Was David Susskind Right ?

[Craig Disher]

This is off thread but I can't let it go by. "Peace with honor is still peace" sounds like an excuse for Nixon's cynical end of the war. It was immoral for him to call his peace honorable when he could have had the same peace on the same terms in 1969 and saved thousands of American and Vietnamese lives.

Obviously a personal flash point...

[Gib_Papazian]

Look Craig,
You have got to understand that I am not defending any of these bums - especially that pig Richard Nixon. But there were no white hats on either side of the conflict. If Lyndon Johnson had possessed the courage and conviction, that ugly mess would have been stopped long before Tricky Dick ever took office.

Again, my primary objection to all this historical revisionism I see in the media is simply that it tries to paint everyone in either black (bad guys) or white (good guys).

Somebody once asked Chou en Lai for his thoughts on the result of the French Revolution. His response:

"It's too soon to tell."

Like the evolution (or devolution) of golf architecture, these historical epochs are still playing out.

Who really knows? Hindsight is not 20/20 in cases like this because we cannot predict what action other nations would have taken in response!

If not for NGLA and CB Macdonald, would golf have taken root in the same way? If not for CB, there might have been no Mackenzie! Would the Golden Age have even occurred?

If we had pulled out of Vietnam in 1964, would that have been perceived by Communist China as a sign of weakness? Could that saving of American lives have precipitated an attack and slaughter in Japan by an emboldened China?

The wounds suffered from WWII was still fresh in their minds. If we had pulled out, would the complexion of Asia be different today? Would China eventually become a REALLY credible threat instead of a backward Third World nation run by a bunch of geriatric sabre-rattlers?

Would Donald Ross have ventured to America from Dornoch if there was no fledgling golf boom?

Adam,

Please tell me you are kidding about that nutcake preacher. Are witch trials next?  

[Craig Disher]

Gib,
I'm over the edge in any discussion that goes in the direction of exonerating Nixon's behavior on Vietnam because "he was cagey on foreign policy" or "he opened the door to China" (not your points but I heard plenty of that in his eulogies).

Johnson was courageous on issues he grew up with politically. His stand on civil rights as a southerner defined courage. The US is different and better for it - and it's not too early to tell. His mistakes in Vietnam came from his unfamiliarity with foreign policy issues and the persuasiveness of his brilliant advisors- primarily Bob McNamara. When McNamara begain to realize we were going in the wrong way, he left Johnson hanging. LBJ can be held accountable for making a series of terrible mistakes, but not for being a cynical manipulator. The best example I remember of how misdirected our policy was is that a short time after we lost, China and Vietnam were engaged in a shooting war - two agrarian autocracies fighting over a border area that had been disputed for hundreds of years.

You're absolutely right about the tendency to paint very complex events in black and white. It certainly removes the need to think very hard. However, in the spectrum in between, it's clear to me how to shade Nixon and Johnson.

[Patrick_Mucci]

CDisher, Dan King, Gib,

Having lost a lot of friends, including my college roommate, a Navy pilot, who was restricted on his targets by the politicians 12,000 miles away in comfy D.C., I have an interest in Vietnam and the accurate reporting of what happened.

Nixon is the bad guy regarding Vietnam ? now that's an iteresting  theory.  Didn't Time Magazine name him and Kissinger as their men of the year for ending the war ?

Did Nixon get us involved in this war, or was that JFK AND LBJ ?  I thougt Operation Rolling Thunder brought an intransient NV to the tables in Paris, resulting in the end of the war.

I thought the Ford wonder boy, who brought his cost efficiencies to the military, was responsible for the extensive loss of American life, including good friends of mine, by restricting military targets, not having clear objectives, not letting the military people run the military campaign, and possibly the worst, costing American lives because he wouldn't approve the stainless steel barrel in the M-16
due to cost considerations, substituting in its place, an inferior barrel and gunpowder, responsible for jams and other malfunctions resulting in the direct loss of American Boys.

And now, that individual who mismanaged a good deal of the entire affair goes whining to the media that it was wrong, visiting Vietnam, why isn't he visiting American Gravesites and apologizing to their loved ones and families.?
Where was he when it counted ?
 
