Cronkite's Bloody Legacy

[Cleets Part 2]

Just saw that movie for the first time a couple months ago. Dig Slim Pickens flyin' the B-52.

Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff.

One of my favorite movies..!!! Kubrick was on a roll, he made maybe 4 or 5 great movies in a row from Lolita - Dr. Strangelove - Barry Lyndon - Clockwork - etc...

[Appaholic]

Apparantly, the Liberal Pacifist has struck again.....dam them!

Toddler Dies In Accidental Shooting
http://www.whiotv.com/news/20131236/detail.html

[Cleets Part 2]

Apparantly, the Liberal Pacifist has struck again.....dam them!

Toddler Dies In Accidental Shooting
http://www.whiotv.com/news/20131236/detail.html

They're everywhere... sometimes they've been known to kill with just a glance - a simple look in your direction
Very dangerous bunch

[ALPHAGRIZ1]

Well at least that kid wont grow up and vote democrat.

[CID1990]

DING DING DING DING!!!!

We have a winner!!!

the american people could have been fully behind the war in a way that we NEVER have (not even wwii had the kind of unanimity of support and feeling that would meet the standards you're setting)... wouldn't have changed the facts on the ground, just would have changed how long we flogged ourselves there and how many young men died fighting for no apparent reason in a country that didn't want what we were peddling.

the problem wasn't political will, which is, at it's best a convenient rationalization... the problem was, simply put, that you either had to initiate total war on the country and decimate its population or withdraw. winning a guerrilla conflict against a determined enemy with a local population that is, at best, indifferent to the result, and more likely, inclined to support the guerrillas.

what many conk revisionist historians are missing, or perhaps, unaware of... western democracies were viewed (and not without justification) as their colonial oppressors. the US was lumped in with the French, after all we were advising them on how to keep their colony, since they would keep out the dreaded communism... most Vietnamese didn't even see it as a conflict between communism and democracy, but national independence and colonialism.

@TTBF-

The prosecution of war is ALWAYS a function of political will in a democratic society. It IS as simple as that. It has nothing to do with whether we are propping up a colonial society, stopping a genocide, guarding strategic interests, or assisting allies. Those are just motivations. There is a motive for surgical strikes in Iran, but there is no political will. There is a motive for military intervention in the Sudan, but no political will. Somalia was just fine because it was a backwater place and not many people really paid attention to our presence there. Once Americans saw those dead Rangers dragged through the streets of Mogadishu, Bill Clinton pulled them out. I am certain that he would have like to stick around and kick a little ass, but Clinton knew full well the implications of dead Rangers in a country most Americans don't give a fvck about. In a society where the expenditure of blood and treasure are the choices of elected officials, the public, in the end, always decides the outcome of the conflict. Period. In addition, the force with which we prosecute a war is a direct function of the knowledge that political will not only shapes war, but is also shaped BY war. Not throwing our full force behind the effort in Vietnam was an attempt to avoid having the war become politically damaging. I would suggest Von Clausewitz for reference, but there are no pictures, and he cannot be found in Maxim magazine, so that might not work.

Aside from that, you completely missed the point. Military success is immaterial in the face of public disapproval. We left Vietnam in spite of the fact that the VC were completely neutralized after Tet. No amount of military success could have changed that.

@UNI88- A good place to start is "The Tunnels of Cu Chi" by Tom Mangold. Although it concentrates on the tunnel rats and their activities, there is some very good historical research into some of the war's greater issues. There are some interesting side stories, including the so called "R&D" process in developing new weapons for the soldiers. The reality of Tet for both sides is well captured in the book, as the Cu Chi tunnels played a major role in the VC infiltration of the south leading up to Tet. Mangold gives equal time to both US and Vietnamese commanders. In all it is an excellent read from a viewpoint of respect for the fighters on both sides.

