Nam greybeards

[skipper]

I'm 50. Too young for Vietnam and too old for the 9/11 wars. Never been in the military. Anybody who puts down any veteran of any war is a chicken shit in my book. It's the sleazeball politicians who send them, and fortunately there are men and women with the cajones doing the dirty work...while the rest of us go shopping.

You're better man than I, Gunga Din...to quote Rudyard Kipling

Yep. And those same sleazeball politicians tucked in their kids behind a draft deferment or later a favorable lottery position.

 

[westwall]

The Americans have not won a single war.
WW2 - won the Soviet Union. Vietnam - America lost, the same thing in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Cuba has not been able to overcome.
The American army - inflated bubble.
Countries have nuclear weapons, Russia, China, India and Iran will soon not worry, Americans do not turn up there.

WWII was won by our production. We gave the USSR over 600,000 trucks, thousands of aircraft, thousands of tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, billions of pounds of food. Were it not for the US you would have lost by 1943. You had a couple fo real good generals after Stalin murdered your officer corps, Koniev was probably the best, Rokossovsky would be a close second. They saved your country...with US equipment.

WWII was won by Russian T-34 tank, the equipment the U.S. was only 10% of the needs of the army.

Horsecrap. We mobilised your army. You would have been walking all the way to Berlin (at a much higher cost in lives and much longer time) if you even made it there. You outnumbered the Germans by over 30 to 1 and you outproduced them by 25 to 1 and you STILL almost managed to lose the damn war. If Hitler hadn't been such a moron they might have pulled it off.

The T-34 was certainly the best tank in the world till the Panther showed up but when you were out of tanks, and aircraft, and food, and bullets, the US sent thousands of ships to your country so you would survive.

To deny that is simple stupidity. The USSR suffered terrible casualties because you had a leader who felt you weren't worth anything. He felt a tank was worth more than your life.
That's why you suffered so terribly during the war. Your own leaders were at war with you as well as the Germans.

It is a credit to the soviet PEOPLE that you prevailed. With our help.

 

[Hugidwyn]

WWII was won by our production. We gave the USSR over 600,000 trucks, thousands of aircraft, thousands of tanks, millions of rounds of ammunition, billions of pounds of food. Were it not for the US you would have lost by 1943. You had a couple fo real good generals after Stalin murdered your officer corps, Koniev was probably the best, Rokossovsky would be a close second. They saved your country...with US equipment.

WWII was won by Russian T-34 tank, the equipment the U.S. was only 10% of the needs of the army.

Horsecrap. We mobilised your army. You would have been walking all the way to Berlin (at a much higher cost in lives and much longer time) if you even made it there. You outnumbered the Germans by over 30 to 1 and you outproduced them by 25 to 1 and you STILL almost managed to lose the damn war. If Hitler hadn't been such a moron they might have pulled it off.

The T-34 was certainly the best tank in the world till the Panther showed up but when you were out of tanks, and aircraft, and food, and bullets, the US sent thousands of ships to your country so you would survive.

To deny that is simple stupidity. The USSR suffered terrible casualties because you had a leader who felt you weren't worth anything. He felt a tank was worth more than your life.
That's why you suffered so terribly during the war. Your own leaders were at war with you as well as the Germans.

It is a credit to the soviet PEOPLE that you prevailed. With our help.

We are certainly grateful for U.S. aid under the Lend-Lease.

However, if you take the cost of the USSR in military spending for 1941-1945, they will be $ 375 billion, the amount of U.S. Lend-lease was about $ 11 billion

The fact remains that the most difficult for the Soviet Union during the war - in the summer and autumn of 1941 - Lend-Lease to the USSR was not yet. Nazi armies were stopped at the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow only Russian weapon.

It would be right to believe that U.S. economic aid to the Soviet armed forces (unfolded on a large scale only since 1943!) Accelerated the final defeat of Nazi forces on the Eastern Front. But it would be erroneous to conclude that without such assistance, this victory would not come at all.

