Posted on 07/17/2009 5:48:01 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK Walter Cronkite, the premier TV anchorman of the networks' golden age who reported a tumultuous time with reassuring authority and came to be called "the most trusted man in America," has died. He was 92.
CBS vice president Linda Mason says Cronkite died at 7:42 p.m. Friday with his family by his side at his home in New York after a long illness.
He was the face of the "CBS Evening News" from 1962 to 1981, when stories ranged from the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to racial and anti-war riots, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
I have nothing good to say about Walter Chronkite
Brinkley and John Chancellor were miles better than Walt.
Huntley was before my time.
You mean just an observer of the war?correct?
Isn’t this the guy who single handedly lost the Vietnam War?
My understanding of events, gleaned several years after the fact, is as follows. We bombed North Vietnam back to the peace table. We negotiated a deal. We had an orderly removal of troops, but for a few at the US embassy. It was understood that we would provide financial aid to our ally, South Vietnam. In case of a conventional invasion by the North, we would provide military assistance.
After Watergate, the new Congress was very Democrat and very liberal. They cut off aid to South Vietnam and passed a law prohibiting military assistance to South Vietnam under any circumstances. This was an open invitation for the communists to resume the war. Two years later, South Vietnam fell.
The US won the war, then abandoned an ally. Liberals did not care. They thought communism would be better for South Vietnam and the region. History has proved them wrong.
“Good Night, David; “ “Good Night, Chet.” was one of the signature trademarks of the ‘60’s. I think for the most part, they beat Cronkite in the ratings.
I remember him on I think “The World of Tomorrow” test driving the Chrysler Jet turbine car.
As long as politics wasn’t involved he was inspiring.
"Do you remember Walter?"
Me too!
This woman does remember... and remembers clearly. I am among the millions who will not forget what happened.
It was not reported, even by the "esteemed" Walter Cronkite, but the vast majority of us were with you back then. And we remain with you now.
Thank you, sir, for your service and sacrifice. And welcome home, hero.
Godspeed.
He lived to be a ripe old age. Good thing he missed out on Obamacare.
You summed it up quite nicely.
I think part of it was also war weariness, and I sort of think we had attained our strategic objective. in ‘64, it seemed Communism was monolithic, that the combined USSR/Red China were likely to be a very powerful enemy. ( That would have been a commoner’s point of view; I guess they were already much at odds in reality) . National Review formulated a theory that was very much a part of my thinking in those years, namely that moscow’s agent in Peking, I believe in was Lin piao, but I may be wrong , was vying with Chou en Lai for dominance, but that he was killed in a plane crash in 1969, I think in Mongolia, “while fleeing to Moscow.” In any case, Nixon going to Peking, meeting with Chou en Lai, etc., more or less openly proved there was no monolithic Communism anymore, that’s by 1972. So I think strategically, it was a holding action while the dynamics between USSR and Red China clarified. In that sense, always saw it as a victory. But that’s only from a teenager’s evaluation of what was happening.
We’re all probably going to die from something, sooner or later.
Now your calling me names
Well, at least he lived long enough to see a communist enter the oval office.
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