While no one with a shred of knowledge can dispute that the VC were in many ways and largely defeated by Tet, the fact is larger than Mitch points out and tries to blame upon the press.

The primary enemy in Vietnam was not the VC, but instead the NVA. Westmoreland's claims of a defeated insurgency, like Mitch's here, were put to lie by the Tet take-over, and consequently ruined the credibility of the Senior Army staff and the administration. LBJ and Westmoreland needed no help from the Press to insert their shoe in their collective mouths. And while each and every city was retaken, the VC and NVA were routed in every way, it impacted the national psyche that the enemy was able to so brazenly push aside our installed government, and our own forces. Especially so after Westmoreland (and others) claimed they were largely defeated.

Before you buy into "it was all the press's fault", the press gave the VC and NVA no bullets, gave them no bombs, yet they murdered nearly every teacher, mayor, or other leader in the country from 1962 to 1968, and they took over every city but Siagon, albeit briefy, despite being in "their last throes." Instead of concluding the press is misleading you, perhaps you need to ask where the administration is LEADING you. The press exposed that the Vietnam was hardly over - the closest we came was later, during Linebacker II (in 1972 airc).

What actually occured was that a nation was shocked, and while those on the right may try to wrap it in something else (i.e. Walter Kronkite or others), the national will was wounded both by graphic images of extremism and most importantly, by finally understanding that quelling rebellion requires substantial forces and cost, a cost the NATION not the press, was uncomfortable with, at home, and in terms of the horrors being purpetrated in our name.

Pretending this General's actions were either isolated or unusual is a deception or a lie - I cut him a break in that (again as I recall) this guy was just captured and had lead a bloody attack - which btw, WAS reported Mitch, and I recall in subsequent reports, by places other than AP (whom you revile as left-leaning anyway)

Alfred Thayer Mahan postulated it requires a 13:1 population to occupier ratio to successfully occupy a nation. Blaming the press because the people didn't see Vietnam as worth that cost is creating a false impression, and needless animosity, but I understand it's easier to blame the press than the people. Once again, it appears the right is engaging in Hate America as it is - i.e. it's people are not willing to sign onto propping up brutal governments, and really don't much like being lied to.

As for whether the Burkett memo were accurate (or not), Mitch consdiring the man's widow affirmed this was Burkett's opinion, and considering the fact that Bush skipped his flight physical, as well as went AWOL, and considering Bush's claim of having selected overseas service cannot be confirmed because the ONLY section of his commissioning papers that has been blacked out is his selection of overseas or domestic service, your claim that they were innacurate is, as above, not factually supported. It seeks to lay blame elsewhere rather than face the real possibility that the truth may not, and probably does not, conform to your world view.

Blaming the press is easy, recognizing the people chose differently may be hard, but it doesn't mean it's wrong.

Oh, one other point.. the VP said "we don't negotiate with terrorists..we destroy them" yet of course we ARE in fact negotiating with Jill Carroll's captors, and no I'm not talking about the release of 5 Iraqi women, we're negotiating through proxies as has been reported. Why? Well, if this were John Carroll vs. Jill, I suspect we wouldn't be (I also suspect we'd not have released 5 women, but I'm SURE it's just a coincidence because I trust the US Government implicitly). Now don't get me wrong, I hope they are successful in this, but they're negotiating because like the Natalie Halloway story that dominated CNN for 4 months, getting pretty young women beheaded just isn't really great for the ole' PR position and there has never been a President more pre-occupied with manipulating and controlling his press, but go ahead Mitch, tell us why it's the Press's fault. I mean, I'm sure if they only shielded us from any bad news, Al Qaeda wouldn't bother with the pictures.. and that would be true, they'd just behead her, but the lie here is that it is the press who is misleading anyone. I think you, and Bush, have that one well covered, because we DO in fact, and have often, negotiated with Terrorists. Whether that is good policy is certainly open for debate, but it's a lie to say things so blatant as that we don't, it makes someone look like oh.. William Westmoreland.

