[tanknetter]

People shouldn’t discount the endemic corruption of the South Vietnamese regime. It becomes magnitudes more difficult to win when your key ally, the one who you are shedding blood and treasure to defend and protect on their own soil, have a national leaderships that is so completely unworthy of help.

[Rockingham]

All too true. A friend of mine fought several tours in Vietnam and was a friend and colleague of John Paul Vann’s and part of his body detail. Oz liked the Vietnamese as individuals but saw them as mostly having little sense of responsibility for the fate of their country. Sadly, many of Oz’s stories about his Vietnamese friends ended with a report of them being killed in reeducation camps.

[oh8eleven]

People shouldn’t discount the endemic corruption of the South Vietnamese regime.

Professor Turgeson: Now, can someone tell me… why, in 1975 we pulled our troops out of Vietnam?

Student: The failure of Vietnamization to win popular support… caused an ongoing erosion of confidence… in the various American… but illegal… Saigon regimes.

Professor Turgeson: Is she right? ‘Cause I know that’s the popular version… of what went on there. I know a lot of people like to believe that. I wish I could, but I was there.
I wasn’t here in a classroom… hoping I was right, thinking about it. I was up to my knees in rice paddies… with guns that didn’t work, going up against Charlie…
slugging it out with him, while pussies like you… were back here partyin’, puttin’ headbands on… doin’ drugs, listening to the g*ddamn Beatle albums!