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Banned
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by NCB
Interesting statement. Does that include the propaganda spewed out by anti war crowd during Vietnam, for theres no denying that their propaganda led to our defeat.
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I'm weary from reading your intentionally offensive and inaccurate statements, NCB..
Quote:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~hbf/london.html
“‘Vietnam’ in the New American Century”
....During the 1980 election campaign, Reagan coined the "Vietnam syndrome" metaphor and, in the same speech to a Veterans of Foreign Wars conference, redefined the war as a "noble cause."[13]By 1982, then President Reagan was articulating a version of the history of the Vietnam War, every sentence of which was demonstrably false.[14]
By the end of the 1980s, the matrix of illusions necessary for endless imperial warfare was in place and functioning with potency.The two great myths--the spat-upon veteran and postwar POWs--were deeply embedded in the national psyche.What was needed next was erasure of memory of the reality....
......How did we get to Gumpify "Vietnam"?
Throughout the decades that the United States was waging war in Vietnam, no incoming president uttered the word "Vietnam" in his inaugural address.[15]Ronald Reagan, in his 1981 inaugural speech, did include "a place called Vietnam" in his list of battlefields where Americans had fought in the twentieth century.But it was not until 1989 that a newly-elected president actually said anything about the Vietnam War.What he said was: forget it.
It was George Bush the First who broke the silence with these words explicitly calling for erasure:"The final lesson of Vietnam is that no great nation can long afford to be sundered by a memory."Note that by now "Vietnam" was no longer a country or even "a place called Vietnam," as his predecessor had put it. It had become a war, an American war.Or not even a war. It was an American tragedy, an event that had divided and wounded America. Bush's speech went on to blame "Vietnam" for the "divisiveness," the "hard looks" in Congress, the challenging of "each other's motives," and the fact that "our great parties have too often been far apart and untrusting of each other." "It has been this way since Vietnam," he lamented.[16]
Two years later, Bush began the war against Iraq with the promise that “this will not be another Vietnam.”[17]Inextricably intertwined with "Vietnam," "Iraq" has also become a construct of simulations, an illusionary reality continually being spun........
.....The fantasy “Vietnam” has proved crucial to launching and maintaining the war against Iraq.In 1991, the myth of the spat-upon Vietnam veteran was invoked to discredit the burgeoning antiwar movement and to create the emotional support necessary to start the war.How this was done is explored brilliantly in the 1998 book The Spitting Image, the landmark study of the spat-upon veteran myth by sociologist Jerry Lembcke, himself a Vietnam veteran.
The Bush Administration had offered many different reasons for going to war: "liberating" Kuwait; defending Saudi Arabia; freeing all those foreign hostages Iraq was holding (I bet you forgot that one); Saddam as Hitler; the threat to America's oil supplies; the 312 Kuwaiti babies dumped out of incubators by Iraqi soldiers (a fiction concocted by leading PR firm Hill and Knowlton); and so on.But the only one that succeeded in generating the required passion was "Support our troops!Don't treat them like the spat-upon Vietnam vets!"From this flowed the ocean of yellow ribbons on cars and trucks and homes that deluged the American landscape.The yellow ribbon campaign, with its mantra of “Support Our Troops,”"dovetailed neatly," as Lembcke wrote, with that other Vietnam issue "about which the American people felt great emotion: the prisoner of war/missing in action (POW/MIA) issue."[19]So finally the war was not about political issues but about people.Which people?Again in Lembcke’s words, "Not Kuwaitis.Not Saudis. . . .The war was about the American soldiers who had been sent to fight it."(20)
In March 1991, gloating over what seemed America's glorious defeat of Iraq, President Bush jubilantly proclaimed to a nation festooned in its jingoist yellow ribbons, "By God, we've kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all!"[20]Kicked?Syndrome?Had Vietnam become America's addiction?Its pathology?
The President's diagnosis proved more accurate than his prognosis.Sixteen months after claiming to have cured us of our Vietnam disease, George Bush was on national TV shouting "Shut up and sit down!" at MIA family members heckling him at the July 1992 annual convention of the National League of Families.
Inaugurated with a promise that he would heal America's Vietnam wounds, Bush tried to win reelection by reopening them, turning Bill Clinton’s anti-Vietnam-War activities and draft avoidance into a central campaign issue.But meanwhile Ross Perot, the original fabricator of the POW/MIA issue back in 1969, now launched his own campaign as the wartime champion of the POWs and a Rambo-like hero who would rescue not only the dozens allegedly still alive in Indochina but also the nation itself.Perot masterfully played his role of the lone outsider from Texas ready to ride into Washington to save us from its sleazy bureaucrats and politicians who had betrayed the POWs and the American people.......
