The Myth that JFK Was Killed Over the Vietnam War

[Bill Fite]

10 hours ago, Cory Santos said:

Well there is an interview where JFK said he believed in the Domino Theory so I will accept what he said.  However, if, as you suggest, he was not telling the truth or misleading the public, then if that is true one would have to throw out everything he said.  I choose to believe what he said.   

Yes - in the Sep 2, 1963 interview w W Cronkite he cites the Domino Theory.  It's also the same interview where JFK states that it's their war to win or lose - that the US can support through material, advisors and advice but it's their war.

 

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Bill Fite said:

Yes - in the Sep 2, 1963 interview w W Cronkite he cites the Domino Theory.  It's also the same interview where JFK states that it's their war to win or lose - that the US can support through material, advisors and advice but it's their war.

That's some rather misleading cherry-picking. In that same interview, in fact right after he said it was their war to win or lose, he said he disagreed with those who were advocating withdrawal, and he added that this would be a "great mistake" and that "this is a very important struggle":

          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. . . .

A week later, when he was interviewed on NBC's Huntley-Brinkley Report on 9/9/63, JFK said he even opposed reducing aid to South Vietnam, said "we must be patient" and "we must persist," and said we did not want to see a repeat of what happened in China:

          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.

In the last two speeches of his life, one of them being the speech he was going to give at the Trade Mart on 11/22, JFK made clear his determination to win the war.

It is misleading and dishonest to talk about JFK's Vietnam policy without quoting the firsthand statements that he himself made, but the tiny handful of researchers who keep peddling the unconditional-withdrawal myth almost never quote those statements--instead, they rely on McNamara's phony "secret debrief" and on hearsay and double hearsay statements attributed to JFK years after his death by liberal aides and associates who were trying to distance JFK from the war. 

And, yes, JFK firmly believed in the Domino Theory, and the theory was sadly proved correct by subsequent events. When it became clear that South Vietnam was about to fall to the Communists, Cambodia fell to Communist rule, and Laos quickly followed. The North Vietnamese Communists executed over 60,000 South Vietnamese and sent another 800,000-plus to concentration camps, where the death rate was at least 5%. Communist rule in Cambodia was even worse, where the Cambodian Communists murdered over 1 million Cambodians. In Laos, the brutality of Communist rule drove 10% of the population to leave the country by 1980.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Bill Fite]

22 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

That's some rather misleading cherry-picking. In that same interview, in fact right after he said it was their war to win or lose, he said he disagreed with those who were advocating withdrawal, and he added that this would be a "great mistake" and that "this is a very important struggle":

 

 

LOL 

Not cherry= picking at all - It's their war to win - did you miss that part?   

As you missed the Gen Maxwell Taylor memo in posts above?

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, Bill Fite said:

 

LOL. Not cherry= picking at all - It's their war to win - did you miss that part?   

I'm only answering this for the sake of others, especially any guests. Well, yes, of course it was "their war to win." You keep quoting this statement as if you're somehow proving something and/or validating the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Heck, Nixon said it was "their war to win." So did Abrams. So did Colby. So did just about everybody.

The point, which you keep avoiding, is that (1) JFK made it clear that he opposed pulling out of South Vietnam and even opposed reducing aid to South Vietnam because he was determined to help them win the war, and (2) that JFK defended the war effort as vital, said we had to be patient and persist, and said he did not want a repeat of what happened in China. 

As you missed the Gen Maxwell Taylor memo in posts above?

Oh, boy. You must be reading the Taylor memo with pink-shaded glasses or with half the memo blacked out. The Taylor memo does not even come close to supporting the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from Vietnam after the election. Where in the world in that memo do you see any such thing? 

BTW, you cannot read the 10/4/63 memo in isolation from Taylor and McNamara's 10/2/63 memo to JFK. Have you read the 10/2/63 memo? The few times when the unconditional-withdrawal-myth folks cite that memo, they usually ignore the parts that make it clear that the withdrawal was neither unconditional nor irreversible. Here's a link to that memo: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IV, Vietnam, August–December 1963 - Office of the Historian.