The French didn't lose Vietnam at Den Bien Phu, they lost it in Paris.  Similarly, we failed our American fighting forces in Washington D.C., but don't ever blame that on Nixon, look a few years earlier for those culprits and their cohorts.

Sorry to get off on a rant, but I wasn't in Canada, or stoned at the time, and my memory of my fallen friends and history remains fairly clear, if not bitter.

[RJ_Daley]

It is fun to see these loosely woven golf philosophical discussions transcend into all things cosmic.  I feel just like I pulled up a chair at the 19th hole of the nearest golf course to Berkeley and bumped into some aging hippies and yippies that finally put down their pipes in their middle ages and picked up some sticks, having discovered the great satanic capitalist pig pass time of golf has some merit in the discussion of the art and design philosophy of GCA, and that golf is not just an ostentatious waste of time by the wealthy human capital burning industrial-militarists CEOs who golf to be somebody...

One day I would think it to be fun to pitch my tent for the season in the People's Park at the corner of Parker and College Ave, and grow my plot of tomatoes and herbs and invite all my bay area friends to come and visit my abode there and tell me more of their notions of FSM and Mario Savio, and the real meaning of our involvement in VN, and if the end of the film was a "do over" by our prime creators when mankind deviated from the monoliths path pre-programmed to lead us to our future until we placed too much of our future fate in the machinations of a HAL computin-machine, and if there is really a much darker and sinister reason that Stanford was going to reroute and destroy much of their golf course... and if the Park may someday be made into a mini-golfland by sleeper agents undercover amongst the peoples brigade.  You know, all the ussual Peoples Park milieu...

[Gib_Papazian]

Is it really all that clear?

Craig,

Hmmmm, Nixon as a "cynical manipulator?"

Sounds a bit like the gentleman who recently occupied the Oval Office for 8 years.

Johnson as a basically good man in a bit over his head on foreign policy issues?

Remind you of anyone these days?

History may be repeating itself, except that the parties have switched roles this time.

Was the recent impeachment exercise just another Watergate? Clinton's PR juggernaut tried to villify his enemies just as Nixon's weasels tried to suggest anyone who defied him was somehow "anti-American."

Besides, did Nixon really "open China?" Bullshit. It remains as closed, controlled, authoritarian and autocratic today as it was prior to his "visit."

Do we really enjoy more "free speech" today because of Mario Savio? College campuses are amongst the most dogmatic and intolerant places in America. Witness the villification of David Rosenberg.

Did the Civil Rights movement bring about an end to racism in America? Don't think so. Did school busing work? Maybe not. Was Lyndon Johnson really at the forefront or along for the ride as a political expedient? As I recall - but I might be wrong - weren't poor blacks disproportionally sent into combat?

Everything might have played out differently if Martin Luther King had not been killed - leaving a void that was filled by the Black Panthers and their irrationality and violence.

[Craig Disher]

Gib,
It's pretty clear to me - I was comparing Johnson and Nixon and their responses to a significant national event.  Who knows how Clinton, the Bushes, or Reagan would have responded to a similar situation.

Johnson was a powerhouse of a politician. I don't think there has been anyone since who can compare to him. He may have been a manipulator, but he wasn't cynical. Fortunately for the country, before he got stuck in the swamp he managed to ram the 1964 voting rights act through a congress controlled at key points by some pretty rabid segregationists. No politician or party will ever rid this country of racism but at least LBJ put the Justice Dept on the side of millions of disenfranchised voters. He wasn't responding to the civil rights movement although they were enthusiastic allies - he acted because his sense of fairness and justice were offended. I don't believe Nixon had a sense of either.

Actually, I think Nixon did open China. I don't mean that he created an open society there, just that he opened it to the US. When I left college, a trip to China was illegal.  Now, the sweater I'm wearing and most of the computer I'm using were made there. If anyone other than Nixon (although I think the impetus came from Kissinger) had made the first move, he would have become dead meat politically. Sticking with my theme, though, I don't believe Nixon had any interest in expanding democracy in China. I think he just enjoyed moving on the big stage. A true cynic.

