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Sunday, February 1, 2009 First Vietnamese congressman leads Tet parade The O.C. community celebrated the lunar New Year with a vibrant parade in Little Saigon. By DEEPA BHARATH THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER WESTMINSTER – Anh "Joseph" Cao, the first Vietnamese American to be elected to the U.S. Congress, was one of the highlights of the annual Tet Parade in Little Saigon on Saturday morning. Local politicians and community organized a fundraiser for Cao, who represents Louisiana's Second Congressional District. "The Vietnamese communities in the rest of the country look to this community in California for leadership and guidance," Cao said.

British and Afghan forces repulsed an attempt by hundreds of Taleban fighters to attack the provincial capital of Helmand, Lashkar Gah, on Saturday night in the most audacious Taliban attack in the province since 2006. Up to 100 Taleban fighters were killed in a series of airstrikes and firefights around the city outskirts in fighting that began in the early evening as Taleban fighters were concentrating to attack the city of three sides and continued into the early hours of Sunday morning. It was the first time that the Helmand capital has been attacked. The Taleban plan appeared to be...

Click on image for the actual September 2, 2008, front pageAfter seven years of initial eligibility, Joseph Biden was removed from the military draft pool just when it was most likely he would be drafted and sent into the Vietnam War. The American death toll was rising rapidly -- 11,153 in 1967. Thousands more had died since the Tet offensive began in January, 296,000 men ages 19 through 25 would be drafted during 1968, Joseph Biden had run out of college deferments, and he would not be safe until November 20, 1968, his twenty-sixth birthday. During the Democrat Party...

On January 30, 1968, more than a quarter million North Vietnamese soldiers and 100,000 Viet Cong irregulars launched a massive attack on South Vietnam. But the public didn't hear about who had won this most decisive battle of the Vietnam War, the so-called Tet offensive, until much too late. Media misreporting of Tet passed into our collective memory. That picture gave antiwar activism an unwarranted credibility that persists today in Congress, and in the media reaction to the war in Iraq. The Tet experience provides a narrative model for those who wish to see all U.S. military successes -- such...

"We had a false sense of security," said Larry Rosser, a Vietnam veteran who now resides in Quartz Hill. Rosser served as a signalman in the 4th Infantry Division and was stationed in Vietnam's central highlands, outside the town of Pleiku, when the attack came. "Between 1 and 3 in the morning, they started rocket and mortar attacks on our base camp," Rosser said. "It was the first time it had been attacked." Rosser said no one was prepared for the attack. In fact, just a few weeks before Tet, commanders at his camp, Camp Enari, had started locking up...

Forty years ago today the North Vietnamese and Vietcong launched the general offensive/general uprising, known to history as the Tet Offensive after the Vietnamese new year’s holiday during which it began. It was a last-ditch attempt at a quick win in a war the Communists knew they were losing. They thought that a series of attacks in South Vietnam’s urban centers would spark a civil uprising against the regime in Saigon, and the people would join them at the barricades. But within days it was clear the offensive had failed, and the general uprising was not forthcoming. By the end...

It was 40 years today that the film from the first day of the Tet Offensive (January 30th) made it onto our television screens. Back then there was no live satellite link from Vietnam so the newsfilm of the war was flown to Hong Kong or Tokyo for satellite transmission to the United States. I sat as a seven year old transfixed by the exciting pictures of the kamikaze style attack by the Vietcong on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon. Militarily speaking the attack was an utter failure, but visually speaking the attack was shocking to Americans sitting in their...

Stanley Johnson returns to Vietnam four decades after the offensive that shattered American confidence in the war — but reflects that the US went on to win the cultural battle For the last few days they have been putting the flags and bunting up in the streets of Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City in preparation for the nationwide celebrations which will mark the Lunar New Year or Tet. Forty years ago, on the night of 30–31 January 1968, the Liberation Army, as it is now known here, launched its famous Tet offensive with a series of co-ordinated surprise attacks...

US signals intelligence during the war came up short in major turning points, according to an NSA history. WASHINGTON -- US signals intelligence – the much-vaunted ability of American military and spy units to eavesdrop on the radio calls and other electronic communications of an adversary – failed at crucial moments during the Vietnam War, according to a just-declassified National Security Agency history of the effort. The 10,000 cryptographers and other signals personnel in Southeast Asia at the time did not predict the start of the Tet offensive on Jan. 31, 1968. Prior to that, signals intelligence may have actually...

Sometime within the next six months or so, al-Qaida or Saddamist terrorists will attempt a Tet offensive. No, Middle Eastern mass murderers don't celebrate the Vietnamese festival of Tet, but trust that America's enemies everywhere do celebrate and systematically seek to emulate the strategic political effects North Vietnam's 1968 attack obtained. This spring marks the 40th anniversary of Hanoi's offensive (yes, 40 years, two generations). It will also mark the umpteenth time American enemies have attempted to win in the psychological and political clash of an American election what they cannot win on the battlefield. In the course of Tet...