I suspect you guys just don't care, but it should give you pause that even the vast majority of liberal historians, who have looked at all the same evidence that you guys cite, reject as spurious and fringe the Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith myth that JFK was determined to totally disengage from Vietnam, no matter what, after the election. That inexcusable myth was one of the two main points of scholarly attack against Stone's 1991 movie, the other point being the obscene myth that Ed Lansdale played a key role in the plot.

Edited November 1, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

@Cliff Varnell@Bill Fite@James DiEugenio 

Speaking of JFK's determination to win the Vietnam War, here is some of what was said on that subject in the first draft of NSAM 273, i.e., the draft that JFK was prepared to sign, dated 11/21/63:

          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. The test of all decisions and U.S. actions in this area should be the effectiveness of their contribution to this purpose. (Paragraph 1)

Wow. Huh. Gee. That doesn't sound like there was any intention to cut and run after the '64 election, does it?

And:

          Programs of military and economic assistance should be maintained at such levels that their magnitude and effectiveness in the eyes of the Vietnamese Government do not fall below the levels sustained by the United States in the time of the Diem Government. (Paragraph 6)

So U.S. aid to South Vietnam was to be maintained, and at the same level as it was under Diem.

How about the withdrawal? What did the first draft of NSAM 273 say about the withdrawal? Let's read:

          The objectives of the United States with respect to the withdrawal of U.S. military personnel remain as stated in the White House statement of October 2, 1963. (Paragraph 2)

Booyah! And let's read the relevant part of that 10/2/63 White House statement:

          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. (Paragraph 3)

Yes, indeed! Notice that this is a judgment call about the situation on the ground in South Vietnam, that the "major part" of the U.S. military task "can" (not "will" or "shall") be completed by the end of 1965, and that some U.S. training personnel (i.e., military advisors) may be required to remain in South Vietnam after the end of 1965.

This is not even in the ballpark of an ironclad, irreversible decision to totally disengage from South Vietnam after the '64 election, and anyone who says otherwise is ignoring the plain English of the statement.

The 10/2/63 White House statement also specified what the "central objective" of U.S. policy for South Vietnam was--it was the “effective performance” of the effort "to deny this country to communism and to suppress" the Viet Cong insurgency. Let's read:

          1. The security of South Viet-Nam is a major interest of the United States as of 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. (Paragraph 1)

But according to the Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith unconditional-withdrawal myth, the central objective was to totally and unconditionally disengage from South Vietnam after the ’64 election. This is an excusable myth that has done considerable damage to the case for conspiracy in JFK's death.

The 10/2/63 statement also said that "major" U.S. assistance to South Vietnam would be maintained until the insurgency had been suppressed or until South Vietnam was capable of suppressing it:

          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. (Paragraph 3)

So until the Communist insurgency had been suppressed or until South Vietnam could suppress it, “major” U.S. assistance to the military effort would be “needed.”

In closing, I quote the final paragraph of the 10/2/63 White House statement, the statement that the first draft of NSAM 273 said governed the objectives of the clearly conditional withdrawal plan:

          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.

This primary-source evidence is a big part of the reason that even nearly all liberal historians reject the unconditional-withdrawal myth.

[James DiEugenio]

That interview was before the signing of NSAM 263.

Now, are we supposed to quote all the people to who JFK said  he was getting out, or the overall review of the policy on Indochina, which Mike's buddy Selverstone tried to say did not exist? 

But it did. And Scott wrote about it back in 1971.

And somehow Selverstone missed it, even though Scott's essay was one of the very first and most famous on the subject.

When people bring an agenda to an historical subject they are not writing history anymore.  They are writing from a pre-formed ideology.

The very title Mike placed on this thread proves that in spades.

[Jeff Carter]

5 hours ago, Michael Griffith said:

LOL. Not cherry= picking at all - It's their war to win - did you miss that part?   