 

[whitehall]

Russian Tanks in VietNam? History according to draft dodging cowards? LBJ set up the rules. LBJ set up the rules. LBJ set up the rules so that the greatest Military force could win every battle but lose the war. Harry Truman did the same thing in Korea.

 

[westwall]

WWII was won by Russian T-34 tank, the equipment the U.S. was only 10% of the needs of the army.

Horsecrap. We mobilised your army. You would have been walking all the way to Berlin (at a much higher cost in lives and much longer time) if you even made it there. You outnumbered the Germans by over 30 to 1 and you outproduced them by 25 to 1 and you STILL almost managed to lose the damn war. If Hitler hadn't been such a moron they might have pulled it off.

The T-34 was certainly the best tank in the world till the Panther showed up but when you were out of tanks, and aircraft, and food, and bullets, the US sent thousands of ships to your country so you would survive.

To deny that is simple stupidity. The USSR suffered terrible casualties because you had a leader who felt you weren't worth anything. He felt a tank was worth more than your life.
That's why you suffered so terribly during the war. Your own leaders were at war with you as well as the Germans.

It is a credit to the soviet PEOPLE that you prevailed. With our help.

We are certainly grateful for U.S. aid under the Lend-Lease.

However, if you take the cost of the USSR in military spending for 1941-1945, they will be $ 375 billion, the amount of U.S. Lend-lease was about $ 11 billion

The fact remains that the most difficult for the Soviet Union during the war - in the summer and autumn of 1941 - Lend-Lease to the USSR was not yet. Nazi armies were stopped at the outskirts of Leningrad and Moscow only Russian weapon.

It would be right to believe that U.S. economic aid to the Soviet armed forces (unfolded on a large scale only since 1943!) Accelerated the final defeat of Nazi forces on the Eastern Front. But it would be erroneous to conclude that without such assistance, this victory would not come at all.

Hub Zemke and John Allison were training Soviet pilots on P-40 aircraft early in 1941 (before the US entered the war) and Hub flew at least two combat sorties against the Germans that we know of. US Lend Lease equipment was arriving in Murmansk by August of 1941. Total amount in WWII dollars was around 11.3 billion dollars, not a dime of which was ever repaid.

I also forgot one other important contribution and that was the 15,000,000 pairs of boots that saved the feet of your soldiers. That one item alone was deemed critical during the fighting in front of Smolensk. In 1941 the USSR was reeling, the US gave them enough equipment to carry on the war. 350,000 of explosives were delivered while the Soviet factories were being relocated to the Urals to keep them out of the hands of the Germans.

Without US assistance there would have been no bullets, no bombs and no artillery shells to fight the Germans at Stalingrad. Operation Typhoon was launched with US boots and supply vehicles supplied by us. The Soviet air force was predominantly made up of American and British types at that time as well. 1942 saw the extensive ramping up of production by your country that allowed them to finally win.

We bridged that gap for you. We made it possible for you to win. Without our supplies you would have lost by the end of 1941. You simply had no means of fighting any more.
The bravery of the Soviet soldier has never been in question, but when you are reduced to marching soldiers with no weapons into the teeth of a machine gun nest to run that nest out of bullets so you can finally kill the Germans in that nest.......well...you have a serious problem with supply.

That's where you were...till we showed up.

 

[SFC Ollie]

asshole LOSERS IMO

Fuck you.

I stand along side my fellow Nam vets every month, and among us are Vets from the gulf, Korea, and WW2.

And even the lowest of them is miles above your ass.

Sergeant First Class
US Army Retired
1971 -1993

And in case you didn't understand the first time:

FUCK YOU!

 

[namvet]

Patton was right. we should have enlisted the Nazi's and declared war on Stalin's ass.

 

[MikeK]

glad I wasnt one of them

lost the war

Vietnam was not a war and we neither won nor lost.

