Free Republic

Hovering in the shadows of President Barack Obama's decision last week to ramp up the nation's war effort in Afghanistan, even as he promises to bring it to a swift conclusion, are ghosts of another decision, made 44 years ago by a Texan in the White House. In 1965, Lyndon B. Johnson took ownership of a war he, like Obama, had inherited. Gen. William Westmoreland wanted more troops in Vietnam, and after a protracted debate within the White House, Johnson sent them. Over the next three years, he would send hundreds of thousands more and launch a carpet-bombing campaign against...

AS President Obama and his advisers contemplate a new course for Afghanistan, many commentators are suggesting analogies with earlier conflicts, particularly the war in Vietnam. Such comparisons can be useful, but only if the characterizations of earlier wars are accurate and lessons are appropriately applied. Vietnam is particularly tricky. While avoiding the missteps made there is of course a priority, few seem aware of the many successful changes in strategy undertaken in the later years of the conflict. The credit for those accomplishments goes in large part to three men: Ellsworth Bunker, who became the American ambassador to South Vietnam...

The 'clear and hold' strategy of Gen. Creighton Abrams was working in South Vietnam. Then Congress pulled the plug on funding. More than 30 years have passed since North Vietnam, in gross violation of the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, conquered South Vietnam. That outcome was partly the result of greatly increased logistical support to the North from its communist backers. It was also the result of America's failure to keep its commitments to the South. Those commitments... --snip-- By the time of the enemy's 1972 Easter Offensive virtually all U.S. ground troops had been withdrawn. Supported by American airpower and...

Apologies for the tease (can you post pics here? I'm a FR noob...) but follow the jump for perhaps one of the rarest photographs in existence. Of the beloved Bella Pelosi. Prepare yourselves...

SHANE Herbert was 11 years old when his older brother Michael went missing on a night bombing mission in Vietnam. Yesterday, as a grown man, Shane wept as he spoke of his RAAF pilot brother whose life was cut short at 24, with his body lying in the jungle for the next 39 years. "We all lived in hope and believed no news was good news," Mr Herbert told more than 300 mourners gathered for his brother's state funeral. "My father and mother, who were younger than what I am now, I just don't know how you kept going," he...

AUSTRALIA'S last two servicemen missing in action from the Vietnam War have begun their final journey home. The remains of Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver, both lost in 1970, have been placed aboard a RAAF Hercules transport aircraft for the trip from Hanoi, Vietnam, back to Australia. Family members and former comrades of the RAAF's 2 Squadron observed the solemn ceremony at Noi Bai Airfield as their caskets were carried aboard the aircraft. The family members and former servicemen will accompany them on the journey home. Parliamentary secretary Dr Mike Kelly said the aircraft would fly...

The US army officer convicted for his part in the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War has offered his first public apology, a US report says. "There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened," Lt William Calley was quoted as saying by the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer. He was addressing a small group at a community club in Columbus, Georgia. Calley, 66, was convicted on 22 counts of murder for the 1968 massacre of 500 men, women and children in Vietnam

ANNIE Cowdroy and her family never expected to get the chance to properly farewell her brother, SAS Trooper David Fisher, who went missing in action during the Vietnam War in 1969. Trooper Fisher died during a “hot extraction” falling from a rope attached to a rescue helicopter called to evacuate his patrol, which was encircled by a superior force of North Vietnamese soldiers. The incident occurred in Cam My district in southern Phuoc Tuy province, where the Australian task force was based. For almost 30 years, that seemed destined to be the final chapter in Trooper Fisher’s story. But last...

In his recent appearance on the Roger Hedgecock Show, Richard Botkin, author of "Ride the Thunder," shares the heroic and largely untold story of how South Vietnamese warriors and their American counterparts almost won the Vietnam War. Hedgecock's nationally syndicated daily radio show can be heard in 75+ markets and on XM Satellite. His show streams live on WND from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern. Marine Capt. Botkin toured battlefields in Vietnam and has chronicled the Vietnamese military organization called TQLC, whose members, with their American advisers, "fought, bled, endured and triumphed against communism." Botkin's book tells a new...

VFW: Woodstock Wasn't the Only Thing Happening 40 Years Ago By Colleen Raezler (Bio | Archive) August 12, 2009 - 13:47 ET    While some in the media have been dusting off their love beads, bell-bottoms and broomstick skirts in an effort to wax nostalgic about Woodstock, the VFW has reminded its members that the world did not stop for those four days in August 1969. In fact, for 109 American soldiers, the world ended that weekend.VFW Magazine honored those soldiers in the August 2009 cover story, "While Woodstock Rocked, GIs Died." Much has been made over the "half...