I'm only answering this for the sake of others, especially any guests. Well, yes, of course it was "their war to win." You keep quoting this statement as if you're somehow proving something and/or validating the unconditional-withdrawal myth. Heck, Nixon said it was "their war to win." So did Abrams. So did Colby. So did just about everybody.

The point, which you keep avoiding, is that (1) JFK made it clear that he opposed pulling out of South Vietnam and even opposed reducing aid to South Vietnam because he was determined to help them win the war, and (2) that JFK defended the war effort as vital, said we had to be patient and persist, and said he did not want a repeat of what happened in China. 

As you missed the Gen Maxwell Taylor memo in posts above?

Oh, boy. You must be reading the Taylor memo with pink-shaded glasses or with half the memo blacked out. The Taylor memo does not even come close to supporting the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from Vietnam after the election. Where in the world in that memo do you see any such thing? 

BTW, you cannot read the 10/4/63 memo in isolation from Taylor and McNamara's 10/2/63 memo to JFK. Have you read the 10/2/63 memo? The few times when the unconditional-withdrawal-myth folks cite that memo, they usually ignore the parts that make it clear that the withdrawal was neither unconditional nor irreversible. Here's a link to that memo: Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, Volume IV, Vietnam, August–December 1963 - Office of the Historian.

I suspect you guys just don't care, but it should give you pause that even the vast majority of liberal historians, who have looked at all the same evidence that you guys cite, reject as spurious and fringe the Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith myth that JFK was determined to totally disengage from Vietnam, no matter what, after the election. That inexcusable myth was one of the two main points of scholarly attack against Stone's 1991 movie, the other point being the obscene myth that Ed Lansdale played a key role in the plot.

This is a straw-man argument, one that has been floated since the earliest attacks on the JFK film.

This is the straw:  “unconditionally and totally disengage”, as it appears in the following formulation:  “the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from Vietnam”

Language specifying “unconditional” or “total disengagement” does not appear in NSAM 263, and such concepts are not part of the argument advanced by the so-called “Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith” cabal. Les Gelb was one of the first to utilize this diversion, claiming “J.F.K. might never have issued the directive if he had thought it would mean losing the war.” Its an entirely hypothetical construct. The rhetorical strategy consists of substituting the hypothetical assertions - i.e. Kennedy would not just hand over South Vietnam to the Communists - in place of the actual policy, and attack the “unconditional withdrawal myth makers” based on the hypothesis.

Fact is - it is impossible to predict what the result of training Vietnamese personnel to replace U.S. personnel and withdrawing the “bulk of U.S. personnel” by the end of 1965 would have been. All that can be said is it was Kennedy’s policy to do the above, as expressed in NSAM 263, and the “Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith” faction are absolutely correct in pointing that out.

[Cory Santos]

7 hours ago, Bill Fite said:

Yes - in the Sep 2, 1963 interview w W Cronkite he cites the Domino Theory.  It's also the same interview where JFK states that it's their war to win or lose - that the US can support through material, advisors and advice but it's their war.

 

That is not the interview I referred to.  So that means twice in September he said this.  

[James DiEugenio]

Jeff, yes that is accurate.

But let me also add, its not just Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith.

It is also:

Gordon Goldstein, CFR

David Kaiser, Naval War College

James Blight, Janet Lang, David Welch, then at Brown

Howard Jones, late of University of Alabama

But further, after a three day debate down in Georgia sponsored for the book VIrtual JFK, the majority of academics and scholars there--out of about 30 total-- agreed that JFK was getting out, including Bill Moyers.  So please let us not say that somehow a very tiny group of writers is advocating for this.  That is not the case.

