Vietnam War Facts

[thedrifter]

After all these years I get a little fed up with the general BS put out over the years about Vietnam. Maybe this will clear a little of it up for some people. We were not all drafted, uneducated,...

[thedrifter]

This included Tet 68, which was a major military defeat for the VC and NVA.

Myth: Air America, the airline operated by the CIA in Southeast Asia, and its pilots were involved in drug trafficing.

The 1990 unsuccessful movie "Air America" helped to establish the myth of a connection between Air America, the CIA, and the Laotian drug trade. The movie and a book the movie was based on contend that the CIA condoned a drug trade conducted by a Laotian client; both agree that Air America provided the essential transportation for the trade; and both view the pilots with sympathetic understanding. American-owned airlines never knowingly transported opium in or out of Laos, nor did their American pilots ever profit from its transport. Yet undoubtedly every plane in Laos carried opium at some time, unknown to the pilot and his superiors. For more information see the Air America Home Page.

Myth: The US military was running for their lives during the fall of Saigon in April 1975.

The picture of a Huey helicopter evacuating people from the top of what was billed as being the U.S. Embassy in Saigon during the last week of April 1975 during the fall of Saigon helped to establish this myth.

This famous picture is the property of Corbus-Bettman Archives. It was originally a UPI photograph that was taken by an Englishman, Mr. Hugh Van Ess.

Here are some facts to clear up that poor job of reporting by the news media.

Facts about the fall of Saigon

It was a "civilian" (Air America) Huey not Army or Marines.

It was NOT the U.S. Embassy. The building is the Pittman Apartments. The U.S. Embassy and its helipad were much larger.

The evacuees were Vietnamese not American military.

The person that can be seen aiding the refugees is Mr. O.B. Harnage. He was a CIA case officer and now retired in Arizona.

Another famous picture:

Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June 1972, was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang. No American had a direct involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc are incorrect. The few Americans involved were in an advisory capacity only. "We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF," according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phuc's brothers were killed in this incident. They were Kim's cousins, not her brothers.

Facts about the end of the war:

The fall of Saigon happened 30 April 1975, two years AFTER the American military left Vietnam. The last American troops departed in their entirety 29 March 1973. How could we lose a war we had already stopped fighting? We fought to an agreed stalemate. The peace settlement was signed in Paris on 27 January 1973. It called for release of all U.S. prisoners, withdrawal of U.S. forces, limitation of both sides' forces inside South Vietnam and a commitment to peaceful reunification. [1996 Information Please Almanac]

There were almost twice as many casualties in Southeast Asia (primarily Cambodia) the first two years after the fall of Saigon in 1975 then there were during the ten years the U.S. was involved in Vietnam. [1996 Information Please Almanac]

THE UNITED STATES DID NOT LOSE THE WAR IN VIETNAM!

POW-MIA Issue (unaccounted-for versus missing in action)

Politics & People, On Vietnam, Clinton Should Follow a Hero's Advice, Sen. John Kerrey is quoted as saying about Vietnam, there has been "the most extensive accounting in the history of human warfare" of those missing in action. While there are still officially more than 2,200 cases, there now are only 55 incidents of American servicemen who were last seen alive but aren't accounted for. By contrast, there still are 78,000 unaccounted-for Americans from World War II and 8,100 from the Korean conflict. "The problem is that those who think the Vietnamese haven't cooperated sufficiently think there is some central repository with answers to all the lingering questions," notes Gen. John Vessey, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Reagan and Bush administration's designated representative in MIA negotiations. "In all the years we've been working on this we have found that's not the case." [The Wall Street Journal]

More realities about war:

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) - it was not invented or unique to Vietnam Veterans. It was called "shell shock" and other names in previous wars. It also can be caused by an automobile accident or other traumatic event. It does not have to be war related. The Vietnam War helped medical progress in this area.

Agent Orange - other wars had similar problems. Atomic radiation in World War II and mustard gas in World War I. Even Desert Storm has a similar problem.

Atrocities - every war has atrocities. War is brutal and not fair. Innocent people get killed.

Restraining the military in Vietnam in hind sight probably prevented a nuclear war with China or Russia. The Vietnam War was shortly after China got involved in the Korean war, the time of the Cuban missile crisis, Soviet aggression in Eastern Europe and the proliferation of nuclear bombs. In all, a very scary time for our country.