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At some point, either in the early '70's or by the blather of saint Reagan and his veep, GHW Bush, you were "played" NCB. I know this because the facts...the record of the Nixon tapes, proving the campaign led by Nixon himself, to discredit Daniel Ellsberg for leaking the Pentagon Papers, and the 2006 disclosure of the FBI and US military investigation of the 1971 "Winter Soldiers" testimony, directly contradicts your misguided opinion displayed above.
I know that I can't reach you, but maybe one or two readers who might otherwise be impressed with your writing will consider the words of the patriot, Daniel Ellsberg who broke open cover up and the lies told to the American people to justify continued US involvement in another civil war
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/...,3848602.story
I Wrote Bush's War Words -- in 1965
By Daniel Ellsberg, Daniel Ellsberg worked in the State and Defense departments under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon. He released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971.
July 3, 2005
President Bush's explanation Tuesday night for staying the course in Iraq evoked in me a sense of familiarity, but not nostalgia. I had heard virtually all of his themes before, almost word for word, in speeches delivered by three presidents I worked for: John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon. Not with pride, I recognized that I had proposed some of those very words myself.
Drafting a speech on the Vietnam War for Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara in July 1965, I had the same task as Bush's speechwriters in June 2005: how to rationalize and motivate continued public support for a hopelessly stalemated, unnecessary war our president had lied us into.
Looking back on my draft, I find I used the word "terrorist" about our adversaries to the same effect Bush did.
Like Bush's advisors, I felt the need for a global threat to explain the scale of effort we faced. For that role, I felt China was better suited as our "real" adversary than North Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, just as Bush prefers to focus on Al Qaeda rather than Iraqi nationalists. "They are trying to shake our will in Iraq — just as they [sic] tried to shake our will on Sept. 11, 2001," he said.
My draft was approved by McNamara, national security advisor McGeorge Bundy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk, but it was not delivered because it was a clarion call for mobilizing the Reserves to support an open-ended escalation of troops, as Johnson's military commanders had urged.
LBJ preferred instead to lie at a news conference about the number of troops they had requested for immediate deployment (twice the level he announced), and to conceal the total number they believed necessary for success, which was at least 500,000. (I take with a grain of salt Bush's claim that "our commanders tell me they have the number of troops they need to do their job.")
A note particularly reminiscent in Bush's speech was his reference to "a time of testing." "We have more work to do, and there will be tough moments that test America's resolve," he said.
This theme recalled a passage in my 1965 draft that, for reasons that will be evident, I have never chosen to reproduce before. I ended by painting a picture of communist China as "an opponent that views international politics as a whole as a vast guerrilla struggle … intimidating, ambushing, demoralizing and weakening those who would uphold an alternative world order."
"We are being tested," I wrote. "Have we the guts, the grit, the determination to stick with a frustrating, bloody, difficult course as long as it takes to see it through….? The Asian communists are sure that we have not." Tuesday, Bush said: Our adversaries "believe that free societies are essentially corrupt and decadent, and with a few hard blows they can force us to retreat."
His speechwriters, like me, then faced this question from the other side. To meet the enemy's test of resolve, how long must the American public support troops as they kill and die in a foreign land? Their answer came in the same workmanlike evasions that served Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon: "as long as we are needed (and not a day longer) … until the fight is won."
I can scarcely bear to reread my own proposed response in 1965 to that question, which drew on a famous riposte by the late U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson during the Cuban missile crisis:
"There is only one answer for us to give. It was made … by an American statesman … in the midst of another crisis that tested our resolution. Till hell freezes over."
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Quote:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/28/op...rint&position=
September 28, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
Truths Worth Telling
By DANIEL ELLSBERG
Kensington, Calif. — On a tape recording made in the Oval Office on June 14, 1971, H. R. Haldeman, Richard Nixon's chief of staff, can be heard citing Donald Rumsfeld, then a White House aide, on the effect of the Pentagon Papers, news of which had been published on the front page of that morning's newspaper:
"Rumsfeld was making this point this morning,'' Haldeman says. "To the ordinary guy, all this is a bunch of gobbledygook. But out of the gobbledygook comes a very clear thing: you can't trust the government; you can't believe what they say, and you can't rely on their judgment. And the implicit infallibility of presidents, which has been an accepted thing in America, is badly hurt by this, because it shows that people do things the president wants to do even though it's wrong, and the president can be wrong."