Howard Jones was a conservative historian.  He said that when he started his book, he did not know where it was headed.  But he discovered an important piece of evidence on the way.  An oral interview with Ros Gilpatric, McNamara's assistant. In it, he essentially said that McNamara told him that Kennedy's withdrawal plan "was part of a plan that the president asked him to develop to unwind this whole thing." (Virtual JFK, by James Blight, p. 371)

When one combines this to the May 1963 Sec Def meeting notes, where McNamara is collecting withdrawal schedules, I really do not see there being any argument about this.  Whether or not the skeletal crew left behind was going to be able to advise the ARVN on how to stave off an attack from the north is a question I think we all know the answer to.  Its just a matter of comparisons. Under Thieu, Saigon had much more weaponry, a substantial Air Force, larger army etc. Did that American skeletal crew help him stop Hanoi's attack? Nope. Just ask Frank Snepp.

Snepp--who was there on the ground-- and we--who watched on TV-- saw what happened: with the helicopter atop the American embassy. And Nixon and Kissinger both knew it was going to happen. A real historian, Jeff Kimball, quotes Nixon as saying this twice.  The whole point of the Nixon/Kissinger strategy was the Decent Interval concept: Saigon would fall after the Americans left. Which Kissinger wrote down in his notes for his talks with Bejing.

The difference is this: Kennedy would not have inserted combat troops, would not have used the USAF for saturation bombing, and would not have invaded Laos and Cambodia. I mean he did not even want Generals going to Vietnam to visit without his permission.  That whole nutty strategy of escalation was LBJ's idea and he inserted it into the dialogue within about 48 hours after Kennedy's death. 

But if you want to see something really nutty, take a look at the plans for Operation Duck Hook.  This was going to be Nixon's last hurrah to get a Korea type settlement.  Harking back to Foster Dulles and Dien Bien Phu, it included the usage of tactical atomic weapons.  The anti war movement  stopped it from being enacted.  As Ambrose said, Nixon was really around the bend on Vietnam. Read it and weep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duck_Hook

Edited November 1, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Michael Griffith]

18 hours ago, Jeff Carter said:

This is a straw-man argument, one that has been floated since the earliest attacks on the JFK film.

This is the straw:  “unconditionally and totally disengage”, as it appears in the following formulation:  “the myth that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally disengage from Vietnam”

Language specifying “unconditional” or “total disengagement” does not appear in NSAM 263, and such concepts are not part of the argument advanced by the so-called “Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith” cabal. Les Gelb was one of the first to utilize this diversion, claiming “J.F.K. might never have issued the directive if he had thought it would mean losing the war.” Its an entirely hypothetical construct. The rhetorical strategy consists of substituting the hypothetical assertions - i.e. Kennedy would not just hand over South Vietnam to the Communists - in place of the actual policy, and attack the “unconditional withdrawal myth makers” based on the hypothesis.

Fact is - it is impossible to predict what the result of training Vietnamese personnel to replace U.S. personnel and withdrawing the “bulk of U.S. personnel” by the end of 1965 would have been. All that can be said is it was Kennedy’s policy to do the above, as expressed in NSAM 263, and the “Stone-Prouty-Newman-DiEugenio-Galbraith” faction are absolutely correct in pointing that out.

You Prouty apologists need to get your story straight. Your reply consists of a lot of special pleading and back-peddling, not to mention, ironically enough, strawman argumentation.  In JFK Revisited, Newman expressly says, without any qualification or caveats, that JFK told McNamara that he was determined to pull out of Vietnam even if it meant South Vietnam fell to the Communists. If that is not "unconditional," what is?

Prouty believers have said over and over and over again that JFK allegedly told certain aides and associates that he was going to pull out of Vietnam after the election even if he were damned as a Communist for doing so and even if the Communists conquered South Vietnam as a result. I've lost count of how many times Jim and his allies have quoted JFK's alleged statement that he wanted all the helicopters/helicopter pilots withdrawn too. Go read Jim's atrocious fringe articles on JFK and Vietnam on his Kennedys and King website. It is amazing that you would pretend that I'm using a strawman argument in pointing out what Prouty apologists have been saying for years.

