that the other prisoners looked “dazed” (p. 279). (Tang was eventually able to get Bich released, but Quyhn spent another 10 years in the camps. Quyhn’s “crime” was that he was a doctor who had attended a political gathering that the communists did not like.)

-- Another reason that Tang became increasingly troubled and distraught over the detention camps was that the former officials, functionaries, and professionals whom he had persuaded to report to the camps were not released after one month or even after one year, and he was ashamed that “this all happened during my tenure as minister of justice” (p. 282).

-- Even over a year after Saigon’s fall, communist brutality against the South Vietnamese continued:

Over a year had passed since the intentional sabotage of our reconciliation policy, and still the wave of official terror continued to swell. (p 287)

-- Tang felt terrible that he had convinced his family, all of whom lived in Saigon, that life under communist rule would be better than life under the Diem and Thieu governments. His own mother and his friends confronted him on the matter:

[His mother asked him] What had possessed me to inflict this misery on my family and my people? “Your Communist friends are full of double-talk—lies and violence.”

She had applauded the liberation of Saigon in April 1975, but in the intervening year her sympathy for the revolution had turned to repugnance.

My mother’s feelings were hardly unique. Talk about what was happening enveloped Saigon. And among my friends, much of it seemed directed at me. [Said his friends,] “At least under Diem and Thieu there was honor among thieves. But these [Communist] Party people are wolfing everything in sight.”

“Do you think it was such a wonderful idea to chase the Americans out? At least when the Americans were here, we had food. Now what do we have?” (pp. 287-288)

-- The mid-1973 Case-Church Amendment, which effectively assured North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of South Vietnam, played a key role in North Vietnam’s decision to resume military operations against the South, in violation of the recently signed Paris Peace Accords (p. 229). Hanoi’s leaders followed U.S. Congressional debates very closely (pp. 229-231).

-- However, the communists initially resumed their attacks on South Vietnam in a limited manner because they were not certain to what extent the Case-Church Amendment “might actually control American conduct, especially if there were to be a major escalation in the level of fighting” (pp. 229-230). The North Vietnamese were particularly worried about “the return of American air power” (p. 230).

-- Once it became apparent that the U.S. Congress would not authorize further military operations to protect South Vietnam, the communists decided to launch a full-scale assault on the South (pp. 230-240, 248-257).

-- Tang spends considerable time talking about how pleased North Vietnam was with the American news media and the American anti-war movement, and the fact that the communists viewed our news media and the anti-war movement as valuable allies (e.g., pp. 145-148, 207-216, 282-286).

-- The 1968 Tet Offensive was a military disaster. The communists “suffered agonizing and irreplaceable losses during the frontal assaults of Tet” (p. 192). It took the communists about two years to recover from the losses they incurred during the Tet Offensive (p. 204).

-- Tang deeply regretted the Hue Massacre committed by communist forces shortly before they retreated from the city toward the close of the fighting of the Tet Offensive (pp. 154-156).

-- In the 1972 Spring Offensive (aka the Easter Offensive), the communists suffered “prodigious” losses (pp. 211-212).

-- The communists were thrilled and grateful when the U.S. Congress “prohibited funds for American operations in Cambodia and Laos” after the highly effective U.S. attacks on North Vietnamese forces and bases in eastern Cambodia and Laos (p. 211).

-- North Vietnam’s bases in Cambodia and Laos were absolutely crucial supply points and staging areas for the communist war effort against South Vietnam (pp. 159-170). When Nixon authorized attacks on those bases, the attacks caused great damage and were very concerning to Hanoi (pp. 170-173, 179-184). (No wonder North Vietnam was so happy when our Democrat-controlled Congress forbade further attacks on those bases.)

-- The Soviet Union began supporting North Vietnam’s communists in 1948, and when China fell to the communists in 1949, this enabled Russia and Red China to begin supplying large amounts of weapons to Ho Chi Minh’s forces (pp. 25-34).

-- The B-52 attacks authorized by Nixon did severe damage and caused many troop casualties. However, assistance from Soviet intelligence prevented the B-52 attacks from being even more damaging. Soviet intelligence ships in the South China Sea provided advance warning of approaching B-52 raids in many cases (pp. 168-170). 

-- Before the launching of the last phase of the final offensive against South Vietnam, the Soviets supplied North Vietnam’s army with enormous amounts of weapons and supplies. This massive injection of war material “altered the balance of military forces” in favor of the communists (pp. 232, 250-251). (This was happening at the same time our Democrat-controlled Congress refused to honor our Paris treaty commitment to resupply South Vietnam’s army if the North invaded.)

-- The North Vietnamese attacked and seized the key southern province of Phuoc Long in January 1975 and were “jubilant” that the U.S. did not respond (p. 250). The fact that the U.S. did not respond to the attack on a key province that bordered Saigon was a clear signal that the communists had nothing to worry about from the U.S.

-- South Vietnam’s shortage of supplies, especially fuel, was a major disadvantage in the final months of the war (pp. 229-232, 248-253).

-- When the Americans left Cambodia, this enabled the murderous Khmer Rouge to take over that country (pp. 176-181, 254-255).

Finally, it is important to keep in mind that Tang was a genuinely moderate member of the National Liberation Front (NFL) and of the PRG. He admired Marx and Lenin, but he was not a hardcore communist. He believed Hanoi’s promises that under communist rule, the southern part of Vietnam would be allowed to form its own regional government that would be part of a national unity government, and that the southern region would have a genuine voice and influence on national policy. It is surprising how many times in his book Tang tacitly and overtly acknowledges that there were significant long-standing differences between northern Vietnam and southern Vietnam. He was shocked and disillusioned when he realized that North Vietnam had no intention of keeping its promises to the NLF and the PRG regarding a degree of autonomy and self-rule for the South, and he was furious over the brutality that the communists inflicted on the South.

