Vietnam War: Top secret US papers published

[Jos]

A top secret US government report into the Vietnam War has been officially released. Pentagon Papers

The publication comes 40 years after parts were leaked to the New York Times, showing that the administration at the time had lied to the public.

The National Archives formally released all 7,000 pages on Monday.

BBC News - Vietnam War: Top secret US papers published

 

[Warrior102]

What Admin lied? JFK's?
I can't imagine that. He was one cool dude.
We need someone like him today. Doubt if he lied to anyone.... He always looked out for what was BEST for America.

 

[Jos]

What Admin lied? JFK's?
I can't imagine that. He was one cool dude.
We need someone like him today. Doubt if he lied to anyone.... He always looked out for what was BEST for America.

Looking out for the Best for America can get yerr dead, the masters dont like that view

 

[whitehall]

What Admin lied? JFK's?
I can't imagine that. He was one cool dude.
We need someone like him today. Doubt if he lied to anyone.... He always looked out for what was BEST for America.

God help us when we ever let a president hire his own brother to be Attorney General. Bobby thought he was secretary of state and his crazy fixation on Cuba might have caused the death of JFK. At any rate the brothers were out of control. They authorized the CIA to raise, feed, train and equip a little army of Cuban exiles and abandoned them at the Bay of Pigs. It was LBJ who lied about the Tonkin Gulf crisis and he set the rules in VietNam so that America couldn't possibly win the war even though they won every battle. Just when the US was poised to finally wear out the V.C. after TET Walter Cronkite decided to enter the war and tell Americans that the hard won victory of TET wasn't a victory at all but a stalemate. LBJ quit in front of the whole world and the VC had a new lease on life.

 

[High_Gravity]

Haven't you heard? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a "Police Action" according to that clown ginscpy.

 

[Sunni Man]

Haven't you heard? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a "Police Action" according to that clown ginscpy.

Actually that is correct.

Same with the so-called Korean War.

 

[High_Gravity]

Haven't you heard? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a "Police Action" according to that clown ginscpy.

Actually that is correct.

Same with the so-called Korean War.

Are you saying it is not a war because congress didn't declare it? or another reason?

 

[Sunni Man]

Haven't you heard? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a "Police Action" according to that clown ginscpy.

Actually that is correct.

Same with the so-called Korean War.

Are you saying it is not a war because congress didn't declare it? or another reason?

They were UN backed conflicts and referred to as a Police Action not a war.

That's why there were soldiers from Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, and several other countries that participated in both conflicts.

 

[José]

Originally posted by whitehall
It was LBJ who lied about the Tonkin Gulf crisis and he set the rules in VietNam so that America couldn't possibly win the war even though they won every battle. Just when the US was poised to finally wear out the V.C. after TET Walter Cronkite decided to enter the war and tell Americans that the hard won victory of TET wasn't a victory at all but a stalemate.

IF WE DID THIS, IF WE DID THAT... BLAH, BLAH, BLAH...

America could have invaded North Vietnam, occupied Hanoi and it wouldn't make any difference.

The North Vietnamese would simply retreat into the jungle and continue to fight from there.

The conflict would even have survived the end of the Cold War, BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HAVE SHIT TO DO WITH COMUNISM, it was a national liberation struggle to expel foreign troops from vietnamese soil and unify the country under the command of Vietnam's greatest independence hero, Ho Chi Minh.

 

[José]

"They won every battle" because "they" was a military behemoth pounding a flea.

If the vietnamese people had anything remotely similar to the US military machine the US army wouldn't have lasted a week.

 

[Sunni Man]

"They won every battle" because "they" was a military behemoth pounding a flea.

If the vietnamese people had anything remotely similar to the US military machine the US army wouldn't have lasted a week.

I would have to disagree with that.

If the Vietnamese had waged a conventional war they would have been beat severely.

Because that type of war is what America does best.

 

[sparky]

I guess failure will always be an orphan

but what can be learned of this info, here & now?

i suppose we'll be singing the woulda coulda shoulda's 100 years from this submission, but i have to ask, how many of you would want to live through it all again?

if your answer is no, check out what Ellsburg is saying about this

i found i rather disturbing....

 

[José]

"They won every battle" because "they" was a military behemoth pounding a flea.

If the vietnamese people had anything remotely similar to the US military machine the US army wouldn't have lasted a week.

I would have to disagree with that.

If the Vietnamese had waged a conventional war they would have been beat severely.

Because that type of war is what America does best.

Disagree all you want, Sunni.

It doesn't change the fact that with similar military hardware and proper training they would have crushed the US army in less than a year because their motivation was 1000 times greater than that of american troops.

They were fighting for home not for American interests in a foreign country they couldn't even find on a map of southeast Asia.

