April 30th, 2005 is Vietnam’s celebrated end to their American War 30 years ago. Issues exists today in veterans in the aftermath of the Vietnam War and in wake of this Iraq War debacle. All war vets included. It’s time for a real gut check about those issues. “Attitude check!” Some may call this a therapy thread but I learned approx 9 years ago that writing is a very positive form of therapy. What I bottled up for decades now finds it’s way onto the paper/screen.

Issues about war will forever remain alive inside war veterans as it follows us quietly and forever. Veterans deals with those issues in their own different ways just as they survived war in their own ways. Veterans deal with many triggers that releases those haunts which sometimes robs us of our coping abilities. Issues are real… triggers are real… frustrations, rage and disappointments are real as well.

The Gulf / Iraq war has become an obvious trigger for many vets. Bush I and II regime actions has also become an extreme trigger. Here we have a chance to share those triggers, parallels and haunts that stirs again inside us over this Iraq / Bush mess. Let our ‘echoes’ from the past create awareness for the future. It’s attitude check in Echo Co!

Let’s start with what you feel during this 30th anniversary celebration by the Vietnamese. How does this lost American war effect you today? What exactly does that mean to you? Remember, our responses may be different just as our personalities are.


http://www.vnanet.vn/newsA.asp?LANGUAGE_ID...&NEWS_ID=147752

30-year-after-war call for friendly Viet Nam-US relations
04/20/2005

Ha Noi, April 20 (VNA) - The Viet Nam-US Society on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the end of the protracted war in Viet Nam, sent an open letter to call on Americans to join efforts in healing wounds of the past and develop friendly relations between the two countries.

The society wrote that 30 years ago, the war in Viet Nam ended, opening a new stage in Viet Nam-US relations. "Viet Nam today is no longer a land of war, but a country of growing prosperity. Our people's earnest desires are to live in peace, independence and freedom, to develop the country along the path of our own choice and to have friendly relations and beneficial cooperation with all countries."

It stressed: "In the spirit of shelving the past while not forgetting it, and looking forward to the future, we wish to contribute to building equal and mutually-beneficial cooperation with the US on a lasting and stable basis. In pursuit of their humanitarian tradition, the Vietnamese people have been willingly working with the American side to address the war legacy, including the POW/MIA issue. We expect that the American side will show good will to help resolve war consequences for the Vietnamese people."

The society also expressed gratitude to peace-and-justice loving Americans for their opposition to the American war in Viet Nam and praised efforts made by the American people, including veterans, to promote friendship and cooperation between the two countries

http://www.times-standard.com/Stories/0,14...2842733,00.html

Iraq, Vietnam veterans talk horrors of war

Friday, April 29, 2005

By Sara Watson Arthurs The Times-Standard

ARCATA -- Veterans and activists from multiple generations gathered Thursday at Humboldt State University to talk about the current war in Iraq, the war in Vietnam more than 30 years ago and anti-war activism then and now.

Camilo Mejia, an Iraq veteran recently released from military prison, gave a talk Thursday morning and was part of a panel discussion that afternoon. Mejia served as an infantry leader in Iraq in 2003, but refused a second deployment after witnessing civilian deaths. He was convicted in military court and sentenced to a year in prison.

Unlike in a traditional war fought between different groups of uniformed soldiers, American soldiers in Iraq are fighting against insurgents who often blend in with civilians, which leads to civilians being killed, Mejia said.

"The only thing that makes a difference between a combatant and a noncombatant is -- who has the weapon?" he said.

Mike Hastie, who served as a medic in Vietnam, told attendees how the war continues to haunt veterans.

"I've seen too many Vietnam veterans who've committed suicide, drunk and drugged themselves to death. I have to speak for those people," he said.

On display was Hastie's photo essay, "Lying is the Most Powerful Weapon in War." The photographs deal with themes of politics and war, including veterans memorials and a photograph of Vietnamese children labeled "The faces of Vietnam; the faces we never knew."

Tim Goodrich, co-founder of Iraq Veterans Against the War, said many veterans talk about the war with the blank stare that goes along with post-traumatic stress disorder. He said activism can drain energy, and different people have different comfort levels. But he urged students to speak up, however they feel appropriate, for what they believe in.

[Hastie said that by 1970, when he arrived in Vietnam, "everything was disintegrating." Heroin addiction was rampant among soldiers, and suicides, assaults and homicides went along with it, he said.

"I think by then we knew the war was a joke," he said. "I don't ever recall one incident where I had a conversation with another soldier about the merits of being in Vietnam. Never. ... We knew it was unraveling."

Hastie recalled another medic, clearly high on heroin, waking him up in the middle of one night to deal with another soldier who'd shot himself. He arrived to find that the soldier was still alive, though his blood and parts of his brain were getting on Hastie's uniform. Hastie and another medic took him to the evacuation center.

"This kid died right there," Hastie said.

The dead soldier had become a heroin addict because the drug was so prevalent, Hastie said. He was 19 years old.

Mejia said activists like Hastie and Brian Willson, another Vietnam veteran and panelist, have helped veterans of his generation speak out against the war.

"If it weren't because of people like them, people like Tim and I probably wouldn't be here," he said.

Thursday's events were part of a four-day teach-in at HSU.]

Perhaps fittingly for a war as controversial as that in Vietnam, the last iconic images from the bitter conflict show the chaos, fear and confusion as helicopters evacuate Americans and South Vietnamese from the rooftop of the U.S. Embassy and other locations in Saigon.

Four hours after the last evacuees were lifted to safety offshore, the South Vietnamese government announced its unconditional surrender to the Viet Cong. The long, costly war had ended.