There was no good reason for our troops being there and the compromising circumstances under which they were forced to function amounted to shameful misuse of our military resources. I was part of the protest movement which ultimately forced an end to that debacle and I am glad to have done that.

Didn't you fight there as well?

No. I was separated in 1960 and my inactive Reserve obligation expired in '62.

 

[MikeK]

Russian Tanks in VietNam? History according to draft dodging cowards? LBJ set up the rules. LBJ set up the rules. LBJ set up the rules so that the greatest Military force could win every battle but lose the war. Harry Truman did the same thing in Korea.

I would call someone who dodged the draft for WW-II a coward but not one who dodged Vietnam, because there was no good reason for our troops to be involved there.

 

[9thIDdoc]

Russian Tanks in VietNam? History according to draft dodging cowards? LBJ set up the rules. LBJ set up the rules. LBJ set up the rules so that the greatest Military force could win every battle but lose the war. Harry Truman did the same thing in Korea.

I would call someone who dodged the draft for WW-II a coward but not one who dodged Vietnam, because there was no good reason for our troops to be involved there.[/QU

OTE]

The simple truth of the matter is that your judgement of the matter was then, and remains, meaningless. Such decisions were simply not your job nor were you privy to much of the information shared by those who really were involved in such decession making. You're on some kind of ego trip.

Draft dodgers and/or deserters are ideed cowards of the slimest sort. They are willing to accept the bennies of being a US citizen without admiting the resonsibities. If I had not felt this way when my draft notice arrived, my life-and the lives of others- would certainly have been very diferent.

 

[MikeK]

The simple truth of the matter is that your judgement of the matter was then, and remains, meaningless. Such decisions were simply not your job nor were you privy to much of the information shared by those who really were involved in such decession making. You're on some kind of ego trip.

What you perceive as my ego trip is actually a symptom of your delusional ignorance and vain need to think of yourself as some kind of war hero, when in fact you were one of many unfortunate young Americans who were forced by an incompetent and corrupt government into participating in a military aggression which our military had absolutely no business being involved in. Now that it's over and you managed to survive you willingly and eagerly allow yourself to be duped into thinking you served your country when in fact you served a bunch of conniving Washington politicians and, above all, the emerging Military Industrial Complex that reaped handsome profits from every bullet you fired and every bomb our planes dropped.

I don't expect you to believe me because my opinion is easy for you to overrule. But if you had any genuine interest in finding out the truth behind your ordeal in Vietnam you would read Robert McNamara's book, In Retrospect. He was the man responsible for sending you, along with the 58,000 killed and countless who were maimed, into that unnecessary madness. If you had read that book you would remember the following paragraph:

(Excerpt)

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

If you don't wish to read the book you can find that quote in Noam Chomsky's assessment of McNamara's debacle here: Robert McNamara, by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Class Warfare)

Draft dodgers and/or deserters are ideed cowards of the slimest sort. They are willing to accept the bennies of being a US citizen without admiting the resonsibities. If I had not felt this way when my draft notice arrived, my life-and the lives of others- would certainly have been very diferent.

If you were drafted during the earliest stages of the Vietnam "conflict" your ignorance was excusable. But as that wholly unnecessary fiasco escalated and anyone with half a brain could figure out that we had no business there it's your own fault if you were deluded by the Gung-Ho bullshit. Because the people you were fighting had done absolutely nothing to your country and they represented absolutely no threat to us. They were engaged in a civil war which was none of our business.

I joined the Marine Corps in 1956. I did so for the most sincerely patriotic reason. If my Country needed me I was willing to fight and to die, if necessary. At that time I would not have believed my Country would send me into harm's way for some misguided, unnecessary, bullshit reason. Luckily I had fulfilled my military obligation by the time Vietnam got going. But if I hadn't I would have done everything I could to avoid the draft, up to and including going to Canada.

While I was ready to fight and die for my Country I was not ready to fight and die for Robert McNamara. If you were, that is your problem.