7 hours ago, Pamela Brown said:

I was in Edinburgh, Scotland, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The anti-JFK rhetoric of the University students was difficult to hear. He was blamed for everything.  

That is a sad example of the fact that so many college students in Europe and America were radicalized by some of their professors to the point of practically being pro-communist. 

I wish the America-bashing students in the U.S. today could be forced to live in North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, China, or Russia for one year, not as pampered guests, but as ordinary members of society. I'd bet good money that after a few months most of them would be begging to come back to "racist, oppressive, unjust America."

On 8/28/2022 at 5:07 PM, Bill Fite said:

You're ignoring what the tax rates were and what they are now.

Why don't you post them?  

Uh, I stated what the tax rate was for the top bracket, which bracket JFK was cutting, and I stated the lower rate that JFK proposed. This is in the part of my reply that you quoted.

JFK cut taxes more than Reagan did.  JFK’s tax cut was larger than the Reagan tax cuts and any single Bush tax cut compared with national income, and it was larger than all three Bush tax cuts combined in relation to the federal budget.  In addition, JFK gave a huge tax cut to the rich.

The Tax Foundation:

Contrasting the size of the tax cuts with national income shows that the Kennedy tax cut, representing 1.9 percent of income, was the single largest first-year tax-cut of the post-WW II era. The Reagan tax cuts represented 1.4 percent of income while none of the Bush tax cut even breaks 1 percent of income. The Kennedy tax cuts would only have been surpassed in size by combining all three Bush tax cuts into a single package.

Comparing the size of these tax cuts with the federal budget shows that the Kennedy’s tax cuts represented 8.8 percent of the budget. In 1981, Reagan’s tax cuts represented 5.3 percent of the budget. Each of Bush’s tax cuts are smaller than Reagan’s—EGTRRA (3.8 percent), JCWA (2.5 percent) and the 2003 Tax Cut (1.8 percent). When the Bush tax cuts are combined (8.1 percent), they would be larger than Reagan’s tax cut, yet smaller than Kennedy’s tax cut. ("Fiscal Facts," Tax Foundation, http://www.taxfoundation.org/news/show/323.html)

Two articles of mine on the facts about tax cuts, revenue, and growth:

https://miketgriffith.com/files/settingrecordstraight.htm

The Facts About Tax Cuts, Revenue, and Growth (miketgriffith.com)

On 8/29/2022 at 11:29 PM, Leslie Sharp said:

Michael Griffith,

Thank you for seeing past your political bias to include our book,  Coup in Dallas, in your twelve recommendations.

I have to say though, I find it so ironic that your concern with Coup  seems to be what you perceive as an ultra-liberal stance, when you fail to even mention the names, or history of, SS Otto Skorzeny and his wife Ilse — both of whom were avowed Nazis.  

We reported the facts, though the heavens fall. 

I didn't mention Skorzeny and his wife because they have nothing to do with the non-assassination-related liberal political preaching in the book. My point is that the book would appeal to a wider audience if it did not have such a heavy dose of liberal politics and did not tar-brush conservatives. 

I don't know of anyone who thinks that identifying Skorzeny and his wife's role in the plot is either liberal or conservative, since 99% of Americans detest Skorzeny's racist, fascist ideology.

There is ample evidence that JFK had no intention of completely disengaging from South Vietnam, and that he had every intention of aiding South Vietnam to prevent a communist victory there. Let us start by reviewing the official statement of U.S. policy on Vietnam that JFK approved at the 10/2/1963 NSC meeting: 

1. The security of South Viet Nam is a major interest of the United States as other free nations. We will adhere to our policy of working with the people and Government of South Viet Nam to deny this country to Communism and to suppress the externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Viet Cong as promptly as possible. Effective performance in this undertaking is the central objective of our policy in South Viet Nam. (Record of Action No. 2472, Taken at the 519th Meeting of the National Security Council, Washington, October 2, 1963) 

This was reinforced in the McNamara-Taylor report that JFK approved in NSAM 263:

 a. The security of South Vietnam remains vital to United States security. For this reason, we adhere to the overriding objective of denying this country to Communism and of suppressing the Viet Cong insurgency as promptly as possible. (By suppressing the insurgency we mean reducing it to proportions manageable by the national security forces of the GVN, unassisted by the presence of U.S. military forces.) We believe the U.S. part of the task can be completed by the end of 1965, the terminal date which we are taking as the time objective of our counterinsurgency programs. . . .

c. The political situation in Vietnam remains deeply serious. It has not yet significantly affected the military effort, but could do so at some time in the future. If the result is a GVN ineffective in the conduct of the war, the U.S. will review its attitude toward support for the government. Although we are deeply concerned by repressive practices, effective performance in the conduct of the war should be the determining factor in our relations with the GVN.

 d. The U.S. has expressed its disapproval of certain actions of the Diem-Nhu regime and will do so again if required. Our policy is to seek to bring about the abandonment of repression because of its effect on the popular will to resist. Our means consist of expressions of disapproval and the withholding of support from GVN activities that are not clearly contributing to the war effort. We will use these means as required to assure an effective military program.

Note that the first paragraph assumed that U.S. forces would remain in South Vietnam until the end of 1965, and that this “terminal date” was an “objective,” not an unalterable, fixed determination. So, rather than indicating that JFK would initiate a complete withdrawal and disengagement as soon as he won reelection, NSAM 263 assumed that U.S. forces would be in Vietnam until “the end of 1965,” and even that was not set in stone but was an “objective,” since, after all, the “overriding objective” was “denying this country to Communism.” 