That was 30 years ago tomorrow, but it is understandable that such an ignominious end to such a divisive war won't be marked with large-scale remembrances.

Less comprehensible, some educators say, is why the lessons of a war that had profound political, societal and cultural effects on America aren't being examined enough, if at all, in the nation's schools.

And, they say, that lack of knowledge among America's young about the sacrifices, successes and mistakes in Vietnam could make them vulnerable.

That's Steve Jackson's fear.

Jackson, a professor of political science at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, said students in his Introduction to American Politics course have little if any knowledge about the Vietnam War and its lessons. He finds that appalling, especially in light of the U.S.'s current involvement in Iraq.

"Oftentimes, in world history courses, high school teachers only get to World War II and then the school year's over," Jackson said. "Unfortunately, high school curriculums are taught in a fairly black-and-white manner, which is what school boards demand. They don't want want nuanced positions, they want right and wrong, and World War II is a great story of right and wrong.

"Vietnam is a much more complicated thing to teach, and high school teachers tend to shy away from it."

That's unfortunate, he said, because students "are losing potential relevance for today. It's the ability for critical analysis that's important ... [to see] that the U.S. can lose a war.

"In many ways, the Gulf War of '91 and the Kosovo intervention kind of restored that sense of World War II invulnerability," he said.

"There definitely needs to be questions. There are no super powers, and we're not omnipotent."

What Jackson has found in the courses he teaches is that young people who have little or no knowledge about Vietnam become fascinated by the conflict and all of its nuances.

That's the same reaction George Esper gets at West Virginia University, where the former Associated Press correspondent who covered the Vietnam War teaches a course in the History of Journalism.

A large segment of the course is coverage of all wars since World War I, but Esper said Vietnam by far provokes the most interest among students, who previously knew little about it.

He said students may choose any topic for an oral presentation and a research project, but most choose Vietnam.

"They're deeply interested in war coverage. The Vietnam War for them is something fresher. There's a huge interest in Vietnam if you lay it out for them. They're more interested in Vietnam than anything else," said Esper.

He was one of the last American journalists to leave the country, departing five weeks after the mass evacuation.

Esper augments his class with guest speakers such as his former war correspondent colleagues Peter Arnett, David Halberstam and Harold G. Moore, author of "We Were Soldiers Once and Young."

"What I teach is that the Vietnam War was the most open [for news media coverage] in world history, and if you had the energy, the stamina and the courage, you could go anywhere you wanted.

"What made us so successful in covering Vietnam was the access and the fact we were the first generation of reporters ... to hold the government accountable. There's been a big change and now it's gone in the opposite direction," said Esper.

Esper currently is in Vietnam for a reunion with other war correspondents. He's also there as a representative of WVU's journalism school in seeking to establish news media training programs in partnership with Vietnam.

While the United States and Vietnam continue to forge educational, economic and cultural ties, he said, the war "has left so many lingering pains and memories, more so than any other war ... that 30 years later it remains an ugly chapter in history and some people choose to forget it."

That, Esper said, is a mistake.

He won't get an argument about that from Ray McClain, Pittsburgh Public Schools' district program officer for citizenship, who said it's imperative students learn the lessons of Vietnam.

Juniors in the 20th century history courses are receiving the kind of analytical education about Vietnam and other milestones of the last 100 years advocated by Jackson and Esper.

"Vietnam is a tragic and sad event that we have to learn from," said McClain, an educator for 42 years. "We don't hide it or sweep it under the rug. We talk about successes and failures, so to speak. We try to learn lessons from Vietnam ... to show the scars and residue, the emotional and fiscal trade-offs.

"We try to get students into the heads of the people at the time, to see the perceptions people had then. It's one of the most important historical skills a student can have."

Moreover, McClain said, teachers take advantage of the resources of having Vietnam veterans come to class to provide oral histories as well as augmenting classes with veterans' diaries and other primary sources to "hook" students.

"You're talking about real people not that different from themselves," he said. "It's something you can do a good job with if you take the time to do it."

There are others taking the time, too. Tomorrow, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation will launch an interactive online journal-- http://www.VietnamViews.org -- to capture the personal experiences of soldiers, families, friends and others who were involved in and affected by the war.

And the Smithsonian National Museum of American History has installed a new permanent exhibition, "The Price of Freedom: Americans at War," which was touted at a seminar earlier this month at the National Council for History Education meeting at the Hilton Pittsburgh, Downtown, which was attended by 700 delegates from 44 states.

The Vietnam section fittingly has televisions from the era broadcasting the actual images and words that reported the conflict to a divided America.

The Vietnam exhibit also includes a Huey helicopter, the workhorse that rescued the wounded from the battlefield.

And the Huey was there at the end, 30 years ago, evacuating Americans from a city about to be overrun, from a war that shouldn't be forgotten.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05119/496477.stm

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - At one end of the National Mall, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is walking into the Capitol for a vote, with students on the steps instantly recognizing him and calling out his name. At the other end, in his 18th year of manning a POW-MIA booth, Chris Horstman sits in a wizened obscurity.

Between them lies the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the dark, brooding, "V"-shaped wall that begins with Jessie Calba on slab 70E and ends with John H. Anderson on slab 70W, commemorating the more than 58,000 war dead. The wall descends below street level and stands in contrast to the nearby soaring tribute to World War II service.

Thirty years after the war's end, Vietnam remains a catch-all metaphor for this nation's most troubled period in the last half-century, still evoking anger, ambiguity and resignation. While memories of the conflict recede, the war continues to affect the nation's politics, military strategy and culture.

Last week, in Kansas City, Mo., 54-year-old Vietnam veteran Michael Smith waited in line 90 minutes for the chance to spit on Jane Fonda. That is one side of the divide.