PB

Under PB's rationale, the Battle of the Bulge should have signalled our immediate withdrawal from Europe, because any time the enemy goes on the offensive, it means we're losing. Of course, most of the MSM thinks that way, too, because they have the military/war understanding of a dead feret.

From:
1st Battalion 69th Armor, by Ray Smith
http://www.rjsmith.com/kia_tbl.html

1968 Tet Offensive
------------------
Legend:
KIA = Killed In Action
WIA = Wounded In Action
MIA = Missing In Action
CIA = Captured In Action

US Forces:
1,536-KIA
7,764-WIA
11-MIA
??-CIA

ARVN:
2,788-KIA
8,299-WIA
587-MIA
??-CIA

NVA/VC:
45,000-KIA
??-WIA
??-MIA
6,991-CIA

So many people have invested their lives in the "Tet Myth" they cannot let go.

Tet was a massive failure by the North. Their strategy was that the invasion would create the space for a peoples uprising just didn't work. The people were not interested.

I have no doubt that at the time the press would have seen Tet as a repudiation of US military and foreign policy. It looked pretty bad on the ground.

What the press did wrong was not reporting the truth when it became apparent that Tet was not as bad as first reported. The press became invested in their original reporting.

The hearts and minds battle in the USA was won by the press for the North.

As an aside, and anyone who knows the history of insurgencty warfare should already know this, the biggest problem of a regular military force is closing with the enemy. Tet gave the US and South Vietnamese the opportunity and they took it. After the initial surprise, and I should say that it wasn't the greatest surprise as some units had been placed on alert, the North and its Viet-Cong allies were beaten soundly.

And I defy anyone with a knowledge of politics to say that the South could not have kept the North at bay with the same level of support given to the North by the Chinese and Soviets.

Westmoreland, acting on intel, believed that the attack would be focused on Khe Sanh, which was alerted, and beat the crap out of its attackers.

Peeb,

Much of your tolstoiian novella is a matter of historical interpretation and opinion, and worth a separate argument.

However:

"As for whether the Burkett memo were accurate (or not), Mitch consdiring the man's widow affirmed this was Burkett's opinion,"

Big deal - she affirmed Burkett hated Bush. Big whoop.

" and considering the fact that Bush skipped his flight physical,..."

...because he was transitioning out of flight duty due to the retirement of the F102...

"... as well as went AWOL,"

Pretty roundly debunked; again. And as Byron York showed, he served two years of full active duty, two more of vastly-more-than-normal Guard duty, and he got the needed "points" for his last two years' service. Say what you will, there is no evidence that he was AWOL, and plenty that he served as expected of an officer, especially an officer whose plane was being phased out.

" and considering Bush's claim of having selected overseas service cannot be confirmed because the ONLY section of his commissioning papers that has been blacked out is his selection of overseas or domestic service, your claim that they were innacurate is, as above, not factually supported."

PB, I couldn't say this is the most obtuse argument you've ever made, but it's in the running.

Colonel Campenni confirmed Bush's story.

And - lest we forget, Peeb - the documents weren't merely inaccurate AND completely fake, but they were quite amateurishly so. They were done on *Microsoft Word*, and they featured a reference to a general (Buck Stout) who'd been retired for 18 months as of the date of the memo.

It's not just inaccurate, not just "fake" - the dox were a bald-faced lie that the media ate up hook, line and sinker - and that the left (and Rather, and Mapes) cling to like a leaky life jacket.

Peeb, you're echoing the last-ditch protestations of the Kossacks, who are grabbing at every straw they can, and of Mary Mapes, who has a career to salvage.

Give it up. The Burkett memos are as accurate as Maury Povich and as real as Paris Hilton.

"Give it up. The Burkett memos are as accurate as Maury Povich and as real as Paris Hilton."

HOW DARE you insult such a sweet, kind, wholesome, squeaky clean debutante in that manner?

