Jeffrey Sachs on what JFK tried to do that led to his assassination.

[James DiEugenio]

And let me add one other thing about this alleged comparison of that fruitcake Nixon with JFK.

Kennedy would have never ever even thought of using nukes in Indochina or bombing the dikes.

Nixon proposed both and we have it on tape.  The latter would have been even more lethal than the former; John Newman said it would have killed about a half million people.

To top it off, Nixon lied abut this after.

Edited October 17, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Cliff Varnell]

On 10/14/2023 at 5:55 PM, Roger Odisio said:

  Kennedy once said, when asked what he wanted on his tombstone, "he kept the peace""

He overthrew Diem, the Inciting Incident of the Vietnam War.  The Buddhist/Catholic conflict, which the CIA ginned up in ‘63, had calmed down by the time JFK green lit the coup.  

Speeches are nice but action talks.

[James DiEugenio]

BTW, when i say that Nixon knew the war was lost, let me explain why.

After LBJ broke with Kennedy and reversed his withdrawal plan, whatever that was supposed to accomplish was evaporated by Tet.

Westmoreland still wanted to fight on.  With 210,000 more men.

There is evidence that Bobby Kennedy leaked this to the press, and that made it a dead duck.

But at the same time, LBJ called a meeting of the Wise Men, Lovett, Acheson, etc.  And tried to make that argument.

Acheson walked out.  LBJ called him up and asked him why.  He said he was tired to being bamboozled by the Pentagon.

This more or less caused LBJ to do two things 1.) Withdraw from the race, 2.) Realizing the war was lost, to push for a peace plan.

Well, Nixon heard about this meeting.  And he told his advisors at the time that he thought the war was lost also.  And this was before the inauguration.  But he also said they could not admit that. And he did not want LBJ to get a peace so he secretly torpedoed that. So he stayed in, while withdrawing American troops, but supplemented it with even more intense bombing than Johnson. 

All the time knowing it was futile. To me it does not get much worse than that.

Under Kennedy, there were no combat troops in theater.

Under Nixon it hit the highest number of about 550,000.  It was only then that he began to lower the numbers.

Edited October 17, 2023 by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

24 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

And let me add one other thing about this alleged comparison of that fruitcake Nixon with JFK.

Kennedy would have never ever even thought of using nukes in Indochina or bombing the dikes.

Nixon proposed both and we have it on tape.  The latter would have been even more lethal than the former; John Newman said it would have killed about a half million people.

To top it off, Nixon lied abut this after.

I agree with everything you have posted here, and even worse. Operation Phoenix? 200 million cluster bombs left in Laos. My Lai? 

Six million dead in broader SE Asia. 

My point is, even Nixon and Kissinger knew the Vietnam War was, within any sort of reason, un-winnable. They wanted to get out. 

But there were militarists who thought the US could prevail in Vietnam. And that detente with Russia was treasonous. And that Nixon had no right to see the BoP files. 

So...Watergate. Ford installed.  

Was Nixon deposed. Maybe. His White House was infested with CIA'ers. 

You know about the Moorer-Radford Affair? 

 

 

 

[Cliff Varnell]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

But at the same time, LBJ called a meeting of the Wise Men, Lovett, Acheson, etc.  And tried to make that argument.

Lovett wasn’t there.  

The heavy was W. Averell Harriman, the quintessential arsonist-fireman who lead the charge to whack Diem and then spent the Johnson Administration trying to negotiate peace.

https://www.politico.com/story/2010/03/johnson-meets-with-the-wise-men-march-25-1968-034945

Johnson meets with ‘The Wise Men,’ March 25, 1968

On this day in 1968, as pessimism over U.S. prospects in Vietnam deepened, President Lyndon B. Johnson met with 14 informal advisers. In 1945, some of them had forged a bipartisan foreign policy based on containing the Soviet Union. They went on to craft key institutions like NATO, the World Bank and the Marshall Plan. They were known, collectively, as “The Wise Men.”

They met with LBJ after being briefed by officials at the State Department, the Pentagon and the CIA. They had been informed of a request from Gen. William Westmoreland, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, for additional troops in the wake of perceived U.S. setbacks in the Tet Offensive.

Present at the White House meeting were Dean Acheson, George Ball, McGeorge Bundy, Clark Clifford, Arthur Dean, Douglas Dillon, Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas, Averell Harriman, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Robert Murphy, Cyrus Vance and Gens. Omar Bradley, Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. 