He got it exactly right. But it's a lesson that each generation of voters and each new set of leaders have to learn for themselves. Perhaps Mr. Rumsfeld - now secretary of defense, of course - has reflected on this truth recently as he has contemplated the deteriorating conditions in Iraq. According to the government's own reporting, the situation there is far bleaker than Mr. Rumsfeld has recognized or President Bush has acknowledged on the campaign trail.
Understandably, the American people are reluctant to believe that their president has made errors of judgment that have cost American lives. To convince them otherwise, there is no substitute for hard evidence: documents, photographs, transcripts. Often the only way for the public to get such evidence is if a dedicated public servant decides to release it without permission.
Such a leak occurred recently with the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, which was prepared in July. Reports of the estimate's existence and overall pessimism - but not its actual conclusions - have prompted a long-overdue debate on the realities and prospects of the war. But its judgments of the relative likelihood and the strength of evidence pointing to the worst possibilities remain undisclosed. Since the White House has refused to release the full report, someone else should do so.
Leakers are often accused of being partisan, and undoubtedly many of them are. But the measure of their patriotism should be the accuracy and the importance of the information they reveal. It would be a great public service to reveal a true picture of the administration's plans for Iraq - especially before this week's debate on foreign policy between Mr. Bush and Senator John Kerry.
The military's real estimates of the projected costs - in manpower, money and casualties - of various long-term plans for Iraq should be made public, in addition to the more immediate costs in American and Iraqi lives of the planned offensive against resistant cities in Iraq that appears scheduled for November. If military or intelligence experts within the government predict disastrous political consequences in Iraq from such urban attacks, these judgments should not remain secret.
Leaks on the timing of this offensive - and on possible call-up of reserves just after the election - take me back to Election Day 1964, which I spent in an interagency working group in the State Department. The purpose of our meeting was to examine plans to expand the war - precisely the policy that voters soundly rejected at the polls that day.
We couldn't wait until the next day to hold our meeting because the plan for the bombing of North Vietnam had to be ready as soon as possible. But we couldn't have held our meeting the day before because news of it might have been leaked - not by me, I'm sorry to say. And President Lyndon Johnson might not have won in a landslide had voters known he was lying when he said that his administration sought "no wider war."
Seven years and almost 50,000 American deaths later, after I had leaked the Pentagon Papers, I had a conversation with Senator Wayne Morse of Oregon, one of the two senators who had voted against the Tonkin Gulf resolution in August 1964. If I had leaked the documents then, he said, the resolution never would have passed.
That was hard to hear. But in 1964 it hadn't occurred to me to break my vow of secrecy. Though I knew that the war was a mistake, my loyalties then were to the secretary of defense and the president. It took five years of war before I recognized the higher loyalty all officials owe to the Constitution, the rule of law, the soldiers in harm's way or their fellow citizens.
Like Robert McNamara, under whom I served, Mr. Rumsfeld appears to inspire great loyalty among his aides. As the scandal at Abu Ghraib shows, however, there are more important principles. Mr. Rumsfeld might not have seen the damning photographs and the report of Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba as soon as he did - just as he would never have seen the Pentagon Papers 33 years ago - if some anonymous people in his own department had not bypassed the chain of command and disclosed them, without authorization, to the news media. And without public awareness of the scandal, reforms would be less likely.
A federal judge has ordered the administration to issue a list of all documents relating to the scandal by Oct. 15. Will Mr. Rumsfeld release the remaining photos, which depict treatment that he has described as even worse? It's highly unlikely, especially before Nov. 2. Meanwhile, the full Taguba report remains classified, and the findings of several other inquiries into military interrogation and detention practices have yet to be released.
All administrations classify far more information than is justifiable in a democracy - and the Bush administration has been especially secretive. Information should never be classified as secret merely because it is embarrassing or incriminating. But in practice, in this as in any administration, no information is guarded more closely.
Surely there are officials in the present administration who recognize that the United States has been misled into a war in Iraq, but who have so far kept their silence - as I long did about the war in Vietnam. To them I have a personal message: don't repeat my mistakes. Don't wait until more troops are sent, and thousands more have died, before telling truths that could end a war and save lives. Do what I wish I had done in 1964: go to the press, to Congress, and document your claims.