I did not say, and have never said, that the primary source documents use the term "unconditional" and "total"! What an odd argument for you to make. I mean, a big part of my whole point is that, no, the primary sources do not say any such thing, which is a major reason that Prouty apologists are wrong for claiming that JFK was determined to unconditionally and totally pull out of Vietnam after the election!

18 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

That interview was before the signing of NSAM 263.

Now, are we supposed to quote all the people to who JFK said  he was getting out, or the overall review of the policy on Indochina, which Mike's buddy Selverstone tried to say did not exist? 

But it did. And Scott wrote about it back in 1971.

And somehow Selverstone missed it, even though Scott's essay was one of the very first and most famous on the subject.

When people bring an agenda to an historical subject they are not writing history anymore.  They are writing from a pre-formed ideology.

The very title Mike placed on this thread proves that in spades.

This is more clownish, wingnut material. You are an embarrassment to the research community when it comes to JFK and Vietnam. As we have seen in other threads on the subject, you have no clue what you are talking about on the matter. 

Contrary to your baffling false claim, Selverstone does not deny the existence of the belated accounts given by some JFK aides and associates that JFK told them he was going to pull out of Vietnam after the election even if it meant losing South Vietnam. How can you say such a thing? In fact, Selverstone acknowledges those accounts, and then he goes on to show why those accounts are not believable, just as ultra-liberal historian Ed Moise has done. Indeed, Moise is even more blunt than Selverstone in rejecting those accounts.

As Moise and Selverstone observe, those accounts contradict every single statement that JFK himself made on the subject. It is also worth noting that several former JFK aides denied that JFK had any intention of abandoning South Vietnam after the election.

Did you actually read Selverstone's book before you wrote your amateurish, misleading "review" of it, or did you just skim through it? This would explain why your "review" simply ignores most of the evidence that Selverstone presents.

You cite a small handful of scholars who agree with your fringe view on JFK and Vietnam. As we both know. those scholars constitute a very, very, very tiny minority of all the scholars who have written on the subject. We both know that even the vast majority of liberal scholars reject your unconditional-withdrawal myth.

I notice you declined to say anything about the points I made about the first draft of NSAM 273 and the 10/2/63 White House statement, which provide further proof that JFK was determined to win the war, that he was going to continue to aid South Vietnam for as long as necessary, that he was prepared to leave behind a training force if needed, and that the central objective of all actions relating to South Vietnam was to defeat the Communist insurgency and to keep South Vietnam free--just as Bobby Kennedy made clear in his 4/30/64 oral interview.

 

Edited November 2, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Michael Griffith]

Radical leftist Noam Chomsky, to his great credit, has also debunked the unconditional-withdrawal myth. When James Galbraith published his "Exit Strategy" article in the September/October 2003 issue of Boston Review, Chomsky wrote a long letter to the editor in response. Chomsky made all the same points that nearly all other scholars have made on the subject. He noted that Galbraith simply ignores most contrary evidence, and he observed that Galbraith's view conflicts with "the mainstream of scholarship." 

Here's Chomsky's letter in its entirety:

Having worked through the relevant documentation that James Galbraith cites, I was curious to see how he could reach his conclusions in his article “Exit Strategy," at variance with the mainstream of scholarship and other commentary, as he notes. The basic method turns out to be simple: deletion.

As for others, the centerpiece of Galbraith’s discussion of the withdrawal plans is NSAM 263, in which JFK gave qualified approval to the recommendations of Robert McNamara and Maxwell Taylor, who were greatly encouraged by the military prospects in South Vietnam and were “convinced that the Viet Cong insurgency” could be sharply reduced in a year and that the U.S.–run war effort should be “completed by the end of 1965.” They therefore advised “An increase in the military tempo” of the war throughout South Vietnam and withdrawal of some troops in 1963 and all troops in 1965—if this could be done “without impairment of the war effort” and with assurance that “the insurgency has been suppressed” or at least sufficiently weakened so that the U.S. client regime (GVN) is “capable of suppressing it” (my italics; the crucial condition throughout). Once again they stressed that the “overriding objective” is victory, a matter “vital to United States security.”