Hollywood Hates America by: Brittany Fortier, August 11, 2009 Conservatives are a rarity in Hollywood, but director and producer Jack Marino is proud to be giving them a voice in the industry. Marino’s feature film Forgotten Heroes salutes the veterans of the Vietnam War and shows how the involvement of the Soviet Union impacted the conflict. Set in the jungles of Vietnam and Cambodia, the film tells the story of a group of “Kelly’s Heroes” who risk their lives to rescue a Russian general who has chosen to defect to America. Marino said that the idea for Forgotten Heroes came...

Something truly astonishing appeared in a Washington Post column on July 25, 2009 (click here to view). It was written by Frank Mankiewicz, former press secretary to Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) and the man who is perhaps most widely remembered for announcing RFK's death in June 1968. Mankiewicz was also the political director of Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern's losing 1972 campaign. The column contained a two-fold revelation about the just-deceased Walter Cronkite, the longtime CBS News anchorman. Here are the disclosures, in Mankiewicz' own words:

THE remains of the last two Australian servicemen missing from the Vietnam War have been found in the wreckage of their crashed bomber. An RAAF search team, which has been excavating the crash site near the Vietnam border with Laos, found human remains which have been identified as pilot Flying Officer Michael Herbert, 24, from Glenelg, South Australia, and navigator Pilot Officer Robert Carver, 24, from Toowoomba, Queensland. Both died when their Canberra bomber crashed while returning from a mission on November 3, 1970. Defence Personnel Minister Greg Combet said the recovery team found human remains near the crash site....

July 27, 2009, 4:00 a.m. McNamara’s FollyThe road to failure in Vietnam. By Conrad Black The recent death of former U.S. defense secretary and World Bank president Robert McNamara, at 93, has raised again, in editorials and obituaries, the hoary head of the Vietnam War. Geeky in his thick, rimless glasses and slicked-back hair, expressionless, desiccated, fast-talking, and mechanically confident, McNamara was at the cutting edge of the managerial revolution—a business administrator, statistician, and efficiency expert. He was a mesmerizing figure for a time, especially after the Kennedy public-relations apparatus confected the myth of calibrated crisis management in the...

WASHINGTON, July 23, 2009 – Nearing the end of his 42-year career in the Navy, Adm. Timothy J. Keating today reflected on those who served alongside him, giving special emphasis to troops whose fates remain unknown. Keating, the commander of U.S. Pacific Command, addressed the National League of POW/MIA Families, a group that strives to account for the more than 1,750 veterans of Vietnam and other wars still missing. “We’re going to do whatever it takes, with appropriate support, to have you reach some sort of conclusion in your minds and in your hearts as to where your loved one...

I just heard the news that former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite died. And perhaps I will be one of the few with the guts to be real and say it: I'm not sad to see this overrated liar go. Buh-bye. Cronkite enjoyed a long and glamorous life, unlike many of our late teen and 20-something American troops against whom he editorialized on a nightly basis. They died on the killing fields of Vietnam in no small part because he contributed to the video demoralization of America and the resulting lack of commitment to help our boys win the Vietnam War....

The famous hotel could be open for bids next week The Watergate Hotel made famous by a presidential scandal is expected to be on the auction block next week. Alex Cooper Auctioneers is announcing that it will take bids Tuesday on the Washington landmark. [snip] The Watergate complex was made famous by the 1972 burglary that led to President Richard Nixon's resignation.

As Ed "Too Tall" Freeman lay ill in a Boise hospital over the past few weeks, many came to pay their respects to the 80-year-old national war hero and former helicopter pilot. One unexpected visitor offered a very personal thank you to Freeman, a veteran of three wars and recipient of the highest military award -- the Congressional Medal of Honor -- for his actions on Nov. 14, 1965, at Landing Zone X-Ray, Ia Drang Valley, Vietnam.

Thomas’s Navy Cross citation states: “His deadly accuracy accounted for at least one enemy dead and held the aggressors at bay until an Army rescue helicopter landed.” It is assumed Thomas was given credit solely for the VC killed and witnessed at the rescue chopper. When a second Army rescue helicopter landed to retrieve the bodies of the dead co-pilot and gunner, the soldiers noted a plethora of VC dead all around the area. One was as close as three yards from Thomas’s shooting position, and the furthest was 150 yards. It was clear to those on the scene that...