To quote Harrison Ford, HOW DARE YOU, SIR???

*ahem* *kaff kaff*

Not to mention Ryan's insult to dead ferrets.

Mitch wants to debate Burkett, because he can't debate the fact that the Press neither caused Tet's impact on the American psyche, the fact that the american psyche is the one that forced our removal from Vietnam, or that his ludicrous assertion that the Press is to blame for the Maine.

Once again, Mitch is off-topic.

As for Burkett, using MS Word does not make the information innacurate, but leave it to you to claim that someone's distaste for the President would cause them to lie about their personal experiences. That's certainly the example people like Rove have carved out regarding O'Niell et.al., and it's low class, but by all means, carry on.

As for his overseas service selection, I see, we are to trust a Colonel, rather than a document because you WANT to, and to distrust another, because you WANT to. Whatever, this isn't about Burkett, it's about your ridiculous asserton that the Press is the genesis of evil, rather than facing the Press (like you) is a tool, manipulated wilfully by those in power, including subjecting it to intimidation and proferring outright lies. The Maine incident was not the fault of the Press, it was the result of either a. an accident or b. sabatoge, and was used by a willing government to start a war.

In Vietnam (the actual story here), the people decided the evil done in our name outweighed the supposed good of establishing a repressive regime. Blame the Press, it's all you have, but it's either you fooling yourself, or like the Maine comment, a completely false and disengenious attempt to fool your readership.

PB

"the people decided the evil done in our name outweighed the supposed good of establishing a repressive regime"

And who shaped the debate thusly? Hmmm? That's right, THE PRESS. When people who had little clue how military engagements and wars are conducted, like Cronkite (The Most Trusted Man In America), pronounced from their pulpits that America was losing the war, that shaped the MSM's message, and public opinion, even though it was incorrect.

If the Press of the Vietnam era were the Press of WWII, our troops would have been home in 1943, Hitler would have controlled all of Europe, and the Press would have been patting itself on the back for a job well done.

Peeb,

Set 'em up. I'll knock 'em down.

"Mitch wants to debate Burkett, because he can't debate the fact that the Press neither caused Tet's impact on the American psyche, the fact that the american psyche is the one that forced our removal from Vietnam,"

Um - huh? What's to debate?

Walter Cronkite declared the war lost because in the opening impact of the offensive, things looked bad - as in much worse than they were, militarily.

What's to debate about the impact on the nation's psyche? It was the turning point of the war, in many ways. *Giap said so*! You know Giap, right, Peeb - the NVA leader?

" or that his ludicrous assertion that the Press is to blame for the Maine."

I'm going to assume, Peeb, that you are on a difficult project. You are banging your head against desks and walls. It's affecting your upper-brain functions.

I'm hoping it's something out of your control like that, Peeb. Because that last bit is the work of someone who is so inflamed by...whatever that he's lost all rational thought.

I didn't say the Press sank the Maine. But William Randolph Hearst wanted war with Spain over Cuba; when the Maine sank (due to a spontaneous main-gun propellant combustion), Hearst's papers shouted that it was a Spanish torpedo/mine/sabotage job. They cranked the jingo, and pushed public opinion into line with the war faction in Washington (who wanted to annex Cuba by force and eject Spain from the hemisphere).

Y'know - little details like history.

"As for Burkett, using MS Word does not make the information innacurate, but leave it to you to claim that someone's distaste for the President would cause them to lie about their personal experiences."

You get the award for the most artless dodge ever.

Account, please, for the BG Buck Stout reference, if you will?

Account if you will for the fact that Bush's squadron had no typewriters that could do proportional, Times-New Roman fonts?

"As for his overseas service selection, I see, we are to trust a Colonel, rather than a document because you WANT to, and to distrust another, because you WANT to."

Peeb, your logic is as fake and accurate as the documents.

