John Newman Discusses JFK, Vietnam, Fake Analysis on VC Strength

[Benjamin Cole]

 

Not sure how this will lead back to the JFKA. 

For whatever reason, Viet Cong strength levels in South Vietnam were vastly underestimated in 1962, and JFK mis-informed. 

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Not sure how this will lead back to the JFKA. 

For whatever reason, Viet Cong strength levels in South Vietnam were vastly underestimated in 1962, and JFK mis-informed. 

It is sad to see Newman relying on a hack like Sam Adams, who issued numerous faulty analyses during the war. I am baffled that Newman seems unaware of the crucial information revealed in newly available North Vietnamese sources. This information has been available for at least 17 years, since Dr. Mark Moyar's 2006 book Triumph Forsaken and since Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen's 2012 book Hanoi's War, both of which make extensive use of the newly available North Vietnamese material. 

It is also sad to see Newman taking CBS's side in the Westmoreland v. CBS lawsuit. Dr. Moyar discusses Adams and the Westmoreland lawsuit at length in his new book Triumph Regained (pp. 354-360), which, like his first book. Moyar does something that Newman strangely fails to do: he includes the new information from North Vietnamese sources that relates to the issue of VC and NVA strength in South Vietnam. It's important to note that the North Vietnamese disclosures were admissions against interest, i.e., they reflected negatively on the North Vietnamese war effort, which is why this information was kept sealed/private for so long. 

Dr. Moyar's treatment of this issue is the most up-to-date and comprehensive, but the following online article by Donald Shaw is a good summary of the other side of the story:

Westmoreland vs. CBS - Donald P. Shaw, Commentary Magazine

Another good article is John Hart's "The Statistics Trap in Vietnam," Washington Post (Op-Ed), 1/6/1985, p. C-7. Hart, the CIA station chief in Saigon in 1967, calls out Adams for his exaggerations and omissions. 

Edited March 7, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

It is sad to see Newman relying on a hack like Sam Adams, who issued numerous faulty analyses during the war. I am baffled that Newman seems unaware of the crucial information revealed in newly available North Vietnamese sources. This information has been available for at least 17 years, since Dr. Mark Moyar's 2006 book Triumph Forsaken and since Dr. Lien-Hang Nguyen's 2012 book Hanoi's War, both of which make extensive use of the newly available North Vietnamese material. 

It is also sad to see Newman taking CBS's side in the Westmoreland v. CBS lawsuit. Dr. Moyar discusses Adams and the Westmoreland lawsuit at length in his new book Triumph Regained (pp. 354-360), which, like his first book. Moyar does something that Newman strangely fails to do: he includes the new information from North Vietnamese sources that relates to the issue of VC and NVA strength in South Vietnam. It's important to note that the North Vietnamese disclosures were admissions against interest, i.e., they reflected negatively on the North Vietnamese war effort, which is why this information was kept sealed/private for so long. 

Dr. Moyar's treatment of this issue is the most up-to-date and comprehensive, but the following online article by Donald Shaw is a good summary of the other side of the story:

Westmoreland vs. CBS - Donald P. Shaw, Commentary Magazine

Another good article is John Hart's "The Statistics Trap in Vietnam," Washington Post (Op-Ed), 1/6/1985, p. C-7. Hart, the CIA station chief in Saigon in 1967, calls out Adams for his exaggerations and omissions. 

You could present some of the new NV material here. 

Newman has presented the primary documents that he relies upon. 

Foreign occupations-wars strike me as fantastically expensive and counter-productive tar-babies. 

At one point (I believe after the Tet offensive), General Westmoreland  proposed 750,000 troops for Vietnam, topping even the 550,000 we had at the peak. 

If the Viet Cong-NV's were losing and small, why did General Westmoreland make that proposal?  Did he overestimate the enemy? Was US intel that bad? 

In the end, was such carnage and expense in the interest of the US public and taxpayer? 

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[Paul Brancato]

It’s completely insane to argue from the position that we could have won that war. I’ll only ask at what price? How many people needed to die? And what would that aftermath look like? Democracy? The details don’t matter. It was immoral. 

[Benjamin Cole]

10 minutes ago, Paul Brancato said:

It’s completely insane to argue from the position that we could have won that war. I’ll only ask at what price? How many people needed to die? And what would that aftermath look like? Democracy? The details don’t matter. It was immoral. 

