Joseph P Carey
08-03-05, 04:20 PM
When was it that we began to allow the unelected to make the policy for this Great Republic? It appears that the news media has taken it upon themselves to write history and policy for this country rather than to report the events of news on their merit.
We have been down this road before, where now it is Iraq, before it was South Vietnam! The News Media should have some lessons to learn about Freedom of Speech! For all their bluster of free speech, what they print is neither free, nor is their speech the truth! The media of today, and the last 40 to 50 years, is the policy of the unelected and the unlearned.
Who here would elect Dan Rather to be their Representative in Congress?
Truthfully, I do not trust the media, particularly the East Coast Media. For instance, does any one here remember Tet 68 in South Vietnam? What a silly question, we all do! The New York media, recognizing an opportunity to manipulate the news to effectively impose its view of another war on the American people created, and deliberately sustained, an image of "disaster", even in the face of incoming battlefield reports that contradicted that image. This image was taken seriously by advisors to President Johnson, totally altering the outcome of the war at the very moment when victory might and would have been possible. The liberal media robbed the United States government and the American people of the ability to make critical judgments about their most vital security interests in a time of war.
"Visitors to the Lyndon Johnson Library are told, "While the President was reading reports from the war that made it clear that the enemy had suffered a severe military loss (Tet), newspaper and TV gave the impression that the loss was ours and that defeat was imminent." (New York Times News Service)
For instance, the true reason for the tragic change in policy after the Tet offensive is seen in what Johnson then told Westmoreland, that to pursue the war more aggressively was politically unfeasible, that he had "no choice but to try to calm the protesters lest they precipitate an abject American pull-out." (America in Vietnam, Levy, 1978) In one of the most incredible phenomenon in the history of warfare, there was during this period, thanks to the media, no logical connection between what was actually happening in Vietnam and response on the home front. The response to victory was despair. This is what the media calls the "psychological victory," which they themselves created. It is much like today in Iraq!
And to their everlasting shame, the "peace" movement responded to any hint of success by American forces at Tet with panic, fearing that their own country might win the war. As presidential candidate George McGovern said to Vietnam vet and former Sec. of the Navy James Webb, "What you don't understand is that I didn't want us to win that war." (American Enterprise Mag. May/June 1997)
The press wrote of the defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army during the Tet 68 as if the Tet Offensive was a right-wing fantasy. The Press has never, to this very day, admitted they were duped by the Communists in Vietnam and the Socialist Left wing Liberal Elite in the Universities in the USA, and they can not to this day admit when they were being taken advantage of by these same people, as they are today.
This is how history writes of the power of the press during the Vietnam war with reference to Tet 68 :
"The enemy has been hurt badly; he committed a total of about 84,000 men. He lost 40,000 killed." (Report of General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Tet Offensive. Feb. 27, 1968) (Note: the allies lost 927. This is the disaster for the North Vietnamese that CBS called a "stalemate.")