 

[Trajan]

Nam was not an official war.
We have not had an official war per the constitution war since WW2.

Official or necessary.

 

[SFC Ollie]

Noam Chomsky?

The guy who describes himself as an anarcho-syndicalist?

And you want to quote him to explain Nam? I don't think so........

 

[Trajan]

glad I wasnt one of them

lost the war

Vietnam was not a war and we neither won nor lost.

There was no good reason for our troops being there and the compromising circumstances under which they were forced to function amounted to shameful misuse of our military resources. I was part of the protest movement which ultimately forced an end to that debacle and I am glad to have done that.

and after all these years you're still ignorant as hell too. to bad.

one would have thought that with all of the information available by now, you would have discovered that; yes there was such a thing as the Domino effect, Ho was just another murdering commie, Diem wasn't nearly as bad as he was portrayed and Cabot Lodge Jr.(sent by Kennedy on purpose) cost us what maybe have been our only chance to keep the south free of the north.

 

[Trajan]

The simple truth of the matter is that your judgement of the matter was then, and remains, meaningless. Such decisions were simply not your job nor were you privy to much of the information shared by those who really were involved in such decession making. You're on some kind of ego trip.

What you perceive as my ego trip is actually a symptom of your delusional ignorance and vain need to think of yourself as some kind of war hero, when in fact you were one of many unfortunate young Americans who were forced by an incompetent and corrupt government into participating in a military aggression which our military had absolutely no business being involved in. Now that it's over and you managed to survive you willingly and eagerly allow yourself to be duped into thinking you served your country when in fact you served a bunch of conniving Washington politicians and, above all, the emerging Military Industrial Complex that reaped handsome profits from every bullet you fired and every bomb our planes dropped.

I don't expect you to believe me because my opinion is easy for you to overrule. But if you had any genuine interest in finding out the truth behind your ordeal in Vietnam you would read Robert McNamara's book, In Retrospect. He was the man responsible for sending you, along with the 58,000 killed and countless who were maimed, into that unnecessary madness. If you had read that book you would remember the following paragraph:

(Excerpt)

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

If you don't wish to read the book you can find that quote in Noam Chomsky's assessment of McNamara's debacle here: Robert McNamara, by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Class Warfare)

Draft dodgers and/or deserters are ideed cowards of the slimest sort. They are willing to accept the bennies of being a US citizen without admiting the resonsibities. If I had not felt this way when my draft notice arrived, my life-and the lives of others- would certainly have been very diferent.

If you were drafted during the earliest stages of the Vietnam "conflict" your ignorance was excusable. But as that wholly unnecessary fiasco escalated and anyone with half a brain could figure out that we had no business there it's your own fault if you were deluded by the Gung-Ho bullshit. Because the people you were fighting had done absolutely nothing to your country and they represented absolutely no threat to us. They were engaged in a civil war which was none of our business.

I joined the Marine Corps in 1956. I did so for the most sincerely patriotic reason. If my Country needed me I was willing to fight and to die, if necessary. At that time I would not have believed my Country would send me into harm's way for some misguided, unnecessary, bullshit reason. Luckily I had fulfilled my military obligation by the time Vietnam got going. But if I hadn't I would have done everything I could to avoid the draft, up to and including going to Canada.

While I was ready to fight and die for my Country I was not ready to fight and die for Robert McNamara. If you were, that is your problem.

I wish I had read that post before bothering to answer above.



you choose to use Chomsky as the ideological underpinning of your 'protest'
vis a vis vietnam?

( oh and you do understand how contradictory to your delusion that quote is...right? )


the question now is do you believe chomskys bullshit or are you just another sheep? what ?you heard this gobbledygook while you were beating on your bongo's and smoking dope? like grateful dead, music after the high wears off, reality is still out there........well for some that is.

 

[westwall]

The simple truth of the matter is that your judgement of the matter was then, and remains, meaningless. Such decisions were simply not your job nor were you privy to much of the information shared by those who really were involved in such decession making. You're on some kind of ego trip.