Technology may make it easier to tell your story, but the decision to do so will be no less difficult. The personal risks of making disclosures embarrassing to your superiors are real. If you are identified as the source, your career will be over; friendships will be lost; you may even be prosecuted. But some 140,000 Americans are risking their lives every day in Iraq. Our nation is in urgent need of comparable moral courage from its public officials.
Daniel Ellsberg is the author of "Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers."
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Quote:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/articl...MG3R50LHE5.DTL
Is Daniel Ellsberg Right ... Again?
Bob Cooper
Sunday, February 29, 2004
....For the middle-aged crowd, especially those who are Vietnam veterans, it's a reopening of old wounds, while for college students it's a history lesson tying their parents' war to their own. Says Ellsberg, "Sometimes I feel I'm waking up to the world I left 40 years ago."
In that world, public support for the Vietnam War was substantial until Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers to the Senate and 19 newspapers. The 47 volumes of mostly classified documents revealed a pattern of government errors and lies about the war considered to be so inflammatory that the Supreme Court temporarily ordered the New York Times to stop publishing excerpts. Henry Kissinger, who had previously sought out Ellsberg for his expertise on Vietnam, called him "the most dangerous man in America."
Ellsberg was charged with 12 felony counts under the Espionage Act, carrying a maximum sentence of 115 years. The charges against Ellsberg and Anthony Russo (who helped him photocopy the papers) were dismissed in the fifth month of the trial, however, on grounds of governmental misconduct due to illegal wiretapping and evidence tampering. He was free to resume criticizing the government, which he's done assiduously and passionately ever since.
Duped by Our Leaders?
"We were lied into both wars in every aspect - the reasons for going in, the prospects, the length, the scale and the probable costs in lives and dollars," he tells the crowd as rain puddles the sidewalk on Shattuck Avenue. "With Iraq, the big lie is that it represented the No. 1 security threat to the U.S. That's not just questionable, it's absurd. We live in a dangerous world with al Qaeda terrorism, more than 20,000 poorly guarded Russian nuclear weapons and the unstable, nuclear-armed state of Pakistan, where Osama and other al Qaeda leaders are probably hiding. Saddam was a tyrant, but he was never linked to 9/11, and the talk of weapons of mass destruction was at least exaggerated. He wasn't even a threat to his neighbors."
Ellsberg speaks in a gravelly baritone. A swirl of white hair frames a slender, kindly face. He is formal and professorial in dress and speech, remnants of his straight-arrow days as a Harvard man (doctorate in economics), U.S. Marine commander, Rand Corporation think-tank analyst and Pentagon insider. He has studied war for most of his life, but came to a visceral understanding of it while "walking point" (leading foot patrols to draw fire) with troops in Vietnam. That was when he realized the Vietnam War was unwinnable, largely because of what he calls "revolutionary judo" - a guerrilla tactic used against U.S. troops by the Viet Cong and now by Iraqis. ......
It doesn't feel any better to hear similar words from another president 40 years on, nor will they read any better to his speechwriters years from now. But the human pain they foretell will not be mainly theirs.
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Quote:
<b>Link to html page:</b> http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache...s&ct=clnk&cd=3
http://nixon.archives.gov/find/tapes...pf/538-015.pdf
<b>NIXON, MITCHELL, HALDEMAN AND EHRLICHMAN JULY 6, 1971</b>
(Page 2)...NIXON:
Well, we'll come right back from there, I
guess, right, then we'd come back and uh,
uh, the uh, uh, have you talked to John
about this Ells --- this, uh -not Ellsberg
thing.
MITCHELL:
Cook.
NIXON:
The, the Mathias thing. The rest of the
papers....
(Page 3)....NIXON:
Well, the problem that we have on those is
not that, these, these are papers from the
NSC, is that correct? Y'see -that's what I'm
concerned about. These are papers -that's
why State should be in on it. These are
papers that involves memorandas apparently
that Rogers is supposed to have written to
the NSC, or to me or to somebody.
MITCHELL:
They are they are the Nixon papers. As far
as I know he has not described them.
HALDEMAN:
How did they get
NIXON:
How did they get out of the NSC file, that's
my point. And, and, and then, are we
-that's the, that's the investigation that's
got to be given the highest priority
immediately now.....
....NIXON:
Sure. Rogers sent papers to me. I'm not
sure that Defense would have them.
HALDEMAN:
No, but then State would.
NIXON:
Fine, fine, all right. States,that's my
point. State's got to get in on it.