"The Allied counter-offensive following Tet destroyed the Viet Cong based in the South and was a major defeat for the North. Yet despite this victory the press in the United States turned Tet into an American defeat." (Great Battles of the 20th Century - Sir Basil Liddell Hart)
"The Viet Cong was suffering severe casualties. .. but this situation was not being reflected in news reports or on television in the United States." (The Unmaking of a President - Herbert Schandler)
"Following Tet, the enemy was completely vulnerable (but) the most powerful country in the world did not have the will power to meet the situation. (Strategy for Defeat - Admiral Sharpe)
"The North Vietnamese regulars and the Viet Cong guerrillas were defeated utterly on the battlefield. Granted the American superiority at that time, there is at least the probability that North Vietnam forces could have been destroyed." (Crossroads of Modern Warfare - Drew Middleton)
"The impression created by the press and television coverage of the offensive was of a great defeat for the Americans and the South Vietnamese. (Why We Were in Vietnam - Norman Podhoretz)
"The war still could have been brought to a favorable end following the defeat of the enemy's Tet Offensive. But this was not to be. Press and television had created an aura, not of victory, but defeat. (A Soldier Reports- General William Westmoreland)
"Newsmen countered official claims of a Communist defeat by saying that even if it were true (which they refused to accept as they did the official account of enemy losses) the communists had achieved a psychological victory. (The Vietnam War - an international panel of historians)
"This is the only war lost in the columns of The New York Times. They created an image of South Vietnam that was as distant from the truth as not even to be a good caricature. There were those who invented, distorted, and lied. (Certain Victory - Dennis Warner)
"COSVN, Viet Cong Headquarters, in its internal report #6, March 1968, admitted the Tet Offensive had been a failure. "We failed to seize a number of primary objectives. We also failed to hold the occupied areas. In the political field we failed to motivate the people to stage uprisings." (The Magruder Expose - Leonard Magruder)
"For the first time in modern history the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and television screens never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side." (Encounter-British journalist Robert Elegant)
"It was the massive military defeat of the Viet Cong and NVA that proved the main turning point in the United States resolve. In military terms it was a massive defeat for Giap. However, on the television screens of the United States Tet turned into a victory for the Communists." (Vietnam - Ian Beckett)
"Jack Fern of NBC suggested to producer Robert Northfield that NBC do a documentary showing that Tet was indeed a decisive military victory for the United States. "We can't," said Northfield, "Tet is already established in the public mind as a defeat." (Between Fact and Fiction - Edward J. Epstein)
"When General Westmoreland publicly announced that the Tet Offensive had been a major defeat for the Communists and a major victory for the Allied forces, a fact obvious to anyone who viewed the events dispassionately, he was treated like a self-deluding fool by the news media." (Battles and Campaigns
- Tom Carhart)
"The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits." (Truong Nhu Tang - Minister of Justice - Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government -The New York Review Oct. 21, l982)
"The military's conflict with the Saigon press corp was the crucible of the debate over the Order of Battle. But CBS chose not to explore that conflict and to have done so the network would have had to bare its own archives of the period, including Walter Cronkites's milestone commentary which declared, following Tet, that an American victory was unlikely and that a truce must be negotiated." (A Matter Of Honor - Don Kowit)
"Though it was an overwhelming victory for South Vietnam and the United States, the almost universal theme of media coverage was that we had suffered a disastrous defeat. The steady drumbeat of inaccurate stories convinced millions of Americans that we had lost a major battle." (No More Vietnams -Richard Nixon)
"The myth was created (by the media) that the war was unwinnable, and that had a decisive effect on American resolution. (War in Peace- Sir Robert Thompson)
"Rarely has contemporary crisis journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality. Essentially the dominant themes of the words and film from Vietnam added up to a portrait of defeat for the Allies, Historians, on the contrary, have concluded that the Tet Offensive resulted in a severe military-political setback for Hanoi in the South. To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other - in major crisis abroad - cannot be counted upon as a triumph for American journalism and it could happen again." (Big Story - 2 vols. - Peter Braestrup)
The fact is, it is happening again!
If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, and the War in Iraq, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population have given credence to the most incredible allegations.
When does this inquiry begin?
Had we responded by attacking the North Vietnamese Army, while in retreat, even into North Vietnam and Laos and even up to Hanoi, until it surrendered or it was thoroughly defeated. The war in South Vietnam would have ended in the Tet of 1968, and another 15 Thousand troops would not have died in a Political defeat, not a military defeat, of the Americans and the South Vietnamese! President Johnson did not have the rocks to do so, because of the Media in this country. Ah! The Power of the Press! The Bastards!
We have been down this road before, where now it is Iraq, before it was South Vietnam! The News Media should have some lessons to learn about Freedom of Speech! For all their bluster of free speech, what they print is neither free, nor is their speech the truth! The media of today, and the last 40 to 50 years, is the policy of the unelected and the unlearned.