Earlier this month, the family of Sheldon Burnett of New Hampshire was able to bury his remains - found last year in Laos - at Arlington National Cemetery, after first learning of his disappearance 34 years ago. That is another.

Vietnam sparked huge protests on America's college campuses. Today's college students can hardly relate.

"I really don't have any connection with it," said 19-year-old University of Minnesota freshman Kelsey Murphy, from Lakeville, Minn. She also cannot recall whether her parents, who are in their 40s, ever discussed the war. And that is yet another facet of the argument.

And there are many others. The mere mention of the word "Vietnam" can still start an argument, and never perhaps as easily as in Washington. But those strong feelings seem to erode with time and distance. For most young Americans, in particular, Vietnam is just another grainy montage in the study of U.S. history, known to them more for the student protests and music the era spawned than for what happened on the battlefield.

McCain has lived that ambiguity and triumphed over it. A veteran celebrated for his heroic role as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, McCain said he had hoped the country had moved on. But when the issue surfaced so prominently in the 2004 presidential campaign - particularly with the attacks on Sen. John Kerry's service in the conflict - he realized that it had not.

"Unfortunately in the last presidential election we found that we have not moved on at all," McCain said. "Thirty years, and it still divides us."

"The legacy is that this is still the second-most divisive conflict in the history of our country - the Civil War being the first - and unfortunately, I don't think the wounds will heal completely until those of us who fought in that time pass on.

"I hate to sound so pessimistic."

Yet pessimism is one of the clearest and cruelest bequests of the Vietnam era to the United States. Some experts believe it started a cycle of civic disengagement, leading to a drop-off in voting and in faith in the institutions of government. The end of the military draft and the Watergate scandal, no doubt, fueled those same trends.

And while Vietnam can still expose raw disagreements, Americans largely share the view that it was a mistake to wage war in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

"The public looking back agrees that the war was a mistake, was not a just war," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, which has been surveying U.S. attitudes on war for more than 50 years. "But that doesn't mean there can't be all kinds of debates about who performed honorably or not. That is a different question."

Horstman, who was manning the POW-MIA booth, trained at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in North Chicago; he served in the Navy from 1968-70. In one moment, he says he has moved on from the conflict. In another, he says he never will.

"I'm sure some people who served have moved on, and there are those ... still looking to do right," Horstman said. "I'm not saying they don't care, but they've decided to get on with their lives.

"After the fall of Saigon, not only did the president of the United States, but also the government leaders and military officials lie about Americans left behind," he said, "and they didn't do anything."

So he presses on with his call for searches for those who he suspects might still be imprisoned in Laos or Cambodia.

"I feel if we could get the release of one live American, we have done our job because to us, the Vietnam War is not over," Horstman said.

As the Democratic presidential nominee, Kerry tried to make his Vietnam combat experience a central part of his personal campaign narrative, as a measure of his credentials to be commander in chief. But that set off instead a re-examination of his service record and his role protesting the war when he returned.

Though service in Vietnam helped to launch the political careers of Kerry, McCain and others, it by no means proved a gilded credential with voters.

Bill Clinton was elected in 1992 despite criticism that he avoided service in Vietnam. Then George W. Bush, who secured a spot in the Texas Air National Guard that almost certainly assured he would not go to Vietnam, defeated Al Gore, who did serve, and Kerry.

Richard Armitage, who recently resigned as deputy secretary of state, served three tours in Vietnam and a fourth during the war aboard a Navy ship. He said the war's influence on American politics and life is ongoing.

"Just ask John Kerry," he said. "It's a gift that keeps on giving."

Its echoes are still felt at the Pentagon. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, who served in combat in Vietnam and ascended the military ranks to become chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, often argued that the United States had to be willing to use overwhelming force before entering an armed conflict and it had to have a clear exit strategy after achieving battlefield victory.

That policy was clearly employed during the 1991 Persian Gulf War and the major combat phase of the Iraq war, but critics of the Bush administration question whether officials properly crafted an exit strategy.

Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., who served in Vietnam in 1969 along with his brother, Tom, believes, unlike McCain, that most soldiers "have put it behind us. And we should."

The 2004 campaign, he said, was "more about one Vietnam veteran than it was about the war."

Which is not to say there isn't also a powerful legacy to the conflict, at least for Hagel's Baby Boom generation.

"One of the primary lessons we learned is that leaders always must tell the truth to the people and you can never sustain a war policy when you lie to the people," he said.

"I don't blame anything particularly on Vietnam or say it was the catalyst, but it was the defining dynamic of a generation and we are still seeing the effects of that, the divisiveness of that," Hagel said.

But only in increasingly isolated settings.

Beyond Washington, memories of Vietnam are kept alive largely by war memorials and POW-MIA groups.

On college campuses today, Vietnam is seen through a more general lens of war, largely the stuff of academia and movies.

At the University of Minnesota, for instance, a black MIA/POW flag flies from the rooftop pole of the 109-year-old stone armory building, a lone and lonely symbol.

The war itself - if it is recalled at all - resurfaces in unusual ways. David Gutman, a 22-year-old senior and history major from Omaha, said the legacy of Vietnam was "the interesting counterculture and the music of the `60s and `70s."

To Bob Herman, 68, a professor of genetics at the University of Minnesota, the legacy of Vietnam has been mostly forgotten.

"For me, it's what a big mistake the whole thing was, and I don't think we've learned a thing. Now, here we are in Iraq," Herman said.

http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/n...cs/11511810.htm

By John Jennings
MANAGING EDITOR
Friday, April 29, 2005


BLAIRSVILLE -- Al Hogue remembers the date well: "June 24, 1968." That was the day he was drafted into the service of Uncle Sam and into what would become a year caught up in the nightmare that was the Vietnam War.
Hogue was both a student and married, two attributes that normally kept a man out of the draft in those days, but it didn't work for him.