Henry's you gotta check Lynn and, uh, this
fellow Cwok what's his name? Is that his
name?
MITCHELL:
Cook.
NIXON:
Cook. He was there right? Is he, one that
had access to this stuff?
HALDEMAN:
He had access to the Vietnam studies in the
-uh,....
(Page 4)...NIXON:
Yeah.
MITCHELL:
(unintelligible)
HALDEMAN:
...since ‘69 when at State. Yeah.
EHRLICHMAN:
I don't think we really know what -we don’t
know what they are.
(Unintelligible)
MITCHELL:
No. The only information I have and it's
what, apparently, he told Mel Laird and it
was the fact that they were Nixon papers.
EHRLICHMAN:
And that they came from Ellsberg?
MITCHELL:
Yes. Ells -Ellsberg.
NIXON:
Ellsberg.
MITCHELL:
Ellsberg. That's correct.
(Page 5)...MITCHELL:
I, I understood it as being during the Nixon
Administration.
NIXON:
Correct.
MITCHELL:
That’s as much information as I have on it.
NIXON:
We’ll know in a couple of days.
MITCHELL:
The 8th’s—
NIXON:
If he makes good on it. But in any case, if
Ellsberg’s sources are contemporary.
MITCHELL:
I, I believe that.
NIXON:
And if they’re—and the main point I would to
get at when I’ve got—I think we’ve got to get
the conspiracy angle here. Uh, Ellsberg is
not a lone operator. Ellsberg is a, he’s a,--
I don’t know who’s in it. Maybe Lynn is in
it. Maybe Cook is in it. Uh. I’m not
speaking just to the New York Times—- I
understand they’re going to do something about
Sheehan—whatever his name is. That’s uh, but,
but he’s uh, he’s a party once removed. But
we have got to get at the people...
MITCHELL:
(unintelligible)
NIXON:
...who are conspirators in it—because that’s
one thing we find the public supports—-the
public want, the people want Ells, Ellsberg
prosecuted probably because of his, because
they, they understand, that threat. They many
not want a newspaper to publish it, but they
don’t want, they don’t want a guy to steal it.
That’s the, that’s the general thing that I
see from everything that I’ve been able to
pick up here—
MITCHELL:
We’ve had a crew—
NIXON:
I think if we could get a, the conspiracy
thing —- Now, the other thing, John. I think
it’s, I think we need cooperation from Hoover,
uh, in terms of, uh —- This has to be tried in
the, in the papers, in the newspapers, you
understand what I mean? Let me say that there
is, uh, the, uh, maybe, I don’t mean Ellsberg,
Ellsberg now has already been indicted, or has
he? -- No.
(Page 6)...MITCHELL:
Yes. He's under indictment.
NIXON:
--been charged--
MITCHELL:
No, he's indicted. He's -been indicted by a
grand jury.
NIXON:
Yeah, yeah. I see. Indicted. Well, the
point is that, that, uh, as far as the others
are concerned, the way really, to get the
conspiracy out is to get it out through
papers, through Congressional sources,
through, uh, newspapers and so forth and so
on, and smoke them out that way. Uh, it's the
only we were, we were able to crack the Hiss
case and the Bentley case. In other words, we
could, and then, we didn't have the
cooperation of the government. They were
fighting us, but we God damn well
(unintelligible) got it out. And in this
instance, these fellows have all put
themselves above the law and, uh, including
apparently, including two or three of Henry's
staff and by God we're going to go after ‘em
because there's just too much stuff in there
now that I don't want another one of his boys
to leak it out. That's why, -I, John, you
cannot assume that Henry's staff didn't do
this. Now, I've had Haig in here right now
and Haig says he couldn't believe Lynn did
anything. Lynn has left. Now he's over
working for Richardson. I'd get him in and
I'd question him. Did you do this? And I'd
polygraph him. I think we've got to do that
for Lynn. I think you've got to do it to -for
Cook. Because we’ve got to find out whether
people currently in, who, who, Jesus he's
still in the government. <b>Now, Richardson isn't
going to like it, but I, I don't know how,
what else we can, we can do to, to get at this
thing. Uh, the uh, think, the Ellsberg
prosecution</b> -it's a -you've got a pretty good
man on it, have you? Who's that?
MITCHELL:
Well, it's under Mardian's department and –
we’ve got...
NIXON:
Is that Mardian?