[Ed_Baker]

Just a few war facts for consideration;

The majority of ground troops that served in RVN were "RA" volunteers and were caucasion. The ratio of "US" draftees that saw combat was actually quite low. Most draftees were given "support" MOS' like supply or commo and served as REMF's. One out of eight draftees were discharged before earning an MOS. The media portrayal of "pissed off drug addicted poor people" running around the jungles of RVN is fiction, regardless of ethnic origin.

The M-16 A1 did have a stainless steel barrel, a closed end flash suppressor(so it wouldn't snag as easily on thick vegetation) and hand guards made by Mattel! The A-1 was standard issue for line units starting in '67 and featured a redesigned forward seer that the soldier could apply immediate action to within a second of breech jam. We were not out there with defective weapons or ammo.

The "jamming" occured mainly because of weak magazine springs on the 30 round "banna clips" used before Tet '68 and a propensity by American Riflemen to overuse automatic firing.
 "Rifle Squad tactics" taught in AIT demanded the weapon be left in the semi-auto matic mode in squad level firefights as the fields of fire were sustained and more effective when riflemen "supported" the M-60 machine gun and M-79 ( later '71 &'72 XM-203) grenade launchers.The ultimate fix was to use the standard twenty round magazines taped end to end. Any FNG that hit the assembly area for line units was taught this by his squad leader before kickoff ,the last thing a line squad needed was a greenie with a malfunction!. Anybody with an 11b10 Mos was aware of these things before their orders were cut for RVN.

The "jam" ratio was actually higher on the AK-47's that LRRPS and SOG spooks carried on missions in to Laos and Cambodia.Most preferred the CAR-15 ( a shorter version of the M-16) Sometimes on "Prairie Fire" missions they were forced to use AK's because the liklihood of death was high and US weapons were not supposed to be lost in Laos and Cambodia('cause we weren't there,right!) Usually the one-zero (team leader) was the only "round eye" on the "op" and any engagement" was accidental, a high percentage of extractions were emergency, many on a "string" (stabo rig) and any ordnance short of angry cobras covering your six was useless anyway.Any line unit "veteran" that tells you he carried an AK wasn't there!Period. It didn't happen.A, C-45 "get out of jail free card" was neccesarry to carry a weapon of choice and they were a very scarce commodity.Nobody just wandered around fire bases with anything other than authorized TO&E. A quick trip to LBJ (Long Bing Jail) would be far more likely.

The "restricted targets" is true and cost countless casualties mostly local indigenous(Montgards) that we abandoned in late '72 and they are still paying for their alliance with us today!

The CCC and CCN units that were operating during the Easter'72 fiasco had provided many "snaps" ( pentax half frames) to S-2 and "OP-34". Op-34 went directly to the Pentagon and Whitehouse, daily "sit-reps" with grid coordinates were sent. Pictures of huge supported NVA elements massing in Cambodia and Laos prior to TET '72. The ARC light spectres(puffs) were supposed to be restricted to border targets, starting in early '72 the map orientations got a little creative,thank God or it would have been worse.But major air strikes outside of the "shrimp" (Vietnam) were prohibited. Many SACAO(supreme allied commander area of operations) calls for airstrikes were ignored because the AO was "restricted."
 Much good intelligence was wasted,misdirected or ignored.They just kept pouring down the Ho chi ming trail and we could have wasted them long before they were in country.
Instead we continued with "Vietnamization" and more lives were lost. Politics! It still enrages me. God help the "yards."

[TEPaul]

Pat:

I can't possibly read this entire thread but I saw a post of yours back a ways about your interest in Vietnam. I thought I might relate this personal story to you about the beginnings of our involvement in Vietnam.

This took place at St. Mark's School around Boston and just following our graduation it was tradtional to bring in a speaker to speak to the graduating class in a day long seminar. So in my graduating year, 1963, they brought in James "Scotty" Reston, the NY Times premier editorial writer.