Even sadder, we now know the Vietnam war was not against communism and dictatorships.

Euro-US globalists have poured trillions of dollars of investment into the CCP-controlled China, and still do. 

So, communist dictatorships are fine, if they do business with globalists. 

Xi makes Putin look like Peter Pan, btw. Concentration camps anyone? 

 

Edited March 8, 2023 by Benjamin Cole

[Anthony Thorne]

6 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

In the end, was such carnage and expense in the interest of the US public and taxpayer? 

Depends if they had stock in a weapons company or not, I suppose.

[Benjamin Cole]

file:///Users/benjamncole/Desktop/PDF.pdf

I don't know if this link will work. The JCS wanted 750,000 troops in 1966. 

The VC-NV were weak and losing? 

[Michael Griffith]

If you ever read just one more book on the Vietnam War, or if you're ever willing to read something other than far-left books on the war, I recommend that you read renowned British historian Max Hastings' widely acclaimed 2018 book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. 

Center-left in his politics and usually voting for Labor Party (liberal) candidates in British elections, Hastings was a proud anti-war liberal journalist during the Vietnam War. But Hastings, unlike most other liberal critics of the war, was sobered by the bloody reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after they conquered South Vietnam. The large-scale slaughter and oppression carried out by the Communists profoundly influenced Hastings and led him to reconsider his outlook on the war. No one would accuse him of being supportive of the war, but his book contains much information that sheds important light on the war effort.

Hastings' book is so balanced and objective that at times it seems like two very different people wrote it. Revealingly, the book has come under strong criticism from both liberal and conservative reviewers. Some liberals have condemned the book as being too sympathetic toward the U.S. war effort and too critical of the Hanoi regime, while some conservatives have attacked the book for supposedly repeating  claims made by the anti-war movement in the '60s and '70s and for understating the U.S. military's achievements and its chances of winning the war.

If you're a liberal who is critical of the war, you will find much in the book that you like. But, you will also find much that will challenge your view of the war, such as the following:

-- Hastings rejects the liberal myths about the Geneva Accords and documents that the North Vietnamese were the first ones to violate the accords and that they violated them egregiously. He also dismisses the myth that the U.S. and South Vietnam violated the Geneva Accords when South Vietnam refused to hold elections in 1956.

-- Hastings takes liberal journalists to task for ignoring or minimizing Viet Cong atrocities and the Hanoi regime's brutality and oppression over its own people. He fully acknowledges the sins of the Saigon regime and gives them no pass for anything, but he admits that the Hanoi regime was worse.

-- Hastings debunks the liberal myth that Ho Chi Minh was merely a nationalist who used communism as a vehicle to achieve his nationalistic aims. Hastings discusses much of the evidence that Ho Chi Minh was a hardcore Stalinist and Maoist who viewed Vietnamese nationalism as being secondary to Stalinism and Maoism.

-- Hastings notes that the Vietminh were brutal and that the majority of Vietnamese who dealt with the Vietminh soon grew to dislike them. He also aknowledges that the Vietminh seized power by killing or imprisoning most non-communist nationalist leaders.

-- Hastings admits that the American media badly misreported the Tet Offensive, that the offensive was actually a crushing, devastating defeat for North Vietnam that came with "catastrophis losses," and that it virtually wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective force. He also admits that the North Vietnamese horrendously miscalculated when they assumed that most South Vietnamese would rebel against the Saigon regime soon after the offensive began. 

-- Hastings is quite critical of his former fellow anti-war activists. He accuses them of ignoring North Vietnamese and Viet Cong brutality and of holding the Saigon regime to a draconian standard while whitewashing the Hanoi regime's more numerous sins. 

-- Hastings acknowledges that Hanoi's leaders were among the most ruthless and cruel in history in their willingness to accept staggering troop losses.

-- Hastings does not make nearly as much use of the newly available North Vietnamese sources as do authors such as Moyar, Veith, Sorley, and Nguyen, but he does note a few cases where these sources disprove certain common liberal claims about the war. 

-- Perhaps the most powerful chapter in the book is Hastings' chapter on the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed on South Vietnam. To my surprise, he includes information on the rape of South Vietnam that I had not seen before. 