[native]

"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert

conks couldn't handle the truth Cronkite told that night, and so began a great conk tradition, despite mocking others who do so, embracing the culture of victimhood that the "big bad media" was the reason they were full of ****, and so they began assembling their own little pravda-esque fiefdoms, and declared "the truth" up for grabs and something to be filtered for partisan purposes.

piss and moan all you'd like, try to revise history if you must - but Cronkite was a lion - a legend and a hero and the pathetic nature of right-wingers in this country who need to keep rehashing the 60's because they've got nothing else stands as a testament to respect Cronkite held and how for 40 years conks just "can't handle the truth"

The TRUTH is that thousands of peope die because of stupid arrogant conks, but MILLIONS of people die because of dishonest left wing idiot j@ck@$$e$ like you.

May the eternal souls of the millions of victims of communist oppression in Southeast Asia haunt you and everyone dear to you for eternity.

Curse my family if you wish, @r$eh0le. A fourth of them are the ones already taken who will be among those souls haunting you and yours.

FVCK every single communist holocaust denier on this thread and anywhere else in the universe!

[AZGrizFan]

[just would have changed how long we flogged ourselves there and how many young men died fighting for no apparent reason in a country that didn't want what we were peddling.

the problem wasn't political will, which is, at it's best a convenient rationalization... the problem was, simply put, that you either had to initiate total war on the country and decimate its population or withdraw. winning a guerrilla conflict against a determined enemy with a local population that is, at best, indifferent to the result, and more likely, inclined to support the guerrillas.

what many conk revisionist historians are missing, or perhaps, unaware of... western democracies were viewed (and not without justification) as their colonial oppressors. the US was lumped in with the French, after all we were advising them on how to keep their colony, since they would keep out the dreaded communism... most Vietnamese didn't even see it as a conflict between communism and democracy, but national independence and colonialism.

Tell all that to the people trying to get onto the airlift flights. Tell all that to the 800,000 boat people....those who chose to die at sea rather than succumb to the horrors hoisted upon the population by the benevolent communists. Yeah, I must have missed the footage where they were running towards Hanoi with flower wreaths and picnic baskets, because they hated having the Americans there.

Talk about revisionist history.

Edit: Oh, and your tacit admission that the Tet Offensive was, in fact, a great victory for American fighting forces is duly noted.

[bench]

"reality has a well-known liberal bias" - Stephen Colbert

conks couldn't handle the truth Cronkite told that night, and so began a great conk tradition, despite mocking others who do so, embracing the culture of victimhood that the "big bad media" was the reason they were full of ****, and so they began assembling their own little pravda-esque fiefdoms, and declared "the truth" up for grabs and something to be filtered for partisan purposes.

piss and moan all you'd like, try to revise history if you must - but Cronkite was a lion - a legend and a hero and the pathetic nature of right-wingers in this country who need to keep rehashing the 60's because they've got nothing else stands as a testament to respect Cronkite held and how for 40 years conks just "can't handle the truth"

The TRUTH is that thousands of peope die because of stupid arrogant conks, but MILLIONS of people die because of dishonest left wing idiot j@ck@$$e$ like you.

May the eternal souls of the millions of victims of communist oppression in Southeast Asia haunt you and everyone dear to you for eternity.

Curse my family if you wish, @r$eh0le. A fourth of them are the ones already taken who will be among those souls haunting you and yours.

FVCK every single communist holocaust denier on this thread and anywhere else in the universe!

Jesus Christ, Twinnie. You think you know somebody, then they turn out to be one a' them mass-murderin' liberal pacifist shitheads. You know, sorta like that Pol Pot, only more liberal, more pacifistic, and more massively murder-iffic

[Appaholic]

Next Up: TMan's thread "Rumsfeld's Bloody Legacy"......(we can dream)

[native]

The TRUTH is that thousands of peope die because of stupid arrogant conks, but MILLIONS of people die because of dishonest left wing idiot j@ck@$$e$ like you.

May the eternal souls of the millions of victims of communist oppression in Southeast Asia haunt you and everyone dear to you for eternity.

Curse my family if you wish, @r$eh0le. A fourth of them are the ones already taken who will be among those souls haunting you and yours.