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2009 – Bright blue skies above the National Mall today belied the solemnity of the ceremony commemorating the first two American combat casualties of the Vietnam War. U.S. Army Master Sgt. Chester Ovnand and Maj. Dale Buis were the first two U.S. servicemembers killed in the Vietnam War. Their sacrifice was honored in Washington, D.C., Jyly 8, 2009, in a ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary of their deaths. DoD photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available. “On this date 50 years ago, two men lost their lives...

Robert McNamara died Monday at the age of 93. Not a lot will be written about him because he is reviled by the left for his role in the Viet Nam war, and reviled by others for his mismanagement and failures. I am one of the latter. McNamara throughout his career held himself in higher regard than those around him did. He felt his intelligence trumped all, even when he was barking up the wrong tree. Prior to being tapped by Jack Kennedy for Defense Secretary, he was President of Ford. He came to Ford as one of a dozen...

Rather than absolving him of his sins, former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s pseudo-mea culpa, “In Retrospect: Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” is a self-indictment. His lesser crime is self-indulgence. His arrogance and duplicity during the Vietnam conflict is echoed throughout his book as he recounts his mismanagement of the war. If as he admits, ignorance was his guiding light, then, it has grown to be a beacon today, proving that he has learned little about Vietnamese communism in the almost three decades that it took him to write his book. Besides the war, another tragedy is that McNamara seems...

Michael Jackson dies and it's 24/7 news coverage. A real American hero dies and not a mention of it in the news. The media has no honor and God is watching Ed Freeman You're a 19-year-old kid. You're critically wounded and dying in the jungle in the Ia Drang Valley , 11-14-1965, LZ X-ray, Vietnam . Your infantry unit is outnumbered 8-1 and the enemy fire is so intense, from 100 or 200 yards away, that your own Infantry Commander has ordered the MediVac helicopters to stop coming in. You're lying there, listening to the enemy machine guns, and you...

Walter Cronkite’s remarks at the end of his February 27, 1968 evening news broadcast, four decades ago today, were a watershed in the history of the MSM’s credibility.   Unless you’re at least 55 years old, you probably don’t remember that CBS broadcast 40 years ago.  The most trusted man in America had recently returned from Vietnam where he hosted a documentary on the VC/NVA TET (New Year) offensive that began January 31, 1968.  Back in NYC, he closed his program that night by introducing “an analysis that must be speculative, personal, [and] subjective.”  Among his comments were these: Who won...

Yesterday I was in Dandenong, a city/suburb towards the South East edge of Melbourne. The Dandenong RSL (Returned and Services League of Australia - may be roughly considered to be the Australian equivalent of something like the VFW or American Legion in the US) is the site of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial of Victoria. It's quite a small memorial, but quite an impressive one, and I decided to take some photos to share with other people. These were taken using the small and not particularly wonderful camera on my cell phone. At some point, I intend to head out there...

The Washington Times has partnered with the Internet company Footnote.com on a new project that transforms Washington's Vietnam war memorial wall into an interactive, personal journey on the Web. The Interactive Vietnam Veterans Memorial allows you to search the names on the wall and to drill down into the government's official war records to learn details about each of the 58,000-plus heroes enshrined on the wall. You can also add your own personal stories, remembrances and photographs. (edit) Start by clicking on the "Search the Wall" box, where you can select "Search" or "View." Once you find the name...

On March 25, 1969, the Marines of Alpha Company, 1st Battalion, 4th Marines, moved through a thick jungle in enemy territory less than a klick from the Laotian border. Their mission was to locate, engage and destroy any enemy position near the company's area of operation. But not long into the patrol, the Leathernecks were soon pinned down by intense enemy fire from a North Vietnamese army position. At the direction of the company commander, the artillery officer called in air support and soon Marine jets dropped napalm and high explosives on the enemy. "We could feel the heat from...

Thanks to Rupert Murdoch, Bill Ayers’ “comrade” and Weather Underground terrorist Mark Rudd is on a book tour, trying to cash in on his bloody record. Murdoch’s Harper Collins published Rudd’s book, Underground: My Life With SDS and the Weathermen. This week he is in the San Francisco/Oakland, California area. According to Rudd’s website, he has other speeches and lectures scheduled around the country. [snip] On Thursday [today, April 23, 2009!], we are holding a news conference in San Francisco to demand justice in the case of the bombing murder of Sgt. McDonnell. If you are in the San Francisco...