Campenni (and Buck Stout's widow, and the widow of Bush's old Squadron commander) provide positive witness for Bush's record, *explicitly* refuting your claims. Bush's record is merely silent. Explicit and corroborated beats silent every day of the week.

In most of our worlds, anyway.

"Whatever, this isn't about Burkett, it's about your ridiculous asserton that the Press is the genesis of evil,"

An assertion I don't make.

"In Vietnam (the actual story here), the people decided the evil done in our name outweighed the supposed good of establishing a repressive regime."

Um, Peeb? "The people" decided no such thing. In fact, their failure to rise up to support their "liberators" from the North was the great strategic failure of the NVA's offensive. That would be according to Giap, again.

Or doesn't Giap's testimony count for as much as whatever "document" you've latched onto?

Please, Peeb. Work on your basic reading comprehension. As I've shown above, you're sorely lacking on basic facts, to say nothing of conclusions.

In 1989, I did a college prep high school history term paper about Richard Nixon and the Vietnam War focusing on policy decisions of Nixon's administration on Vietnam from 1968 to 1974. I had very little understanding about Vietnam other than it was the first war that America lost. That fall, I did A LOT of reading about Vietnam, how the war began - all the way back to French Colonialism pre-WWII to how the war ended at the Fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975. I especially focused on Nixon's conduct of the Vietnam war. to make a long story short, I went from being a apolitic observer to firmly concluding that Vietnam was a hard, but winnable war (backed up by my retelling and observation of key Nixon decisions about Vietnam and the war's events in my paper) if Nixon hadn't been so paranoidly obsessed with his political enemies - which led to Watergate - which led to his resignation - which led to Democrats taking over the House in 1974 - which led to a cut off of just about all military aid to South Vietnam - which led to April 30, 1975. One cannot just blame Democrats for how this debacle occured, but also hold to account the man that made such a takeover possible.

Some personal connections to the Vietnam war, I was actually a blissfully unaware 2 year old living in family housing on (now-defunct) Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines when my father - serving as an Air Force Doctor -literally did not come home for several weeks since he was working with other Air Force doctors round the clock screening the health of thousands of Vietnamese refugees. Dad told me of hundreds of flights at that time that were coming in round the clock trying to rescue as many refugees that were connected to the soon-to-fall South Vietnamese government and anyone who was remotely connected with the U.S. - a lot were rescued, but a lot were left behind as well.

I've been married almost two years now, my father-in-law is a Vietnam vet that served under the Military Police - after nine months of dangerous convoy duty, he landed the job (I suspect his commendations on file may have had something to do with it - he's never spoken to me about actual combat) of being in General Creighton Abrams squad of personal bodyguards. His job was to ride in the helicopter to and fro everywhere General Abrams went. He said that the General and many of his staff were really nice down-to-earth guys.

I had a history teacher at the U of MN that taught the class the Tet Offensive was successful.

Mitch, once again your ego knows no bounds... I'm not sure you've knocked anything down but bowling pins in 20 years.

For example

Campenni (and Buck Stout's widow, and the widow of Bush's old Squadron commander) provide positive witness for Bush's record, *explicitly* refuting your claims. Bush's record is merely silent. Explicit and corroborated beats silent every day of the week.

See Mitch, there's this little problem of a redacted record, it's not silent, it's blacked out, and the only section blacked out is his overseas or state-side selection box. He's said he selected overseas, so Bush is NOT silent here. So yeah, actual papers with a meaningless box blacked out apparently after the Texas GOP scrubbed his records, beats toady attestations every time.

Perhaps you need to open your eyes before you aim.

"As for this kind of comment:
Please, Peeb. Work on your basic reading comprehension. As I've shown above, you're sorely lacking on basic facts, to say nothing of conclusions."

And then there's..

I'm hoping it's something out of your control like that, Peeb. Because that last bit is the work of someone who is so inflamed by...whatever that he's lost all rational thought...