JFK approved their recommendations, while distancing himself from the withdrawal proposal and approving instructions to Ambassador Lodge in Saigon stressing “our fundamental objective of victory” and directing him to press for “GVN action to increase effectiveness of its military effort” so as to ensure the military victory on which withdrawal was explicitly conditioned. The president, Lodge was informed, affirmed “his basic statement that what furthers the war effort we support, and what interferes with the war effort we oppose,” the condition underlying NSAM 263, as consistently throughout the period and beyond.

JFK and his advisers were concerned with the “crisis of confidence among Vietnamese people which is eroding popular support for GVN that is vital for victory,” and the “crisis of confidence on the part of the American public and Government,” who also do not see how “our actions are related to our fundamental objective of victory”—JFK’s invariant condition. JFK (and his advisers) recognized that the war was unpopular at home, but regarded such lack of support—as well as GVN initiatives toward political settlement—not as an opportunity for withdrawal, but rather as a problem to be overcome, because it posed a threat to the military victory to which they were committed. The significance of these facts for the thesis under discussion is obvious.

Virtually all of this was deleted from Galbraith’s account of NSAM 263, and the tidbits that remain he clearly misinterprets. Thus he does quote the qualification that troops can be withdrawn only “when they are no longer needed,” but fails to recognize that this is simply another reiteration of the unwavering commitment to military victory.

By this method, Galbraith is able to draw the conclusions rejected by virtually everyone he cites, who use the same documentary record (in all relevant cases) but without crucial omissions and misreadings. His treatment of his own prime example is typical, as interested readers can readily discover.

Galbraith also deletes much else of crucial significance, including: the shifting plans of Kennedy and his advisers that are closely correlated with changing perceptions of the military situation, clearly a critically important matter; the absence of any record by the memoirists of any thought about withdrawing without victory, e.g., in Arthur Schlesinger’s virtual day-by-day account; the fact that JFK’s most dovish advisers (George Ball, Mike Mansfield, etc.) reiterated their firm commitment to victory after the assassination, and in the months that followed praised LBJ for carrying forward JFK’s policies with “wise caution” (Ball), urging that LBJ’s “policy toward Vietnam was the only one we could follow” and strongly opposing the withdrawal option and diplomatic moves advocated by Wayne Morse (Mansfield), as did Robert Kennedy, who, as late as May 1965, condemned withdrawal as “a repudiation of commitments undertaken and confirmed by three administrations”; and a great deal more of very considerable relevance to his thesis.

There is no need to review these matters, which are covered in detail in literature that Galbraith claims to refute, including my Rethinking Camelot, which also documents the revisions of the record that were introduced after the war became unpopular, the basic reason why such material (including much on which Galbraith uncritically relies) is unreliable for any historian. Galbraith claims further that this book was immediately refuted by Peter Dale Scott, but here there is another rather significant omission. Galbraith fails to point out that his claim is logically impossible: Scott does not even mention the book in the “epilogue” to which Galbraith refers, and was plainly unaware of its existence. Scott did mention an article of mine, which he apparently read so hurriedly that he seriously misunderstood its topic and was unaware of the documentation on which it was based, crucially, thousands of pages of recently released documents which, though I did not specifically refer to it, undermined Scott’s speculations to which Galbraith refers, published 20 years earlier in a collection of essays on the Pentagon Papers that I edited. Galbraith, like Scott, believes that I was relying on the Pentagon Papers; a look at the opening paragraphs suffices to correct this quite crucial error. But Scott’s departure from his usually careful work is irrelevant here, so there is no need to pursue it.

Rather surprisingly, Galbraith relies heavily on John Newman’s deeply flawed account, which establishes its conclusions by elaborate tales of “deception” of JFK by those around him, though “in his heart [JFK] must have known” the truth so we can ignore the documentary record which leaves no trace of what JFK, alone, “had to notice.” This strange performance too is reviewed elsewhere in detail, and need not be discussed here.