He was a fascinating man and he talked to us a good deal about how writing techniques had evolved in his lifetime but then he told a few interesting vignettes about some interesting times in his reporting. This one had to do with Kennedy's first trip abroad to Vienna (1961) to meet Khruschev, and you may remember their summit did not go well as Nikita tried to bully our young new President and did bully him.

Reston, who had known Kennedy well for quite a few years happened to be alone in a room in an enormous palace where all were meeting and to his amazement Kennedy came flying into the room followed by his old friend Kenny O'Donnell. Kennedy was furious, cursing and uncontrollable! He said: "That little bastard tried to humiliate me!! He may think I'm inexperienced but I will show him what I know about global politics and history! I'm going to get that SOB in Southeast Asia!!"

As you know, immediately into South Vietnam went our military advisors (obviously to tweak and piss-off Nikita) and the rest as they say, is history!

[Jim_Kennedy]

TEPaul,
Our involvement in Vietnam precedes JFK by some twenty years and as you will see, HST and DDE laid the groundwork for the U.S... and where we went from there is predictable.   Here is a timeline for you to read, if you care to do so.

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/vietnam/index-1945.html

[Gib_Papazian]

The rest is history. . . . . what an astounding story that is (if true).

Would we have still gotten entangled in that mess if Khruschev had been respectful and deferencial? Interesting question. Maybe some other brushfire would have drawn Kennedy's attention instead.

I pray that 50-odd thousand American kids (plus 200,000 maimed, shot-up, drug-addicted or psychologically traumatized) did not go to their death to soothe the bruised ego of some snotty, skirt-chasing Haaaavard pseudo-monarch.

But stranger things have happened . . . . what horrible carnage the Archduke Ferdinand assasination set in motion still astonishes me.

    

[Craig Disher]

We bankrolled the French war and nearly gave air support to break the siege of Dien Bien Phu. As they say, cooler heads prevailed. JFK and his crew were so fascinated with their new ideas of uncoventional war and special forces as a way to stop communist insurgencies that using them in SE Asia may have been a cheerful thought. What a boneheaded misreading of history! Frances Fitzgerald wrote "Fire in the Lake" which I think is the best book written on the war. We weren't fighting communism, we were fighting an inexorable historical trend.

I'd like to know the timing between the JFK/Kruschev meeting and the increase in our advisors in VN.  Sounds like a plausible and perfectly arrogant sequence of events.

[Patrick_Mucci]

Ed Baker,

I believe the original and early versions of the M-16 didn't have the stainless steel barrel. The original powder in the 55 grain, .223 caliber bullet was changed as well.  The plunger mechanism to clear jams was an added feature not on the original weapon.

All of these additions were modiciations due to early field failures.

The weight of the 30 round banana clips did cause problems especially when two were taped.  Current versions of the
M-16 fire in three shot bursts.

Modified or rather updated versions of the AK-47 continue to prove efficient in almost all conditions.

I believe RM should be touring America not Vietnam, appologizing, and consoling those who lost family and friends.
It's interesting how some in the press view Vietnam and Ali as heros today.

Sorry for the diversion, now back to golf.

[Mike_Cirba]

Ed Baker,

I don't know quite how to express what I'm feeling after reading your post.  I was born in 1958, and the Vietnam War was ended before I turned 18, although it colored most of the events I can remember from the period.

All I can say is, simply, thank you very much for your service.  I don't think that can be repeated too many times to you or anyone else who was sent to risk life and limb for uncertain, ambiguous political goals.  

Thankfully, it's amazing what we all collectively realize in retrospect.  Last year I went to DC and saw the Viet Nam War Memorial for the first time.  The crowds around that somber monument were continuous, and I was stunned by the number who paid the ultimate price and moved by the outpouring of emotion that is palpable in the thick air around the monument.  

Optimistically, it made me believe that we as a nation learned something valuable and permanent from your collective sacrifice.