Yes, annoyed his hometown newspaper is about to be shuttered by the NYT, Sen. John Kerry wants to rescue the mainstream press. Capitol Hill hearings a-'coming.

POOR weather was reported over the target when Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver took off from Phang Ran base in South Vietnam in their RAAF Canberra bomber on November 3, 1970. They had completed their mission and were returning home when their aircraft, A84-231, suddenly disappeared from the radar controller's screen while over hostile country near the rugged Viet-Lao border. The alarm was sounded and all No2 Squadron missions were cancelled the following day as a desperate search was launched involving RAAF and US Air Force planes. It failed to find any wreckage or evidence of...

HANOI (AFP) — US Senator John McCain leaned over a miniature mock-up on of the Vietnamese prison where he was held for years as a wartime prisoner. "I'm trying to figure it out," he said, studying the scale model on a return visit to the prison site that is now a museum.

HANOI (AFP) — US wartime use of the defoliant Agent Orange in Vietnam remains an issue between the two countries despite remarkable progress in relations, Senator John McCain said Tuesday. "I think it remains an issue both in Vietnam and the United States," McCain told reporters. . . . . . McCain said the United States has spent about 46 million dollars in Vietnam compensating victims and attempting to find areas that are contaminated by dioxin. "But I believe that it remains an irritant, and perhaps more than that, for some of the people of Vietnam. But I think we...

US Senator John McCain will stop over in Hanoion April 6 during his week-long Asian tour. He is scheduled to deliver a speech at the Institute for International Relations and host a press briefing. He will also visit Hoa Lo (Hanoi Hilton) Prison where he was imprisoned during the Vietnam War.

The following just in from Nancy at familysecuritymatters.org (read to the end for word of a new report concerning a "new SDS" on campuses): In a sensational letter to be released at a March 12 National Press Club news conference, the San Francisco Police Officers Association (SFPOA) tells Cliff Kincaid of America’s Survival, Inc., and FamilySecurityMatters.org contributing editor, that evidence in the 1970 bombing murder of a San Francisco police officer points to Weather Underground members Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, two associates of President Barack Obama. The letter will be made public at a news event that will feature a...

Fort Lewis is the setting for an emotional Purple Heart ceremony more than 43 years after a young Marine was hurt in Vietnam. The corpsman who treated him attends.

And, the US was defending the Republic of Vietnam from an invasion. Whatever the US administrations and military leaders did wrong, THAT was not one of them. Let's put things in their proper context, for starters. You're talking about an authoritarian communist regime which, during the 1950s, was murdering many tens of thousands of North Vietnamese civilians, stealing the property of everyone else, and using terror tactics to subject the whole population of North Vietnam to a total destruction of rational social order. None of the usual excuses from historical revisionsists like you apply here: this wasn't self defense because...

When I decided to write something on Mark Felt who passed away this week at 95, an online friend, Narciso, wrote of the “incremental irony of Mark Felt.” When I asked him to elaborate he wrote back: He conducted illegal or at least dubious surveillance against the Weathermen, he then faults Nixon for the same tactics, he undermined his own agency and ultimately almost ended up in jail. Besides sage words about being wary of the motives of government employees bearing tales of corruption to the press, Narciso’s words constitute as complete an epitaph of Mark Felt as I can...

Gobin Stair, artist and the publisher of the Pentagon Papers, and longtime member of the First Congregational Parish Church of Kingston, died Tuesday night in his sleep. He was 96. Stair was a well-known abstract artist, but made a name for himself as publisher of Beacon Press when he decided to publish the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers, the top-secret Defense Department history of the U.S.’s involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. The 1971 publishing created questions of credibility in the U.S. government and injured the Nixon administration’s war effort.

One of the "dominoes" said antiwar terrorist was not on the right side of the Vietnam War http://www.thebulletin.us/site/index.cfm?newsid=20203853&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=8

"We were preparing to leave when the sirens sounded again," he said. "Two American F-4 Phantoms flew in. We had two missiles out of six left. The Vietnamese fired first. Their rocket missed, it fell into the jungle. One plane went round the hill, the other came over the bridge. We fired at this one."

I shot down McCain A retired Red Army Lieutenant who fought in Vietnam has confessed to shooting down the plane of defeated presidential candidate, John McCain. Colonel Yuriy Trushechkin told Russia’s Moskovsky Komsomolets he had no regrets about downing the future Senator’s aircraft back in 1967. Journalists from Russia’s most popular tabloid paper found the veteran in a St Petersburg hospital. Trushechkin said he still hated John McCain and wasn’t at all sorry for what he had done all those years ago. He added he was very happy that McCain didn’t make to the White House. ”He always hated the...