"I was in my second year at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester, N.Y.," Hogue explained. "I was married, and my wife was working to put me through school, but she got sick and couldn't work, so I was working two jobs to support us and go to school.

"I dropped down to nine credits, below the 12 credit minimum, and lost my 2-S (student) deferment." Next thing he knew Hogue was at the Federal Building in Pittsburgh being sworn into the Army.

Though they didn't know each other at the time, Herb Gleditsch of Indiana was "25 years old, college educated and very married" when he was drafted into the Army two months later, in August 1968. (Drafting married men indicated how wide a net the Army was casting in search of replacement troops.)

Seven months later, after basic training, advanced training and a stop at Fort Campbell, Ky., Gleditsch was Vietnam-bound.

"In late March 1969 I was sitting on a bench in Hess' Restaurant Bus Depot (in Indiana) waiting for a trip to Pittsburgh Airport," he recalls. "I chose to say goodbye to my wife at her mother's house on 7th Street in Indiana, and walk up to Hess' alone to wait for the bus."

Gleditsch spent the next several days on planes until he arrived at night at Ton Son Nhut airport near Saigon. He knew at once that he wasn't in Pennsylvania any more. "As I stepped off the plane, the heat and humidity were overpowering. Some said it was like being hit by a two by four."

Vietnam was truly a different world, he remembers. "The sights, sound and smells were peculiar to the place and unforgettable. There were two types of weather, very hot and dry or very hot and wet." (Robin Williams had a similar, very impolite line in the movie "Good Morning Vietnam.")

Irv Lindsey of Blairsville already knew how wet Vietnam could be--he served in country in 1965-66, in primitive conditions that he associates with mud, monsoons and disease.

However, one of Lindsey's most vivid memories is the long, long cruise from Charleston, S.C., through the Panama Canal, a stop in Long Beach, Calif. and on to the shores of Vietnam.

"There really was nothing to do all day but read and count the flying fishes," Lindsey recalled. "Then at supper we counted the sharks following us (as food was pitched over the side.) My dog wouldn't eat the garbage we were served. It was beyond garbage."

Lindsey, once ashore in Vietnam, served as the Radar O'Reilly, the company clerk, of his outfit, part of the First Air Cavalry Division, and his job, like Radar of "MASH" fame, had everything to do with improvisation.

"In the morning I would fill out the company report and the sick call, and then in the afternoon you would do whatever you could to help out," he said.

Conditions were well past miserable at Lindsey's base, early in the American buildup. "We lived in the old Army canvas tents," he said. "We got our chow outdoors. There was no place to sit down and eat it."

But the misery had its silver lining aspects. "The way I look at it, they took you over as a boy and brought you back as a man."

He was very much a kid--17--when he enlisted out of Altoona. "I guess a bunch of us just decided to sign up for the Army and see what it was like," he said.

"You knew you were going to be drafted anyway," Lindsey added, "and I had my obligation over when I was 20 years old. But I lost that part of my life where the kids stayed around and could do things, and I was over there stuck knee-deep in mud."

Mud dominates Lindsey's memories of being in country. "Instead of having winter over there, they have the monsoon season, three months of nothing but rain. Everything was bogged down, you had malaria, disease."

He notes, both proudly and ruefully, that he was in Vietnam during the time the First Air Cavalry fought the battle depicted in the movie "We Were Soldiers." He assisted with the logistics that supported the battle.

None of the three veterans reported having received much time off during their time in Vietnam.

Hogue was in the field for almost 11 of his 12 months. He saw only three days of R&R in his entire tour, and spent a couple weeks at NCO (non-commissioned officer) school, where he earned his sergeant's stripes.

"We weren't in combat all that time," he said. "We would stand down sometimes, which means we would get a break in camp. We would go to an LZ (landing zone) or a fire base where the artillery support would be. We would provide security for them, but we wouldn't be actually fighting unless the Viet Cong probed the perimeter.

"We also provided convoy support for convoys coming from the coast to Pleiku...I was in II Corps, part of the Fourth Division, in the central Highlands. We provided security for engineers working on roads, helicopters landing, bridges...We hired native kids to put sand in sandbags."

As a reconaissance unit, "our officers felt that we should be out on reconaissance...We spent 80 percent of our time on the tracks (personnel carriers.) Twenty percent of our time was spent on foot, as grunts."

Hogue saw most of his encounters with the enemy as small skirmishes and ambushes. The American vehicles, especially personnel carriers, were especially vulnerable to rockets. "They had a heat round, they would explode, penetrate inside and explode inside, with shrapnel flying around including shrapnel from the vehicle."

He also related how his unit was involved in a "friendly fire" incident when they were shelled by 105 mm. howitzers. "I'm breathing in dirt and dust, screaming on the radio, Stop!," Hogue recalled. "That kind of stuff is hard to forget."

Gleditsch's duty was similar to Hogue's. He served with the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, principally at Blackhorse Base Camp situated just east of Saigon, and at Quan Loi, located northwest of the capital on the Cambodian border.

"Our mission was to guard the approaches to Saigon, interdict Ho Chi Minh Trail traffic (the main supply route from North Vietnam) and escort military convoys," he said.

"We completed all our missions and lost no battles," Gleditsch said with the air of someone who doesn't think his unit accomplished very much, either.

Most of what he remembers deals with "my fellow soldiers and what my thoughts were with regard to them and my own predicament," he noted. "I remember being physically and mentally exhausted all the time with no respite from the sound of artillery and the ever-present danger of incoming mortar rounds and rockets.