Until I read Hastings' book, I never realized just how massively the North Vietnamese looted South Vietnam. Nor did I know, until I read Hastings' book, that the Communists even arrested the Buddhist monk Tri Quang, who had so vocally attacked the Saigon regime. Why was he arrested? Answer: He was religious and didn't like communism.

Hastings notes that untold thousands of South Vietnamese remained imprisoned in brutal concentration camps for over 10 years, and that some of them were not released until the 1990s. He notes that thousands died of starvation in the camps, and that "starvation was employed as a psychological weapon." Typically, prisoners were worked for 10-12 hours per day. Hastings points out that a "conservative estimate" of the death rate in the camps is 5 percent.

Hastings observes that the North Vietnamese people suffered terribly under Communist rule after the war. He observes that in 1988, thousands of people in the north died of starvation because of Communist mismanagement of the annual crops and the food supply. 

Finally, Hastings notes that as of the time of the writing of his book, Vietnam's Communist leaders "have shown no inclination either to indulge personal freedom or to sacrifice a jot of the power of the Party." He acknowledges that the regime has introduced some pro-market economic reforms, but he also notes that basic rights are still repressed.

Edited March 9, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Benjamin Cole]

8 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

If you ever read just one more book on the Vietnam War, or if you're ever willing to read something other than far-left books on the war, I recommend that you read renowned British historian Max Hastings' widely acclaimed 2018 book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. 

Center-left in his politics and usually voting for Labor Party (liberal) candidates in British elections, Hastings was a proud anti-war liberal journalist during the Vietnam War. But Hastings, unlike most other liberal critics of the war, was sobered by the bloody reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after they conquered South Vietnam. The large-scale slaughter and oppression carried out by the Communists profoundly influenced Hastings and led him to reconsider his outlook on the war. No one would accuse him of being supportive of the war, but his book contains much information that sheds important light on the war effort.

Hastings' book is so balanced and objective that at times it seems like two very different people wrote it. Revealingly, the book has come under strong criticism from both liberal and conservative reviewers. Some liberals have condemned the book as being too sympathetic toward the U.S. war effort and too critical of the Hanoi regime, while some conservatives have attacked the book for supposedly repeating  claims made by the anti-war movement in the '60s and '70s and for understating the U.S. military's achievements and its chances of winning the war.

If you're a liberal who is critical of the war, you will find much in the book that you like. But, you will also find much that will challenge your view of the war, such as the following:

-- Hastings rejects the liberal myths about the Geneva Accords and documents that the North Vietnamese were the first ones to violate the accords and that they violated them egregiously. He also dismisses the myth that the U.S. and South Vietnam violated the Geneva Accords when South Vietnam refused to hold elections in 1956.

-- Hastings takes liberal journalists to task for ignoring or minimizing Viet Cong atrocities and the Hanoi regime's brutality and oppression over its own people. He fully acknowledges the sins of the Saigon regime and gives them no pass for anything, but he admits that the Hanoi regime was worse.

-- Hastings debunks the liberal myth that Ho Chi Minh was merely a nationalist who used communism as a vehicle to achieve his nationalistic aims. Hastings discusses much of the evidence that Ho Chi Minh was a hardcore Stalinist and Maoist who viewed Vietnamese nationalism as being secondary to Stalinism and Maoism.

-- Hastings notes that the Vietminh were brutal and that the majority of Vietnamese who dealt with the Vietminh soon grew to dislike them. He also aknowledges that the Vietminh seized power by killing or imprisoning most non-communist nationalist leaders.

-- Hastings admits that the American media badly misreported the Tet Offensive, that the offensive was actually a crushing, devastating defeat for North Vietnam that came with "catastrophis losses," and that it virtually wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective force. He also admits that the North Vietnamese horrendously miscalculated when they assumed that most South Vietnamese would rebel against the Saigon regime soon after the offensive began. 

-- Hastings is quite critical of his former fellow anti-war activists. He accuses them of ignoring North Vietnamese and Viet Cong brutality and of holding the Saigon regime to a draconian standard while whitewashing the Hanoi regime's more numerous sins. 

-- Hastings acknowledges that Hanoi's leaders were among the most ruthless and cruel in history in their willingness to accept staggering troop losses.