Here is what JFK was going to say about Vietnam in his speech at the International Trade Mart on 11/22/1963, the speech that he never got to deliver:

About 70 percent of our military assistance goes to nine key countries located on or near the borders of the Communist bloc – nine countries confronted directly or indirectly with the threat of Communist aggression – Viet-Nam, Free China, Korea, India, Pakistan, Thailand, Greece, Turkey, and Iran. No one of these countries possesses on its own the resources to maintain the forces which our own Chiefs of Staff think needed in the common interest. Reducing our efforts to train, equip, and assist their armies can only encourage Communist penetration and require in time the increased overseas deployment of American combat forces. And reducing the economic help needed to bolster these nations that undertake to help defend freedom can have the same disastrous result. 

JFK said the following in his 5/22/1963 news conference when asked about withdrawing troops from South Vietnam:

QUESTION: Mr. President, the brother of the President of South Viet-Nam has said that too many American troops are in South Viet-Nam. Could you comment on that, and give us some progress report on what is going on?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, I hope we could-- we would withdraw troops, any number of troops, any time the government of South Viet-Nam would suggest it. The day after it was suggested, we would have some troops on their way home. That is Number 1.

Number 2 is we are hopeful that the situation in South Viet-Nam would permit some withdrawal in any case by the end of the year, but we can't possibly make that judgment at the present time. There is still a long, hard struggle to go, and we have seen what happened in Laos, which must inevitably have its effect upon South Viet-Nam, so that I couldn't say that today the situation is such that we could look for a brightening in the sky that would permit us to withdraw troops or begin to by the end of the year. But I would say, if requested to, we will do it immediately. As of today, we would hope we could begin to perhaps do it at the end of the year, but we couldn't make any final judgment at all until we see the course of the struggle the next few months.

JFK made no secret of his desire to bring troops home from South Vietnam, but notice that JFK clearly made withdrawing troops dependent on the situation in South Vietnam. Note that he said "there is still a long, hard struggle to go." Of course, JFK knew full well that South Vietnam's leaders would never request a withdrawal of any kind unless they were confident it would not endanger the country's survival, so that was really a non-issue. And note that he added that he could not make a final judgment until "we see the course of the struggle the next few months."

Then, in his 11/14/1963 news conference, just eight days before the assassination, he once again talked about withdrawing troops from South Vietnam in response to a question:

QUESTION: Mr. President, in view of the changed situation in South Viet Nam, do you still expect to bring back 1,000 troops before the end of the year, or has that figure been raised or lowered? 

THE PRESIDENT: No, we are going to bring back several hundred before the end of the year, but I think on the question of the exact number I thought we would wait until the meeting of November 20th.

Not a word about ending aid or completely disengaging, not even an indication of an intention to withdraw all the troops anytime soon.

On 9/9/1963, JFK was asked about South Vietnam on NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report. He said the following:

Mr. Huntley: Mr. President, in respect to our difficulties in South Viet-Nam, could it be that our Government tends occasionally to get locked into a policy or an attitude and then finds it difficult to alter or shift that policy?

THE PRESIDENT. Yes, that is true. I think in the case of South Viet-Nam we have been dealing with a government which is in control, has been in control for 10 years. In addition, we have felt for the last 2 years that the struggle against the Communists was going better. Since June, however, the difficulties with the Buddhists, we have been concerned about a deterioration, particularly in the Saigon area, which hasn't been felt greatly in the outlying areas but may spread. So we are faced with the problem of wanting to protect the area against the Communists. On the other hand, we have to deal with the government there. That produces a kind of ambivalence in our efforts which exposes us to some criticism. We are using our influence to persuade the government there to take those steps which will win back support. That takes some time and we must be patient, we must persist.

Mr. Huntley: Are we likely to reduce our aid to South Viet-Nam now?

THE PRESIDENT. I don't think we think that would be helpful at this time. If you reduce your aid, it is possible you could have some effect upon the government structure there. On the other hand, you might have a situation which could bring about a collapse. Strongly in our mind is what happened in the case of China at the end of World War II, where China was lost, a weak government became increasingly unable to control events. We don't want that.

On 9/2/1963, JFK told Walter Cronkite that ultimately it was up to South Vietnam to win or lose the war, that we would help them but that it was their war, and that he was against withdrawing because that would be “a great mistake.” He also suggested that our effort to defend Asia may need to be equal to the effort that we made to defend Europe: 

. . . in the final analysis it is the people and the government itself who have to win or lose this struggle. All we can do is help, and we are making it very clear, but I don't agree with those who say we should withdraw. That would be a great mistake. I know people don't like Americans to be engaged in this kind of an effort. Forty-seven Americans have been killed in combat with the enemy, but this is a very important struggle even though it is far away. . . . 

We took all this--made this effort to defend Europe. Now Europe is quite secure. We also have to participate--we may not like it--in the defense of Asia. . . . 

What, of course, makes Americans somewhat impatient is that after carrying this load for 18 years, we are glad to get counsel, but we would like a little more assistance, real assistance. But we are going to meet our responsibility anyway. 

It doesn't do us any good to say, "Well, why don't we all just go home and leave the world to those who are our enemies."

I'll take these statements, along with Bobby's April 1964 statements and Schlesinger and Sorenson's silence over any plans for a complete disengagement, over anything that McNamara, O'Donnell, Powers, and Mansfield later said. 

On 8/17/2022 at 8:01 AM, Benjamin Cole said:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/was-russia-behind-cia-killed-jfk

By Max Holland in The Daily Beast

"Helping defeat Hillary Clinton is not the most successful influence operation Moscow has ever mounted against the United States. . . ."

Eee-gads, I hope Holland now realizes that this tale has been utterly destroyed. I realize he wrote this in 2018, before the Mueller Report was published and before the Durham discoveries began to emerge. To their credit, Mueller and his staff acknowledged that the small amount of Russian-backed blogging/ads about the election were substantially split between Trump and Hillary: many were anti-Hillary, but some were anti-Trump. 