[TEPaul]

Jim Kennedy:

Thanks, I will read that hyperlink but haven't yet. Before I do though, I would say I understand why you might say that 20 years before 1961 HST and DDE laid the groundwork for Vietnam. I am not, however, of the mind or historical mind that we should get lazy in our specific research and specific understanding of the true reasons and ebbs and flows of history, in this case the particulars of Vietnam--and it is extremely important that we do not--at least in my opinion.

I agree with you that if one were to trace back to the very root of our involvment in Vietnam one might want to go back that far but I would suggest that one would then have to go forward about 20 years to understand the conscious involvement that I am citing. I do believe in very small increments of fate but 20 years previous to 1961 might be too far back, for even me!

Gib:

A most incredible realization for me from your post. I stared at that parenthetic of yours "(if true)" and thought for the longest moment that you might be implying I'm a liar! But then realized maybe you meant more or something else.

I must be a very poor instinctual historian because it never  occured to me to put what me and my class heard from James "Scotty" Reston that June day in 1963 into true perspective! I suppose he mentioned it as just a mildly interesting story but made more interesting because his friend was the President of the USA. Although it was probably a good 2 1/2 years after Vienna, why otherwise would he have mentioned it to us? Was it just an interesting occurence or juxtaposition for a reporter (him alone barged in upon by JFK)? Was it still current events in his mind?

To me today, it's a startling realization, at some point an explanation of the evolution of history, but when did that become apparent (to me)? I can't now even remember when it occured to me in the perspective of the jolting "history" of it all (Vietnam). Maybe it wasn't even me who realized the significance of it, since about 37 of us heard him say it and although I keep in touch with my classmates somewhat I don't know when it became significant to us or me. Until your post I never realized (or had forgotten) that Reston meant no historical significance by his story, how could he, since in 1963 nothing historical had really happened?

I'm interested, like Pat, in Vietnam, since so many of us lived  through the brunt of it in our formative years. I did not have the personal lose that Pat seemed to have though.

I'm interested in Kennedy though, and frankly ten times more than any significant figure in my lifetime. I'm not sure why that is really. Whether it was him and his aura, the Greek tragedy of it all or the fact that he had such an impact in so many undefinable ways and then he was gone or in the way that he went!

I was thinking of saying more and then I thought I would be crazy to--the FBI might come after me! Sometimes I think of Golfclubatlas as my friends just sitting around but then I remember this is the Internet and can potntially go all over the world.

[Gib_Papazian]

Tom,
You were right on the second guess . . . . .

The only reason for the "if true" comment was that there are always three versions to every story. In this case:

#1. Reston's

#2. JFK's

#3. The truth.

Sometimes they are one and the same and sometimes they are not. If you had stated that you heard JFK yourself, well then there is absolutely no doubt. Sometimes us "journalists" have a tendency to be a trifle elastic with the truth to make a point or even just in trying to be entertaining.

But again, if that really is the absolute truth, then we all ought to be sickened by the senselessness of it all. Some of my earliest memories are of Walter Cronkite giving the Vietnam report on the news with those gruesome body counts they posted like scores in a football game.

No wonder so many people have become cynical about the government! We have lost the childlike trust we once had in the basic benevolence of authority - mostly because of betrayal by those who we were taught to look up to.

Now, after decades of the pendilum swinging wildly back and forth in a ridiculous game of push me - pull me between two groups of graft ridden criminals on both sides of the aisle, we are harvesting a generation of kids with little respect for anything or anyone and serve only themselves with no love of country or respect for tradition.

Patrick,
Before you open fire, remember that kids like your nephew are almost impossible to find today.

[TEPaul]

Gib:

This is all very fascinating to me! I'm going to read back through these posts as some of the contributors have some very detailed, poignant and interesting info.

Clearly you seemed sickened by the general flow of events, the apparent motivations if broken down into history's "small increments of fate" that may have had a guiding hand in those events whether or not they sparked them, the eventual carnage, macrocosmic or global alterations, psychic damage to whole generations etc.

But some of these events, like my little Reston vignette, are interesting to me simply to try to understand better how history itself is actually interpreted and viewed. It reminds me of the excellent history professor I once had who admonished all of us with his first remark in our first class to try to understand how to properly view history. To take yourself out of your time and take yourself back to an historical time, event and to put yourself in it's context--all of it--and then look at the distortions of time and history's prism! It's a most interesting process and practice if it can be done even partially!