-- Hastings does not make nearly as much use of the newly available North Vietnamese sources as do authors such as Moyar, Veith, Sorley, and Nguyen, but he does note a few cases where these sources disprove certain common liberal claims about the war. 

-- Perhaps the most powerful chapter in the book is Hastings' chapter on the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed on South Vietnam. To my surprise, he includes information on the rape of South Vietnam that I had not seen before. 

Until I read Hastings' book, I never realized just how massively the North Vietnamese looted South Vietnam. Nor did I know, until I read Hastings' book, that the Communists even arrested the Buddhist monk Tri Quang, who had so vocally attacked the Saigon regime. Why was he arrested? Answer: He was religious and didn't like communism.

Hastings notes that untold thousands of South Vietnamese remained imprisoned in brutal concentration camps for over 10 years, and that some of them were not released until the 1990s. He notes that thousands died of starvation in the camps, and that "starvation was employed as a psychological weapon." Typically, prisoners were worked for 10-12 hours per day. Hastings points out that a "conservative estimate" of the death rate in the camps is 5 percent.

Hastings observes that the North Vietnamese people suffered terribly under Communist rule after the war. He observes that in 1988, thousands of people in the north died of starvation because of Communist mismanagement of the annual crops and the food supply. 

Finally, Hastings notes that as of the time of the writing of his book, Vietnam's Communist leaders "have shown no inclination either to indulge personal freedom or to sacrifice a jot of the power of the Party." He acknowledges that the regime has introduced some pro-market economic reforms, but he also notes that basic rights are still repressed.

MG_

 

But you ignore the question I asked.

You have posited that John Newman is incorrect is his assessment of the strength of the VC and NV in SV. Newman said the strength was purposely underestimated. You differed. 

I note that at least twice, in 1966 and then after the Tet Offensive, the JCS or Westmoreland asked for 750,000 troops in SV, even larger than the 550,000 the US had at the peak. 

That suggests they US was up against a strong enemy, not an overestimated enemy. 

I concur wholeheartedly that authoritarian communist regimes are horrible, and what happened in Vietnam was horrible. 

BTW, the largest and most repressive authoritarian communist regime on the planet today is the CCP. Concentration camps, and ever shrinking speech and political rights. 

The multinationals have poured trillions of dollars into China. They love the CCP. They even manufacture lies about the origins of the Wuhan lab virus on behalf of the CCP. 

What happened to make communism great again? 

[Chuck Schwartz]

Benjamin, there is now a labor shortage in China and US companies are re- sourcing back to the US (and to Mexico).  Here is a partial explanation of why there is a labor shortage in China...https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57154574

[Benjamin Cole]

10 hours ago, Chuck Schwartz said:

Benjamin, there is now a labor shortage in China and US companies are re- sourcing back to the US (and to Mexico).  Here is a partial explanation of why there is a labor shortage in China...https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-57154574

Yes, all over the developed world, women have stopped having babies. S Korea is down below one baby per woman. Japan etc.

Not sure what this has to do with Westmoreland wanting 750,000 troops in S Vietnam to fight a small and weak enemy, but it is an interesting topic.....

 

[Michael Griffith]

On 3/9/2023 at 10:53 AM, Michael Griffith said:

If you ever read just one more book on the Vietnam War, or if you're ever willing to read something other than far-left books on the war, I recommend that you read renowned British historian Max Hastings' widely acclaimed 2018 book Vietnam: An Epic Tragedy, 1945-1975. 

Center-left in his politics and usually voting for Labor Party (liberal) candidates in British elections, Hastings was a proud anti-war liberal journalist during the Vietnam War. But Hastings, unlike most other liberal critics of the war, was sobered by the bloody reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed after they conquered South Vietnam. The large-scale slaughter and oppression carried out by the Communists profoundly influenced Hastings and led him to reconsider his outlook on the war. No one would accuse him of being supportive of the war, but his book contains much information that sheds important light on the war effort.

Hastings' book is so balanced and objective that at times it seems like two very different people wrote it. Revealingly, the book has come under strong criticism from both liberal and conservative reviewers. Some liberals have condemned the book as being too sympathetic toward the U.S. war effort and too critical of the Hanoi regime, while some conservatives have attacked the book for supposedly repeating  claims made by the anti-war movement in the '60s and '70s and for understating the U.S. military's achievements and its chances of winning the war.