In the words of Acheson, who summed up the recommendations from 11 of the men, “we can no longer do the job we set out to do in the time we have left, and we must begin to take steps to disengage.” Murphy, Taylor and Fortas dissented. 

That was a change from Johnson’s first series of such meetings, on Nov. 1-2, 1967. Then, the Wise Men had unanimously opposed leaving Vietnam. “Public discontent with the war is now wide and deep,” Bundy had said, but he told Johnson to “stay the course.” 

<quote off>

 

 

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

This more or less caused LBJ to do two things 1.) Withdraw from the race, 2.) Realizing the war was lost, to push for a peace plan.

Well, Nixon heard about this meeting.  And he told his advisors at the time that he thought the war was lost also.  And this was before the inauguration.  But he also said they could not admit that. And he did not want LBJ to get a peace so he secretly torpedoed that.

“That” happened to be the peace deal with North Vietnam hammered out by Harriman and Vance on the eve of the ‘68 election. If Humphrey had won, Harriman stood to realize his fondest dream — Secretary of State.  Nixon killed that dream.  

It’s been argued that George H. W. Bush helped hang Watergate on Tricky Dick.  Bush was a Harriman protege.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Cliff Varnell

[Michael Griffith]

12 hours ago, Benjamin Cole said:

Maybe.

Evidently, even before they got into office, Kissinger and Nixon regarded Vietnam as a lost cause, and Nixon wanted to get out, but waited for the 1972 election. 

Remember, after the Tet offensive, Westmoreland wanted 750,000 troops for South Vietnam. That is a matter of public record.

From a military perspective, maybe there was a case to be made that some sort of victory could be had in South Vietnam. With enough outlays and fighting, maybe. From the perspective of US interests, and taxpayer dollars, South Vietnam did not add up. 

Remember, the US had to abandon Khe Sanh, after spending who knows how many lives and dollars there. 

In a way, you are arguing the case Nixon was deposed. Nixon and political leaders of the US had concluded that Vietnam should not be a national priority, that the cost of victory was too high for a non-existential war, in fact a volitional war.  

But the military---the Pentagon, CIA---still thought the war should be prosecuted. And that Russia had to be alienated, not negotiated with. 

Another reason for deposing Nixon was his insistence on reviewing the "Bay of Pigs" files. 

I am open-minded on the topic whether deposing Nixon was an intel-Pentagon op. Carter, and Mr. T too. 

No, Nixon and Kissinger most certainly did not view Vietnam as a lost cause. This is part of the invalid liberal spin on the "decent interval." I addressed this issue at some length in the thread "Top 5 Books on JFK & Vietnam."

Trying to save 18 million South Vietnamese from Communist tyranny, concentration camps, and mass executions was a noble goal, and the cost would have been much smaller in blood and treasure if we had used our military power smartly and effectively. The Linebacker campaigns in 1972 proved that we had the power to bring North Vietnam to its knees in a matter of a few months. If a slightly longer campaign of the same intensity had been done earlier, especially in 1965 or 1966, the war would have been won relatively quickly and with far fewer lives lost. 

I certainly do agree that Nixon was deposed, but not by JFKA plotters. He was deposed by dishonest elected Democrats and their allies in the news media. We now know that the case against Nixon was a mix of gross exaggeration and outright fabrication. You should read Geoff Shepard's books The Real Watergate Scandal and The Nixon Conspiracy. A good intro is this panel discussion on Shepard's research held at George Washington University: LINK.

[Benjamin Cole]

29 minutes ago, Michael Griffith said:

No, Nixon and Kissinger most certainly did not view Vietnam as a lost cause. This is part of the invalid liberal spin on the "decent interval." I addressed this issue at some length in the thread "Top 5 Books on JFK & Vietnam."

Trying to save 18 million South Vietnamese from Communist tyranny, concentration camps, and mass executions was a noble goal, and the cost would have been much smaller in blood and treasure if we had used our military power smartly and effectively. The Linebacker campaigns in 1972 proved that we had the power to bring North Vietnam to its knees in a matter of a few months. If a slightly longer campaign of the same intensity had been done earlier, especially in 1965 or 1966, the war would have been won relatively quickly and with far fewer lives lost. 

I certainly do agree that Nixon was deposed, but not by JFKA plotters. He was deposed by dishonest elected Democrats and their allies in the news media. We now know that the case against Nixon was a mix of gross exaggeration and outright fabrication. You should read Geoff Shepard's books The Real Watergate Scandal and The Nixon Conspiracy. A good intro is this panel discussion on Shepard's research held at George Washington University: LINK.