Who here would elect Dan Rather to be their Representative in Congress?
Truthfully, I do not trust the media, particularly the East Coast Media. For instance, does any one here remember Tet 68 in South Vietnam? What a silly question, we all do! The New York media, recognizing an opportunity to manipulate the news to effectively impose its view of another war on the American people created, and deliberately sustained, an image of "disaster", even in the face of incoming battlefield reports that contradicted that image. This image was taken seriously by advisors to President Johnson, totally altering the outcome of the war at the very moment when victory might and would have been possible. The liberal media robbed the United States government and the American people of the ability to make critical judgments about their most vital security interests in a time of war.
"Visitors to the Lyndon Johnson Library are told, "While the President was reading reports from the war that made it clear that the enemy had suffered a severe military loss (Tet), newspaper and TV gave the impression that the loss was ours and that defeat was imminent." (New York Times News Service)
For instance, the true reason for the tragic change in policy after the Tet offensive is seen in what Johnson then told Westmoreland, that to pursue the war more aggressively was politically unfeasible, that he had "no choice but to try to calm the protesters lest they precipitate an abject American pull-out." (America in Vietnam, Levy, 1978) In one of the most incredible phenomenon in the history of warfare, there was during this period, thanks to the media, no logical connection between what was actually happening in Vietnam and response on the home front. The response to victory was despair. This is what the media calls the "psychological victory," which they themselves created. It is much like today in Iraq!
And to their everlasting shame, the "peace" movement responded to any hint of success by American forces at Tet with panic, fearing that their own country might win the war. As presidential candidate George McGovern said to Vietnam vet and former Sec. of the Navy James Webb, "What you don't understand is that I didn't want us to win that war." (American Enterprise Mag. May/June 1997)
The press wrote of the defeat of the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army during the Tet 68 as if the Tet Offensive was a right-wing fantasy. The Press has never, to this very day, admitted they were duped by the Communists in Vietnam and the Socialist Left wing Liberal Elite in the Universities in the USA, and they can not to this day admit when they were being taken advantage of by these same people, as they are today.
This is how history writes of the power of the press during the Vietnam war with reference to Tet 68 :
"The enemy has been hurt badly; he committed a total of about 84,000 men. He lost 40,000 killed." (Report of General Earle G. Wheeler, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on the Tet Offensive. Feb. 27, 1968) (Note: the allies lost 927. This is the disaster for the North Vietnamese that CBS called a "stalemate.")
"The Allied counter-offensive following Tet destroyed the Viet Cong based in the South and was a major defeat for the North. Yet despite this victory the press in the United States turned Tet into an American defeat." (Great Battles of the 20th Century - Sir Basil Liddell Hart)
"The Viet Cong was suffering severe casualties. .. but this situation was not being reflected in news reports or on television in the United States." (The Unmaking of a President - Herbert Schandler)
"Following Tet, the enemy was completely vulnerable (but) the most powerful country in the world did not have the will power to meet the situation. (Strategy for Defeat - Admiral Sharpe)
"The North Vietnamese regulars and the Viet Cong guerrillas were defeated utterly on the battlefield. Granted the American superiority at that time, there is at least the probability that North Vietnam forces could have been destroyed." (Crossroads of Modern Warfare - Drew Middleton)
"The impression created by the press and television coverage of the offensive was of a great defeat for the Americans and the South Vietnamese. (Why We Were in Vietnam - Norman Podhoretz)
"The war still could have been brought to a favorable end following the defeat of the enemy's Tet Offensive. But this was not to be. Press and television had created an aura, not of victory, but defeat. (A Soldier Reports- General William Westmoreland)
"Newsmen countered official claims of a Communist defeat by saying that even if it were true (which they refused to accept as they did the official account of enemy losses) the communists had achieved a psychological victory. (The Vietnam War - an international panel of historians)