"Convoy escorts meant mined roads and ambushes." He didn't feel close to his fellow soldiers, perhaps because he was older than most of them. "My best friend was a dog. Most men were 18 to 25, and the average age of those who were killed was 19."

Gleditsch cites one of the most popular books about the Vietnam combat experience, Philip Caputo's "A Rumor of War," to describe what the Vietnam veteran's homecoming was like. "We came home with baggage both mental and physical which our families had a hard time understanding."

He said, like Caputo notes in his book, "I heard the sound of artillery in the summer thunder, I looked for trip wires during walks in White's Woods, and saw the monsoons in every summer downpour."

Hogue remembers the pande-monium when his unit would be ambushed. "It always happened so fast. All of a sudden a mine went off, everybody's wondering 'What's going on,' and suddenly you're taking small arms fire.

"We were fighting both regular North Vietnamese soldiers and the Viet Cong," said Hogue. "They were local people who melted into the woodwork during the day and at night they would come out and attack us.

"What we would do is expend all kinds of material and energy and get men hurt taking an objective, providing support for that objective, in our case providing convoys, getting involved in skirmishes, taking a particular hill or area of operation.

"Then two weeks later we would disband and move on, letting the enemy move in again. And a lot of those areas had underground bunkers and underground caches of material that we never found. We never had time to look, always on the move.

"It would frustrate us because we would be back in the same area in a couple months, saying 'This area looks familiar' or 'I remember those coordinates on the map.' "

There was a strong sense of isolation from the rest of the world, even from the rest of the miliary. Individual soldiers focused on their own survival and the time remaining until they rotated out of the country.

"When man walked on the moon (July 1969), I didn't know about it until two weeks later," Hogue said. "It also frustrated us that we weren't supported by the American public. That got back to me through my family and friends."

Lindsey said mail was extremely sporadic; "you might go a couple months without hearing any-thing...You missed your family, of course, but you missed the comforts of home--like electricity. You spent your time in a bunker, where you were safe."

He said it was hard, as a kid, to adjust to the loss of things kids take for granted. "Like going for a year without a glass of milk or a doughnut. Like going a year without driving. Those things are tough to take."

He remembers with a sardonic laugh when the word spread that a "girlie" movie was about to be screened that night for the troops. "You know what that girlie movie turned out to be? Annette Funicello and 'Beach Blanket Bingo.' "

Americans were mystified by the culture--"They were 500 years behind us"--and especially by the attitude of the Vietnamese. Lindsey said the natives were quite up front about it: "They said 'We like you today, but we're going to kill you tonight.' "

By contrast, Hogue made friends with the Montagnards, the equivalent of American Indians, Vietnam's native people, who lived in the central highlands. They were fierce fighters and allies of the Americans, and Hogue fears that they are gradually being wiped out by the Communist government.

Hogue said soldiers supported each other, but didn't get close, either, partially because the Army's policy was to replace unit members one at a time. "Nobody in my unit was from this area except one man that I went through basic training with."

Hogue noted that he didn't join the Blairsville VFW until 2002, because "I didn't want to rehash all that stuff again. I was afraid it would end up as drinking buddy time, bragging about this and that, and I didn't need to go through all that."

Many Vietnam veterans remain unwilling to this day to talk about their experiences in that war. However, Hogue found that his grandchildren wanted to know what it was like, and, in studying post-traumatic stress, that it was healthy to share with other veterans.

Hogue makes a point of marching in parades on holidays, and serving on honor guards when a war veteran passes away. "There's no other way for society to come together to say thank you to these guys for what they've done."

Hogue said he had considerable difficulty adjusting to civilian life after leaving the Army. "The first three months I was home were really bad. I was thinking I was forgetting something, everywhere I'd go. Finally I realized I didn't have my weapon."

He said his friends and neighbors gave him a good sendoff when he entered the Army, but when he came back--nothing. "It's the same thing now. Do we know there's a war going on in Iraq? The general public still doesn't know what happens in a war and the sacrifices that are made."

One lingering effect of the Vietnam War for Hogue: he was tested for exposure to Agent Orange--the results were inconclusive--after he and his wife lost a baby.

He drew unemployment for awhile, including eight of nine weeks of extended benefits, until he landed a job with the state of Pennsylvania. He supervised the job call center office in Indiana for a number of years.

Hogue saw combat of a different kind in 1977 when he assisted victims of the Johnstown flood. "We were there from July until Sept. 11 of that year. We took care of people who were flooded...They set up the morgue in the basement of the Catholic church there."

Why did America lose this war? Bottom line for Hogue was that the enemy was willing to outlast the American will to fight. "They were hard, tough and resolved," he said. "They fought a war of attrition, and our society wasn't like that. They knew that if they could outlast us, they would win."

Lindsey recalls, with a hint of a shudder, how the enemy just kept coming in the face of the overwhelmingly superior Amer-ican firepower. "One night they attacked us, and we just encircled them with helicopters and destroyed them with rockets. I think it cost $3 million per person to kill them.

"They didn't have good uniforms, they didn't have boots, they didn't have steel pots...And I think this was where our morale started to wear down later. It was like 'Are we in this to win it, or are we doing this to please somebody?"

"It was guerilla warfare, not traditional frontline fighting. In a sense it was a reversal of our American Revolution," Hogue pointed out. "We were the British and they were the Americans hiding behind trees with their squirrel guns. "

As for the stress of daily life on the line, "You had to cope. We weren't fighting all the time, but there was always that stress, that sense of being in danger. It was only through the grace of God that I made it through okay," he recalls. "I was never wounded. I was injured--an ammo can fell and hurt my leg."

