During the Vietnam War, was the credibility of the generals...

[Eric J in MN]

...also treated as above question by conservatives and liberal apologists?

Rudy Giuliani said of the Iraq War's General David Petraeus, "You have no right to disagree with his integrity."

During Vietnam, were Americans told that we have no right to question the integrity of General William Westmoreland or the other generals?

[EST]

1. Yep.

I know of a few instances when protesters, and "hippies" in general, were attacked and beaten up for such questioning.
Some were killed.

We were kept more in the dark abut just who was making the same stupid "stay the course" decisions.

[CTyankee]

2. Well, yes, the generals and our fearless leader (Nixon).

I guess we should all go and read "The Best and the Brightest" by the late David Halberstam, once again.

The full tragedy of Vietnam has never really been absorbed by our society today. So few remember its corrosive effects on political dialogue and our society as the soldiers came home. So very sad...

[Thothmes]

8. Dont forget the other fearless leader, Johnson

[trof]

9. Also read Ellsberg's "Secrets:"

"A Memoir of Viet Nam and the Pentagon Papers"
It'll make you puke.

[Kagemusha]

3. The press questioned the generals, and were widely assailed for it

and indeed, by conservatives and liberal apologists.

Lesson taken by the Bush clan: Dominate the media, and the rest takes care of itself.

Yes, they're hugely unpopular, but the public's opinion doesn't really matter much, does it?

[daninthemoon]

5. That's a lesson that goes back to Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin.

A lesson Americans are beginning to re-learn. Again.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

4. Yes " the government wouldn't lie "

In San Diego a newspaper called the Teaspoon Door was fire bombed by off duty police.

[EVDebs]

6. Gen Westmoreland's houseboy was a spy

http://www.vietnamwar.net/Houseboy.htm

and so was Bush/Cheney's houseboy Chalabi,

Iran used Chalabi to dupe U.S., report says
by Knut Royce
Newsday
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2001935950_iranchalabi22.html

"The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that for years Iran has used a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress to funnel disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources."...

"Patrick Lang, former director of the DIA's Middle East branch, said he had been told by colleagues that Chalabi's U.S.-funded program to provide information about weapons of mass destruction and insurgents was effectively an Iranian intelligence operation. "They (the Iranians) knew exactly what we were up to," he said.

He described it as "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history."

"I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work," he said."


Shouldn't take anything coming out of Iraq as credible.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Went you want moral guidance, just go to Rudy. If he's unavailable,

there's always Newt. They have a big ashram.

[gratuitous]

10. During the war?

No, the military was largely above such pedestrian concerns as actual truth, but it was a very different time. In the last 40 years, Americans have learned that the government is not always to be trusted, but in the 1960s and early 1970s before the full dimensions of Watergate became apparent, the majority of Americans believed what they were told about government, the prosecution of the war in Vietnam, and most other things. The only folks who actively questioned what the government was saying were the nut groups like the Weather Underground on the Left and the John Birch Society on the Right.

Giuliani, who has done as much as anyone to encourage this ongoing distrust of government, pines for the days when elected officials could make god-like pronouncements and the nodding electorate would simply follow along. The default setting for anything coming out of the crooked Bush administration is and should be distrust; they've been so conscientious about fomenting distrust, it would be impolite not to reward them for it by doubting everything they say.