Max Boot gets Booted on Lansdale in Vietnam

[Cliff Varnell]

4 hours ago, Karl Kinaski said:

There is a German book APOCALYPSE VIETNAM where Pierre Salinger said, quote: "The day I embarked for Tokyo (via Honolulu) (20.11. 1963) Kennedy told me: I am about to negotiate (openly) with North Vietnam and I will make clear, that there will be no war in Vietnam." 

I think that's what likely got him killed.  They went thru all that effort to thwart Nhu's rapprochement with the North, only to have Kennedy do it instead?  Not as it turned out.

 

[Cliff Varnell]

On 5/28/2018 at 1:30 PM, Cliff Varnell said:

Ellen J. Hammer, A Death in November, pg 156:

<quote on, emphasis in the original>

When [Diem and Nhu] had first claimed that Americans were active behind the scenes in the agitation spreading in Saigon, they had sounded paranoid – a favorite word among Americans for Diem and Nhu that summer.  But who could disbelieve [David] Halberstam, with his excellent sources in the Central Intelligence Agency, when he reported that the CIA had been openly sending its agents into the pagodas and making daily contact with Buddhist priests and “other participants in this crisis”?  These agents were acting under orders – and they did not go to the pagodas to discuss the finer points of Buddhism.

<quote off>

No, the CIA's Far East cowboys weren’t discussing the finer points of Buddhism – they were teaching American-style public relations.

Roger Hilsman:  Buddhists bit – tasted a little bit of political blood.  Bit harder – tasted more political blood -- and then finally began to use American television.  None of them spoke English but their signs were all in English.

(36.53)

 

Edited August 24, 2018 by Cliff Varnell

[Cliff Varnell]

This thread deserves a bump.

[Karl Kinaski]

This the Lone Nutter Max Boot, in his book " Edward Lansdale and the American tragedy in Vietnam"  has to say about Oliver Stone  and Fletcher Prouty. It is a bunch of claims, lies and errors. 

Quote

 

Quote, Chapter 25:

"The film (JFK by Stone) features a shadowy character, played by Donald Sutherland
and identified only as X, who claims that Kennedy was killed by the
“military industrial complex” in a plot orchestrated by “General Y.” The
movie furnishes some telltale clues to Y’s identity. X says that Allen Dulles
was Y’s benefactor and that Y was in charge of Operation Mongoose. In
case there is any further doubt of Y’s identity, the camera briefly pans to his
office desk. His nameplate is obscured but the visible part reads “M/GEN.
E.G.” above the words “U.S. AIR.” It does not take much imagination to
infer that this is the desk of Major General E. G. Lansdale, U.S. Air Force.
And just as the identity of Y was obvious, so too the identity of X was
never in doubt either. Stone himself identified X at a press conference as L.
Fletcher Prouty, a retired Air Force colonel who had worked as a liaison
officer in the Pentagon’s special operations office when it was run by
Lansdale between 1961 and 1963.
Stone held up Prouty as a fearless truth-teller—a man who, in his
words, “will go down in history” for revealing the “Secret History” of the
United States and uncovering “the ugliest nest of vipers the civilized world
has probably seen since the dreaded Mongol raiders of the tenth and
eleventh centuries.”   In reality, Prouty was a crank with a
febrile imagination—“a complete nut,” in Rufus Phillips’s words. 
 He was a “good pilot of prop-driven aircraft,” Lansdale later said, “but had such a
heavy dose of paranoia about CIA when he was on my staff that I kicked
him back to the Air Force.”
Prouty would be associated after his retirement from the Air Force in
1964 with the white supremacist Liberty Lobby, the Church of Scientology,
and the cult leader Lyndon LaRouche; he grandiosely compared
LaRouche’s federal prosecution for conspiracy and mail fraud to the trial of
Socrates. He also claimed that the fall of the Berlin Wall was stage-
managed by David Rockefeller to profit from “the rubles and the gold,” that
he had personally seen a UFO, and that “the Churchill gang” murdered
Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Close quote.

