Nathan
Well-known Member
- Location
- High Desert- Calif.
I'm still not completely over it.Here's the F'n "glory" we reap from war:
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Those guys in the caskets are at peace, the rest of us that went to 'nam....not so much.
Man, that burns my ass. I am fully aware that such things happen but when I hear about it I get angry every time. Then there's the Tuskegee Experiment where the VA Hospital allowed black veterans to die of syphilis (and apparently infect others in the meantime) without any treatment or even telling them what ailment they had just for the purpose of observing & documenting the effects of syphilis untreated. Eventually, they even started to inject people with syphilis who were healthy. They continued doing that right up until 1972. What bastards! There's more if you want to know.My dad (born in 1911) spent 20+ years in the Merchant Marines and Navy. He served in the South Pacific during WW II. Some of his johnnies (sailor's terms for brothers) were assigned to the Indianapolis. When my dad returned to Brooklyn, NY after the war he sought a job as a dock worker. He was told "we don't hire s_____s" (the insulting term used for Hispanics). After sacrificing 20 years of his life for his country he was still nothing more than a third class citizen. Other browns and blacks suffered the same fate and worse. That's just the way it always was.
What's to believe? What's not to believe? I experienced things during the war in Vietnam that I don't want to tell you about because you might not believe me. That guy getting the crap knocked out of him for "doing nothing" is easier to believe than the massacre at My Lai or the lie about the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. And what does the guy have to benefit from lying about being beaten by the MP's? That's the question.I went out for my usual walk this morning when I came upon another man walking and wearing the familiar "Vietnam Veteran" cap. I started speaking with him and he told me about a few experiences that he had over there. He told me one story about being in Saigon one night and getting drunk and disorderly and being arrested by the MP's. He said one of them was a Sergeant and he beat the crap out of him for no reason. He said that he just started pounding on him when they got outside. I asked him what he said or did and he replied, "Nothing!"
Is he to be believed?
You may be right, but he sounded very unsure of what he was talking about and it just came out different than most others I have heard. Maybe you had to be there. Some people do sensationalize their stories. It's like catching a six inch trout and making it sound like an eighteen inch Pike.What's to believe? What's not to believe? I experienced things during the war in Vietnam that I don't want to tell you about because you might not believe me. That guy getting the crap knocked out of him for "doing nothing" is easier to believe than the massacre at My Lai or the lie about the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. And what does the guy have to benefit from lying about being beaten by the MP's? That's the question.
I'm former Marine Corps, 0811 and a Vietnam Veteran. I wish we'd move on. Its all water under the bridge. Posts like this just bring back memories I don't need.View attachment 132384
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www.bygonely.com/vietnam-war/
www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war
www.americanhistoryprojects.com/downloads/vietnam.htm
www.time.com/vietnam-photos/
www.theatlantic.com/photo/2015/03/the-vietnam-war-part-i-early-years-and-escalation/389054/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
I'm sure of that.You may be right, but he sounded very unsure of what he was talking about and it just came out different than most others I have heard. Maybe you had to be there. Some people do sensationalize their stories. It's like catching a six inch trout and making it sound like an eighteen inch Pike.
The law doesn't allow that much truth in a single sentence.All wars are bad but the Vietnam war just seemed particularly cruel to everyone except the profiteers.
Crap was the order of the day in every one of my 367 Army days in the Vietnam War. I could turn the lights off, put a burlap sack over my head and punch out in all directions and hit a "bad guy" every time. If you were there then you know what I am talking about and if you weren't there then I can find no way to describe it for you. So ...... what could Lt. Calley tell you? Lots. But the only honest reply he can ever, ever, ever make is, "It seemed like the right thing to do at the time." Maybe he'll tell you that someday.To this day, I would like to hear Lt. Calley's version of what happened during the My Lai Massacre. Not that it would matter any to me, but I often wonder if what the government presented as evidence of his wrong doings, if it was all true. My reason is because as I read the stories surrounding this event, I learned that a lot of the evidence presented was strictly hearsay testimony and even testimony from witnesses that reported on what they heard. A lot of unanswered questions for me to be able to put it to rest.
Inside of those hundred boxes or so you will find every race, colour, and creed. I knew there were some awful things being committed in the US during that time ... in the name of racism & anti-Semitism ... but what really pissed me off is that there were some of us who were just as racist while in the "Nam". Obviously, America didn't educate its sons and daughters very well back then and it looks like nothing has improved even to this very day.Here's the F'n "glory" we reap from war:
View attachment 172120
Those guys in the caskets are at peace, the rest of us that went to 'nam....not so much.
It wasn't all "John Wayne" moments in the war, with bayonets between their teeth, and flags flying. It was also death, destructions, inhuman violence, and tragedy- the horrors of war that last a life time. These honored are the men, whom we never can thank enough for their service.Here's the F'n "glory" we reap from war:
View attachment 172120
Those guys in the caskets are at peace, the rest of us that went to 'nam....not so much.
And in real life, the sun sets in the west in Vietnam, not the East.It wasn't all "John Wayne" moments in the war.....
By "thanking them (us) for their (our) service" I suspect that you are ignoring the people they (we) were sent to kill and whose country they (we) destroyed. Please tell me that your words were only inadvertently selective....... It was also death, destructions, inhuman violence, and tragedy- the horrors of war that last a life time. These honored are the men, whom we never can thank enough for their service.
Taken from the U.S. Naval Institute after top secret files were de-classified in 2008.
