Posted on 07/14/2018 12:04:36 PM PDT by eastforker
Re Mrs. Kushner. You don’t know the half of the story. Maybe it will come out next year.
I was involved with the MIA/POW movement so I know things that were never made public. Until I get permission to speak, all I can say is that there is a whole side of the story that has never been fully revealed.
#176. Kearnyirish2. You are very wrong about the ARVN being “routed” when they went into Cambodia (1970) as opposed to Laos 1971.
In Cambodia, the ARVN armor destroyed No. Vietnamese divisions. Led by Gen. Cao Tri (he wore a scarf around his neck as a sign that he was a leader). The Cambodians loved him. My sources, the head of the Cambodian forces, my host, Gen. Sosthene Fernandez (ancestor was a Portugese trader), Gen. Phan Muong (JCS), and other Cambodian leaders I interviewed in Nov. 1970.
As for Laos, the ARVN troops were way outnumbered and out gunned by a ration of at least 3 to 1 or even more. The NVA pitted whole divisions against ARVN battalions which made the end results inevitable. However, the PAVN took tremendous losses, again (after the Tet 1968 and Spring/Summer offenses of 1968, the Spring and Summer Offensives of 1969; the Cambodian operation of Spring 1970, and later the devastating Easter Offensive where the ARVN/Marines and VNAF/Navy defeated the NVA on the ground.
If we hadn’t abandoned the SVN re our promised aid of arms and supplies, Hanoi might not have been able to succeed in 1975 (plus the fact that we promised air power if Hanoi violated the Paris Peace Agreement through an invasion).
Read the book “The Easter Offensive” and Jay Veith’s “Black April” for real history, not the crap that you get from Burns or Karnow or Jennings, etc.
#200. Kerry didn’t know about the Tiger Force. It was a limited area operational unit of probably less than 50 men who literally went wild to their disgrace.
Kerry himself killed several unarmed, innocent civilians when he careless machine-gunned their fishing junk. He admitted so himself.
I was part of the research team for “Unfit for Command” about John Kerry and his fake narrative of his Vietnam service (some of which was honorable and brave but some of which was cowardly and self-serving). Read the book and you’ll learn from the guys who served with him what a fraud he was (and none of his “crewmen” supported him during the Democrat Party convention. Two who spoke about him and endorsed him DID NOT SERVE under him. Both were wounded and medevacued out before Kerry took command of PC4.
My friend John O’Neill took command of Kerry’s boat when he left after only serving less than 6 months, more like 3, in Nam.
Also read “To Straighten the Record Out” by Scott Swett (also of “Unfit for Command”) and Tim Ziegler. It represents post “Unfit for Command” research a group of us did in Navy records found at the Navy Historical Center in Wash. DC and elsewhere.
Oh, by the way, the Wash. Post nixed a potentially devastating follow-up article about Kerry’s false Vietnam service claims. One of their writers had started to cover Kerry and esp. the Bay Hap River incident in much more detail but was not allowed to do the second piece. Wonder why? Believe the writer was Michael Dobbs, one of their foreign correspondents.
The Wash. Post was afraid that the real truth about Kerry would come out and destroy his political career.
We knew about this shortly after Dobbs began to start his research on the second story because some of our people talked to him.
Like I said earlier, there is so much more about Vietnam and specific events and issues that have not been thoroughly explored or event superficially covered. Maybe this will happen soon.
Try www.VVFH.org website and their new monthly magazine for articles you won’t find elsewhere. It will open up a whole new world of information about the wars in SE Asia.
What is this go to town and have a few drinks? You mean beers like Ba Me Ba (Beer 33) or were you another who was never in Vietnam.
After reading an old letter the beer is Ba Muoi Ba (33).
You never served in Vietnam so how the heck would you know if you saw something FALSE?
You act like you know all about the war, and; frankly your posts reveal how little you really do know about the enemy and war. Our recon teams ran into NVA in Cambodia from just south of the Tri border area 56 K’s NW of Duc Co SF camp in II Corps down to west of Song Be in III Corps. I mainly ran OPS on the border from west of Duc Lap SF camp to south in Bu Gia Map and to the border and back towards Duc Co near the Ia Drang valley. The NVA were in Bu Gia Map as were main force VC units. West of Duc Lap became hot in late Aug 68 and they hit the camp. The II Corps Mike Force followed by the 5th Group Nha Trang Mike Force kicked the crap out of the NVA and ran then back across the border. Our rules in Cambodia kept us limited to 12 men and only gunships. There were a few exceptions granted. Besides those rules I had no other restrictions, I had an URC 10 radio and could get TAC air fast, I often had two F-100’s, the two F-4’s for support as we were far from arty support. We also had our own AF 20th SOS gunships.