SOURCES
[Nixon] No More Vietnams by Richard Nixon
[Parade Magazine] August 18, 1996 page 10.
[CACF] (Combat Area Casualty File) November 1993. (The CACF is the basis for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, i.e. The Wall), Center for Electronic Records, NaThat We Can Be] All That We Can Be by Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler
[Westmoreland]Speech by General William C. Westmoreland before the Third Annual Reunion of the Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association (VHPA) at the Washington, DC Hilton Hotel on July 5th, 1986 (reproduced in a Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association Historical Reference Directory Volume 2A)
[McCaffrey]Speech by Lt. Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, (reproduced in the Pentagram, June 4, 1993) assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to Vietnam veterans and visitors gathered at "The Wall", Memorial Day 1993.
[Houk] Testamony by Dr. Houk, Oversight on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, 14 July 1988 page 17, Hearing before the Committee on Veterans' Affairs United States Senate one hundredth Congress second session. Also "Esitmating the Number of Suicides Among Vietnam Veterans" (Am J Psychiatry 147, 6 June 1990 pages 772-776)
[The Wall Street Journal] The Wall Street Journal, 1 June 1996 page A15.
[VHPA 1993] Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association 1993 Membership Directory page 130.
[VHPA Databases] Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association Databases.
[1996 Information Please Almanac] 1995 Information Please Almanac Atlas & Yearbook 49th edition, Houghton Mifflin Company, Boston & New York 1996, pages 117, 161 and 292.

Sempers,

Roger

[thedrifter]

Vietnam War Revisited (N. Vietnamese Perspective)

Interesting Information

On Sat, 29 Jun 2002 11:20:56 -0400, "MG David Gray USAF ret" forwarded

In a recent interview published in The Wall Street Journal, former
colonel
Bui Tin
who served on the general staff of the North Vietnamese Army and
received
the
unconditional surrender of South Vietnam on April 30,1975 confirmed the
American
Tet 1968 military victory: "Our loses were staggering and a complete
surprise. Giap
later told me that Tet had been a military defeat, though we had gained
the
planned
political advantages when Johnson agreed to negotiate and did not run
for
reelection.
The second and third waves in May and September were, in retrospect,
mistakes.

Our forces in the South were nearly wiped out by all the fighting in
1968. It
took us
until 1971 to reestablish our presence but we had to use North
Vietnamese
troops as
local guerrillas. If the American forces had not begun to withdraw
under
Nixon in
1969, they could have punished us severely. We suffered badly in 1969
and
1970 as
it was."

And on strategy: "If Johnson had granted Westmoreland's requests to
enter
Laos
and block the Ho Chi Minh trail, Hanoi could not have won the war....
it was
the
only way to bring sufficient military power to bear on the fighting in
the
South.
Building and maintaining the trail was a huge effort involving tens of
thousands
of soldiers, drivers, repair teams, medical stations, communication
units
....
our operations were never compromised by attacks on the trail. At
times,
accurate
B-52 strikes would cause real damage, but we put so much in at the top
of the
trail
that enough men and weapons to prolong the war always cameout the
bottom ....

if all the bombing had been concentrated at one time, it would have
hurt our
efforts.
But the bombing was expanded in slow stages under Johnson and it didn't
worry
us.
We had plenty of time to prepare alternative routes and facilities. We
always
had
stockpiles of rice ready to feed the people for months if a harvest was
damaged.
The Soviets bought rice from Thailand for us.

And the left: "Support for the war from our rear was completely secure
while
the
American rear was vulnerable. Every day our leadership would listen to
world
news
over the radio at 9AM to follow the growth of the antiwar movement.
Visits to
Hanoi
by Jane Fonda and former Attorney General Ramsey Clark and ministers
gave us
confidence that we should hold on in the face of battlefield reverses.
We
were elated
when Jane Fonda, wearing a red Vietnamese dress, said at a press
conference
that she
was ashamed of American actions in the war and would struggle along
with us
....
those people represented the conscience of America .... part of it's
war-making
capability, and we turning that power in our favor."

Bui Tin went on to serve as the editor of the People's Daily, the
official
newspaper of
the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

Disillusioned with the reality of Vietnamese communism Bui Tin now
lives in
Paris.

Sempers,

Roger