 

[José]

The West created a totally discredited puppet government in a fictitious country named South Vietnam, turned a small conflict that would follow France's withdrawal into a bloodbath of biblical proportions, utterly destroyed Vietnam's infrastructure and we still have to put up with asshole posts by cretins like whitehall.

And people tell me I should honor all Vietnam vets... even those who don't regret their participation in the destruction of that small nation.

I'd love to honor an unrepentant Vietnam vet by delivering a load of hot, stinky piss in his mouth.

 

[Sunni Man]

That is a bit much José.

Most Vietnam vet like me were drafted.

In those days it was prison for three years or two years in the army.

I did not want to go but I sure did want to spend three years in prison.

Believe me it wasn't about patriotism or defending America.

It was about surviving and having your brother's back.

Many vets like me are neutral about it.

We were 19 years old and not politically sophisticated.

So to blame us is pure nonsense.

The US government is who should bear the responsibility not the individual soldier

 

[José]

That is a bit much José.

Most Vietnam vet like me were drafted.

In those days it was prison for three years or two years in the army.

I did not want to go but I sure did want to spend three years in prison.

Believe me it wasn't about patriotism or defending America.

It was about surviving and having your brother's back.

Many vets like me are neutral about it.

We were 19 years old and not politically sophisticated.

So to blame us is pure nonsense.

The US government is who should bear the responsibility not the individual soldier

Sunni, we are all humans, we all make mistakes, specially when we're teenagers/young adults... so I won't be the first one casting stones...

But there has to be repentance, Sunni...

If you sincerely regret your participation it's like you'd never left America and didn't participate in the destruction of Vietnam.

But if you don't it's as if you were still in the jungles of Vietnam, killing young vietnamese who never did any harm to America and only wished to unify their homeland.

I know what I'm saying sounds like Christian theology (the emphasis on repentance) but as an agnostic I can assure you it's just common sense : )

I have nothing but respect for people who participated in that conflict and sincerely regret it... because we all know how difficult it is to recognise our own mistakes from a human point of view.

And yes, I know the weird, absurd tendency people have to give a free pass to the direct perpetrators of that unjustified war of aggression, the tendency to exonerate the ones who pulled the triggers and drop the bombs of any guilt and put all the blame on politicians.

This is pure, unadulterated bullshit. The direct perpetrators are as guilty as any politician.

No justice system in the world would allow a murderer to go unpunished just because he was not the intellectual author of the crime.

But I'll say it again, Sunni.

It's not the "I was just following orders" bullshit what really cleanses a Vietnam vet from the acts of unjustified violence he commited against that country.

REPENTANCE IS WHAT REALLY ABSOLVE YOU OF ANY WRONGDOING.

The way I see it, if you sincerely repent you're just like a newborn baby, immaculate, without any sin.

 

[Sunni Man]

You're going to go in way out there José.

Am I happy with the way things happen? No

Do I feel like I need to repent for something.? No

It's just the way it was and it was a long time ago.

FIDO Forget it; drive on

 

[whitehall]

Haven't you heard? Vietnam wasn't a war, it was a "Police Action" according to that clown ginscpy.

They never really called VietNam a "police action". That term was reserved for Korea. It wasn't a war either.

 

[Douger]

Actually that is correct.

Same with the so-called Korean War.

Are you saying it is not a war because congress didn't declare it? or another reason?

They were UN backed conflicts and referred to as a Police Action not a war.

That's why there were soldiers from Greece, Australia, New Zealand, Turkey, and several other countries that participated in both conflicts.

Those weren't soldiers. Those were brainwashed sheep too fucking dumb to think and act on their own.

 

[whitehall]

Originally posted by whitehall
It was LBJ who lied about the Tonkin Gulf crisis and he set the rules in VietNam so that America couldn't possibly win the war even though they won every battle. Just when the US was poised to finally wear out the V.C. after TET Walter Cronkite decided to enter the war and tell Americans that the hard won victory of TET wasn't a victory at all but a stalemate.

IF WE DID THIS, IF WE DID THAT... BLAH, BLAH, BLAH...

America could have invaded North Vietnam, occupied Hanoi and it wouldn't make any difference.

The North Vietnamese would simply retreat into the jungle and continue to fight from there.

The conflict would even have survived the end of the Cold War, BECAUSE IT DIDN'T HAVE SHIT TO DO WITH COMUNISM, it was a national liberation struggle to expel foreign troops from vietnamese soil and unify the country under the command of Vietnam's greatest independence hero, Ho Chi Minh.

Here's the deal jose. You lefties jost love to make grand statements about international policy you might have learned in the third grade but you can never seem to pin the tail on the donkey. A true leftie might condemn Nixon or the Military or even capitalism but they can't seem to bring themselves to criticize LBJ even when it is right in front of them. Maybe it's the skewed pop-culture education in the last 40 years.