I was sent to Nebraska Omaha in 70-72 by the Army and the VVAW came in 71 or so. We active military guys there tore those VVAW wannabes to shreds. They left fast.
I watched the first couple of episodes and thought Burns was doing a credible job of dealing down the middle, especially when he played recordings of telephone conversations with JFK and LBJ (while each was POTUS) with both effectively saying they were compelled to take BAD decisions, decisions taken in the full knowledge that they would cost American servicemen their lives, because to do otherwise would have damaged their chances for re-election. So at that juncture he was giving demoncrats as well as Republicans a good shellacking.
But then about episode three (or was it four?) he began his attempt to rehabilitate the image of Ho Chi Minh, trying to portray him as a simple patriot and freedom-fighter who got swept up in events karger than himself.
That was when I switched it off.
I’m sorry; they failed in Cambodia and were routed in Laos. I agree cutting off aid doomed the ARVN; I’d recommend anyone should watch “Last Days in Vietnam” for anyone who wants to understand how it all fell apart. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything from Burns, Karnow, or Jennings.
The war provided a lot of warning for foreign governments that make deals with us; the importance of Nixon’s resignation to the Hanoi government couldn’t be understated. We govern in four-year increments, sometimes stretched to eight; there is real inconsistency that should give pause to others.
What you wrote mostly correlates to my recollections plus the men from my unit who went back into Cambodia in 1970. The last LTC to command CCS, MACVSOG wrote all US units and even our SOG unit on the ground in Ba Kev, Cambodia were ordered out of that country by 1 July 1970. I recall the men we lost west of the fishhook border AO in Jan-April 69.
Nixon had the secret bombings going and our recon teams were ordered to conduct BDA’s (bomb damage assessments).Also we had an RT make a great POW snatch. The NVA was a COSVN HQ messenger. He spilled his guts in Feb 69. We kept losing men there, and; some MACV HQ type figured a 32 man unit could come in right after the last bombs exploded and the NVA would be so stunned all they had to do was pick a few up and call for an exfil. Well bombs on concrete and other well fortified dug in troops is like poking a hole in a hornets nest. 22-26 men were KIA on that LZ coming in. You are dead on about our not helping, cutting off all bombing, etc. Sad as hell. Kerry was there in Paris with the damn VC.
Or more likely, wait until the pro-communist demonstrators (assisted by our media)wore down the people at home.
Shows you how little you know: the Vietcong were the southern guerilla branch of the communist forces. Some of the leadership - former Viet Minh - came from the North directly after the 1954 partition but from then on, the VC received supplies from the North but not personnel.
The North Vietnamese Army operated the Hi Chi Minh trail and used it as a conduit to infiltrate large NVA units into South Vietnam.
See? You need to consult more that Ken Burns to get your information. You missed your chance to be credible about the Vietnam War when you avoided going yourself.
“Please tell me where you found fault in his WWII doc? The stories were told by those who were there.”
I didn’t mention WWII. I referred to the Civil War...
So the film footage of VC troop movements along with supplies to the south and the wounded VC going back to the north is false? Yes the VC did recruit fighters from the south but they were commanded from the north. The Tet offensive was planned by the north, moved thousands of north VC to the south for the planned offensive. The VC from the north would dress as farmers, sometimes as women even, with rifles under their clothes.The majority of communist VC infiltrated the south, some lived there for years in the country side and the slums.
You should really tear the keyboard away from your computer and stop with the blathering because you really have no idea at all what you're talking about. We had half a million men in country at the peak and almost all of us conducted a courageous and very honorable fight against a vicious enemy. I saw atrocities committed by the VC almost every day against their own people. Mines planted on trails and in rice paddies which killed and maimed ordinary farmers, village elders beheaded, people shot because they spoke to us, children kidnapped and the livestock and food supplies stolen.