3 hours ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

This has nothing to do with politics. Do you forget that some Democrats are hawks?

This has everything to do with facts and truth.

I'm talking about documented, undisputed facts and truth. The Democrats had large majorities in Congress in 1972 to the end of the war. The Democrats used their huge majorities to slash badly needed aid to South Vietnam and then to pass the treasonous Case-Church Amendment after the Paris Peace Accords, which guaranteed North Vietnam that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another invasion of the South. Nixon lobbied furiously against the amendment, but he was too badly damaged by Watergate to stop it. Then, in 1975, when the final North Vietnamese offensive was in full swing, President Ford literally begged Congressional Democrats in a joint session of Congress to allow him to resupply South Vietnam's army, but the Democrats said no. Some Democratic congressmen even got up and walked out during Ford's speech. A few weeks later, communists tank rolled into South Vietnam's capital and 18 million South Vietnamese fell under communist tyranny. 

On 8/28/2022 at 11:48 AM, Bill Fite said:

Here's the evidence right here -- a memo from the head of the JCS on Oct 4, 1963:

Link to article w more evidence

First, yes, I've read Galbraith's article. Unlike some folks here, I like to read both sides before I make arguments on a subject. 

Two, the problem is that you are ignoring that these were plans, objectives, goals, but they were not absolute and unalterable--they were conditional, and the crucial condition was that South Vietnam be able to defend herself. 

Three, you folks keep ignoring the plain language of NSAMs 263 and 273 (first draft) that the U.S. would continue to aid South Vietnam even after the withdrawal had been executed. 

This is why it is problematic and discrediting when Stone's JFK documentary has Newman citing the secret McNamara debrief to the effect that JFK was prepared to pull out even if South Vietnam fell to the communists. In April 1964, RFK made it crystal clear that this was not the case. NSAM 263 and 273 both clearly envision U.S. aid even after a withdrawal and even in the absence of any American troops on the ground--however, one of Taylor's recommendations approved in NSAM 263 stated that a small number of trainers may have needed to remain in country.

You folks would be fine if you would just stick to what the facts support: JFK wanted, intended, desired to withdraw all troops as soon as possible and to avoid using regular combat troops. Yes, absolutely. That is totally clear. But, any total pullout would be based on the situation on the ground. He had no intention of abandoning South Vietnam to communist tyranny. He was going to continue to give South Vietnam weapons and supplies, and he was even willing to provide air support if needed. 

Have any of you watched Dr. Selverstone's 2016 video yet? The evidence he presents therein is a fraction of the evidence that will be in his upcoming book The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam.

On 8/30/2022 at 12:43 PM, Derek Thibeault said:

Never seen this before, but I am going to read it, always thought Roger Craig was one of the unsung heroes of this case and he suffered for it.

Roger Craig was a hero. Sadly, be began to exaggerate and embellish a bit in later years, and WC apologists have, as usual, unfairly used this as a reason for rejecting his earlier statements and accounts. 

Good stuff. It's been a few years since I watched this video. I will add a link to this video to my new JFK site. 

As much as I respect Anthony Summers' JFK research, I'm disappointed that he has such a blind spot when it comes to Jim Garrison. To be sure, Summers has done great, important work on the case. Some of his interviews have been historic and crucial. But, yes, he has a serious blind spot when it comes to Garrison. So does David Kaiser.

1 hour ago, Gil Jesus said:

A white jacket that becomes tan.

.38 auto shells that become .38 specials.

An automatic pistol that becomes a revolver.

A cop killer who discards his jacket but holds on to the weapon tying him to the murder. At a time when police are looking for the killer of a brother officer who was reportedly on foot, he has $ 13.87 in his pocket but instead of escaping the scene by bus or taxi, he elects to avoid capture by fleeing on foot down a street crawling with cops. He furthers his chances of escape by acting suspiciously and drawing attention to himself. Then he figures he'll avoid arrest by beating the Texas Theater out of a 90 cent movie ticket.

Yeah, that's believable.

Not only that, but the lone-gunman theory's cop killer was nice to enough to leave spent shell casings at the crime scene, instead of disposing of them later out of sight, and he was also considerate enough to have five bullets in one of his pockets when he was arrested. Yeah, totally believable. 

1 hour ago, Sean Coleman said:

MTG, this quote makes it sound like Vietnam was a success? There was intervention, it didn’t work, and when the dust had settled was brutal tyranny imposed? Definitely no domino effect…

I’ve been to Vietnam and the most brutal imposition I found was that you can’t hire a car.

But the intervention most certainly did work--until the Democrats refused to honor our promise to aid South Vietnam if North Vietnam invaded after the Paris Peace Accords. What made the Democrats' betrayal especially immoral was that they knew North Vietnam was still getting large amounts of weapons and supplies from the Soviets and the Chinese. I am almost tempted to ask if you folks are upset that we intervened to keep South Korea free, and to ask if you think it would have been a good thing if North Korea had been allowed to annex South Korea. 

If we had kept our word and provided South Vietnam with air support, weapons, and supplies, South Vietnam would be another South Korea today, and the horrors that the North Vietnamese communists imposed on the South Vietnamese after the war never would have happened. But some of you folks don't want to acknowledge the brutality that the South Vietnamese suffered because it was your party that betrayed South Vietnam and allowed the communists to win.

5 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Michael:

I guess you do not read English.  Kennedy was getting out all of the advisors. How were we going to support the south with no advisors and no combat troops?