Were Columbus and Jefferson the callous racists they are sometimes made out to be today? Probably not much or not so much if viewed in the context of their time. And in Jefferson's case when those claims are juxtaposed to the extraordinary concept he helped to conceive despite his own personal circumstances and possibly personal sensibilities to the contrary! Fascinating stuff to ponder if you can manage to strip through the "revisionisms" and the prisms of time!

Kennedy's brief era? A most fascinating time to me! David Halberstam's "The Best and the Brightest" was then and remains today a most interesting and accurate account of the ebbs and flows then and an "in that time" account. Somebody on here mentioned Fitzgerald's "Fire in the Lake", certainly always considered the most telling account of the Vietnam era!

Would Kennedy have pinpointed South Vietnam for the reasons I gave? Who knows? Clearly it was a time of swirling geopolitcal possiblities likely even "stage set" decades before, as CDisher suggested. Would Kennedy have done what he did in SV if he had even the slightest gleaning of where it all would lead? Surely not, in my opinion. Was he in fact the one who sent in the "military advisors" (an ominous euphemism and most tragic one in hindsight!)?

Something tells me that he may not have been the one who sent them in first. Something tells me it was the DDE administration in the end of his second term even despite the fact of his eerie warning in his farewell address to the Nation to "Beware the Military/Industrial complex". And this from a man who may have been the ultimate military/industrialist manager!

How did Kennedy really look at Vietnam in 1961? Probably just as I said; an opportunity to make a personal political tweak in the gigantic arena of the communist/capitalist chess game of his time. Did he drop a match on the chessboard of that global powder keg? Apparently so! Did he have any warning of what the consequences (of SV) may have been. History clearly tells us he did! From none other than De Gaulle and in no uncertain terms during the famous visit to Paris of Kennedy when he introduced himself as, "The man who had accompanied Jackie to Paris".

All interesting stuff here, and I hope someone will print it out so as not to lose it if Ran deletes it for lack of golf architectural content.

[Patrick_Mucci]

TEPaul,

Our paths must have crossed before.

I met Scotty Reston in Miami Beach at the Fountainbleu Hotel in the early sixties, could even have been late fifties.  
My dad was with a golfing friend of his who served as an Under-Secretary or similar position in the DOL.  He was friendly with Reston and we had dinner.  Though I was young, I seemed to sense a good deal of sarcasm or bitterness in some of his discussions, but, perhaps he was just having a bad day like everybody else.

As a young student, I didn't dare ask him a question, perhaps his reputation scared me.  In retrospect, I still wouldn't have asked him a question, but might have asked my dad or his friend to do so on my behalf.

[Craig Disher]

In Stanley Karnow's VN - A History, he points out that JFK after meeting with Kruschev told Reston "Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place." Karnow told TEPaul's story to give one reason why JFK, when he had the chance to reach a negotiated settlement in VN like he had in Laos, opted to back Diem's government. Is it really possible that the miserable years that followed were caused by such a minor and barely remembered event?  

It is generally assumed that JFK would have pulled back from the commitment of large numbers of troops when he realized that advisors weren't enough to keep the country under SVN government control. I'm not so sure.

Ed Baker - You mentioned that our ground troops were mostly volunteers (3 yr enlistees rather than 2 yr draftees). Are you referring to an average of all troops throughout the war? Certainly until the draft quotas began to increase dramatically in 66/67, that was the case but I believe that from 67/68 on, the majority of Army combat troops (the Marines accepted draftees but in very small numbers) were draftees. Can you direct me to where I could find those stats? I've had this opinion for so long that I may have fallen into the trap of "proof by rigorous assertion."

[TEPaul]

CDisher:

Interesting detail there from Karnow's book. I haven't read it. But you're certainly uncovering a chain of events, that if all true, could explain the way things evolved. Going back to that story of Reston and Kennedy (after JFK is embarassed by Nikita) seems a plausible spark or motivation, although seemingly small and inconsequential. But is it? Not really, not to me anyway. This is in fact the nail that fell out of the shoe of the King's horse scenario, which although seemingly funny or tragic sometimes is often the way the world works. That's why I really do believe in "very small increments of fate!"