FVCK every single communist holocaust denier on this thread and anywhere else in the universe!

Jesus Christ, Twinnie. You think you know somebody, then they turn out to be one a' them mass-murderin' liberal pacifist shitheads. You know, sorta like that Pol Pot, only more liberal, more pacifistic, and more massively murder-iffic

Don't wear the shoe if it doesn't fit, Bench. I don't recall you being one of the deniers.

But is that the best you can do to stand up for liberal pacificst complicity? Making light of mass murder?

[TwinTownBisonFan]

Jesus Christ, Twinnie. You think you know somebody, then they turn out to be one a' them mass-murderin' liberal pacifist shitheads. You know, sorta like that Pol Pot, only more liberal, more pacifistic, and more massively murder-iffic

Don't wear the shoe if it doesn't fit, Bench. I don't recall you being one of the deniers.

love that American Taliban... wowzers guy - you're nuttier than squirrel shit with this jive...

[native]

Don't wear the shoe if it doesn't fit, Bench. I don't recall you being one of the deniers.

love that American Taliban... wowzers guy - you're nuttier than squirrel **** with this jive...

Count the bodies.

[TwinTownBisonFan]

[just would have changed how long we flogged ourselves there and how many young men died fighting for no apparent reason in a country that didn't want what we were peddling.

the problem wasn't political will, which is, at it's best a convenient rationalization... the problem was, simply put, that you either had to initiate total war on the country and decimate its population or withdraw. winning a guerrilla conflict against a determined enemy with a local population that is, at best, indifferent to the result, and more likely, inclined to support the guerrillas.

what many conk revisionist historians are missing, or perhaps, unaware of... western democracies were viewed (and not without justification) as their colonial oppressors. the US was lumped in with the French, after all we were advising them on how to keep their colony, since they would keep out the dreaded communism... most Vietnamese didn't even see it as a conflict between communism and democracy, but national independence and colonialism.

Tell all that to the people trying to get onto the airlift flights. Tell all that to the 800,000 boat people....those who chose to die at sea rather than succumb to the horrors hoisted upon the population by the benevolent communists. Yeah, I must have missed the footage where they were running towards Hanoi with flower wreaths and picnic baskets, because they hated having the Americans there.

Talk about revisionist history.

Edit: Oh, and your tacit admission that the Tet Offensive was, in fact, a great victory for American fighting forces is duly noted.

enjoying putting words in mouth old timer?

things i never said:
I never said there was unanimity of of opinion in Vietnam about communism, just that there was broader support for them than the US, and it had less to do with political ideology than with who was advocating for it. I never said that there weren't atrocities committed by the communist regime, or that they were somehow "benevolent" either... but hey, if it suits you and makes you feel better to make the argument about what it wasn't about... have fun.

oh, and by the way... no tacit admission at all... from a military standpoint, it's an indisputable fact that Tet was a success for the US and ARVN. Again, never said it wasn't, have no desire to claim it either. the problem isn't the military repercussions of Tet, it's what the ability of the VC to carry out the attack said about our real ability to ever get a real handle on the country. So again, it comes back to what I've been saying about Vietnam all the while - it was a question of what to do, withdraw, or pour several hundred thousand more troops in and turn the country in to holocaust, because the way things were being done wasn't working.

[Cleets Part 2]

The levels (the sheer depths) of insanity can scarcely be measured
we have but scratched the surface...



We've discovered the human condition:
Pacifism has destroyed the world...

[TwinTownBisonFan]

love that American Taliban... wowzers guy - you're nuttier than squirrel **** with this jive...

Count the bodies.

never said there weren't atrocities committed by the communists, in many countries. the mistakes i think you're making are many, but... to address the biggie

the idea that we had some sort of real obligation to "save" people from communism for some f'd up religious reason - like it's a damn crusade or something. you want to have a holy war and convert the world to your religion... start a private army friend, that's not our job.