(Page 8)....NIXON:
John, would you like -do you think it would
be well to put, uh, to put uh, for you to
put some -oh, maybe that isn't the place for
it. Maybe the place for it's up in a
committee of Congress. Let Ichord and his
bear cats go after it. Uh, what I'm getting
at is, that, uh, you've got the Ellsberg
case. I, I'm not so interested in getting
out and indicting peopld and then having our
mouths shut. I'm more interested in
frankly, getting the story out, see the
point? That's even on the Ellsberg thing.
I'm not so sure that I'd would. that I'd
want him tried, convicted -we had to do that
because he's admitted -but as long as we
can, uh --
MITCHELL:
Well, uh, we have Ellsberg back into some of
our domestic Communists.
NIXON:
Have you?
MITCHELL:
Yes.
NIXON:
You really have?
MITCHELL:
Yup.
NIXON:
Domestic Communists -now, that’s that's
great. That's the kind of thing we need.
MITCHELL:
That's right. And we're putting the story
together. He's been, attended meetings out
in Minnesota and, uh, for this Communist
lawyer in a trial out there and we're
putting all that together. We're gettin'
NIXON:
Is that, is that the result of Hoover or the
Defense Department, do you think?
MITCHELL:
You mean the information?
(Page 9)...NIXON:
Yeah.
MITCHELL:
It, it came out of a U.S. Marshal out in
Minnesota who, uh...
NIXON:
Oh?
MITCHELL:
...recognized the guy and recognized his
background...
NIXON:
Great
MITCHELL:
...and had, had him under surveillance at
one of those meetings.
NIXON:
Mm Hmm.
HALDEMAN:
Shouldn't somebody get at -I assume they
keep the files on all those taps when we
were running all those people through.
NIXON:
You know that’s--...
(Page 12)...MITCHELL:
Well, I know there's a conspiracy, uh,
because of the fact that, uh, our East Coast
conspiracy people in Massachusetts are the
ones that are, have been distributing the
documents...
NIXON:
Uh, huh.
MITCHELL:
...which we will be able to develop. Uh.
With respect to, uh Ellsberg and the papers
that Mathias has, obviously, there's
somebody else other than Ellsberg is taking
them out of the government and uh, we may
have some problems finding that guy, but
hopefully we will be able to. That guy or
guys. Let me put out one other factor in
here. I don't know whether you noticed it,
but uh, this statement that I put out with
respect to the court decision, that the
court decision spoke for itself...
NIXON:
Yes, yes (noise) but you were goinq to --
MITCHELL:
...but that it reserved all of our criminal
approaches and...
NIXON:
That's exact, that's exactly right.
MITCHELL:
No, what we have got going there is the Post
has fallen over and laying dead. They,
y’know, they're talking to McComber. They
want to give him back those sensitive
documents and everything else.
NIXON:
You've gotta watch (unintelligible)
MITCHELL:
And they want to give McComber back all the
sensitive documents.
NIXON:
(Unintelligible)
MITCHELL:
Now, the reason for this is, and I've just
let it sit there, is that if we ever
convicted the, the Post or Katie Graham
she'd lose all of her television and radio
licenses.....
(Page 13)....NIXON:
And the other thing is, I think right now I have
a feeling you're in an excellent position to go
forward letting the leaks and everything else
out which would indicate that these bastards are
guilty as hell and uh, I, uh, can, cannot wait
for, th, the conviction of Ellsberg and so forth
(unintell).
(Page 14)MITCHELL:
No, I, I quite agree.
NIXON:
I think, we've got, I think the conspiracy
side of that's why I hope, I think, I think
we’ve got to go out. If you would tell
Hoover to work people (unintelligible)
Defense outfit and push Laird, is it, or or
whoever it is -Buzhardt.
MITCHELL:
I believe Buzhardt (unintelligible)
NIXON:
Make that son of a bitch get it done. Tell
him we want it done. I'm cutting off. I've
I find shocked amazement to find that this
stupid Administration sold this classified
(unintelligible) and everything else. Now,
we’re gonna start getting tough. Where are
those names? Now I asked for those names
this morning.
UNIDENTIFIED: (unintelligible)
NIXON:
None of you asked what I want. I want them
on my desk. Every former ten Johnson
Administrator who's not in the government I
want his God damned name (unintelligible) so
we can removed. I was out for eight years.
I've never, they refused me CIA briefings.
What the hell, it would have beautiful
opportunity to have offered --
MITCHELL:
(Unintelligible)
NIXON:
That's right. But does this sound like a
good game plan? We're going to keep this one
step away from me. (unintelligible)
relation. I'll, I'll know what's going on
and (unintelligible) Buchanan knows how to
tell....
