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Fifty-one years ago this month, the 173rd Airborne Brigade (Separate) fought in close quarters and uphill through deep foliage to take Hill 875 in what became known as the Battle of Dak To. The 173rd Airborne Brigade had already seen action before moving inland to South Vietnam’s Central Highlands in early November of 1967. This support included a role in Operation Junction City in the spring, as well as a search-and destroy (S&D) mission in the vicinity of Tuy Ho on the south-central coast. The 173rd was assigned to Dak To after intelligence reports indicated that North Vietnamese Army (NVA)...

Fifty years separate us today from 1968 and the two momentous legacies of the then failed presidency of Lyndon Johnson: The declaring of war on America's supposed domestic ills in the form of the "Great Society" programs, and the aggressive military intervention in a real war in Vietnam. Both of these "wars" reflected the arrogance and hubris of the social engineer who believes that he has the power and ability to remake and direct society in his own preferred image.... A part of the Vietnam War tragedy was due to the fact that it was managed by "the best and...

(Warning: You May Find Some Of This Offensive And Or Disturbing) "...We have been here now for twelve and one half hours by my reckoning and we still don't know who the next President of the United States is...." NBC Anchorman Chet Huntley At 7 AM Eastern Time Wednesday November 6, 1968- I was watching Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the morning of Wednesday November 6th, 1968 as I awoke around 7 am from a short nights sleep for an eight year old, probably not much more than four and a half hours. We still didn't know who the...

Provided to YouTube by Universal Music Group An Open Letter to My Teenage Son · Victor Lundberg Lost Hits Of The 60's ℗ 1967 Capitol Records, LLC

Adrian Cronauer, a disc jockey, actor and Pentagon adviser whose story as a radio host during the Vietnam War inspired the 1987 film “Good Morning, Vietnam,” helping make its star Robin Williams a household name, died Wednesday in Troutville. He was 79. His death was confirmed by Jeff Hunt, a longtime Roanoke radio announcer who hired Cronauer at Roanoke FM station WPVR. He said Cronauer had been in a nursing home. “Goooooooood morning Vietnam,” was the signature sign-on Cronauer used hosting “Dawn Buster” from 1965-6 in Saigon. Williams’ portrayal of the fictional Cronauer cemented the line in American culture, associating...

Sergeant First Class Arno J. Voigt was killed by friendly fire near Khe Sanh, Republic of Vietnam on June 4, 1970, and like all friendly fire accidents it was one of those things that shouldn’t have happened but did. A Pink Team consisting of an OH-6 Cayuse Light Observation Helicopter (Loach) and three AH-1G Cobra Gun Ships from the 2d Squadron 17th Cavalry, 101st Airborne Division mistook Arno Voigt and a company of ARVN Airborne Rangers for a company of NVA and fired on them, killing Arno Voigt along with two Rangers and wounding an additional twenty Rangers. This is...

In contemplating bombing Syria, we are looking at a limited military action and the possibility of a considered accidental all-out war with Russia – or as we are prone to say, World War Three. Even as we initially ponder bombing a Russian client state, we are once again considering limitations on military strategy. As a consequence of a political choice not to bomb Russian assets and Russian personnel, we would unnecessarily be putting American lives in danger. These considerations are eerily similar to those that the U.S. government imposed during the Vietnam conflict, which led to a protracted politically managed...

It was a cold, solemn day on the Texas ranch. A biting, prairie wind was staved off with a thick, fur coat wrapped around an American music icon. Former President Lyndon B. Johnson had said before he died that at his burial he wanted the Rev. Billy Graham to pray and Anita Bryant to sing. Bryant, once Miss Oklahoma and a Miss America second runner-up, was known in 1973 as the vivacious spokeswoman for Florida orange juice and the Sunshine State. She nervously tried to get her voice ready to sing for a worldwide satellite television audience at the president’s...

".....To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest that we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic if unsatifactory conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that...

When Daniel Ellsberg, the defense analyst, leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, it created one of the most significant newspaper stories -- and battles -- of the century. One thing it did not do was prevent the Vietnam War, although it may have shortened it. Now he is calling on officials within the government to leak "the Pentagon Paper of the Middle East" to modern reporters, to short-circuit another possible war. Ellsberg's challenge is found in the October issue of Harper's magazine, to appear next week. E&P has obtained an advance copy. The article is titled, "The...

Anthony J. Russo, a Rand researcher in the late 1960s who encouraged Daniel Ellsberg to leak the Pentagon Papers and stood trial with him in the Vietnam War-era case that triggered debates over freedom of the press and hastened the fall of a president, has died. He was 71.

