Posted on 07/03/2004 7:29:13 PM PDT by Spackidagoosh
Gen. Giap: Kerry's Group Helped Hanoi Defeat U.S.
The North Vietnamese general in charge of the military campaign that finally drove the U.S. out of South Vietnam in 1975 credited a group led by Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry with helping him achieve victory.
In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote that if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. - according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North.
That's why, he predicted on Tuesday, the Vietnam War issue "is going to blow up in Kerry's face."
"People are going to remember Gen. Giap saying if it weren't for these guys [Kerry's group], we would have lost," North told radio host Sean Hannity.
"The Vietnam Veterans Against the War encouraged people to desert, encouraged people to mutiny - some used what they wrote to justify fragging officers," noted the former Marine lieutenant colonel, who earned two purple hearts in Vietnam.
"John Kerry has blood of American soldiers on his hands," North said.
It's very important to check sources
NewsMax.com ran a story on Feb. 10 titled, "Gen. Giap: Kerry's group helped Hanoi defeat U.S."
The story claimed, "In his 1985 memoir about the war, Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap wrote if it weren't for organizations like Kerry's Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Hanoi would have surrendered to the U.S. — according to Fox News Channel war historian Oliver North."
North's claim has been repeated as gospel in numerous articles, blogs, commentaries and pseudo-news reports, despite the fact the Giap memoir is bogus. According to WashingtonDispatch.com columnist Greg Lewis, who researched the alleged quotation, "No such volume exists."
Lewis wrote, "A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an `urban legend.' Specifically, based on a `news' item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 `Memoirs,' I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated."
In the past, Gen. Giap is alleged to have made similar statements about Jane Fonda and Walter Cronkite, though there is no verifiable evidence that he ever did. Revisionist historians take note. Check your sources, no matter how much you want to believe the lie.
Walter F. Wouk, Cobleskill
http://www.thedailystar.com/opinion/letters/2004/04/lt0416.html
I don't know, myself. Off a-googling I will go.
The suggestion that VVAW lengthened the war comes from convicted arms dealer, perjurer, and media personality Oliver North. In a cited quote from North (Greg Lewis, "Fellow Travelers, Useful Idiots, and Other Innocents", Washington Dispatch, 2/19/2004), North alleges that Giap in a 1985 book stated that John Kerry and VVAW lengthened the war and insured the ultimate Vietnamese victory. Giap published no 1985 book. THERE IS NO SUCH QUOTE in either of General Giap's two post-war publications (Vo Nguyen Giap, Unforgettable Months And Years, Southeast Asia Program, Dept. of Asian Studies, Cornell University, 1975 or How We Won the War (coauthored by Van Tien Dung) RECON Publications, 1976).
This particular slander on VVAW and Kerry was disseminated on the Internet from a column in the Washington Dispatch by Greg Lewis, February 19, 2004. (Complete article: http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8129.shtml) In reaction to responses to his original column, on March 2, 2004, Greg Lewis retracted his initial accusation against Kerry with: "A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an 'urban legend.'
Specifically, based on a 'news' item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 "Memoirs," I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated. My apologies to Colonel North and to WashingtonDispatch.com readers for including inadequately verified material in my piece on Kerry."
Complete article: http://www.washingtondispatch.com/article_8268.shtml
If the VVAW has this one right, lets not dig the pit deeper.
Newsmax does it again?
And Giap apparently didn't have any 1985 memoirs.
But that does not change the reality that Kerry and his ilk were a huge asset for Ho and Giap.
Agreed. And reposting urban legends doesn't help to spread that message.
Okay, I havent actually read the book but here are two intriguing reviews on amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0916894010/qid=1088912262/sr=8-2/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i2_xgl14/102-3812331-7790528?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
"Nor is this the book in which Gen. Giap supposedly stated that groups such at the Vietnam Veterans Against the War gave the North the resolve to carry on."
And Conflicting with that is...
"Especially, enlightening is where Giap said that organizations such as "Viet Nam Vets Against the War" (started by John Kerry) gave the North courage and resolve."
It might be worth a couple of bucks to pick it up used and give it a read.
i read an article many years ago in the NY Times by an author who interviewed Giap. i remember giap as saying that they knew they would win because the north vietnamese were willing to take numbers of casualties that americans would never be willing to accept.
even if we had obliterated north viet nam or occupied it, they would have just hid out in cambodia or china, and continued a guerilla war from there.
the cost of winning the war in terms of american lives was probably not something americans would have been willing to pay, and the war might just never have ended.
i think it is was Gen. McArthur who cautioned against fighting wars on the mainland of asia. i think he was probably right.
Gen. Giap, in a series of postbellum interviews, confessed that the North Vietnamese were ready to cease aggression under the weight of the 1972 and 1973 bombing campaigns. He then directly associated the reprieve with the welcome efforts of the radical antiwar movement. Indeed he told French television that his most important guerrilla ally during the war was the American press. The Vietnam News Agency as early as 1966 wrote "We praise the American peace champions. The movement of the American people to protest the war of aggression has really become the second front against the U.S. imperialists." Another communist official, Bui Tinh, claimed that Fonda's Hanoi visits, press releases and much publicized photo-ops in enemy batteries had helped the communists "to hold on in the face of battlefield reverses."
Now of course Kerry isn't mentioned by name, but he for sure was part of the "radical antiwar movement" and could be counted among those our enemies in Vietnam saw as the "American peace champions".......
Former American POWs have stated that Kerry's 1971 Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony got used by their captors to break the Americans' will.
No need to hand the VVAW a victory by reposting an urban legend, with live ammunition at hand.
Giap may well have praised the VVAW, but not Kerry, and not in 1985.
More Interesting historical news about kerry's notoriety:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1091943/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1160580/posts
Some of Hillary's and John Effin's friends listed below:
http://www.cpusa.org/
http://www.dsausa.org/
DSA's "Progressive Caucas" Links below:
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/
http://bernie.house.gov/pc/members.asp
The Enemy Within!!!!
I don't understand why those that posted responses to you seem not to get that fact clear.
Maybe this thread should be deleted so as not to give Kerry any ammunition against us when we do post the true stuff??
We need auditors and salesmen both.:)
I disagree. This thread shows FR as a truth detecting enterprise.
I don't understand why those that posted responses to you seem not to get that fact clear.
Has anyone denied the urban legend charge, in the specific details discussed?
Even better! I am fearful that these faked stories are put out there by the Kerry camp to "get us". But your point is valid - It may serve good to shopw that we can tell the BS from the truth even if we want to believe the BS. But I still think the Admin moderator should get a heads up regardless.
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