I am not going to argue Porter and Moise vs whoever you want to bring up.  That is clearly what you want to do.  I mean why stop at 50,000? Right.  But isn't it odd how Hanoi left the  school of banking in Saigon open, after the city fell  in 1975?  Was this part of re education. We will have this guy on BOR soon.

 I will reply to your previous point about air bombing, which I think is revealing.

You really do ally yourself with the LeMay camp.  You really wanted an all out WW2 style war in Vietnam.  In other words, if you have to do a Dresden type bombing of Hanoi, fine.  If you want to firebomb Haiphong, fine.    If you want to invade Laos and Cambodia fine. 

That is utterly remarkable to me.  See, in WW 2, there was an excuse for these atrocities.  The Axis countries did have an industrial base. And Tojo and Hitler and Mussolini literally threatened the fate of the world.  They had even mapped out plans for world domination.  Therefore, things like the Manhattan Project, and LeMay's carpet firebombings were done under that rubric. (Although the USA knew the Germans were never close to an atomic bomb.) 

How did that poor agricultural country in Southeast Asia, with almost no industrial base, threaten the world?  So, for you, dropping more bomb tonnage on Indochina than in WW 2 was not enough. You  really think that if we had to destroy the country then that was justified.  Whew.

Mike, the USA should have never been in Vietnam. It was Nixon and Eisenhower who got us there, helped by the Dulles brothers. If America had not broken the Geneva Accords, the country would have been peaceably reunited after an equally wrong French recolonization effort.   As Gullion told Kennedy, the age of colonialism was coming to an end. The war in Vietnam was not about communism vs free enterprise.  And it was not about democracy since Diem was a US backed dictator. it was about nationalism and independence vs colonialism and imperialism..  And we were on the wrong side. Period. JFK knew that.  Its why he was getting out. It is also why he helped get the film of The Ugly American made.  The authors of that book said that if all America had to offer in the Third World was anti communism, we should pack up and go home. 

There is no point in arguing with you anymore on this.  I now see where you are coming from.  You really are in the LeMay camp.  The guy who flew secretly into Washington that night and broke orders on where to land so he would not have to reply to any questions as to why he was there.

Bye Mike.

How could we have supported South Vietnam with no advisors in country? Is this a serious question? Have you heard of the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Air Force? We could have provided air support from fighters and bombers from Navy aircraft carriers and from our air base in Taiwan. We could have provided weapons, ammo, and logistics by Navy ships, just as we did throughout most of the war. 

If you could ever break free from your far-left ideology and research the matter objectively, you would find that, except for left-wing anti-war historians, there is broad agreement that at least 50,000 South Vietnamese were executed by the communists after the South fell, and that's not counting the thousands who died from abuse in the "reeducation" camps. Are you ever going to ready any of the sources I cited on this issue? 

Your comments about my supposedly siding with LeMay show you haven't bothered to read any of the sources I've recommended and/or linked, and that your reading on the subject has been very limited. Admiral Sharp, the CINCPAC, the man in charge of overseeing and executing the bombing missions, never recommended LeMay's vicious and immoral style of bombing. He only recommended hitting valid military targets, which included POL sites, major railroads, major highways, weapons factories, major harbors where Russian and Chinese war materials were being offloaded, etc., in addition to military bases. 

Your comments about the Geneva Accords, colonialism, and American intervention likewise indicate that your reading on the subject has been very limited. You are literally repeating communist propaganda.

If anyone violated the Geneva Accords, it was North Vietnam. Have you read the Geneva Accords? What does Article 24 say? The communists began violating Article 24, among other provisions, almost as soon as the ink was dry on the accords. 

If we had not intervened in South Vietnam, the communists would have imposed their brutal tyranny on South Vietnam in a year or two after the Geneva Accords. I cannot fathom how any rational, humane American could think that that would have been a good thing. Have you read what JFK said about North Vietnam and the Geneva Accords?

Finally, it is truly sad to see you whitewash and minimize the brutality that the communists imposed on South Vietnam. It is almost obscene to try to minimize that brutality by noting that the communists left open a school of banking in Saigon or that they later allowed some Western businesses to operate in the country. Again, Russia and China have done the same thing. Are you going to tell us that Russia and China really are not brutal regimes that suppress basic human rights just because they have schools of banking and finance and allow some Western businesses to operate within their borders?

How does the fact that Hanoi allowed a school of banking in Saigon to stay open explain or mitigate the brutality that Hanoi imposed, the 50K-65K executions, the hundreds of thousands of people imprisoned in detention camps (some for many years), and the suppression of basic human rights to this day? And you call yourself a "liberal"?

20 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

The reason JFK wanted the initial withdrawal to be low key is because he wanted the ability to adjust the flow.

Why?  As Newman explains, its because he and McNamara were not sure Saigon would not fall before the election of 1964.  (p. 419, 2017 edition)This is why JFK ordered an evacuation plan in November of 1963.  But the Pentagon wanted to hold his feet to the fire, so MAAG announced it in Saigon. ( Ibid p. 435)

As for the whole Nixon inspired "there was a huge massacre of over 50,000 people in the south" afterward. Those numbers have been disputed by both Gareth Porter and Edwin Moise.  The actual number is maybe one quarter of that, even less.  I'm not excusing it, but I want to present what I think is the real number.

One, you are missing the point about the NSAMs. The point is that nowhere do they even hint at a total disengagement regardless of the situation on the ground. On the contrary, they specify that the U.S. would continue to provide support to South Vietnam until it was able to stand on its own. I don't know anyone can avoid this obvious fact.

Two, if you are accurately representing Porter and Moise, then they do not know what they are talking about, and they must not be aware of the research that Asian scholars have done on this issue. Indeed--again, assuming you are accurately conveying their views--I have to wonder if they have read any of the numerous oral histories of survivors of the camps.