As we approach its 50th Anniversary, please allow me to share with you my memories of the Vietnam War’s 1968 Tet Offensive, and the “Butterfly Effect” spawned by this Tet Offensive. The Chinese New Year celebration was called Tet in Vietnam and it was the only holiday they celebrated during the year. Tet celebrations lasted for two weeks, and it wasn’t just a time for drinking, feasting, and partying, it was a time for family reunions where Vietnamese traveled great distances to be with their families during those two weeks. Prior to Tet 1967, a truce had been negotiated with...

But buried in the dusty archives of CBS News was another Cronkite report from Saigon broadcast days earlier – nearly two weeks earlier to be exact. The “lost” Feb. 13 clip, shows Cronkite had a much different and unambiguous view of the recent Tet battlefront immediately after it was over. “First and simplest, the Viet Cong suffered a military defeat,” he reported. “Its missions proved suicidal. If they had intended to stay in the cities as a negotiating point, they failed at that. The Vietnamese army reacted better than even its most ardent supporters had anticipated. There were no defections...

Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H.R. McMaster An intriguing analysis that challenges the view that Cold War anticommunism was primarily responsible for American military intervention in Vietnam. In his first book, McMaster, a US Army major and Persian Gulf war veteran, and a historian who has taught at West Point, zeroes in on the actions of Lyndon Johnson and his top advisers from the time LBJ became president in November 1963 to the July 1965 decision to escalate the war drastically. The author makes a convincing case...

Written by Jolie and Ung, First They Killed My Father is Cambodia’s official entry for this year’s Academy Awards Foreign Language Film race. Jolie, who has dual citizenship in America and Cambodia, was selected by the government to represent the Southeast Asian country — which is remarkable considering she is a Western woman. The Netflix film is about Cambodian author and human rights activist Ung’s life under the rule of the deadly Khmer Rouge, the name given to the followers of the Communist Party of Kampuchea in Cambodia. The film is the adaptation of Ung’s memoir about surviving the deadly...

Special Forces Sergeant Major Joe Murray passed away on December 23 and will be laid to rest today at the Sandhills State Veterans Cemetery in Spring Lake, NC. SGM Murray spent 30 years in the service of the US Army, with the vast majority of it being as a Green Beret in the Special Forces. Murray served from 1962 – 1992 and at the time of his retirement was the School Sergeant Major for the USA JFK SWC (US Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School). Murray went to Korea in 1962-63 and then to West Germany where...

It’s not as if Angelina Jolie hasn’t proved her worth as a writer-director before now. Following on from the Bosnian war drama "In the Land of Blood and Honey," and "Unbroken’s" harrowing account of life in a second World War prisoner-of-war camp, Jolie’s fourth narrative feature, confirms her as an exquisite craftswoman and an artist capable of tackling geopolitical complexities. "First They Killed My Father," the official Cambodian selection for the Academy Awards, is based on the memoir of the same name by Loung Ung, whom Jolie befriended in 2002 after the actor became a goodwill ambassador for the UN....

Making Sense of the Sixties is a six part series analysing certain facets of the social and political upheaval of the 1960s and beyond in the United States. The series chronologically examines the cultural and political changes which shaped the era and left an indelible mark on later decades. From the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; to the rapidly escalating atrocities in Vietnam; to the height of the Cold War and the Space Race, Making Sense of the Sixties weaves historical retrospect with the experiences of ordinary people to capture the mood and mindset...

The latest of the Disney “Star Wars” franchise is out, and it’s already dividing the audiences – and not just on its artistic and storytelling merits. Scanning the media commentary, one gets the impression the “long time ago in a galaxy far far away” saga is getting increasingly political, which some fans love and others hate, depending on where they stand in real life in relation to the type of political injected into the Jedi-Sith struggle. As CNN reports (spoilers alert): "Pop culture can hardly avoid politics anymore, especially in the case of a huge target like “Star Wars.” But...

For Vietnam veteran John Nugent, who served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, coming home to Newburgh, N.Y., meant some isolation, according to his son Chris, but his love of ham radio allowed him to reach out to other people throughout the world. "It was tough for him. The radio made him feel comfortable, and helped with his transition," Chris Nugent said. The veteran's call signal, WA2EQJ, came alive again Tuesday at the Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center in North Chicago, where the 75-year-old Nugent got his dying wish to broadcast on ham radio one more time....