Fred Barnes, Editor of The Weekly Standard, in a little noticed press release, claims that: "Last Monday Bush was briefed on an actual plan for victory in Iraq, one that is likely to be implemented. Retired General Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the Army, sketched it for him during a meeting of five outside experts at the White House. The president's reaction, according to a senior advisor, was "very positive." Authored by Keane and military expert Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute the plan ...envisions a temporary addition of 50,000 troops on the ground in...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrilla fighters attacked an Iraqi government ministry in central Baghdad on Thursday with mortars and machineguns in one of the most dramatic shows of force by militants in the capital since the U.S. invasion. A deputy minister in the Shi'ite-run Health Ministry and a police source said about 30 unidentified gunmen were involved. "Terrorists are attacking the building with mortars, machineguns and we can even see snipers. Any employee who leaves the building will be killed," Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said from his office. Reuters Pictures Photo Editors Choice: Best pictures from the last 24 hours....

President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations. Mr Bush's refusal to give ground, coming in the teeth of growing calls in the US and Britain for a radical rethink or a swift exit, is having a decisive impact on the policy review being conducted by the Iraq Study Group chaired by Bush family...

If it’s any consolation, this is not the beginning of the end of Western civilization. It is the end of the beginning… of the end of Western civilization. Three years ago, I wrote a screed called Tet II in which I predicted that American liberals would once again turn victory into defeat – this time in Iraq. But Bush did not crack, and I found myself actually daring to hope that our Captain MacWhirr would, out of sheer unimaginative stubbornness, tame the coolies in the hold and outlast the typhoon. [Read Conrad’s masterpiece and experience the first six years...

It becomes pretty obvious why comparisons of recent escalated violence in Iraq to the 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam fall short. Here’s what the Press Secretary Tony Snow said to a reporter from CNN yesterday: “Well, your network has shown pictures of snipers hitting Americans, which was used as a propaganda tool.” Back when the networks were more respected than they are today, the free press could get away with something like this. So influential was the Mainstream Media in the days of Vietnam, Walter Cronkite could express the War as a failure, and then cause an American president to...

October 20, 2006, 7:36 a.m. Tet? Not YetVictory by association. By James S. Robbins When President Bush said that there might be some parallels between the Iraq and Vietnam wars, you would think he had declared unilateral surrender, judging from the press reaction. He mildly agreed with Thomas Friedman’s assertion that the recent uptick in violence in Iraq (during Ramadan, note) could be the “jihadist equivalent of the Tet offensive,” and the frenzy began. It may have been a first for the President, but the Tet analogy is nothing new. Arthur Schlesinger touted Tet with reference to Fallujah in...

Sorry it has been five months since my last update, but then, we have been busy. Let me give you the bottom-line up front (BLUF), and then catch you up on things. Feel free to forward this to whomever, since we still can’t seem to get the press to tell folks what is going on. This is how the fight is going from my foxhole, and it is much more than the bombings, US casualties, and rumors of civil war the press seems to be focused on.

Air University Review, November-December 1978 The Press and the TET Offensive a flawed institution under stress Captain Donald M. Bishop The Tet offensive of 1968 must surely be regarded as one of history's chameleon campaigns. When the North Vietnamese and Vietcong troops assaulted targets throughout the Republic of Vietnam at the end of January 1968, they expected to trigger an uprising of the South Vietnamese people against their government. Despite some spectacular early successes, the attacks failed. The South Vietnamese did not embrace the cause; thousands of sappers, assault troops, and cadres met their deaths before overwhelming allied counterattacks; and...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version March 15, 2006, 7:41 a.m. Baghdad Tet How the bad guys can win. It is a scenario reminiscent of the Trojan Horse. Iraq’s Interior Minister Bayan Jabr revealed that Iraqi internal security had broken up a plot to place 421 al Qaeda fighters as guards controlling access to Baghdad’s International or “Green” Zone. Once in position, the terrorists planned to storm the U.S. and British embassies, take hostages, and wreak havoc. They were “one bureaucrat’s signature away” from implementing the plan when it was uncovered. Imagine if the aforementioned pen...

KARBALA, Iraq -- The governing council of Karbala province said Monday it was suspending contact with U.S. forces over the behavior of soldiers during a visit to the governor's office two days ago. The decision followed similar moves by leaders of Maysan and Basra provinces, which have frozen ties with British forces in southern Iraq. Karbala provincial spokesman Abdel Amir Hanoun complained that U.S. soldiers brought dogs inside the building when their commander visited provincial Gov. Aqeel al-Khazraji, considered an insult by the council.