If you're a liberal who is critical of the war, you will find much in the book that you like. But, you will also find much that will challenge your view of the war, such as the following:

-- Hastings rejects the liberal myths about the Geneva Accords and documents that the North Vietnamese were the first ones to violate the accords and that they violated them egregiously. He also dismisses the myth that the U.S. and South Vietnam violated the Geneva Accords when South Vietnam refused to hold elections in 1956.

-- Hastings takes liberal journalists to task for ignoring or minimizing Viet Cong atrocities and the Hanoi regime's brutality and oppression over its own people. He fully acknowledges the sins of the Saigon regime and gives them no pass for anything, but he admits that the Hanoi regime was worse.

-- Hastings debunks the liberal myth that Ho Chi Minh was merely a nationalist who used communism as a vehicle to achieve his nationalistic aims. Hastings discusses much of the evidence that Ho Chi Minh was a hardcore Stalinist and Maoist who viewed Vietnamese nationalism as being secondary to Stalinism and Maoism.

-- Hastings notes that the Vietminh were brutal and that the majority of Vietnamese who dealt with the Vietminh soon grew to dislike them. He also aknowledges that the Vietminh seized power by killing or imprisoning most non-communist nationalist leaders.

-- Hastings admits that the American media badly misreported the Tet Offensive, that the offensive was actually a crushing, devastating defeat for North Vietnam that came with "catastrophis losses," and that it virtually wiped out the Viet Cong as an effective force. He also admits that the North Vietnamese horrendously miscalculated when they assumed that most South Vietnamese would rebel against the Saigon regime soon after the offensive began. 

-- Hastings is quite critical of his former fellow anti-war activists. He accuses them of ignoring North Vietnamese and Viet Cong brutality and of holding the Saigon regime to a draconian standard while whitewashing the Hanoi regime's more numerous sins. 

-- Hastings acknowledges that Hanoi's leaders were among the most ruthless and cruel in history in their willingness to accept staggering troop losses.

-- Hastings does not make nearly as much use of the newly available North Vietnamese sources as do authors such as Moyar, Veith, Sorley, and Nguyen, but he does note a few cases where these sources disprove certain common liberal claims about the war. 

-- Perhaps the most powerful chapter in the book is Hastings' chapter on the reign of terror that the North Vietnamese imposed on South Vietnam. To my surprise, he includes information on the rape of South Vietnam that I had not seen before. 

Until I read Hastings' book, I never realized just how massively the North Vietnamese looted South Vietnam. Nor did I know, until I read Hastings' book, that the Communists even arrested the Buddhist monk Tri Quang, who had so vocally attacked the Saigon regime. Why was he arrested? Answer: He was religious and didn't like communism.

Hastings notes that untold thousands of South Vietnamese remained imprisoned in brutal concentration camps for over 10 years, and that some of them were not released until the 1990s. He notes that thousands died of starvation in the camps, and that "starvation was employed as a psychological weapon." Typically, prisoners were worked for 10-12 hours per day. Hastings points out that a "conservative estimate" of the death rate in the camps is 5 percent.

Hastings observes that the North Vietnamese people suffered terribly under Communist rule after the war. He observes that in 1988, thousands of people in the north died of starvation because of Communist mismanagement of the annual crops and the food supply. 

Finally, Hastings notes that as of the time of the writing of his book, Vietnam's Communist leaders "have shown no inclination either to indulge personal freedom or to sacrifice a jot of the power of the Party." He acknowledges that the regime has introduced some pro-market economic reforms, but he also notes that basic rights are still repressed.

Oh, I forgot to mention two things.

One, Hastings provides an exceptionally detailed look at the extreme level of repression imposed by North Vietnam's government on its own people during the war. His treatment of this subject even rivals that of Lien-Hang Nguyen in her book Hanoi's War. The Hanoi regime was so fanatically controlling and oppressive that even the Soviet advisers were surprised by the pervasive and excessive nature of the regime's totalitarian grip. Soviet advisers wrote home and/or later talked about the extreme degree of control that the Hanoi government exercised over the people.  