[Cleets Part 2]

Next Up: TMan's thread "Rumsfeld's Bloody Legacy"......(we can dream)

Don't count on it
T-man thinks it's perfectly fine to carpet bomb "other" civilians
While you're "saving them" from the tyranny of dictatorship - you can kill them...

it's almost too good

[AZGrizFan]

oh, and by the way... no tacit admission at all... from a military standpoint, it's an indisputable fact that Tet was a success for the US and ARVN. Again, never said it wasn't, have no desire to claim it either. the problem isn't the military repercussions of Tet, it's what the ability of the VC to carry out the attack said about our real ability to ever get a real handle on the country. So again, it comes back to what I've been saying about Vietnam all the while - it was a question of what to do, withdraw, or pour several hundred thousand more troops in and turn the country in to holocaust, because the way things were being done wasn't working.

Back to cleets point about our unwillingness, as a country (politically), to EVER do that (even if we perceive we're RIGHT) and I repeat my point again: disband the military and spend the money somewhere else.

So, in reality all Cronkite was doing was spouting the political views of the government from his pulpit behind the news desk. Imagine that....MSM being a puppet for the government.

[native]

Don't wear the shoe if it doesn't fit, Bench. I don't recall you being one of the deniers.

love that American Taliban... wowzers guy - you're nuttier than squirrel **** with this jive...

Taliban? funny.
Am I telling you what to wear? No.
Am I telling you how or whether you should pray? No.
Am I stealing money from your pocket? No.
Am I throwing acid on Democrat schoolchildren's faces? No.
Do I blow up union hallls? No.
Do I want to do any of these things? NO!

These are the kinds of things Taliban do in real life. I don't do them, so what do you think you mean by "Taliban?"

Here are some useful civic activities:
Have you ever made a payroll out of your own pocket?
Have you defended this country at the risk of your life?
How many thousands of hours and dollars have you donated to youth programs with no political agenda?
How many thousands of hours have you donated to teaching English as a second language with no political agenda?

Are these the actions of a squirrel$h!t "taliban?"

Who is the taliban? Dems are the ones who want to tell me what car to drive, monitor the thermostat in my home, determine what vewpoint and skin color can have access to the airwaves, and take my money to give to themselves and their political friends...

What do you and your party establishment actually stand for, TTBF? I know you are a slick operative, but to what end?

This is what it seems like to me:
The use of government power to reward political friends with no public value in return
The use of government power to create winners and losers
*Freedom as long as you don't actually have to pay a(ny) price or bear a(ny) burden...
*(White trailer trash apparently do not deserve freedom because they are white trailer trash and don't embrace your elitist wisdom)
Generous welfare for deadbeats as long as it benefits the dem party and someone else pays...
Special privileges for any group with a large enough voting block, as long as they're not white males... Generous social programs as long as it benefits the dem party and someone else pays...
Controlled speech in favor of dems...
Civil rights for scumbags but not innocent victims...
Free enterprise as long as the corporate exectives pay off Dem pols...
Destruction of any part of the Constitution which interferes with the march to socialism...

Prove me wrong.

[native]

... the problem isn't the military repercussions of Tet, it's what the ability of the VC to carry out the attack said about our real ability to ever get a real handle on the country. So again, it comes back to what I've been saying about Vietnam all the while - it was a question of what to do, withdraw, or pour several hundred thousand more troops in and turn the country in to holocaust, because the way things were being done wasn't working.

One of the reasons that Tet failed militarily for North Vietnam was the fact that many of the VC cadre (VC=Viet Cong = South Vietnamese insurgents) never showed up for the big event. Those that did show up were wiped out. The only way the North finally won in 1975 was to "pour several hundred thousand more troops in [to South Vietnam] and turn the country in to [a] holocaust."

It's not like a holocaust was this was a new thing for the North Vietnamese communists in 1975. They had been killing their own civilians for decades, for example on both the micro scale with the assassination of Ho Chi Minh's rivals in the 40's and 50's, and on the macro scale with ethnic, religious and class-cleansing of Ho Chi Minh's home province in the 50's, and the execution of non-combatant civilian prisoners during Tet itself. These activities were all about consolidation of communist power and had NOTHING to do with nationalism or foreign intervention.