That a very small portion of those half million men of ours did commit war crimes is known because they were exposed by us and almost always tried and punished for their crimes. With the enemy, terror was the object and they made it central to their tactics.
John Kerry was a fraud and a traitor who had absolutely no idea what we ground troops endured and accomplished - yet that blowhard made a whole political career out of lying about us.
You're just the latest "useful idiot" to buy into his line of trash.
Yes,the great majority of our troops did fight honorably, but some did commit atrocities, that is a fact. Some with approval of their command. To say they did not would be a lie. Yes I am aware of what the VC did and how they did it. Agree with what you said about JK, that didn’t make his statement a lie. No he had no business testifying about things he had no first hand knowledge of. And even if he did have first hand knowledge, of course he did not, he still had no right to publicly testify about it.
How the heck would you know? You never spent one second "in country", so you're trying out-expert me?
No, the VC weren't Northerners except for a few who infiltrated the great mass of people who fled Ho Chi Minh's terror government.
There were three groups of the enemy that we fought (if you exclude the home-grown swine who decided to back the enemy at home):
The local VC. They were usually farmers and peasants who fought occasionally and they were armed with older weapons like Moisin-Nagant bolt action rifles and DP machine guns. They conducted reconnaissance, moved supplies, put in some of the booby traps, sniped. They were usually less fanatic and we often took a lot of prisoners if we cornered them. There were a lot of them but they weren't professionals.
The second level of the VC we used to call "Main Force VC" or "Hard Core VC" and they were the committed fanatics: they were smaller in number and many had served in the Viet Minh before and they were vicious. They had more modern weapons and often carried US weapons. They were the ones who carried out the ambushes and night attacks and the mortar and rocket attacks. They conducted the mobile propaganda operations in the villages and they did most of the murdering of the locals. They almost never took prisoners and when and if they did, they often tortured and murdered them. They had their own political leadership and even though they received coordination and support from the NVA, they considered themselves distinct players.
The last level were the NVA (who we called "Hard Hats" because of their distinctive helmets): they were all from the north and they're the ones who infiltrated south via the Ho Chi Minh trail. They had modern and effective weapons (including T-54 and PT-76 tanks, long range artillery, heavy mortars and 122mm rockets) and they never showed up in less than battalion strength. If you thought that your were engaging a platoon of Hard Hats, you were wrong. They were highly disciplined, physically fit, and aggressive. There were at least two divisions of NVA in the South even before the first US troops arrived.
Now - would you finally quit trying to pose as an "expert"? You aren't, no matter how many liberal/Left documentaries you've watched on TV.
since you don’t believe the people that were THERE, try these sources...
The National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, also known as the Viet Cong, was a mass political organization ***in South Vietnam*** and Cambodia with its own army – the People’s Liberation Armed Forces of South Vietnam (PLAF) – that fought against the United States and South Vietnamese governments during the Vietnam War,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viet_Cong
Both were revolutionary organizations, but the Viet Minh emerged from the North, and faded away by the time of American involvement in the Vietnam War, and the Viet Cong was born in the South, and played a major role in the fighting against the United States.
Viet Minh Vs Viet Cong - eNotes.com
https://www.enotes.com/homework.../what-was-difference-viet-minh-viet-cong-359807
I was in Pleiku, central highlands, most off my time in the Army 66-67 under LBJ’s McNamara. I was personnel clerk, one of thousands in Pleiku. We had personnel clerks, supply clerks, cooks cooking for us, truck drivers driving for us ... as far as the eye could see. We were all bored stiff.
550,000 men there when I was there. 500,000 of us in the rear. 50,000 out front. McNamara micro-managing the war without satelitte views and without wanting to hear the truth.
Pleiku. Been there. As you know SF had a B Detachment there plus the II Corps Mike Force, and; there was an Air Force Base. Our Covey FAC’s were assigned from that TASS. The 4th ID was just down the road. I spent about 3 months after the company running our northern launch site at Duc Co A camp. Our 20th SOS choppers had to use the 4th ID’s Oasis to refuel as did the FAC. Our head FAC flew me into Pleiku AFB and I was taken to the BOQ for the night. I was in awe of the comfort. I thanked him when he flew in from our HQ in the AM. The Air Force did many great things for us like flying in much needed items.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.