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<b>NCB... the following evidence that supports young John Kerry's senate testimony regarding atrocities committed by US troops against Vietnamese people was printed just 5 months ago. The last time that I posted it directly preceded this post of yours:
http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showpos...4&postcount=14 yet you continue to blame those who risked the wrath of Nixon's malignant government to bring the criminality of the US government civilian and military leaders to the attention of the American people in the early 1970's.
What "side" are you on NCB? Why do you continue to believe the bullshit of Nixon, Reagan and both George Bushes, and attack the folks who try to put the truth in front of your nose?</b>
Quote:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...home-headlines
Civilian Killings Went Unpunished
<b>Declassified papers show U.S. atrocities went far beyond My Lai.</b>
By Nick Turse and Deborah Nelson, Special to The Times
August 6, 2006
</b>.......In 1971, Henry joined more than 100 other veterans at the Winter Soldier Investigation, a forum on war crimes sponsored by Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
The FBI put the three-day gathering at a Detroit hotel under surveillance, records show, and Nixon administration officials worked behind the scenes to discredit the speakers as impostors and fabricators.
Although the administration never publicly identified any fakers, one of the organization's leaders admitted exaggerating his rank and role during the war, and a cloud descended on the entire gathering.
"We tried to get as much publicity as we could, and it just never went anywhere," Henry says. "Nothing ever happened."
After years of dwelling on the war, he says, he "finally put it in a closet and shut the door."
The Investigation
Unknown to Henry, Army investigators pursued his allegations, tracking down members of his old unit over the next 3 1/2 years.
Witnesses described the killing of the young boy, the old man tossed over the cliff, the man used for target practice, the five unarmed women, the man thrown beneath the armored personnel carrier and other atrocities.
Their statements also provided vivid corroboration of the Feb. 8, 1968, massacre from men who had observed the day's events from various vantage points.</b>
Staff Sgt. Wilson Bullock told an investigator at Ft. Carson, Colo., that his platoon had captured 19 "women, children, babies and two or three very old men" during the Tet offensive.
"All of these people were lined up and killed," he said in a sworn statement. "When it, the shooting, stopped, I began to return to the site when I observed a naked Vietnamese female run from the house to the huddle of people, saw that her baby had been shot. She picked the baby up and was then shot and the baby shot again."
Gregory Newman, another veteran of B Company, told an investigator at Ft. Myer, Va., that Capt. Reh had issued an order "to search and destroy and kill anything in the village that moved."
Newman said he was carrying out orders to kill the villagers' livestock when he saw a naked girl head toward a group of civilians.
"I saw them begging before they were shot," he recalled in a sworn statement.
Donald R. Richardson said he was at a command post outside the hamlet when he heard a platoon leader on the radio ask what to do with 19 civilians.
"The cpt said something about kill anything that moves and the lt on the other end said 'Their [sic] moving,' " according to Richardson's sworn account. "Just then the gunfire was heard."
William J. Nieset, a rifle squad leader, told investigators that he was standing next to a radio operator and heard Reh say: "My instructions from higher are to kill everything that moves."
Robert D. Miller said he was the radio operator for Lt. Johnny Mack Carter, commander of the 3rd Platoon. Miller said that when Carter asked Reh what to do with the 19 civilians, the captain instructed him to follow the "operation order."
Carter immediately sought two volunteers to shoot the civilians, Miller said under oath.
"I believe everyone knew what was going to happen," he said, "so no one volunteered except one guy known only to me as 'Crazy.' "
"A few minutes later, while the Vietnamese were huddled around in a circle Lt Carter and 'Crazy' started shooting them with their M-16's on automatic," Miller's statement says.
Carter had just left active duty when an investigator questioned him under oath in Palmetto, Fla., in March 1970.
"I do not recall any civilians being picked up and categorically stated that I did not order the killing of any civilians, nor do I know of any being killed," his statement said.
An Army investigator called Reh at Ft. Myer. Reh's attorney called back. The investigator made notes of their conversation: "If the interview of Reh concerns atrocities in Vietnam … then he had already advised Reh not to make any statement."
As for Lt. Col. Taylor, two soldiers described his actions that day.
Myran Ambeau, a rifleman, said he was standing five feet from the captain and heard him contact the battalion commander, who was in a helicopter overhead. (Ambeau did not identify Reh or Taylor by name.)