I have seen some of Geoff Shepard's work on Youtube, and it is thought-provoking. Although Shepard does not deny the illegality of the Watergate burglary, or White House involvement. 

I think Shepard underestimates the role of the CIA in the whole affair. 

I will say this: Young HRC worked on the Watergate committee and first-hand learned how to weaponize prosecutorial agencies, congressional committees and the media. She may be the most skilled at DC black arts that we have seen yet. 

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/18/the-myth-of-henry-kissinger

Here is one view on Kissinger. 

[Michael Griffith]

7 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

 

And let me add one other thing about this alleged comparison of that fruitcake Nixon with JFK.

“That fruitcake Nixon”??? Such a comment again puts you on the left fringe of the political spectrum.

That “fruitcake Nixon” desegregated schools in the South and did so without major confrontations with governors. He supported and signed the Voting Rights Act. He created the EPA. He signed the ABM and SALT arms control agreements. He signed the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. He ended discrimination in companies and labor unions that received federal contracts. He established affirmative action hiring for African Americans. He was the first president to invest a large sum of money in cancer research ($100 million, $800 million in today’s dollars). He signed Title IX, opening the door for women’s collegiate athletics. And he literally saved Israel from destruction when your peace-loving Egyptian and Syrian governments launched a combined attack against Israel in the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Kennedy would have never ever even thought of using nukes in Indochina

Yes, I know most liberals shudder and shiver at the thought of ever using nukes, even tactical nukes. Did it slip your mind that FDR was fully prepared to nuke Nazi Germany if necessary?

Even many liberal scholars still defend Truman’s atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though they were clearly unnecessary and unjustified.

By the way, guess who first authorized the extensive use of chemical defoliants in Vietnam? John F. Kennedy.

or bombing the dikes.

Uh, FDR authorized the bombing of German dams during WW II. In Operation Chastise, we and the Brits blew huge holes in two major dams, the Mohne Dam and the Edersee Dam in 1943, which caused catastrophic flooding in the Ruhr Valley and flooded entire villages in the Eder Valley.

Both Truman and Ike authorized the bombing of dikes and dams in North Korea during the Korean War, directly killing tens of thousands of people, and causing the deaths of many more people due to starvation and the lack of electricity in the cold months.

Your beloved, peace-loving Soviets blew up the Dnieper Dam in Ukraine in 1941, in order to stop a German advance, flooding numerous villages along the river and killing thousands of civilians. The Soviets also blew up the Kakhova Dam in Ukraine in 1941, in order to stop a German advance.

The Chinese blew huge breaches in the Yellow River dikes in 1938, killing some 400,000 of their fellow Chinese, in order to stop a Japanese advance.

Nixon proposed both and we have it on tape.  The latter would have been even more lethal than the former; John Newman said it would have killed about a half million people.

I already debunked the myth that bombing the Red River Dikes would have killed half a million people. That is ridiculous.

By the way, did Newman say anything about the fact that the North Vietnamese put AAA and SAM batteries near and on those dikes?

As we have seen, dikes and dams were considered valid targets by FDR, Churchill, Truman, Ike, and Chiang Kai-shek during the Sino-Japanese War, World War II, and the Korean War. Moreover, when you put AAA and SAM batteries on and near a dike or dam, as the North Vietnamese did, that dike or dam is a perfectly valid target, according to even the most rigid rules of war.  

To top it off, Nixon lied about this after.

Probably because he knew that liberals would pounce on it to try to make him look like an ogre. I am not sure that Nixon really ever seriously considered using nukes. He may have just been thinking out loud. As is well known, Ike finally got the Chinese and the North Koreans to agree to an armistice by threatening to use nukes. He even had nuke tubes shipped to South Korea and arranged for this movement to be leaked to the Chinese and the North Koreans. They got the message. I trust you know this stuff.

Besides, according to you, JFK was lying through his teeth in 1963, right up until the day he died, when he repeatedly said that he opposed withdrawing from Vietnam, that withdrawing from Vietnam would be a great mistake, and that we had to be prepared to stay the course in Vietnam. According to your scenario, JFK was involved in a cynical-but-necessary deception and was prepared to allow thousands of more deaths in Vietnam until after the election.