No one—even JFK himself—could have known how he would react to the radically changed assessments of the military/political situation immediately after his assassination. It is conceivable that he might, for the first time, have made decisions counter to those of his closest associates and advisers and chosen to withdraw (or perhaps to escalate more sharply). There is, however, no hint in the record that he contemplated withdrawal without victory, as we discover when we fill in the crucial blanks in Galbraith’s account, as is done in the extensive literature to which he refers, while evading its evidentiary base, and adding nothing of particular relevance.

Kennedy-Johnson State Department official Lincoln Gordon, later president of Johns Hopkins University, once warned against “Camelot myth-making”—an observation that merits some reflection. (LINK)

Edited November 6, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, I think that this was the major reason that Stone's 1991 feature was attacked so bitterly.

Because it incorporated this thesis through the work of Newman and Prouty.

It was saying: not only did the MSM screw up on the JFK assassination, it missed the story about how that paved the way for the Vietnam War.

Let us not forget, the first combat troops arrived at DaNang about 3 1/2 months after the Commission volumes were released.

And everyone missed that connection.

At least I have not seen anyone who did so at the time.    

 

[Pat Speer]

9 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

BTW, I think that this was the major reason that Stone's 1991 feature was attacked so bitterly.

Because it incorporated this thesis through the work of Newman and Prouty.

It was saying: not only did the MSM screw up on the JFK assassination, it missed the story about how that paved the way for the Vietnam War.

Let us not forget, the first combat troops arrived at DaNang about 3 1/2 months after the Commission volumes were released.

And everyone missed that connection.

At least I have not seen anyone who did so at the time.    

 

FWIW, my best friend growing up rose to the rank of Lt. Col. in U.S. Special forces. He told me we were backing off from Afghanistan and instead attacking Iraq...within weeks of 9/11...,and more than 6 months before the PR blitz started about Saddam's pursuing nuclear weapons. He said it was not a possibility, but an inevitability, and that it was U.S. policy--that we prepare for an upcoming invasion. Well, knowing this, I've never once doubted that the military began planning an escalation in Vietnam within days of JFK's murder, and then spent the next year trying to figure out how to sell it to the public. 

[W. Niederhut]

4 hours ago, Pat Speer said:

FWIW, my best friend growing up rose to the rank of Lt. Col. in U.S. Special forces. He told me we were backing off from Afghanistan and instead attacking Iraq...within weeks of 9/11...,and more than 6 months before the PR blitz started about Saddam's pursuing nuclear weapons. He said it was not a possibility, but an inevitability, and that it was U.S. policy--that we prepare for an upcoming invasion. Well, knowing this, I've never once doubted that the military began planning an escalation in Vietnam within days of JFK's murder, and then spent the next year trying to figure out how to sell it to the public. 

Interesting information from your Lt. Col. friend, Pat.

In his memoir, The Price of Loyalty, George W. Bush's former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neill, mentioned that Donald Rumsfeld had asked him as early of January of 2001 about contingency plans for funding a U.S. invasion of Iraq.

And we know that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and the Neocons involved in the Project for a New American Century had proposed invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein prior to Dubya's GOP nomination in 2000.

We also know that General Wesley Clark was briefed in late September of 2001--shortly after 9/11-- about the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz Pentagon agenda of invading Iraq.

Dubya's official Iraq invasion public relations committee was chaired by Karl Rove, beginning in 2002-- information that emerged during the grand jury investigation of Rove and Scooter Libby's involvement in the Valerie Plame affair.  The committee's job was to sell the American public on the necessity of invading Iraq.

Edited November 7, 2023 by W. Niederhut

[James DiEugenio]

I agree, that is really interesting Pat.

Thanks for that.

It probably is a parallel since Kennedy had to  sign an executive order stopping the generals from visiting Saigon.  This is in Monica Wiesak's fine America's Last President. 

Edited November 7, 2023 by James DiEugenio