Vietnam War Papers Released

[sandnsea]

That show Kissinger and Nixon did tell the Chinese Communists that we would accept a communist Indochina - in 1972. Kerry's "other side of the wall". Just - fuck. He's going to be sick when he sees this.


http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2309046&mesg_id=2309046

[wisteria]

1. It just makes you want to cry. All those lives lost...and for what-

to save face.

[karynnj]

2. It's amazing that Kerry's recent speeches

bluntly said precisely this - that they just wanted a decent interval between us leaving and the country falling. It also means that as they decided this, they still harrassed a 28 year old war hero running for Congress who correctly perceived all of this.

Although this is unlikely to get the news it deserves, this totally shots a whole through the believes of people like Webb who think the war would have been won if we all supported it blindly. Kerry, not he, was 100% right. (Although Kissinger wants us to "use caution" in interpreting this.

[wisteria]

3. The papers say what they say. It seems clear to me.

What could he (Kissinger) possibly say to explain this away? I think this should be saved and pulled out when the Swifties and people like Webb, who you mentioned, criticize Kerry for his anti-Vietnam War activities.

[TayTay]

4. I think the good Senator knows this

From his April 22nd, speech:

I believed then, just as I believe now, that it is profoundly wrong to think that fighting for your country overseas and fighting for your country's ideals at home are contradictory or even separate duties. They are, in fact, two sides of the very same patriotic coin. And that's certainly what I felt when I came home from Vietnam convinced that our political leaders were waging war simply to avoid responsibility for the mistakes that doomed our mission in the first place. Indeed, one of the architects of the war, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, confessed in a recent book that he knew victory was no longer a possibility far earlier than 1971.

By then, it was clear to me that hundreds of thousands of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen-disproportionately poor and minority Americans-were being sent into the valley of the shadow of death for an illusion privately abandoned by the very men in Washington who kept sending them there. All the horrors of a jungle war against an invisible enemy indistinguishable from the people we were supposed to be protecting-all the questions associated with quietly sanctioned violence against entire villages and regions-all the confusion and frustration that came from defending a corrupt regime in Saigon that depended on Americans to do too much of the fighting-all that cried out for dissent, demanded truth, and could not be denied by easy slogans like "peace with honor"-or by the politics of fear and smear. It was time for the truth, and time for it all to end, and my only regret in joining the anti-war movement was that it took so long to succeed-for the truth to prevail, and for America to regain confidence in our own deepest values.

I have watched that speech a few times on tivo and the facial expression and emphasis on 'he knew' is amazing. It is obviously still an unbelievable outrage that our kids were still being sent into that valley of the sahdow of death for a lie. It is an outrage today to think that we are sending a different generation of kids into that valley as well, when you damn right and well know that there are behind the door deliberations going on to undercut them and make a palatable exit possible.

Everyold old is new again. I think Sen. Kerry knows this cold. You can see it in his eyes.

[ginnyinWI]

6. yes you certainly can see it in his eyes

and hear it in his voice.

The most heartbreaking part of this is that the people who learned the lessons of Vietnam are out of power, and those with the most power never did. Because they didn't care about the human suffering aspect of that war then, they don't care about it now either. To them it is just a huge power game, little people be damned.

I thought being in a democracy was supposed to prevent this. But the people can be fooled and defrauded; that's what's happening now. But I do still believe that the people can only be fooled for a limited length of time. It's happening quicker this time than for Vietnam, maybe partly because we still have Vietnam in living memory.

[ProSense]

8. That portion of the speech

really made me angry! What's worse is that this is happening again, and everyone knows it. They should be preparing to withdraw from Iraq now!

[sandnsea]

9. Sure,

But this is Nixon and Kissinger's willingness to let the country go communist, actually having talks with China. Much more than knowing the war was unwinnable. All these years, and Hanoi Jane, and Kerry meeting with Madam Binh, Democrats let Vietnam be taken over -- now we find out Nixon was negotiating with the Chinese all along and lying through his teeth about it. That's why we didn't do anything about the slaughters in Cambodia or anything else, it was part of the negotiations to get out of Vietnam.

[karynnj]

10. The American University speech (Johnkerry.com)

is even closer to this charge - I wonder if Kerry was given information on this between the two speeches.

From AU speech:

It was 1971 – twelve years after the first American died in what was then South Vietnam, seven years after Lyndon Johnson seized on a small and contrived incident in the Tonkin Gulf to launch a full-scale war--and three years after Richard Nixon was elected president on the promise of a secret plan for peace. We didn't know it at the time, but four more years of the War in Vietnam still lay ahead. These were years in which the Nixon administration lied and broke the law--and claimed it was prolonging war to protect our troops as they withdrew--years that ultimately ended only when politicians in Washington decided they would settle for a "decent interval" between the departure of our forces and the inevitable fall of Saigon.

[sandnsea]

11. It sure is

That's kind of incredible. Maybe he saw some of this Communist material and decided he could get bolder with his Vietnam statements because the rest of the story was finally coming out. I wonder if someone will have the guts to ask John McCain what he thinks about being left in those camps an extra year so Nixon could save face. Or maybe they saw some of this stuff during their POW/MIA hearings, ya think?

[fedupinBushcountry]

5. Thanks for posting

Sandsea. Do you know where I can find Senator Kerry's testimony from '71 ? I use to have it bookmarked on my computer that crashed, but now I am having a hard time finding it.

[sandnsea]

7. Here

I usually just put Kerry 1971 text in a search engine and it's listed a bunch of places.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3875422

[kerrygoddess]

12. C-Span has it too.

Search John Kerry + Fulbright Commission