However, Bobby Kennedy, as late as March 1968, just three months before his death, said he opposed a unilateral withdrawal and called the idea "unacceptable":

          I do not want, and I do believe that most Americans do not want, to sell out America's interest to simply withdraw -- to raise the white flag of surrender in Vietnam -- that would be unacceptable to us as a people, and unacceptable to us as a country.  (https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/the-kennedy-family/robert-f-kennedy/robert-f-kennedy-speeches/remarks-at-the-university-of-kansas-march-18-1968)

Edited October 17, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Sandy Larsen]

On 10/16/2023 at 9:39 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Pasting something to a different location requires the following.  Highlight it.  Hit Control C to save it. Place the cursor where you want it to go.  Hit Control V.  Voila.  We're talking a matter of seconds.

 

No. You didn't say that I should just copy and paste the whole thread. You said that I should cut it up and move only the political posts.

Here are your exact words:

"If you think [the thread] is also about your definition of "politics", cut and paste to [the Political Discussions] forum. But leave the thread here."

 

On 10/16/2023 at 9:39 AM, Roger Odisio said:

In short, your rule separating contemporary politics from discussion of the JFKA makes sense only if you think the murder has no relevance to today.  And we're simply a debating society trying to solve interesting but irrelevant puzzles.

 

This forum is a debate on the many facets of the JFK assassination, including how it was done, by whom, and for what purpose. This forum has nothing to do with how the assassination affects contemporary politics.

If you wish, I can create a forum for discussing precisely that.

The forum administrators used to allow contemporary politics on the main board. But doing so resulted in so many heated arguments that it was decided that such threads would no longer be allowed.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Michael Griffith is passing gas to disguise just how bad Nixon was and how hopeless the war was.

Here is the exact quote in context. So there is no denying it, its just what I said it was.

Nixon had heard about the Wise Men meeting and understood what it meant. In March of 1968, before the presidential campaign began, he told three of his speechwriters: “I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course. In fact, we have to seem to say the opposite, just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage.” (Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, p. 52)

There is no better source on this than Jeff Kimball.  He was the foremost scholar on this subject, Nixon and Vietnam.

From the start, Nixon knew he could not win.  The best he could do was a Korea type stalemate.  And he could not even attain that. Even though he needlessly invaded two other countries with utterly disastrous results.

 

[Sandy Larsen]

I don't know why people are posting on various topics here. The purpose of this thread is to complain to the mods about not allowing discussions of contemporary politics on the JFKA board.

I will be moving this thread to the Questions, Comments, and Criticism on EF Moderation   section soon. Where it belongs.

 

[James DiEugenio]

Sandy,

Why?

This is now about what Sachs had written about.  Kennedy's quest for peace, and comparing that with what Nixon did after.

Which is a perfect topic for this forum.

[Michael Griffith]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Michael Griffith is passing gas to disguise just how bad Nixon was and how hopeless the war was.

Here is the exact quote in context. So there is no denying it, its just what I said it was.

Nixon had heard about the Wise Men meeting and understood what it meant. In March of 1968, before the presidential campaign began, he told three of his speechwriters: “I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s no way to win the war. But we can’t say that, of course. In fact, we have to seem to say the opposite, just to keep some degree of bargaining leverage.” (Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War, p. 52)

There is no better source on this than Jeff Kimball.  He was the foremost scholar on this subject, Nixon and Vietnam.

From the start, Nixon knew he could not win.  The best he could do was a Korea type stalemate.  And he could not even attain that. Even though he needlessly invaded two other countries with utterly disastrous results.

Here again we will see the difference between your level of research on the Vietnam War and mine. Do you think this is the first time I’ve seen a liberal quote this alleged statement? Do you have Kimball's book? Do you? If so, did you check the source he cites for this alleged statement? Did it occur to you that, gee, after all the times I caught you peddling dubious and even fraudulent "evidence” in other threads on the Vietnam War, that perhaps you should do some checking before running with this statement?

Now, if you turn to Kimball's book, you'll see that his source for this quote was a disgruntled former Nixon speechwriter named Richard Whalen (p. 54). Even a New York Times reviewer recognized that Whalen used his book to "settle a few personal scores" (LINK). Just FYI, Whalen’s book is loaded with doubtful claims, some of which come across as downright paranoid, such as his accusation that LBJ’s final bombing halt was an “ambush.”

Does it concern you that none of Nixon’s other speechwriters said they ever heard Nixon say this? Does it concern you that Whalen did not bother to get the other speechwriters who supposedly heard the statement to confirm his story? What about all the instances on the Nixon White House tapes when Nixon expressed confidence in the war effort? How do you explain those statements? And, you know that Nixon and Kissinger both wrote books that strongly argued that the war was most certainly winnable, right?  