But there were mental wounds to cope with, even today, Hogue admits. When he hears about an ambush in Iraq, the memories come flooding back. "There are times when a loud noise will make me dive under a desk. That'll probably never go away. But with time, it's really healed."

One agreement these veterans share is that they would do it again. Lindsey came through the Vietnam experience with his patriotism stronger than before he went in. "Say all you want to about this country," he said, 'but it's still the greatest country on earth." Whenever Blairsville Cemetery puts up its display of American flags honoring veterans, he makes it a point to help put up the hundreds of flags.

Gleditsch is now the president of the Indiana County Historical and Genealogical Society. As such, he spearheaded an effort to gather photos of Indiana County Vietnam veterans and document their time in country.

It was 35 years ago this month that Gleditsch came back from Vietnam, but he never forgot the plane ride home, where his seat mate suggested that Vietnam would be "the war to end all wars." He reasoned that people had seen the fighting unfold on TV, and would never let it happen again.

"I thought so too," Gleditsch recalls. "It was April 1970 and anything seemed possible. I did not return to cheering crowds, parades or the pealing of the bells on Church Street. I, and a million like me, had survived, and that was our victory."

http://pittsburghlive.com/x/tribune-review...y/s_329457.html

Saturday's 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon has special meaning for the U.S. military and for the country's Vietnam veterans.

On April 30, 1975 Tom Corey had already been home from Vietnam for seven years - a wounded veteran of the war, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair. Today, Mr. Corey is the president of the organization Vietnam Veterans of America. He works closely with officials at the Department of Defense on a variety of issues, including efforts to ensure that what he sees as the mistakes of Vietnam are not repeated.

"It's a word that I think that DOD and others, when you say Vietnam, it reminds them of, 'let's not make that same mistake again,’" he said.

On April 30, 1975, Mark Clodfelter was a cadet at the U.S. Air Force Academy. By the time he graduated, the war was over. But he felt its impact during his more than 20-year military career. He became a military historian, and he says the specter of Vietnam was particularly evident when the United States took a very different approach in its next major conflict, the Gulf War of 1991.

"Vietnam was constantly in the background, and the lack of support that had been given to the troops and the families, and things of that nature, was paramount I think with the administration there in 1991,” he explained. “George Bush Sr. makes the statement that we're not going to go to war with one hand tied behind our back the way we did in Vietnam. And the military commanders there, were given a great deal of latitude in terms of how to run the war, with a great amount of support from the Bush I administration. And I think those types of trends have continued."

But Professor Clodfelter, who now teaches as a civilian at the National Defense University here in Washington, says the first President Bush was wrong about one thing.

"In the aftermath of the conflict, you've got George Bush Sr. saying we kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all,” recalled Mr. Clodfelter. “I personally don't believe that, because I believe the Vietnam Syndrome means something dramatically different to every individual. Once you start saying 'Vietnam shows that' or 'Vietnam proves that', you're on very shaky soil."

Still, Americans inside and outside the military take their own lessons from the Vietnam era. Officials of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff declined to be interviewed for this report, but analyst Frank Gafney at the Center for Security Policy says the now all-volunteer U.S. military is much more capable than the conscription-based U.S. military of the 1960s and 1970s was. He says Americans have learned not to believe their enemies' propaganda, as he says they did during the Vietnam War. And Mr. Gafney believes that even in the midst of controversy over the war in Iraq, Americans have also learned the importance of sticking with things they start, even if the road is difficult.

"I think the United States has a learned painful lesson from Vietnam, I certainly hope it has, and that is we bail out, or cut and run, if you will, on people at our peril. As hard as some things appear to be at a given moment, the consequences of doing that particularly over time can be even worse, certainly for the people directly involved, but ultimately I think perhaps for us, as well," said Mr. Gafney.

For Tom Corey of the Vietnam Veterans of America, there is another lesson, too. "When we came home, nobody wanted to be part of it. And I think that had a severe effect on these guys, too. Nobody wanted to recognize them for what they had done for their country, what their country had asked them to do. [At] Vietnam Veterans [of America], our motto is 'Never again will one generation of veterans abandon another,'" he added.

Mr. Corey says the word 'Vietnam' has a strong meaning for most Americans, even those too young to remember the war. "I don't think it will ever be forgotten,” he stated. “I think the word 'Vietnam' will stay out there. It's a word that means something to people today. It's not negative. We don't hear it negative anymore. It's something that people say, 'thank you.'"

Mr. Corey says it is a continuing effort to make sure that the lessons of Vietnam are applied, and that veterans of all the wars are properly cared for. But he says he has some allies among the top U.S. military officers of today, some of whom were young soldiers like him in Vietnam.

PFC Russel Widdifield vietnam 1969 Age- 19

http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-04-29-voa62.cfm

On April 30, the United States commemorates the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. As we look back at Vietnam, we must ask ourselves, what have we learned? How do we bring those lessons into current foreign policy making and state practice? On April 29, 2005, the Center for American Progress conducted an Interview with Stanley Karnow, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Vietnam: A History, to answer some of these questions.

What are the most important lessons this country learned from Vietnam?

There are many lessons from Vietnam. The first is: don't get involved in a situation in a place where you don't know anything about the people or the country. We had no specialists on Vietnam; we knew nothing about them; and we didn't learn anything from the French. We also got involved without an exit strategy, and we were in there without any clear cut support from the American public. Most Americans didn't even know where Vietnam was on a map. We made the mistake of propping up a weak, unpopular government in South Vietnam, and later we were complicit in overthrowing the government because we finally realized they were incompetent.

Nearly 60,000 Americans ended up dying. Twenty-five years after the war, the war's chief architect, Robert McNamara, who served under both Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, looked back at the war and said that it was all "terribly wrong."