"The battalion commander told the captain, 'If they move, shoot them,' " according to a sworn statement that Ambeau gave an investigator in Little Rock, Ark. "The captain verified that he had heard the command, he then transmitted the instruction to Lt Carter.
"Approximately three minutes later, there was automatic weapons fire from the direction where the prisoners were being held."
Gary A. Bennett, one of Reh's radio operators, offered a somewhat different account. He said the captain asked what he should do with the detainees, and the battalion commander replied that it was a "search and destroy mission," according to an investigator's summary of an interview with Bennett.
Bennett said he did not believe the order authorized killing civilians and that, although he heard shooting, he knew nothing about a massacre, the summary says. Bennett refused to provide a sworn statement.
An Army investigator sat down with Taylor at the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa. Taylor said he had never issued an order to kill civilians and had heard nothing about a massacre on the date in question. But the investigator had asked Taylor about events occurring on Feb. 9, 1968 — a day after the incident.
Three and a half years later, an agent tracked Taylor down at Ft. Myer and asked him about Feb. 8. Taylor said he had no memory of the day and did not have time to provide a sworn statement. He said he had a "pressing engagement" with "an unidentified general officer," the agent wrote.
Investigators wrote they could not find Pvt. Frank Bonilla, the man known as "Crazy." The Times reached him at his home on Oahu in March.
Bonilla, now 58 and a hotel worker, says he recalls an order to kill the civilians, but says he does not remember who issued it. "Somebody had a radio, handed it to someone, maybe a lieutenant, said the man don't want to see nobody standing," he said.
Bonilla says he answered a call for volunteers but never pulled the trigger.
"I couldn't do it. There were women and kids," he says. "A lot of guys thought that I had something to do with it because they saw me going up there…. Nope … I just turned the other way. It was like, 'This ain't happening.' "
Afterward, he says, "I remember sitting down with my head between my knees. Is that for real? Someone said, 'Keep your mouth shut or you're not going home.' "
He says he does not know who did the shooting.
The Outcome
The Criminal Investigation Division assigned Warrant Officer Jonathan P. Coulson in Los Angeles to complete the investigation and write a final report on the "Henry Allegation." He sent his findings to headquarters in Washington in January 1974.
Evidence showed that the massacre did occur, the report said. The investigation also confirmed all but one of the other killings that Henry had described. The one exception was the elderly man thrown off a cliff. Coulson said it could not be determined whether the victim was alive when soldiers tossed him.
The evidence supported murder charges in five incidents against nine "subjects," including Carter and Bonilla, Coulson wrote. Those two carried out the Feb. 8 massacre, along with "other unidentified members of their element," the report said.
Investigators determined that there was not enough evidence to charge Reh with murder, because of conflicting accounts "as to the actual language" he used.
But Reh could be charged with dereliction of duty for failing to investigate the killings, the report said.
Coulson conferred with an Army legal advisor, Capt. Robert S. Briney, about whether the evidence supported charges against Taylor.
They decided it did not. Even if Taylor gave an order to kill the Vietnamese if they moved, the two concluded, "it does not constitute an order to kill the prisoners in the manner in which they were executed."
The War Crimes Working Group records give no indication that action was taken against any of the men named in the report.
Briney, now an attorney in Phoenix, says he has forgotten details of the case but recalls a reluctance within the Army to pursue such charges.
"They thought the war, if not over, was pretty much over. Why bring this stuff up again?" he says.
Years Later
Taylor retired in 1977 with the rank of colonel. In a recent interview outside his home in northern Virginia, he said, "I would not have given an order to kill civilians. It's not in my makeup. I've been in enough wars to know that it's not the right thing to do."
Reh, who left active duty in 1978 and now lives in Northern California, declined to be interviewed by The Times.
Carter, a retired postal worker living in Florida, says he has no memory of his combat experiences. "I guess I've wiped Vietnam and all that out of my mind. I don't remember shooting anyone or ordering anyone to shoot," he says.
He says he does not dispute that a massacre took place. "I don't doubt it, but I don't remember…. Sometimes people just snap."
Henry was re-interviewed by an Army investigator in 1972, and was never contacted again. He drifted away from the antiwar movement, moved north and became a logger in California's Sierra Nevada foothills. He says he had no idea he had been vindicated — until The Times contacted him in 2005.....
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Last edited by host; 01-17-2007 at 02:27 AM..
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01-14-2007, 09:44 PM
