On Oct 22, 7:29 pm, "ScottW" wrote:
"Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!" wrote in oglegroups.com...
On Oct 21, 2:57 pm, "ScottW" wrote:
"Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!" wrote in
snip He authorized US combat air force operations.
Not true.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam...y.27s_escalati...
"Kennedy had introduced helicopters to the war and created a joint U.S.-South
Vietnamese Air Force, staffed with American pilots."
What often precedes "full-scale" military operations?
An "attack" like the one on the Gulf of Tonkin.
_Dereliction of Duty_. It's a good book, 2pid. You should read it.
Here are some comments by the author:
"McNamara [in his book] said, 'We were wrong, terribly wrong'[about
Vietnam] but that he and others were prisoners of the Cold War
ideology of containment. So they had no flexibility. It didn't matter
who the President was, who the Secretary of Defense was, who the
members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were, because they were compelled
by the ideology of the time.
You are getting repititous.
I clearly stated in the other post that this response had not
appeared. After a few hours I reposted the salient points.
McNamara got nothing right during his
service...yet when he's hawking a book...his credibility is beyond
dispute.
That was not the point at all. What McMaster said was that he read
McNamara's book AS HE WAS RESEARCHING IT. He saw the guy was lying his
ass off. McMaster was reading the records of meetings and so on.
McNamara's recollection ran counter to the record.
"What this new evidence shows dramatically is that these were men who
not only should have known better but who did know better. It also
shows that the war, far from being inevitable, was only made possible
by the deliberate deceit and manipulation of the American public, the
Congress, and members of Johnson's own administration."
http://www.afa.org/magazine/perspect...m/0198duty.asp
Of course, your "opnion" and "beliefs" outweigh the evidence of those
who have done the "research".
Kennedy did send Army Aviation to Vietnam. These were transportation,
medical lift, and search-and-rescue assets.
He increased military aid.
So what?
So that is not a de-escalation.
Do you even understand what is being said to you? Find the point where
I said "Kennedy de-escalated prior to his death."
So...if Kennedy didn't die would escalation have continued?
Data says.....yes.
2pid, look up "combat operations" and "support operations." Then get
back to me. They are military terms, it is true, but they really are
pretty self-explanotory. It is doubtful that Kennedy would have
crossed that line. His spoken words and his official policy support
that doubt.
Since the rapid escalation was in response to the anarchy created
by the Kennedy approved coup of Diem...is it likely he would have
declared that strategy a failure and pulled out?
I have never said "Kennedy would have pulled us out." This is a
strawman.
We know...McNamara says it was not discussed but thinks maybe.
Bobby Kennedy says they never discussed withdrawal.
Did they discuss secretly cooking things to ensure that we went in
without the public or Congress really knowing what was going on, and
without debate? Do they recall discussing disregarding and hiding a
DOD study that showed the COA of of intervention in Vietnam was
fatally flawed?
You seem to think Kennedy would have suddenly implemented a policy
never discussed.
No, again, this is a strawman. I have never said anything about
Kennedy pulling out.
We'll never know.
We *do* know what Johnson *did.* You can too, by reading the book!
Then you can talk like you know something about it. You can 'point'
out all the areas that McMaster has it wrong. That would put you in a
league of your own, 2pid. 'Think' of all the historians and senior
military officers you could show your 'chops' to! If you can 'point'
out how COL McMaster is a "pinko" at the same time, why, you may win a
Nobel prize, just like Gore did.
LOL!