As I said a while back, these sorts of insults are (rarely) funny, but they make discussion nearly impossible..what's ironic is that you think you're the only one being slighted, saying that you never insulted me (knowingly)... sure.. I'm sure that was just a joke above.

I'm constantly amazed at your fundamental need to insult, to be abusive, and then cry when you get repayed, complaining about hostility. Nothing I said to you compares to this level of vitriole. Further, you haven't at all addressed the fact that the people decided to leave Vietnam based on thousands and thousands of stories and images, but at least as much based upon the stories of those who served. You appear to want to blame the press, because it is impossible to blame the people and remain credible. Regarding whether you assert the press is Evil, no, you assert it's Biased, makes stuff up, leads to all kinds of problems.. evil is simply short hand for it being your boogeyman.

Finally..

I didn't say the Press sank the Maine. But William Randolph Hearst wanted war with Spain over Cuba; when the Maine sank (due to a spontaneous main-gun propellant combustion), Hearst's papers shouted that it was a Spanish torpedo/mine/sabotage job. They cranked the jingo, and pushed public opinion into line with the war faction in Washington (who wanted to annex Cuba by force and eject Spain from the hemisphere).

First, that's precisely what I asserted.. so gosh, what exactly I'm incorrect about I'm not sure..further, it was a right-wing press advancing a pro-administration story... but what you ACTUALLY said was..

But it was during Tet that the media's reputation as a left-leaning institution started to work its way, rightly or wrongly (*), into the national canon.

First, that's flatly false, it happened during the 1964 Republican National Convention, when the conservative press (written) was upstaged by a uncontrolled broadcast media that they didn't much like, you see, the written press had been in control of the right (guys like Hearst) for a LONG time.. and these uppity TV guys wouldn't show Goldwater how they wanted him shown. So Mitch, your history minor seemed to have missed that.

But further..

The "defeat" at Tet wasn't the first story the media conjured from at least partial cloth and got entered into the national mythology (the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine certainly qualified),

This is the part where your ill-chosen words are getting "spun" purposefully, because you are irresponsibly spinning the reality. The MEDIA didn't INVENT this, the Administration did, and then used a complicit press to froth it.

So the MEDIA didn't conjure anything, like today, it worked in concert with a corrupt administration to foster a false image, similar to the image they (the Administration) wanted to convey in Vietnam, and was upset with the broadcast media (principally TV) for not playing ball.

You are correct in that you did not say the Press sank the Maine, you said they conjured the story (in part), they didn't, and your uncareful choice of words incorrectly laid the blame for the issue at their feet. Yes they were complicit in fomenting war furvor, but this started and ended with corrupt politicians and corporate ownership. Perhaps in your zeal to blame anyone but those who were the genesis, you simply ommitted the collaberation between the Right-wing pro-Republican press and the Administration, but somehow, I don't think you forgot.

Ryan, your supposition that it was simply because of bad press we left Vietnam undervalues the american public to an amazing degree. Further, apparently you would rather we were "protected" from bad news and the truth unless it supports your view. I would rather hear both sides, and decide for myself. But that's the whacky, unstable, irrational, traitorous kind of Nazi that I am.

Peekey

"Mitch, once again your ego knows no bounds"

Lesser mortals are often botherd by that.

What am I to do?

What I find amusing is that PB can write:

"I'm constantly amazed at your fundamental need to insult"

When the opening sentence to his novel is:

"Mitch, once again your ego knows no bounds... I'm not sure you've knocked anything down but bowling pins in 20 years."

The PB creed: "Insults from me but not from thee."

And further. ..

"I would rather hear both sides, and decide for myself."

Oh, you're expecting the media to give you both sides. . . good luck with that. Although that explains your stance on, oh, pretty much everything.

Ryan: "The PB creed: "Insults from me but not from thee."

No kidding. PB does NOTHING wrong. It's always those OTHER people.

That character known, as PJ O'Rourke said, as "everyone's first wife".

Dickhead.

MITREs tipped blisters merge respectably,publicizing forestall

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