The Tet Television Offensive: 40 Years Ago Today (Remembering 1968)

1/31/08 | Self

[Nextrush]

It was 40 years today that the film from the first day of the Tet Offensive (January 30th) made it onto our television screens.

Back then there was no live satellite link from Vietnam so the newsfilm of the war was flown to Hong Kong or Tokyo for satellite transmission to the United States.

I sat as a seven year old transfixed by the exciting pictures of the kamikaze style attack by the Vietcong on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon.

Militarily speaking the attack was an utter failure, but visually speaking the attack was shocking to Americans sitting in their living rooms. The story of this attack was the first of many distorted stories that would be spread by the mainstream media in the weeks to come.

In a very detailed book called "Big Story" author Peter Braestrup, who worked for the "Washington Post" covering the war, laid out how the media coverage misrepresented what really happened.

The Tet Offensive was a military failure, a desperate move by the Communist forces. But as propaganda, with the assistance of the mainstream media, it would prove to be a great success.

Tet would break American resolve, lead to "peace talks" that would end with a "peace agreement" in 1973 and the eventual Communist takeover in 1975.

[beckysueb]

My husband was in VietNam in 1968. In 1990 our town elected a mayor who is a VietNam vet and in 1991 he arranged a parade and formal ceremony to finally formally welcome the VietNam vets home. When our folks came home from Iraq, the mayor organized a huge welcome home shindig. It was awesome! Most of them came home together on a bus but there were a few who came home a few days later and the mayor met each and every one of them at the county line and personally welcomed them home. He said as long as he was alive, no soldier was ever going to come home to the hate that the VietNam vets did. God bless him. My husband was just a 20 yr old boy when he came home to this. He didn’t deserve it. None of you fine folks deserved it. God, how I hate the left!

[beckysueb]

And don’t forget John Kerry.

[oh8eleven]

He said as long as he was alive, no soldier was ever going to come home to the hate that the VietNam vets did.
You must live in a really nice town. Welcoming Vietnam vets home has become a "cause celeb" lately, but it looks like your town was way ahead of the curve.

I fought with our local news media for years over misrepresentations of Vietnam vets. Newspaper headlines like, "Ex-Marine, Vietnam Veteran, Robs Bank" were the rule rather than the exception.

[VOA]

In a very detailed book called "Big Story" author Peter Braestrup,
who worked for the "Washington Post" covering the war, laid out
how the media coverage misrepresented what really happened.

IIRC, an episode of "Declassified" on The History Channel
did a decent job of recounting what really went down during Tet,
as oppossed to the filtered story we got from the US presstitutes.

Even more suprising, one of the best interviewees was a young
history professor from one of the California State University
system...I can't remember which campus. The guy might be the
the next Victor Davis Hanson, i.e., a non-revisionist historian.