Free Republic

Uploaded on Jul 16, 2008 Al Santoli -- combat vet of the Vietnam War and former Congressional investigator Carol Hrdlicka --wife of a Vietnam War pilot shot down, captured, yet never returned Mike Benge -- returned POW of the Vietnam War andEleanor Apodaca -- sister of a Vietnam War MIA explain some of the reasons that: Disabled American Veterans (DAV) rates John McCain's voting record as only 20% in support of veterans, the lowest in Congress; Iraq and Afghanistan American Veterans give McCain a grade of "D"; and Vietnam Veterans of America rate McCain's voting record on veterans' issues at...

There is no shortage of "expert advice" on what we should do in Afghanistan in light of the shortcomings of the Karzai government. Several writers argue that the best way to fight the Taliban is to support and strengthen the traditional tribal system by dealing with individual tribes rather than working to build a national police force and army. While this might offer a short-term advantage over a more comprehensive "nation building" strategy, this approach proved disastrous in both Iraq and Vietnam.

President Bush’s use of the Vietnam-Iraq analogy in his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars last month was accurate but lacking. Most of his critics, including those in Congress, know little about the history of the Vietnamese communists, and they choose to blindly ignore what is glaringly known about the intentions of al Qaeda and the radical Muslim jihadists in the Middle East. Where the President fell short in his analogy is he forgot to mention that while the communists in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos did not announce their genocidal intentions at the onset of the war, al Qaeda...

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” -- Joseph Goebbels Of the many myths about the Vietnam War, the most prevalent is that...

While the radical Islamists held a scimitar to the throat of freedom of expression over cartoons, Hun Sen, Cambodia’s dictator, was throttling those who dared speak out against his misdeeds and Vietnam’s grab of a good portion of Cambodia’s border. Prime Minister Hun Sen is the epitome of the old adage that a tiger never changes his stripes. First by a coup d’état in 1997 in which over 100 members of the Royalist Party democrats were murdered, then through rigged elections, and now through his kangaroo courts, Hun Sen has managed to intimidate and silence all opposition to his fascist...