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To: Right Wing Assault; BIGLOOK
Possible snopes material. Consider:

Ed Moise has already tackled this one [in a review of] Vo Nguyen Giap and Van Tien Dung, How We Won the War. Philadelphia: Recon Publications, 1976. 63 pp.

This book has been the subject of several unfounded rumors on the Internet. The first one began in the late 1990s. Supposedly, General Giap had written in How We Won the War that in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive of 1968, the Communist leaders in Vietnam had been ready to abandon the war, but that a broadcast by Walter Cronkite, declaring the Tet Offensive a Communist victory, persuaded them to change their minds and fight on. This rumor was entirely false. Giap had not mentioned Cronkite, and had not said the Communists had ever considered giving up on the war.

Several variants of this rumor appeared in 2004. In these, Giap is supposed to have credited either the American anti-war movement in general, or John Kerry's organization (Vietnam Veterans Against the War) in particular, for persuading the Communist leaders to change their minds and not give up on the war. Giap is sometimes said to have made this statement in How We Won the War, sometimes in an unnamed 1985 memoir. All versions of the rumor are false. Neither in How We Won the War, nor in any other book (the 1985 memoir is entirely imaginary), has Giap mentioned Kerry or Vietnam Veterans Against the War, or said that the Communist leaders had ever considered giving up on the war."

http://hnn.us/roundup/archives/16/2004/10/#8232

Of course, even if the Giap quotes are bogus it takes nothing away from the main point: the media helped pull defeat from the jaws of victory.

39 posted on 07/28/2007 5:02:43 PM PDT by secretagent
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To: secretagent
Whatever was going through Giap's mind is moot. What was going on in the Media at the time was false and bordering on treasonous.

The Battle at LZ X-RAY was won by the 7th but the reporting gave the impression of a loss.

During the '68 Tet offensive, the VC advance groups were decimated by US and ARVN forces....their NVA backup retreated in a rout, suffering debilitating casualties.

Forward fire bases of the Marines and Army on the Kontom Plateau held against NVA insurgency from the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

The Air War....We put their fighters in the ground and the survivors were stashed in caves along the Red River Valley. Assets were hard to come by when the NVNAF's sponsors and creditors took a hard look at the tally sheets.

Once the fighter capability was neutralized in our favor, ARC LIGHT and ROLLING THUNDER were free to roam....after Queers cleared air corridors for ingress.

Best guess body count was 30:1.

I think Giap realized this. I've also picked up on the controversy of Giap's memoirs. Whether it's bogus or not it fits the unreported facts.

From late '72 to '75, the NVA had time to rebuild while we withdrew. Then Congress cut the legs out from under the Thieu gov't in Saigon.

Checkmate.

50 posted on 07/28/2007 5:50:17 PM PDT by BIGLOOK (Keelhauling is a sensible solution to mutiny.)
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To: secretagent
"How We Won the War" is a 64-page book that deals mostly with 1975 according to Amazon.com info and comments. I have not read the book.

Anybody got the Thursday August 3, 1995 edition of the Wall Street Journal laying around? An interview with Col. Bui Tin who served on Gen. Giap's general staff was published. Here's a part of the interview (I have not found the entire article).

"Q: Was the American antiwar movement important to Hanoi's victory?

"A: It was essential to our strategy. Support of the war from our rear was completely secure while the American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to world news over the radio at 9 a.m. to follow the growth of the American antiwar movement. Visits to Hanoi by people like Jane Fonda, and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers gave us confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses. We were elated when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press conference that she was ashamed of American actions in the war and that she would struggle along with us."

One site provided this link to other parts of the interview.

Here's one of Col. Bui Tin other comments: "Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in 1968. It took us until 1971 to re-establish our presence, but we had to use North Vietnamese troops as local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw under Nixon in 1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969 and 1970 as it was."

Of course this site is not a Eugene McCarthy Democratic Party or John Kerry Rat Party approved source like the esteemed Ed Moise.

This link above was provided by http://newsbusters.org/node/10406.

65 posted on 07/28/2007 7:17:45 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: secretagent; All
Accordingly, one can only imagine Giap's relief when Walter Cronkite — "the most trusted man in America' — after reading the initial bulletin on the Tet attacks, stupidly asked the country:

"What the hell is going on? I thought we were winning this war'

Then, three weeks later, Uncle Walter delivered Giap an unexpected victory when he spoke these words during his 2/27/1968 CBS News broadcast:

"We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and in Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds.... To say that we are mired in a stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion.... It seems increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out will be to negotiate.'

http://www.americanthinker.com/2006/07/the_ho_chi_minh_trail_to_beiru.html

I have not read the book. I don't know if Gaip or Minh mentioned Kronkite and/or our media. But let's look at the words of Cronkite and the words of our media and Demoratic leaders today.

Also, and I don't know, but it says Jonathan Winkler wrote Did General Giap Say the Vietnam War Was Won on the Streets of America?

So, far, this is all I have found on Jonathan Winkler:

I don't know if it is the same Jonathan Winkler from the University of Maryland who wrote about Gaip. IF it is, he is the one in the middle.

http://www.enme.umd.edu/ceee/personnel/vikrant.html

And: With the Vietcong wiped out in the Tet offensive, North Vietnamese regulars moved south down the Ho Chi Minh trails through Laos and Cambodia to continue the war. Even Giap admitted in his memoirs that news media reporting of the war and the anti-war demonstrations that ensued in America surprised him. Instead of negotiating what he called a conditional surrender, Giap said they would now go the limit because America's resolve was weakening and the possibility of complete victory was within Hanoi's grasp.

http://www.upi.com/inc/view.php?StoryID=20040406-032203-3282r

This is a good one for snopes.

114 posted on 07/30/2007 5:35:44 PM PDT by do the dhue (Don't let Jihad Jane do what Hanoi Jane did!!!! SEP 15, 07 Gathering of EAGLES DC)
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