Vietnam was one of the most horrible chapters in American history. We didn't get involved in Vietnam because of oil or markets or raw materials. We didn't get involved in Vietnam for any practical reasons. It was hubris and pride. We stumbled in based on misinformation. We thought that the Vietnamese communists were part of an international communist conspiracy. We thought Ho Chi Minh was a pawn of China and Russia. One looks back, and it is a terrible tragedy.

Do you see any similarities between Vietnam and what we are seeing in Iraq?

It is dangerous to take one situation and overlay it on another. They are very different situations. Iraq is much more complicated than Vietnam. Vietnam was a civil war between anti-communist and communist factions. The Vietnamese agreed, though, that there should be one Vietnam. It's just they had different approaches. Vietnam was simple and forthright compared to Iraq; Iraq has different ethnic and religious factions.

We got involved in Vietnam very gradually. It started as a low-wage guerilla war and then escalated into a conventional war. Iraq started as a conventional war and became a guerilla war. The guerilla war in Vietnam was mostly in the countryside, while the guerilla war in Iraq is urban warfare. This is much more difficult. The insurgents in Iraq have much more sophisticated weaponry than the Vietnamese communists had. The Iraqi insurgents can shoot down helicopters – they make Vietnam look like child's play.

I personally think that we are involved today in an international war, and Iraq is not the most important part of it. The most important threat we are facing today is international terrorism, extending from Asia to Africa and capable of carrying out attacks on the United States. Vietnam was nowhere close to that. Vietnamese communists had no intention of going outside of their borders; they wanted to throw out foreigners. Vietnam was very much a local situation, and Iraq is a sideshow to the really big problem of fighting against international terrorism.

I am not very optimistic today. Our intelligence is very poor. Years have gone by, and we haven't captured Osama bin Laden and there are probably dozens of Osama bin Ladens.

Iraq may evoke Vietnam, but it is very dangerous to compare. Similarities exist in that Iraq may become the quagmire that Vietnam was called. But there are also positive things that have happened in Iraq. We got rid of Saddam Hussein, and Iraqis had an election and have a somewhat representative government. However, this was not the Bush administration's purpose. I think it was a misguided adventure from the beginning. I think Bush went into Iraq for an evangelical purpose.

Do you see major differences between the fighting forces of today and those in Vietnam, especially in terms of the demographic makeup of the armed forces?

Under the draft in Vietnam, there were exemptions for college students, which meant that that the "elite classes" largely did not serve in Vietnam. By and large, the Vietnam War was fought by professional forces, and by people who couldn't escape the draft. People who were not in college and a large contingent of black soldiers ended up fighting. The Reserves and National Guard were never called up in Vietnam.

In Iraq, the National Guard and Reserves are fighting in Iraq. The fighting forces in Iraq are more representative of the general U.S. population than was the case in Vietnam. In Vietnam, there should have been no exemptions. If there were no exemptions, more Americans would have been more aware of what was happening in Vietnam. Middle-class Americans did not protest. They were not aware. Protests were coming from those people who did not have to serve.

Did that disconnect between those who fought and those who protested create more anger against U.S. troops?

Yes, the protesters blamed the soldiers, calling them "baby killers" and "losers." John Kerry is a rare case. He had the audacity and courage to fight in the war and to be wounded in the war and to come back to protest against it. At least he had the credibility. But Jane Fonda's type of protest turned more people off than it influenced. The anti-war movement had much less influence than people think. President Nixon won by a landslide in 1972 – winning every state except Massachusetts. The anti-war movement did not influence the larger population. It existed in campuses and not in communities.

Do you see similarities in the domestic challenges for Presidents Johnson and Bush – the fact that they are trying to maintain U.S. commitment to a war that the American public is increasingly doubting?

The American public is turning off in Iraq just as they did in Vietnam. By the mid-'60s, most Americans thought it was a mistake, and then the question was how to get out of it. But many were concerned about our reputation, and we found ourselves locked in a situation where we were up against an enemy that would take unlimited losses.

If Americans did not support the war by the mid-1960s, why were they not supportive of the anti-war movement?

When Nixon appeared in the 1968 primary, his campaign slogan was that he was going to give Americans peace with honor. Americans wanted peace, but an honorable peace. The anti-war movement did not offer an honorable peace. They were running around wearing Viet Cong uniforms and burning flags. Most Americans are and were patriotic and realized that it was a bad situation. I was covering George McGovern's presidential race, and he kept saying that we had to get out of Vietnam. But he did not offer alternatives, and Americans were still inculcated with the idea that communism was just going to take over if we left.

What do you think Americans should remember in commemorating the Vietnam War?

Vietnam taught us that we can't do everything everywhere. Americans before Vietnam thought we were a generation of John Waynes – that we could swagger into a saloon and knock off the bad guys. It can't be that way. We are not omnipotent. In the wake of the Vietnam War, Colin Powell and Casper Weinberger agreed that war had to be absolutely the last resort when every other option is lost. Bush made a grievous error in getting this country into Iraq.



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Other Commentary on the Vietnam War:

Interview of Robert McNamara: "'And if we can't persuade other nations with comparable values and comparable interests of the merit of our course, we should reconsider the course, and very likely change it. And if we'd followed the rule, we wouldn't have been in Vietnam, because there wasn't one single major ally, not France or Britain or Germany or Japan, that agreed with our course or stood beside us there. And we wouldn't be in Iraq.'…The United States is today the strongest power in the world, politically, economically and militarily, and I think it will continue to be so for decades ahead, if not for the whole century,' he told me. 'But I do not believe, with one qualification, that it should ever, ever use that power unilaterally – the one qualification being the unlikely event we had to use it to defend the continental U.S., Alaska or Hawaii.'"