 

One thing: The statement that the "Churchill gang" murdered FDR is not a quote from Prouty. Let's nProuty speak for himself, quote from his book about JFK and Vietnam ...)

Quote

 

quote

"At  that  time,  1945,  Soviet  ambassador  Andrei  Gromyko  had  been
directed  by  Stalin  to  view  the  remains  of  the  dead  President (FDR),  but  Mrs.
Roosevelt had denied that request several times.
While Elliott (Roosevelt)was with Stalin in 1946, this subject arose again. According to Elliott Roosevelt, this is what Stalin said:
“When your father died, I sent my ambassador with a request that he be
allowed to view the remains and report to me what he saw. Your mother
refused. I have never forgiven her.”
“But why? Elliott asked.
“They poisoned your father, of course, just as they have tried repeatedly
to  poison  me.  Your  mother  would  not  allow  my  representative  to  see
evidence of that. But I know. They poisoned him!”
“‘They’? Who are ‘they’?” Elliott asked.
“The  Churchill  gang!”  Stalin  roared.  “They  poisoned  your  father,  and
they continue to try to poison me. The Churchill gang!”

Close quote

 

Max Boot don't know what he is talking about, when it comes to Stone and Prouty ... 

 

KK

 

  
 

 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Karl Kinaski

[Michael Griffith]

Tom Bass starts his far-left review with this dubious paragraph:

          The Vietnam War was a dog from day one. This was the scandal revealed by the Pentagon Papers, the forty-seven volumes documenting the lies and fakery that year after year racked up bodies like cordwood. More than 3 million Vietnamese were bombed, shelled, gassed, tortured and otherwise killed in a war that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon and Ford should have ended the day it began, by acknowledging that the Vietnamese beat the French at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 and that colonialism in Asia was dead.

You can find this spin repeated virtually verbatim in communist propaganda about the Vietnam War. 

In point of fact, the Vietnam War was a noble effort to keep the 18 million citizens of South Vietnam from falling under North Vietnam's brutal, tyrannical communist rule. 

To read Bass's review,

-- You'd never know that North Vietnam was the aggressor, that North Vietnam launched four large-scale invasions against South Vietnam (1964, 1968, 1972, and 1975). In contrast, South Vietnam never once sent a large army across the DMZ and/or through Laos to invade North Vietnam. 

-- You'd never know that the Saigon regime allowed its citizens far more basic rights than the Hanoi regime allowed its citizens.

-- You'd never know that Ho Chi Minh and the Viet Minh would not have defeated the French without massive aid from the Chinese, that China provided tens of thousands of support troops to aid the Viet Minh, that Chinese generals ran major Viet Minh operations (including the assault on Dien Bien Phu), and that Ho and his fellow Communists murdered tens of thousands of non-communist Vietnamese nationalists to consolidate their power in the north. 

-- You'd never know that there would have been no North Vietnam without massive Soviet and Chinese military and financial aid, that China had over 100,000 support troops in North Vietnam, and that Russia had over 1,000 advisers in North Vietnam (many of whom operated some of North Vietnam's Soviet-provided SAM missile batteries).

-- And you'd never know that after the Communists took over South Vietnam, they imposed a reign of terror that nearly rivaled the Communist genocide in Cambodia. As has been thoroughly documented, when the North Vietnamese took over South Vietnam, they executed tens of thousands of South Vietnamese, and sent well over one million others to concentration camps, where tens of thousands died from abuse and cruel conditions. To this day, Communist Vietnam remains one of the most repressive regimes on the planet, according to every major human rights group (including Human Rights Watch). 

And, is Bass aware that the portion of the war covered by the Pentagon Papers only goes to 1967, and that, even then, the Pentagon Papers is not a comprehensive record of the deliberations regarding the war up to 1967?  

If you'd like to read more to get the full story on the Vietnam War, I invite you to check out my website The Truth About the Vietnam War.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Michael Griffith