No, Nixon was not the one who originated the 50,000 figure, and 50,000 is almost certainly an underestimate. Scholars who specialize in the subject put the figure at over 60,000. In a study published earlier this year, Nathalie Huynh Chau Nguen puts the number of South Vietnamese executed after the war at 65,000, and this is not counting the untold thousands who died in the detention (aka reeducation) camps (Detention Camps in Asia, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2022, p. 160). Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl Jackson likewise put the number of executed at around 65,000 (“Vietnam 1975-1982: The Cruel Peace,” The Wilson Quarterly, 8:4, July 2009, pp. 169-182).

And, again, this is not counting the thousands of South Vietnamese who died in the reeducation camps. Nguyen:

After Vietnam was reunified in 1975, the re-education camp system became an extensive network spread throughout the country. One million South Vietnamese soldiers and civil servants were interned in the gulag in 1975. An unknown number died in the camps. Based on two oral history projects conducted in Australia in 2005–2015, this chapter explores the memories and experiences of men and women who were interned in the Bamboo Gulag after 1975, and survived to become refugees and resettle in Australia. While several memoirs of internment by Vietnamese men have been published in English and in French, few women have written about their camp experience. The narratives of South Vietnamese female veterans examined here are among the few accounts by women of their experience in the gulag. Detainees reveal details of camp life including forced ‘self-confessions’, malnutrition, hard labour, and witnessing the deaths of other inmates. (Detention Camps in Asia, p. 156)

Of the one million South Vietnamese who were imprisoned in these camps, we have the oral histories of thousands of them, and those histories describe the brutal conditions in most of the camps, and they also describe numerous cases of prisoners being killed by various means, ranging from beatings and forced mine-clearing to malnutrition and deliberate deprivation of medical care (Detention Camps in Asia, pp. 158-172). A prisoner in one camp remembered having “to bury one or two prisoners every day” (Detention Camps in Asia, p. 170).

Based on the survivors’ accounts, a very conservative estimate for the number of prisoners who died from various forms of abuse in the camps would be 5,000.

Three other sources on the horrors of the reeducation camps are Tran Tri Vu’s Lost Years: My 1,632 Days in Vietnamese Reeducation Camps (Berkeley: University of California, 1988), Nghia Vo’s The Bamboo Gulag: Political Imprisonment in Communist Vietnam (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2006), and Nguyen Van Canh’s Vietnam Under Communism, 1972-1985 (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1983).

Nathalie Nguyen cites numerous other references on the camps, but I have not read them, whereas I have read Canh’s book and have read sizable extracts from Vu’s and Vo’s books.

15 hours ago, Paul Brancato said:

It comes down to who one finds credible. Posner is convincing too. 

Shaw quotes several Kennedy friends/biographers on this point. Seymour Hersh deals with this issue at some length in The Dark Side of Camelot (see the chapter titled "The Stolen Election").

Posner??? Posner is one of the last researchers I would trust on anything involving JFK. Does he deal with all the sources that Shaw quotes?

Let me add that I am not insisting that the Mafia stole the 1960 election for Kennedy. I am focusing on the deal that Joseph Sr. made with the Mafia to help get JFK elected. Whether or not Mafia assistance played a key role in JFK's victory is another issue.

I've mentioned the fact that LBJ, through McNamara and then Clifford, imposed absurd, dangerous restrictions on our air operations against North Vietnam. If you didn't know better, you'd think the restrictions must have been drafted in Hanoi. If someone had suggested similar suicidal restrictions in WW II or the Korean War, they would have been laughed to scorn, if not suspected of either insanity or treason. These restrictions are a matter of record; they were included in operations orders, and they have been discussed in many books on the war (although liberal books on the war rarely mention them). Here are some of the restrictions:

-- Our aircraft could not attack surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites unless the missile sites fired first.

-- Our aircraft were not allowed to attack SAM sites that were under construction.

-- Some areas of North Vietnam (NV) were placed off limits for aerial attack. Naturally, the North Vietnamese built MIG airfields in those areas. Our fighter jets could not even overfly those prohibited areas. This insane restriction was not lifted until 1967.

-- Our aircraft could not attack NV Navy ships within 3 miles of the coast unless they fired first.

-- Until early 1967, American aircraft flying near MIG airfields could not use their weapons until the MIGs took off from those airfields and fired at them.

-- The first several iterations of the Rolling Thunder bombing operation were not allowed to bomb any targets north of the 20th parallel, even though *all* of the important, high-value targets, the targets that would have done done great damage to NV's war effort, were above the 20th parallel.

-- After loud protests from senior field commanders and the JCS, LBJ and McNamara finally allowed very limited bombing above the 20th parallel, but it was so limited that it had minimal impact.

-- LBJ and McNamara micromanaged the air war to such a shocking degree that they took it upon themselves to produce target lists. These target lists rarely included even medium-value targets. Even worse, LBJ and McNamara imposed time limits on the target lists, regardless of the time of year or  weather conditions. The result of this idiotic restriction was that many of the targets on those lists were never attacked because bad weather prevented aerial attack until after the time limits had expired.

-- LBJ and McNamara refused to allow extensive use of the B-52 in any of the Rolling Thunder operations for fear of causing Soviet and/or Chinese intervention (a fear that was proved groundless when Nixon began massive use of B-52s). This meant that F-4 and F-105 fighter-bombers had to do most of the air strikes over North Vietnam; this led to the needless loss and capture of many pilots because those aircraft had to bomb from lower altitudes that put them in range of conventional anti-aircraft artillery, whereas B-52s could only be brought down with SAMs. Also, those fighter-jets could carry far fewer bombs than a B-52 could carry: they carried a maximum load of nine 500-pound bombs, while a B-52 could carry 108 such bombs.