Two, in his analysis of the sorry performance of liberal journalists during the war, Hastings discusses the Hanoi regime's extensive propaganda efforts. He discusses cases when the Hanoi regime fed visiting liberal journalists false stories, including faked pictures, about the effects of American bombing. Those journalists uncritically repeated these stories and many American newspapers published them. Hastings spends some time on Harrison Salisbury's infamous 1966 visit to North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese gave Salisbury bogus statistics lifted straight out of one their propaganda booklets, and Salisbury repeated them virtually verbatim in the New York Times. The North Vietnamese also gave Salisbury a fraudulent photo that appeared to show that American bombs had destroyed a Catholic cathedral. Without making any effort to verify the photo, Salisbury ran with it. The photo was later exposed as a fake when photo reconnaissance and ground observation proved that the cathedral was totally undamaged. Hastings notes that liberal journalists frequently repeated bogus North Vietnamese claims about American bombs hitting the Red River dikes and hitting rural areas that were actually never hit and that never even had bombs land anywhere near them.

[Benjamin Cole]

2 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

Oh, I forgot to mention two things.

One, Hastings provides an exceptionally detailed look at the extreme level of repression imposed by North Vietnam's government on its own people during the war. His treatment of this subject even rivals that of Lien-Hang Nguyen in her book Hanoi's War. The Hanoi regime was so fanatically controlling and oppressive that even the Soviet advisers were surprised by the pervasive and excessive nature of the regime's totalitarian grip. Soviet advisers wrote home and/or later talked about the extreme degree of control that the Hanoi government exercised over the people.  

Two, in his analysis of the sorry performance of liberal journalists during the war, Hastings discusses the Hanoi regime's extensive propaganda efforts. He discusses cases when the Hanoi regime fed visiting liberal journalists false stories, including faked pictures, about the effects of American bombing. Those journalists uncritically repeated these stories and many American newspapers published them. Hastings spends some time on Harrison Salisbury's infamous 1966 visit to North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese gave Salisbury bogus statistics lifted straight out of one their propaganda booklets, and Salisbury repeated them virtually verbatim in the New York Times. The North Vietnamese also gave Salisbury a fraudulent photo that appeared to show that American bombs had destroyed a Catholic cathedral. Without making any effort to verify the photo, Salisbury ran with it. The photo was later exposed as a fake when photo reconnaissance and ground observation proved that the cathedral was totally undamaged. Hastings notes that liberal journalists frequently repeated bogus North Vietnamese claims about American bombs hitting the Red River dikes and hitting rural areas that were actually never hit and that never even had bombs land anywhere near them.

I loathe, detest and revile repressive Communist regimes, such as the one flourishing in Beijing, watered by trillions of Western euros and dollars. Globalist nirvana. 

What has that to do with the JCS and Westmoreland wanting 750,000 troops in SV? Does that sound like the US, with every advantage in materiel, equipment, information, command & control...was up against a feeble enemy? 

[Bob Ness]

On 3/7/2023 at 7:33 AM, Michael Griffith said:

It is sad to see Newman relying on a hack like Sam Adams, who issued numerous faulty analyses during the war.

I didn't hear him "rely" on Adams. It leads me to question your motives for saying that. To wit: 07:58 " ...(Adams) provided contacts for the most important Intelligence Officers that I needed to interview".

This sort of straw man argument doesn't do justice to the remainder of your argument (I really don't know what that is because the NV infiltration into the South isn't really debatable). It was common knowledge in the Air Force that the VC were fully reinforced and "Victory" in Viet Nam would end up looking like the surface of the moon if accomplished. I know that because my father was in Air Force Intelligence (SAC) at the time and stated as such. He retired effective 1965 largely BECAUSE of that.

He wasn't keen on Ho Chi Mihn or the communists obviously but along with the reinforcement issue he felt the current political climate in the US combined with the political decisions made by previous administrations made evicting the communists impossible. He could have stuck around to get his full bird but retired to raise his still-young family.

I have no doubt his WW2 experience probably illustrated the consequences to human life of a sustained and possibly nuclear bombardment of the population.

[Benjamin Cole]

Was the war in Vietnam "against communism"?

Why then the pandering of US globalists towards CCP-Beijing? 

The raccoon-dog non-story is the latest simpering from the NYT. Beneath contempt.