What you perceive as my ego trip is actually a symptom of your delusional ignorance and vain need to think of yourself as some kind of war hero, when in fact you were one of many unfortunate young Americans who were forced by an incompetent and corrupt government into participating in a military aggression which our military had absolutely no business being involved in. Now that it's over and you managed to survive you willingly and eagerly allow yourself to be duped into thinking you served your country when in fact you served a bunch of conniving Washington politicians and, above all, the emerging Military Industrial Complex that reaped handsome profits from every bullet you fired and every bomb our planes dropped.

I don't expect you to believe me because my opinion is easy for you to overrule. But if you had any genuine interest in finding out the truth behind your ordeal in Vietnam you would read Robert McNamara's book, In Retrospect. He was the man responsible for sending you, along with the 58,000 killed and countless who were maimed, into that unnecessary madness. If you had read that book you would remember the following paragraph:

(Excerpt)

"We of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations who participated in the decisions on Vietnam acted according to what we thought were the principles and traditions of this nation. We made our decisions in light of those values. Yet we were wrong, terribly wrong. We owe it to future generations to explain why. I truly believe that we made an error not of values and intentions, but of judgment and capabilities."

If you don't wish to read the book you can find that quote in Noam Chomsky's assessment of McNamara's debacle here: Robert McNamara, by Noam Chomsky (Excerpted from Class Warfare)

Draft dodgers and/or deserters are ideed cowards of the slimest sort. They are willing to accept the bennies of being a US citizen without admiting the resonsibities. If I had not felt this way when my draft notice arrived, my life-and the lives of others- would certainly have been very diferent.

If you were drafted during the earliest stages of the Vietnam "conflict" your ignorance was excusable. But as that wholly unnecessary fiasco escalated and anyone with half a brain could figure out that we had no business there it's your own fault if you were deluded by the Gung-Ho bullshit. Because the people you were fighting had done absolutely nothing to your country and they represented absolutely no threat to us. They were engaged in a civil war which was none of our business.

I joined the Marine Corps in 1956. I did so for the most sincerely patriotic reason. If my Country needed me I was willing to fight and to die, if necessary. At that time I would not have believed my Country would send me into harm's way for some misguided, unnecessary, bullshit reason. Luckily I had fulfilled my military obligation by the time Vietnam got going. But if I hadn't I would have done everything I could to avoid the draft, up to and including going to Canada.

While I was ready to fight and die for my Country I was not ready to fight and die for Robert McNamara. If you were, that is your problem.

Noam Chomskey is not a person I would look to for support in your efforts. He was, and still is, an ardent supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You need to get your head on a little straighter before engaging in a discussion like this.

 

[MikeK]

Noam Chomskey is not a person I would look to for support in your efforts. He was, and still is, an ardent supporter of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. You need to get your head on a little straighter before engaging in a discussion like this.

Read what I wrote a bit more closely, please. I recommended reading Robert McNamara's book as a primary source of information and Chomsky's on-line compendium as a secondary source for those who reading a whole book is too daunting a task.

So read the excerpted quote again, this time being mindful that it is McNamara's quote. Not Chomsky's. The quote tells the whole tale. What Chomsky has to say is redundant. You can agree with it if you wish to or reject it if you choose. It doesn't change a thing.

 

[AnonymousIV]

Vietnam Veterans were subject to mind control: http://www.rense.com/general17/imp.htm Don't hear much about it. I would tend to trust my government ~ if it asked me to be implanted. Is that right or wrong?

 

[AnonymousIV]

Microchip Mind Control, Implants And Cybernetics

 

[Sunni Man]

Vietnam Veterans were subject to mind control: http://www.rense.com/general17/imp.htm Don't hear much about it. I would tend to trust my government ~ if it asked me to be implanted. Is that right or wrong?

Actually, in your case; what they did to you is called a lobotomy.