-- For a time, LBJ and McNamara imposed a downright criminal restriction that our aircraft could not fire back at anti-aircraft sites if the sites were located at ostensibly "civilian" airfields, even if the sites were firing at them. One pilot remembered losing a friend while attacking a railroad bridge in NV because his flight was forced to overfly Gia Lam International Airfield before hitting the primary target. Anti-aircraft artillery and SAM sites at this airfield fired at his flight all the way into the target area, but the rules of engagement forbade him from firing back, and he was shot down and killed. 

LBJ, McNamara, and then Clifford also imposed equally self-defeating restrictions on our ground forces, but that's a subject for another day.

Oh, and I did not say that JFK signed or authored NSAM 273. As we all know, it was prepared by McGeorge Bundy on 11/21/63 to be submitted to JFK when he returned from Texas, but of course he never returned from there (not alive anyway).
 

The fact that the original configuration of the boxes would have made anyone in the sniper's nest visible from almost anywhere on the sixth floor makes Bonnie Ray Williams' testimony even more interesting. Williams said he was on the sixth floor eating lunch until 12:15 or 12:20 and saw no one else on the floor. The motorcade was slated to be in Dealey Plaza by 12:25. Even someone who was experienced with guns would have needed a bare minimum of six minutes to reassemble the Mannlicher-Carcano with a coin. Ian Griggs' experiment shows it would have taken an amateur like Oswald a lot longer.

Of course, we now have good evidence that Oswald was on the first and second floors just before and during the shooting. The segment on this issue in the new documentary JFK Revisited is outstanding. Even the very cautious Anthony Summers has acknowledged that there is strong evidence that Oswald was not on the sixth floor during the shooting. Summers' section on this in Not in Your Lifetime is worth the price of the book.

For a book-length study on Oswald's whereabouts during the shooting, I recommend Barry Ernest's The Girl on the Stairs. A good summary of Ernest's findings is presented in JFK Revisited.

In fact, if you read NSAM 263, you see that JFK approved the recommendations contained in McNamara and Taylor’s report in the same paragraph that mentions the 1,000-man withdrawal, and those recommendations make it undeniably clear that NSAM 263 was never intended to initiate a complete disengagement from South Vietnam regardless of the conditions on the ground. Let’s first read the relevant portion of NSAM 263:

At a meeting on October 5, 1963,[2] the President considered the recommendations contained in the report of Secretary McNamara and General Taylor on their mission to South Vietnam.

The President approved the military recommendations contained in Section I B (1-3) of the report, but directed that no formal announcement be made of the implementation of plans to withdraw 1,000 U.S. military personnel by the end of 1963.

Okay, now let’s read those recommendations:

b. Noted the President's approval of the following statement of U.S. policy which was later released to the press: [3]

"1. The security of South Viet Nam is a major interest of the United States as other free nations. We will adhere to our policy of working with the people and Government of South Viet Nam to deny this country to Communism and to suppress the externally stimulated and supported insurgency of the Viet Cong as promptly as possible. Effective performance in this undertaking is the central objective of our policy in South Viet Nam.

"2. The military program in South Viet Nam has made progress and is sound in principle, though improvements are being energetically sought.

"3. Major U.S. assistance in support of this military effort is needed only until the insurgency has been suppressed or until the national security forces of the Government of South Viet Nam are capable of suppressing it.

"Secretary McNamara and General Taylor reported their judgment that the major part of the U.S. military task can be completed by the end of 1965, although there may be a continuing requirement for a limited number of U.S. training personnel. They reported that by the end of this year, the U.S. program for training Vietnamese should have progressed to the point where 1,000 U.S. military personnel assigned to South Viet Nam can be withdrawn.

"4. The political situation in South Viet Nam remains deeply serious. The United States has made clear its continuing opposition to any repressive actions in South Viet Nam. While such actions have not yet significantly affected the military effort, they could do so in the future.

"5. It remains the policy of the United States, in South Viet Nam as in other parts of the world, to support the efforts of the people of that country to defeat aggression and to build a peaceful and free society."

Even the first draft of NSAM 273, which said nothing about U.S. troops, and which LBJ revised before JFK was even buried, made it clear that the U.S. would continue to aid South Vietnam:

“1. It remains the central object of the United States in South Vietnam to assist the people and government of that country to win their contest against the externally directed and supported Communist conspiracy. . . .

“7. With respect to action against North Vietnam, there should be a detailed plan for the development of additional Government of Vietnam resources, especially for sea-going activity, and such planning should indicate the time and investment necessary to achieve a wholly new level of effectiveness in this field of action.”

All of this dovetails perfectly with what Bobby said about JFK’s intentions in his April 1964 oral interview.

Refreshingly, paragraph 10 shows that JFK and his advisers knew that the Viet Cong were a creature and puppet of North Vietnam, contrary to liberal anti-war mythology about the Viet Cong:

10. In connection with paragraphs 7 and 8 above, it is desired that we should develop as strong and persuasive case as possible to demonstrate to the world the degree to which the Viet Cong is controlled, sustained, and supplied from Hanoi, through Laos and other channels.

I’ll take Bobby’s April 1964 statements over anything McNamara said. And I, again, point out that even when Bobby turned against LBJ’s war effort, he never claimed that JFK planned on totally disengaging from Vietnam regardless of the consequences. I also point out, again, that Schlesinger and Sorenson said nothing—not one word—in their 1965 memoirs about any intention for a complete pullout or complete disengagement from South Vietnam.

McNamara was willing to give up on South Vietnam early on, before we had launched a single air raid into North Vietnam, before we had done any damage to a single high-value target in North Vietnam, and, crucially, before we had done anything to stop the flow of weapons and supplies to North Vietnam from the Soviets and the Chinese.