"This is the only war lost in the columns of The New York Times. They created an image of South Vietnam that was as distant from the truth as not even to be a good caricature. There were those who invented, distorted, and lied. (Certain Victory - Dennis Warner)
"COSVN, Viet Cong Headquarters, in its internal report #6, March 1968, admitted the Tet Offensive had been a failure. "We failed to seize a number of primary objectives. We also failed to hold the occupied areas. In the political field we failed to motivate the people to stage uprisings." (The Magruder Expose - Leonard Magruder)
"For the first time in modern history the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and television screens never before Vietnam had the collective policy of the media sought, by graphic and unremitting distortion, the victory of the enemies of the correspondents own side." (Encounter-British journalist Robert Elegant)
"It was the massive military defeat of the Viet Cong and NVA that proved the main turning point in the United States resolve. In military terms it was a massive defeat for Giap. However, on the television screens of the United States Tet turned into a victory for the Communists." (Vietnam - Ian Beckett)
"Jack Fern of NBC suggested to producer Robert Northfield that NBC do a documentary showing that Tet was indeed a decisive military victory for the United States. "We can't," said Northfield, "Tet is already established in the public mind as a defeat." (Between Fact and Fiction - Edward J. Epstein)
"When General Westmoreland publicly announced that the Tet Offensive had been a major defeat for the Communists and a major victory for the Allied forces, a fact obvious to anyone who viewed the events dispassionately, he was treated like a self-deluding fool by the news media." (Battles and Campaigns
- Tom Carhart)
"The Tet Offensive proved catastrophic to our plans. It is a major irony of the Vietnam War that our propaganda transformed this debacle into a brilliant victory. The truth was that Tet cost us half our forces. Our losses were so immense that we were unable to replace them with new recruits." (Truong Nhu Tang - Minister of Justice - Viet Cong Provisional Revolutionary Government -The New York Review Oct. 21, l982)
"The military's conflict with the Saigon press corp was the crucible of the debate over the Order of Battle. But CBS chose not to explore that conflict and to have done so the network would have had to bare its own archives of the period, including Walter Cronkites's milestone commentary which declared, following Tet, that an American victory was unlikely and that a truce must be negotiated." (A Matter Of Honor - Don Kowit)
"Though it was an overwhelming victory for South Vietnam and the United States, the almost universal theme of media coverage was that we had suffered a disastrous defeat. The steady drumbeat of inaccurate stories convinced millions of Americans that we had lost a major battle." (No More Vietnams -Richard Nixon)
"The myth was created (by the media) that the war was unwinnable, and that had a decisive effect on American resolution. (War in Peace- Sir Robert Thompson)
"Rarely has contemporary crisis journalism turned out, in retrospect, to have veered so widely from reality. Essentially the dominant themes of the words and film from Vietnam added up to a portrait of defeat for the Allies, Historians, on the contrary, have concluded that the Tet Offensive resulted in a severe military-political setback for Hanoi in the South. To have portrayed such a setback for one side as a defeat for the other - in major crisis abroad - cannot be counted upon as a triumph for American journalism and it could happen again." (Big Story - 2 vols. - Peter Braestrup)
The fact is, it is happening again!
If there is to be an inquiry related to the Vietnam War, and the War in Iraq, it should be into the reasons why enemy propaganda was so widespread in this country, and why the enemy was able to condition the public to such an extent that the best educated segments of our population have given credence to the most incredible allegations.
When does this inquiry begin?
Had we responded by attacking the North Vietnamese Army, while in retreat, even into North Vietnam and Laos and even up to Hanoi, until it surrendered or it was thoroughly defeated. The war in South Vietnam would have ended in the Tet of 1968, and another 15 Thousand troops would not have died in a Political defeat, not a military defeat, of the Americans and the South Vietnamese! President Johnson did not have the rocks to do so, because of the Media in this country. Ah! The Power of the Press! The Bastards!