Posted on 02/13/2008 3:47:36 PM PST by Richard Poe
| by Richard Lawrence Poe Wednesday, February 13, 2008 |
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AMERICANS FACE a grim anniversary this month. Forty years ago, on February 27, 1968, CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite pronounced the Vietnam War a hopeless cause. His forecast was premature. Saigon did not fall for another eight years. What possessed Cronkite to raise the white flag so far in advance?
We now know that Cronkite was simply parroting the CIA line. Agency analysts had been churning out gloomy reports about Vietnam by the ream since 1963.
Sadly, they were not content to issue classified reports through proper channels. They went further. They sought to turn public opinion against the war, using press leaks and disinformation campaigns.
Ironically, it was the CIA that got us into Vietnam in the first place. The military wanted nothing to do with it. In a May 26, 1954 memo, the Joint Chiefs of Staff declared Indochina "devoid of decisive military objectives." The only way to stop communism in Southeast Asia would be to destroy its supply sources "in China proper", the Joint Chiefs concluded.
The CIA ignored this advice. In June 1954, it sent Col. Edward G. Lansdale to Vietnam to begin paramilitary operations.
CIA strategists believed they could fight wars more effectively than the Pentagon. Their technique was to dispatch CIA advisors to hot spots, whereupon they would raise armies of local mercenaries. Such operations had borne fruit in Iran (1953-54), Guatemala (1954), the Congo (1960-61) and Laos (1960-62).
Vietnam provided the ultimate testing ground. The CIA was given a free hand there from 1954 through 1964. The experiment failed catastrophically.
In a memorandum of October 19, 1964, CIA officer William Bundy informed President Johnson that the situation was hopeless. America should flee Vietnam and "shore up the next line of defense in Thailand."
Appalled by such talk, President Johnson turned to the military. In early 1965, he ordered bombing raids on North Vietnam and sent the Marines into Da Nang.
The CIA made a fateful choice. Rather than accept President Johnson's decision, it resolved to stop him.
For this it was well-equipped with a powerful propaganda network. While heading the CIA’s covert operations division from 1948 to 1956, Frank Wisner recruited hundreds of U.S. journalists at virtually every major newspaper and broadcast network in America. He boasted that he could play the media like a Wurlitzer pipe organ.
Long after Wisner left, his "Mighty Wurlitzer" played on. President Johnson felt the full effects of its wrath.
CIA-friendly journalists Walter Lippmann and James Reston began savaging Johnson's war policy. The New York Times ran a major feature on March 15, 1965 praising the New Left and glorifying Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
A group called the League for Industrial Democracy (LID) had launched SDS in 1959. Socialist Party bigwig and LID co-founder Norman Thomas helped shield SDS from critics. Thomas' Institute of International Labor Research was later exposed as a conduit for CIA funds.
Prior to 1965, SDS focused on poverty and civil rights. In April 1965, it emerged as America's leading anti-war group, sponsoring a "National March Against the Vietnam War" which brought 20,000 protestors to Washington.
CIA contract consultant Allard Lowenstein established the “Dump Johnson” movement on April 2, 1967. He persuaded anti-war Senator Eugene McCarthy to challenge Johnson in the Democratic primaries.
Meanwhile, the Viet Cong were on the ropes. Communist forces in Vietnam launched the Tet Offensive in January 1968. It was a desperate, suicidal assault on hundreds of cities and towns in South Vietnam. The attack failed. Communist forces met ruin and slaughter on every front.
Nonetheless our media portrayed Tet as a U.S. defeat. Walter Cronkite declared on February 27, 1968:
"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. ... we are mired in stalemate... it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could."To this, President Johnson responded, "If I've lost Cronkite, I've lost middle America.” On March 31, 1968, Johnson announced that he would not seek reelection as president.
The CIA had made its point. Communist victory was still eight years away. But its seeds were sown.
Americans must learn from this dark episode. Even now the "Mighty Wurlitzer" plays. We must never again dance to its tune.
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Richard Lawrence Poe is a contributing editor to Newsmax, an award-winning journalist and a New York Times bestselling author. His latest book is The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Sixties Radicals Siezed Control of the Democratic Party, co-written with David Horowitz. |
So where do America’s REAL enemies really reside???
So Cronkite was working for the CIA.....
They had a lot of help from the mainstream media.
Probably just too stupid to realize that he was.
Probably just too stupid to realize that he was.
We were right ot be in Vietnam. We were fightin gthe spread of Communism and that was absolutely, unquestionably the right thing to do. Unfortunately, we fought the entire time with a no-win strategy. (I think we did that at the beginning in Iraq too.) Ultimately, becausae we were never trying to win, we lost.
We were still fighting for a just and noble cause.
Washington DC mostly.
L
.
NEVER FORGET
.
The same WALTER CRONKITE who publically declared our TET Offensive Victory a defeat in 1968...
...went on to publically call for our 11 Southern States to SECEDE from our Union. This at a Year 2000 London World Conference.
The very same WALTER CRONKITE who is now backing HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON’s re-entry into our Oval Office in a new time of war.
The very same HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON that backed Communist North Vietnam’s terrorist takeover of a then Free South Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
Both bringing down on a once Free South Vietnamese peopple, a most horrid...
..”JOURNEY from the FALL”..
http://www.JourneyFromTheFall.com
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1806248/posts
http://www.Freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1308949/posts
.
NEVER ever AGAIN.
.
NEVER FORGET
.
cia was full of leftists - and the f’ed nixon too.
Crackpot Cronkite’s BS report (as well as the eroneous one about the US Embassy being captured) was one of the key reasons why the MSM shouldn’t be allowed free reign in a war/combat zone.
Does anybody have the name of the gin soaked smart ass from CIA who decided VN was a fight worth fighting?
Nixon was the one who helped us win the Vietnam War (which was then lost by the RATs in Congress). Had he been in office rather than LBJ, the Vietnam War might be remembered differently today.
This is a surprising charge.
Exactly. Most people do not remember that Vietnam fell to a full scale (conventional) North Vietnamese invasion. It did not fall to the Vietcong guerrillas who (by 1971) were a spent force. The US Military was uniquely qualified to repel the NVA invasion (even using Airpower alone), but sat on their hands (thanks to Congress).
Nixon was the one who helped us win the Vietnam War (which was then lost by the RATs in Congress). Had he been in office rather than LBJ, the Vietnam War might be remembered differently today.
Nixon was the one who helped us win the Vietnam War (which was then lost by the RATs in Congress). Had he been in office rather than LBJ, the Vietnam War might be remembered differently today.
Sorry about the multiple posts, folks. My computer is being...difficult.
When a dog turns on its owner, it needs to be killed.
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