Posted on 05/23/2014 10:35:41 AM PDT by TangledUpInBlue
In June 1969, LIFE magazine published a feature that remains as moving and, in some quarters, as controversial as it was when it intensified a nation’s soul-searching 45 years ago. On the cover, a young man’s face — the very model of middle-America’s “boy next door” — along with 11 stark words: “The Faces of the American Dead in Vietnam: One Week’s Toll.” Inside, across 10 funereal pages, LIFE published picture after picture and name after name of 242 young men killed in seven days halfway around the world “in connection with the conflict in Vietnam.”
(Excerpt) Read more at life.time.com ...
No doubt, and the lamestream news does the same. How many times did stephy's program show the names of the weekly fallen under Bush?
puppypusher, as with you, I enlisted in the USAF 4 days after graduation, on June 21, 1974. I wonder if we brushed elbows? I had an operation first and didn’t go to basic until after I recovered in the Fall of ‘74. I was in 3723 BMTS, just down the road from the Thunderbird Theater and just across the street from the AFEES convenience store.
Don't forget to thank:
John F. Kennedy
A very special thanks to Lyndon Baines Johnson
And a very very special thanks to (drum roll please):
The Democrat Party!:
for all of the their tireless work in that effort to get America stuck in that war.
And give a big applause to their communist fellow travelers in America that helped America lose the war.
Special thanks for the Democrat Party's propaganda organs (known as the American Media) for their sterling effort to deceive the American public about the war and blame it on the Republicans and President Richard Nixon.
A special WELL DONE to Walter Cronkite and CBS News and the rest of the American Media for their excellent work in trashing all of those Americans who served and died in what has now turned out to be a pointless, aimless war.
Our fighting men were superb in Vietnam, victory was denied by the old WWII generation, playing some sort of weird political game for a decade of us defeating the Communists on the battlefield.
As far as the draft, Vietnam was fought overwhelmingly by volunteers, just the opposite of WWII which was a war fought by draftees.
I note with bitter irony that this issue of Life Magazine was published in the same month that Bill Clinton got drafted, received his notice of induction, while attending Oxford in England.
He used his political contacts from working in a Senators office when he attended Georgetown University in Washington DC, to defy the draft and never serve when millions of his peers who were drafted dropped everything and served, many of them paying with their lives for obeying the law.
Yet Clinton becomes Commander in Chief thanks to a Corrupt Liberal Media which censors his being drafted from the American public and spins it as if he only avoided the war.
There is nothing “mainstream” about the the “Mainstream Media”. The accurate term should be “The Corrupt Liberal Media” with the operative word being “Corrupt”
Liberalism has killed journalism.
Viet Nam Mai Mai! RVN,68,69,70.
You omitted Hanoi Jane Fonda!
Remember those who did not obey the law( went to Canada) were granted AMNESTY!.They are mostly STILL alive today!
I don’t think you remotely know what you’re talking about.
Those I know well that went to Vietnam; including one of my brothers and my hubby tell me they came back to a completely different country. My brother was there 1967-1969 (two tours), hubby was there 1968-1969. They said things had changed so much here while they were gone didn’t know what to think.
You don't have a clue! Why do you write such nonsense?
Revisionists and journalists with similar political agendas have guided an entire generation of young Americans to believe that America lost the Viet Nam war. Sadly, many older citizens have allowed time and a politicized ‘media’ to cloud and/or alter their memories.
The facts are certain. American troops and airmen lost not a single battle during that war. The combined military forces of America, Thailand, New Zealand, and Australia, four of the supporting nations of the South East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), South Viet Nam and South Korea won the war against North Viet Nam and the Viet Cong, plain and simply.
The stated military goals were precise. SEATO forces were to neutralize or push the ag¬gressor forces out of South Viet Nam. South Vietnam was to be armed for it’s own self de¬fense. In fact, the Viet Cong were effectively neutralized. North Viet Nam’s army was pushed back home. The rail bridges connecting North Viet Nam and China were sev¬ered. The Ho Chi Ming trail was rendered inoperative to vehicles. Haiphong harbor was mined, greatly restricting the flow of war materials into North Viet Nam from the Soviet Union.
The enemy was forced to sign peace accords in Paris, ending the military conflict on SEATO’s terms. Prisoners of war were repatriated. America’s war ended then. Our Con¬gress subsequently voted not to re-engage after North Viet Nam violated the accords later.
So why do most Americans believe that we lost that war? Is it because of the fierce fighting at the onslaught of the 1968 Tet Offensive that was, in fact, the Viet Cong’s last hurrah? Is it because of the film footage of our embassy personnel being evacuated from Saigon in 1975, three years after our war ended? Is it because of the anti-war demonstrations and turmoil at home during the war? Is it because of anti-military sentiment still fostered by left wing politicians? Is it a classic example of a ‘Big Lie’ told often enough to establish credibility in gullible people?
How have the revisionists been so successful in creating a believable lie? It may be simplistic to imply that Americans inappropriately trusted TV journalists, political commenta¬tors and editorialists, collectively termed ‘the media’, instead of historians, but the answer may be that simple. To this day, most Americans do not understand why we became engaged in that war, the stated objectives or the true outcome.
Our WW2 victory on the island of Iwo Jima was not nullified because we returned the Island to Japanese control two decades thereafter. Similarly, our victory in Viet Nam was not nullified because three years after our departure, North Viet Nam reneged on the peace accords and overran South Viet Nam, unopposed by the departed SEATO military forces.
Military victory is not diminished by what politicians give away later. We won that war.
“Walter Cronkite came back from VN, after the Tet Offensive in early 1968, and told America, “To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.”
+++++++++++++++
I recall watching an old news item on Vietnam with some famous reporter. It was after the first major fight using American troops. The reporter ended it up with something like “It remains to be seen how long Americans will support the war as the number of dead increases.” I was ASTOUNDED! It must have been in there playbook from the very beginning.
And iirc didn’t they really push the number of dead during the first Gulf War?
JOHN A BULPITT
PFC - E3 - Army - Selective Service
1st Infantry Division
Length of service 1 years
His tour began on Dec 17, 1965
Casualty was on Apr 28, 1966
In , SOUTH VIETNAM
HOSTILE, GROUND CASUALTY
MISADVENTURE
Body was recovered
Panel 07E - Line 4
He was a tall, skinny,kid that hung out at the Granitville Fire Station and the A &W with a bunch of us. All those years ago and the emotion overwhelms me still. I want to grab hold of him and pull him back so he can grow old with the rest of us, but I can’t.
Not to mention the claim that they were all draftees. None of that was true. Blacks did not serve in a larger percentage than their percentage of population, and most that served actually volunteered. The myths of that war are many, revisionist history was being written during the war. Stolen Valor is a great book where many myths are not only shot down, but explained in great depth.
The body count was a daily front page thing along with gas prices while W was President
No one would have stood for it. Not to mention that 200+ Americans died per day in World War II.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfBLUOSNryc
Here is the report by CBS Morely Safer that I recalled. It opens with Cronkite saying something like “Americans awoke to the news that 270 of our young men had been killed this week, more than the weekly average of the Korean War...”
And ends with Safer wondering “How many more deaths will America put up with.”
From 1965.
Righto. Sometimes less. Sometimes a whole lot more.
And America suffered a great deal less in WWII than some other countries. (Some of which deserved it.)
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