I guess McNamara’s version of a fair fight was to abandon South Vietnam while doing nothing to stop the Soviets and the Chinese from giving North Vietnam massive amounts of weapons and supplies. Well, that’s exactly what McNamara’s fellow Democrats did soon after the Paris Peace Accords, slashing aid to South Vietnam and then making it clear with the Case-Church Amendment in mid-1973 that the U.S. would not intervene to stop another North Vietnamese invasion.

58 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

Thanks for chiming in Chris. Joe Sr enlisting the mafia in 1960 to help his son seems to be the main smear. . . .

It's not a smear. You could start by considering the evidence that Shaw presents on this issue in Collateral Damage. Shaw's case on this issue is one of the strongest parts of his book.

On a related note, Anthony Summers notes that "a mass of persuasive information links their names [the Kennedys] to election tampering" (Not in Your Lifetime, p. 9).

On 8/19/2022 at 7:04 AM, Pete Mellor said:

Saturday 1st

 

9:45-10:00 Opening Remarks – Neale Safaty

10:00 -11:00 The Anatomy Papers Update – Bart Kamp (remote)

11:00 -11:20 Tea/Coffee Break

11:20 – 12:20 The Paines – Paul Brown

12:20 -13:55 Lunch at the Two Sawyers

14:00 – 15:00 The network of men & institutions involved in the JFKA – Casey Quinlan (remote)

15:00 -16:00 Tactical Ambush in Dealey Plaza – Brian Edwards (remote)

16:00-16:15 Tea/Coffee Break

16:15 – 17:15 The Throat Shot (revisiting the case with new technology) – David Knight (remote)

17:15 – 18:15 Buell Wesley Frazier Update – Nancy Weiford (remote)

 

Sunday 2nd

 

09:30-10:15 DPUK Auction – Mike Dworetsky

10:15 – 11:15 William Duff – Scott Reid (remote)

11:15- 12:00 Researching the physical evidence or Tippit – Johnny Cairns

12:00-13:00 Lunch Buffet

13:00 – 14:00 The Medical Evidence – Russell Kent

14:00 – 14:45 A 1970s Journalist’s Perspective Q&A – Dave O Brien (remote) interviewed by Neale Safaty

14:45 – 15:00 Comfort Break

15:00 – 16:00 Oswald in New Orleans – Larry Hancock & David Boylan (remote)

 

Attendance is £50 for the two days held at:

The Old Sessions House,

Canterbury University,

Canterbury,

Kent.

For full contact details see the Dealey Plaza U.K. website. 

http://dealeyplazauk.com/uncategorized/canterbury-2022-conference/

 

The location is in the historic city of Canterbury, on the site of the ruins of St.Augustine's 6th Century Abbey.

D.P.U.K. attendees gather on Friday 30th September for evening meal & again on Saturday 1st October.

For any European interest Canterbury is a short distance from Dover sea crossings.

Will this conference be live streamed, by any chance?

I lived in England for five years when I was in the U.S. Army. I lived in Harrogate, which is about 30 minutes from Leeds. 

5 minutes ago, Chris Barnard said:

A couple of the chief smears on Joe Snr are that he was a bootlegger, a rumour started by a Mafia associate about 6 years after Joe’s death. It happened to be that there were Kennedy’s that were bootlegging in New York, completely unrelated. It is after all the 25th most common surname in the world, or there about’s. Somerset Importers just made for a great narrative. 
 

Another which Wiki likes is that he was an anti-Semite. He certainly used the phrases of his day to describe people of various ethnic and cultural groups, something the Irish themselves were stigmatised by. The reality was that it was Joe as US Ambassador in the UK who was trying to get the Jews out of Germany and France, asking Roosevelt to take them as part of the UK migrant quota. Joe and Chamberlain both asked. Roosevelt said “it’s not our problem.” Both Joe and Chamberlain could see a disaster about to happen. 
 

Regarding the Kennedy’s in general, the victors in the assassination have written their history, diminishing any accomplishments or virtues they had. Why? People stop caring about the dead if they seem them as immoral. 
 

To better understand all of this, it needs looking at from the lens at the time, taking into account what was happening in politics. Its a dirty business. Those who have read what JFK/RFK were trying to do understand that it was a better direction for America and its people. The father has no small part in that, he was the most influential figure in their lives. The mother was committed to god and god only. 

I do agree that Joe Sr. did some good things and was not entirely bad. I tried to convey this with my comment that he was not as immoral as Dulles or LeMay. 

You touched on an important point about FDR's apathy about the fate of the Jews and his refusal to help them escape the Holocaust. Over the last 20 years, several thorough--and disturbing--books have been written about FDR's miserable record on the Jews and the Holocaust. The few small steps that he took to help European Jews he took reluctantly and after being pressured to do so. Two of the better books on the subject are Rafael Medoff's The Jews Should Keep Quiet and David Wyman's devastating The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust 1941-1945.

To his great credit, even Stanley Karnow, in his monumental and highly acclaimed Vietnam: A History, was willing to acknowledge the brutality that the communists imposed on the South Vietnamese after South Vietnam fell. Even though his book was originally published as a companion volume for PBS's Vietnam series, he did not whitewash the terrible fate that befell South Vietnam: the executions, the reeducation camps, the massive confiscation of property, and the enormous exodus of refugees who fled the country rather than live under communist rule (aka the "boat people"). He called communist Vietnam a "gulag." 

Of course, there are probably well over 100,000 Vietnamese boat people still alive in the U.S. who could provide plenty of information about the oppression and terror that the communists inflicted on the South. How many people know that thousands of former South Vietnamese refugees in America held two large protests against Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary after it was broadcast? They considered its portrayal of South Vietnam as slanderous, and they viewed its portrayal of communist North Vietnam as disgraceful.