Historians have long suspected that the second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin never occurred and that the resolution was based on faulty evidence. But no declassified information had suggested that McNamara, Johnson, or anyone else in the decision-making process had intentionally misinterpreted the intelligence concerning the 4 August incident. More than 40 years after the events, that all changed with the release of the nearly 200 documents related to the Gulf of Tonkin incident and transcripts from the Johnson Library.
These new documents and tapes reveal what historians could not prove: There was not a second attack on U.S. Navy ships in the Tonkin Gulf in early August 1964. Furthermore, the evidence suggests a disturbing and deliberate attempt by Secretary of Defense McNamara to distort the evidence and mislead Congress.
The historian also concluded that some of the signals intercepted during the nights of 2 and 4 August were falsified to support the retaliatory attacks. Moreover, some intercepts were altered to show different receipt times, and other evidence was cherry picked to deliberately distort the truth. According to Hanyok, "SIGINT information was presented in such a manner as to preclude responsible decision makers in the Johnson Administration from having the complete and objective narrative of events of 04 August 1964."
Subsequently, Secretary McNamara intentionally misled Congress and the public about his knowledge of and the nature of the 34A operations, which surely would have been perceived as the actual cause for the 2 August attack on the Maddox and the apparent attack on the 4th. On 6 August, when called before a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services committees to testify about the incident, McNamara eluded the questioning of Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) when he asked specifically whether the 34A operations may have provoked the North Vietnamese response. McNamara instead declared that "our Navy played absolutely no part in, was not associated with, was not aware of, any South Vietnamese actions, if there were any."
Later that day, Secretary McNamara lied when he denied knowledge of the provocative 34A patrols at a Pentagon news conference. When asked by a reporter if he knew of any confrontations between the South and North Vietnamese navies, he responded: "No, none that I know of. . . . [T]hey operate on their own. They are part of the South Vietnamese Navy . . . operating in the coastal waters, inspecting suspicious incoming junks, seeking to deter and prevent the infiltration of both men and material." Another reporter pressed the issue, "Do these [patrol boats] go north, into North Vietnamese waters?" McNamara again eluded the question, "They have advanced closer and closer to the 17th parallel, and in some cases, I think they have moved beyond that in an effort to stop the infiltration closer to the point of origin."
In reality, McNamara knew full well that the 34A attacks had probably provoked the 2 August attacks on the Maddox. On an audio tape from the Johnson Library declassified in December 2005, he admitted to the President the morning after the attacks that the two events were almost certainly connected:
Back then there was no indication that the news media engaged in fakery. But the government clearly did.
By contrast, when Bush faked news of WMD in Iraq, the American media refused to publish the Downing Street Memo like the British press did. There, clearly the controlled pro war news media did report fake news in the USA. Publication of the Memo is what led to the immediate downfall of the Tony Blair regime in the UK as well as the end of Aznar regime in Spain. Had the media reported it in the USA, Bush would also have lost his position in the White House.
memo.indd (gwu.edu)
Downing Street memo - Wikipedia
That's often a difficult question to answer. The reporter. The editor. The boss. The owner. Industrial-Political coercion? We can say that I name them in reverse order of importance. Independent journalism? Where is it? Where was it? Julian Assange can tell us but he's been gaged and muzzled. The next time he surfaces I wouldn't be surprised to learn and he's had his tongue and fingers amputated.
But to answer your question as best as possible it was the Washington Post (back then, mind!!!!!) that dared print the truth while no one else did ... so you're probably right about the press being accomplices in the dirty deeds of the Whine Hose and Pentagram.
Let me see if I can reply to this without exploding, but please bear with me if I do.I seriously believed the America Forces were actually winning the Vietnam War ...
All true. But wait! In what appears to be an after-thought in 'righting the wrong' against Vietnam Veterans the American people are being encouraged to award veterans a "thank you for your service!" - sort of like a "Hi! How are you today! Have a nice day!" What does this simple nicety really mean? Think about it. Within that short statement is a whole lot of nonsense between the lines. It says 'the US was a peace-maker standing up for the downtrodden' and also "thank you" for something you've provided for the benefit of the person(s) who is greeting you. But what might that be? What thank-worthy service did we provide? We ravaged an innocent country and its inhabitants that was no threat to the US. In fact, Vietnam admired the US and had considered the US a fine model of justice up until the US sabotaged the free national elections set to be conducted in 1956, an election that had been internationally approved of and praised by the United Nations as an event of great humanitarian-political achievement that had hitherto been denied the Vietnamese people by the Japanese and the French. So, Vietnam was to be further held hostage by a string of "bad guys" in turn: Japanese - French - and now Americans.The war that shouldn't have been. And those vets didn't get the treatment nor help they deserved when they got home. It's a damned shame!
Excuse me? Where did you get that idea?..... When countries begged America to help them from the threat of Communism, as Vietnam .....
Let me see if I can reply to this without exploding, but please bear with me if I do.
1). Justification: Has a sufficient and logical explanation ever been given for why the US refused to allow the Geneva Conference of 1954 - stating that Vietnam would conduct Free Democratic National Elections in 1956 - to be held? Was then the American invasion, occupation, and initiation of war in Vietnam legal?
2). Weaponry/Ordinance: Who manufactured it? GM? Colt? etc?
3). Bartering: Did the producers get paid for their manufacturing of weaponry/ordinance? Was it a particularly lucrative business?
4). Payment for weaponry/Ordinance: Who foot the bill for it? The military? The government? The tax-payers?
5). Goal: What would be the purpose of "winning" the war in Vietnam? Raise your hands, please.
6). Reasoning: On what grounds do you base your answer to question nr. 5?