Have you read Dr. Larry Berman’s book No Peace, No Honor yet, as I recommended that you do months ago when we were discussing your erroneous spin on the “decent interval”? Using the White House tapes, Berman, no Nixon lover, shows that Nixon was determined to win the war and that one of the reasons he agreed to the Paris Peace Accords was that he intended to order massive bombing when North Vietnam violated them.

even though he needlessly invaded two other countries with utterly disastrous results.

This is sheer fiction. Apparently you still have not read a single scholarly study that challenges your far-left myths about the war. The incursions into Cambodia and Laos were entirely legal under international law, since the North Vietnamese were illegally using their eastern regions as staging and supply bases against the express wishes of those governments.

The Cambodian incursion did great damage to the North Vietnamese army. The Laotian incursion, though not as successful as the Cambodian one, did considerable damage and caused a noticeable decline in NVA operations from the area for several months.

Edited October 17, 2023 by Michael Griffith

[Roger Odisio]

1 hour ago, Sandy Larsen said:

 

No. You didn't say that I should just copy and paste the whole thread. You said that I should cut it up and move only the political posts.

Here are your exact words:

"If you think [the thread] is also about your definition of "politics", cut and paste to [the Political Discussions] forum. But leave the thread here."

 

 

This forum is a debate on the many facets of the JFK assassination, including how it was done, by whom, and for what purpose. This forum has nothing to do with how the assassination affects contemporary politics.

If you wish, I can create a forum for discussing precisely that.

The forum administrators used to allow contemporary politics on the main board. But doing so resulted in so many heated arguments that it was decided that such threads would no longer be allowed.

 

  On 10/16/2023 at 11:39 AM, Roger Odisio said:

Pasting something to a different location requires the following.  Highlight it.  Hit Control C to save it. Place the cursor where you want it to go.  Hit Control V.  Voila.  We're talking a matter of seconds.

 

 

 

SL:  No. You didn't say that I should just copy and paste the whole thread. You said that I should cut it up and move only the political posts.

 

Here are your exact words:

 

"If you think [the thread] is also about your definition of "politics", cut and paste to [the Political Discussions] forum. But leave the thread here."

 

RO:  I never said to "cut up" a thread and "move only the political posts".  I don't care what you paste to Politics as long as you leave the thread intact  here.  As you can see from the passage of mine above your comment where I simply talk about pasting.

 

My use of the word "cut" was inadvertent. "Copy" is a better word.  In any case, I think you understand what I'm suggesting about pasting a thread to Politics while leaving it here.

 

Now that you understand what I meant, you didn't answer my point.  Pasting a copy of a thread to Politics is a useful resolution, isn't it?  Without extra burden on your time.

  On 10/16/2023 at 11:39 AM, Roger Odisio said:

In short, your rule separating contemporary politics from discussion of the JFKA makes sense only if you think the murder has no relevance to today.  And we're simply a debating society trying to solve interesting but irrelevant puzzles.

 

 

SL:  This forum is a debate on the many facets of the JFK assassination, including how it was done, by whom, and for what purpose. This forum has nothing to do with how the assassination affects contemporary politics.

 

RO:  You accept that a main purpose of the murder was to allow the killers to not only reverse the outcome of the '60 election, but more fundamentally replace JFK's search for peace with the Pax Americana policy (currently called rules based order where the US makes the rules) that they wanted, enforced by the continuous wars he so despised.   Do you imagine this effect of the murder was felt only back then, that it somehow disappeared after JFK's death?  The killers were interested in fundamentally changing policy direction that would last right up to today. They succeeded. 

 

Therefore, analysis of the effect of the murder on contemporary politics provides an important clue as who did it and for what purpose. This seems obvious to me.  Can't you see that?

 

SL:  If you wish, I can create a forum for discussing precisely that.

 

RO:  No thanks.  It's relevant here and this forum will be less without it.

 

SL:  The forum administrators used to allow contemporary politics on the main board. But doing so resulted in so many heated arguments that it was decided that such threads would no longer be allowed.

 

RO:  Discussions of contemporary politics boil up all over the forum.  Including in this thread.  That is no reason to ban relevant discussion of the effect of the murder on politics today.  You have the tools to limit discussion of contemporary political issues that are *not* relevant to the JFKA. Clearly Jeff Sack's discussion is not one of those.

 

 

 

[Sandy Larsen]

1 hour ago, James DiEugenio said:

Sandy,

Why?

This is now about what Sachs had written about.  Kennedy's quest for peace, and comparing that with what Nixon did after.

Which is a perfect topic for this forum.

 

Okay, give me an appropriate name for the title and I will leave the thread here.