[AZGrizFan]

... the problem isn't the military repercussions of Tet, it's what the ability of the VC to carry out the attack said about our real ability to ever get a real handle on the country. So again, it comes back to what I've been saying about Vietnam all the while - it was a question of what to do, withdraw, or pour several hundred thousand more troops in and turn the country in to holocaust, because the way things were being done wasn't working.

One of the reasons that Tet failed militarily for North Vietnam was the fact that many of the VC cadre (VC=Viet Cong = South Vietnamese insurgents) never showed up for the big event. Those that did show up were wiped out. The only way the North finally won in 1975 was to "pour several hundred thousand more troops in [to South Vietnam] and turn the country in to [a] holocaust."

Gotta disagree there, native. True, the North DID do that, but only after we'd already thrown in the towel and started winding down (hmmm.....sounds a lot like Iraq).

[native]

Next Up: TMan's thread "Rumsfeld's Bloody Legacy"......(we can dream)

Don't count on it
T-man thinks it's perfectly fine to carpet bomb "other" civilians
While you're "saving them" from the tyranny of dictatorship - you can kill them...

it's almost too good

Except that we did not carpet bomb civilians after WWII. ...a fact you consistently ignore.

[Cleets Part 2]

Back to cleets point about our unwillingness, as a country (politically), to EVER do that (even if we perceive we're RIGHT) and I repeat my point again: disband the military and spend the money somewhere else.

So, in reality all Cronkite was doing was spouting the political views of the government from his pulpit behind the news desk. Imagine that....MSM being a puppet for the government.

That's the real concern (or should be)
We can wage a war - in the right - and with the correct motives...
But no matter what (Conservative majority or not) congress will not allow our military to fight to win
It's been that way for about 50 years...

So all the monkey chatter about liberal and conservatives and who's smarter... is meaningless

[AZGrizFan]

Back to cleets point about our unwillingness, as a country (politically), to EVER do that (even if we perceive we're RIGHT) and I repeat my point again: disband the military and spend the money somewhere else.

So, in reality all Cronkite was doing was spouting the political views of the government from his pulpit behind the news desk. Imagine that....MSM being a puppet for the government.

That's the real concern (or should be)
We can wage a war - in the right - and with the correct motives...
But no matter what (Conservative majority or not) congress will not allow our military to fight to win
It's been that way for about 50 years...

So all the monkey chatter about liberal and conservatives and who's smarter... is meaningless

Yep.

[Cleets Part 2]

Don't count on it
T-man thinks it's perfectly fine to carpet bomb "other" civilians
While you're "saving them" from the tyranny of dictatorship - you can kill them...

it's almost too good

Except that we did not carpet bomb civilians after WWII. ...a fact you consistently ignore.

Pin-point strikes - sorry I'm not buying that load of rotten bananas
Only about 500 visual accounts from the Red Cross of hits that consisted of 75% civilian casualties - the idea that collateral damage is "minimal" can be sold elsewhere fella - a few too many (like over a million) dead Iraqi pedestrians forces me to say: You can call it whatever you want - so you can sleep at night - I call it carpet bombing"

Now, Do I care... let me put it this way: It's out of my control

[native]

Except that we did not carpet bomb civilians after WWII. ...a fact you consistently ignore.

Pin-point strikes - sorry I'm not buying that load of rotten bananas
Only about 500 visual accounts from the Red Cross of hits that consisted of 75% civilian casualties - the idea that collateral damage is "minimal" can be sold elsewhere fella - a few too many (like over a million) dead Iraqi pedestrians forces me to say: You can call it whatever you want - so you can sleep at night - I call it carpet bombing"

Now, Do I care... let me put it this way: It's out of my control

Stop wasting your IQ on what you want to believe, Cleets!