Today is the publication date of the new edition of his book Fugitive Days, and now that the election is over, Ayers has chosen to speak out in his own defense in the pages of a democratic socialist newsweekly, In These Times. By choosing this vehicle, Ayers is skillfully engaging in his own sanitized rewriting of history. His effort is to paint himself as just another honest dissenter, a man whose valiant socialist principles have caused the media to unfairly demonize him as a terrorist. All he did in his memoir, he writes, is to go back to those “exhilarating...

The Department of Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office (DPMO) announced today that the remains of four U.S. servicemen, missing from the Vietnam War, have been identified and will be returned to their families for burial with full military honors. They are Lance Cpl. Kurt E. La Plant, of Lenexa, Kan., and Lance Cpl. Luis F. Palacios, of Los Angeles, Calif. Remains that could not be individually identified are included in a group. Among the group remains are Lance Cpl. Ralph L. Harper, of Indianapolis, Ind., and Pfc. Jose R. Sanchez, of Brooklyn, N.Y. All men were U.S. Marine Corps. Palacios will...

Erica Jong: “Yesterday, Jane Fonda sent me an email to tell me that she cried all night and can’t cure her ailing back for all the stress that has reduces her to a bundle of nerves.” Ah, the most entertaining presidential race in my adult life just became more amusing as our “Fear of Flying” feminist gives an expatriate interview to Corriere della Sera, an Italian newspaper. Jong is worried that Republican John McCain will win. So are all her friends. Hanoi Jane is waking in the middle of the night to cold sweats? Well, she is well past menopause...

THE remains of Australia's last missing soldier from the Vietnam War will be repatriated next week. Private David Fisher, of the Special Air Service Regiment, fell from a rope as he was being evacuated from Vietnam by helicopter in September 1969. His remains were found in the Cam My district in August this year. ..... Pte Fisher was the last of the missing army personnel to be found in Vietnam following the recovery of the remains of three others last year. There are still two members of the air force - Flying Officer Michael Herbert and Pilot Officer Robert Carver...

More than 38 years after being recommended for a Bronze Star, a Texas man has received the medal for helping avert a Viet Cong attack in South Vietnam. Jim Greenwalt of Rockwall, Texas, a former U.S. Army sergeant, helped to prevent a surprise attack by Viet Cong, the Dallas Morning News reported Wednesday."I fired at muzzle flashes, sounds, any movement," Greenwalt said, recalling the violence that repelled a Viet Cong attack.Greenwalt's bravery on Jan. 30, 1970, was remembered at a ceremony at Fort Hood, in central Texas, after a paperwork snafu delayed the honor.The U.S. Army has awarded more than...

RUSH: Guess what NBC did last night, NBC Nightly News? They sent a reporter to Hanoi to find McCain's Hanoi Hilton torturer, to see if the torturer would confirm McCain's version of what happened. I am not kidding, ladies and gentlemen. I'm not kidding whatsoever. A new low has been reached. They also claim, by the way, that they've sent people to Chicago to find out about some of the things about Obama, but I'll be damned if I've seen it -- and they didn't uncover anything. We have two sound bites to illustrate this. A portion of the report...

Excerpt... After returning from Cuba, Dohrn and others met with North Vietnamese and Viet Cong representatives in Budapest, Hungary, to discuss antiwar strategy on US campuses. Speaking a few days later at an assembly of revolutionary student movements at Columbia University, Dohrn reported that the Vietnamese communists she met in Budapest were working with US GIs in Saigon, attempting to obtain military information. As a gesture of solidarity, the Vietnamese who Dohrn met in Budapest presented her with a ring made from an American aircraft shot down over North Vietnam. Bill Ayers would receive a similar ring while meeting with...

Click on image for the actual September 2, 2008, front pageAfter seven years of initial eligibility, Joseph Biden was removed from the military draft pool just when it was most likely he would be drafted and sent into the Vietnam War. The American death toll was rising rapidly -- 11,153 in 1967. Thousands more had died since the Tet offensive began in January, 296,000 men ages 19 through 25 would be drafted during 1968, Joseph Biden had run out of college deferments, and he would not be safe until November 20, 1968, his twenty-sixth birthday. During the Democrat Party...

DOVER, Del. (AP) | Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, received five student draft deferments during the Vietnam War, the same number of deferments received by Vice President Dick Cheney, and later was disqualified from service because of asthma as a teenager.