And this is a good example, a very good example, of viewing history properly and from the correct perspective. This is a good example of looking at things from the beginning forward, as you should look at them, and not from now backwards. This way you are looking through the correct end of the telescope of history! We all tend to look at things from now backwards the vast majority of the time but unfortunately Kennedy (or any other actor on the world's stage) just didn't have that ability or luxury! Or did he? This is not mentioned to excuse him either, but.....!

When you look at it this way, what was Kennedy to do? These people were the players in the chess game of global geopolitics and when they move a pawn it happens to be a small country on the other side of the world sometimes. How else could it be? What do you think Kennedy should have done? Not be embarrassed by Nikita? Embarrasse him back? Should Nikita have embarrassed Kennedy in a setting like that? Shit happens, but in the case of people like Nikita and JFK an awful lot of people end up smelling it! To me anyway, JFK probably should have listened a bit more carefully to what De Gaulle, definitely a man who should know, had told him, and in no uncertain terms, about getting into VN!

Look at a chain of events (from beginning to now) more current but no less impactful. Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, Somalia and its intelligence service and the US and its Aministration,  foreign affairs and intelligence apparatus!

Absolutely nobody denies, at this point, that the Somalian Intelligence service had the information on Bin Laden's rapidly building terror network. They tried to share it with the US and our intelligence network. Ours would not take the information! They tried for years (yes years) to pass it to us, to meet with our officials, in the Administration, in the State Department, in the Intelligence community. Everyone refused to meet with them or even talk with them. We wouldn't even return their phone calls or attempted contacts!

Why would we do such a thing? They just had information for God's Sake--it was just an ever-expanding file! Because, apparently we couldn't stand them, we didn't trust them after what happened to us there. Clinton, apparently, was really pissed at them for the politcal embarrassment he probably figured they caused  him. And the State Department and our Intelligence community figured whatever they had was probably disinformation anyway!! Did you hear that? We thought a file on suspected terrorists was DISINFORMATION and we wouldn't take it! Does that really make any sense under any imaginable scenario? It didn't help at all that we had noone from intelligence on the ground over there. Why? Noone wanted to live in that crappy atmosphere!

This all began in 1995, I believe, and in the summer of 2001 the Somalian Intelligence info starts to FINALLY filter in to us (probably from some other source). I guess the spooks in Langley were reading through the file saying to themselves; "This doesn't really look like disinformation" when US airliners hit the Twin Towers and the Pentagon!  America  quickly forms a world-wide coalition and goes to war around the world against terrorism including Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network--and things start to unfold into what will become a most significant time in our history!

So let's go back to the nail in the shoe of the King's horse on this one. Who was it who took that first phone call or contact from the Somalian Intelligence Service, probably beginning a policy where we decided we didn't need to deal with these assholes because they might have embarrassed us once upon a time?

It's unbelievable sure, but crazy stuff like this happens, and it will happen again! In the past, now or in the future, it's just the times of our lives, I suppose!

[JakaB]

Since we must all die either a natural or unnatural death and we now have both classic and modern wars....I have been sitting here thinking how I would rank which war I would have liked to die in...be it classic or modern.  I tend to lean towards the classics even though I worry that many deaths were not as swift as catching a daisy cutter in Tora Bora.

1.  Civil...Union
2.  Civil...Confederate
3.  Christian Persecution....Roman Colleseum (Lions)
4.  WW2...Hiroshema ground zero
5.  Alamo
6.  WW1...Dogfight with Red Barron
7.  WW2...Tank fight with Rommel
8.  Abel
9.  Red Sea Collapse...Chariott Driver
10. Hanoi Hilton...MIA

[Ed_Baker]

CDisher:

A comprehensive resource for facts concerning the war can be found at www.vwip.org. there is a bibliography by Prof. Edwin Moise that is exceptional.