-- Doug Saunders, "It's Just Wrong What We're Doing," Globe & Mail (Canada), January 25, 2004

"I wonder: Are the insurgents in Iraq students of history? Have they studied Ho Chi Minh's playbook? Are they familiar with Gen. Vo Nguyen Giap's dream of cutting the country in two?...Are they aware that protracted war goes against the grain of the American experience? Do they understand that the president's encouraging words are effective, but only up to a point, given battlefield reversals and disappointment?"

-- Charles A. Krohn, "In Iraq, Echoes of Another Offensive," The Washington Post, December 29, 2004



"Time is the condition to be won to defeat the enemy,"wrote Ho Chi Minh, the man whose insurgency drove U.S. forces from Vietnam 30 years ago. 'To protract the war is the key to victory,' agreed his revolutionary colleague Dang Xuan Khu. 'We shall weary and discourage them in such a way that, strong as they are, they will become weak and meet defeat.'

-- David Ignatius, "Time Is a Weapon," The Washington Post, January 11, 2005

"The truth is that atrocities were committed in Vietnam. The worst and most horrendous atrocity was officially sanctioned. The American command coldbloodedly set about to deprive the Communists of the recruits and other assistance the peasantry could provide by emptying the countryside. Peasant hamlets in Communist-dominated areas were deliberately and relentlessly bombed and shelled. Free Fire Zones – anything that moved, human or animal, could be killed – were redlined on military maps.… It created an atmosphere that fostered the massacre at My Lai hamlet on March 16, 1968, when 347 Vietnamese old men, women, boys, girls and babies were butchered.… There is a way to honestly confront the reality of Vietnam and still honor the men who fought there. One must learn to distinguish between the war and the warrior.…"

-- Neil Sheehan, "A War Without End," The New York Times, August 27, 2004,



"There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor – both black and white – through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such...."

-- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence,"

Speech delivered April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.

"We and our allies can only help to provide a shield behind which the people of South Vietnam can survive and can grow and develop. On their efforts – on their determinations and resourcefulness – the outcome will ultimately depend.… And there may come a time when South Vietnamese – on both sides – are able to work out a way to settle their own differences by free political choice rather than by war…. We have no intention of widening this war. But the U.S. will never accept a fake solution to this long and arduous struggle and call it peace...."

-- Lyndon B. Johnson, "Renunciation Speech," delivered March 31, 1968

For more information on the Vietnam War, please see the following:

The movie, the Fog of War, offers interesting insights into the Vietnam War. Its website can be found at: http://www.sonyclassics.com/fogofwar/indexFlash.html

Please note the website of the Vietnam Veterans of America at: http://www.vva.org/whatsnew/30Anniversary/index.htm

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.as...RJ8OVF&b=619113

Some mighty fine posts Bammo.... hits home deeply.

Bro, you remember the mixed feelings back in '75 when they officially ended the war? I was both glad and pissed. By the time we came home, we knew how f**ked up it was over there.... and like many, we just wanted the hell out of there and home in one piece if possible. Then, there was that strong ripping apart anger over how we went through all of that, deaths, injuries and the costs.... and we were declared loosers and gave the country back to the 'enemy'. It was all for NOTHING! Of course, all the turth about that lie war hadn't been disclosed yet, but what a waste it all was. I felt it then in '75 and today in '05.

Do you still carry that same anger about all of this as I do? Doesn't the Gulf and Iraq wars both feed into what we are dealing with now? Isn't BushCo same same as the Nixon rats too which feeds our hatred over this corruption today?

He_l yeah Bro', I remember the mixed feelings back in 75!!

Had about the same feeling---Americans like winners! LOL What can I say--we lost plain and simple!

Me bitter---LOL---Does a cow give milk? He_l yeah I am bitter at this Goverment lies and the sheople who shafted us! Bitter to the max!---LOL

Speaking about 75 Bro' and the end of Vietnam for Uncle Sammy - where the he_l are all these so called "professional" soldiers --and their thoughts on this subject.

I thought this here thread would be a "LIFER" magnet.

War Stories --BS--what should of happened--politics--hippies- Jane Fonda --John Kerry--VVAW etc. Where are the Lifers?

I am formally calling out Marine, Flydangler, semperFidelis, Joe e and the rest of the VFW stool sittin' Chat Room --"Reporting Aboard" to post their professional oppinions on this subject.

You got it guys--Bammo is challenging the Lifers to post here if you own some!

Get off your stool, quit your BS'N and post what you think.

We will respect your posts like good low rankers! LOL

So pull the anchor "METHINKS" and get your "CAREER MILITARY LIFE" oppinions and posts in here.

What the he_l you got to hide?

Seriously, your looking like Boy Scouts, right Flydangler!

Get on in here and show some Lifer class and keep the CL in there!

You got to have something to say about this anniversary!

I seen where one of you killed NVA with a Crossbow--LOL -

So lets here the BS you can post!

Show us what you got Bro's!
Let it fly or maybe you all do have something to hide!!! Is that it??? LOL

Your not wanna bee Rambo's are you? Then Prove it and post!

I, Bammo am personally calling you all on to post!

Show me what you claim to have, testicle fortitude! LOL

Go for it Bro's--your turn for your Brass to shine and tell all about your trinketts on your chests! Do it!!!!

All I remember is that Nixon's war, at the time I was in it, was a total waste! Messed so many lives and livelihoods. Hell I was seeing dudes coming back from that piece of crap all pissed off and hating everything about it. The war was already a lost cause and yet it had over 4 more years to run and we stood to get drafted into that worthless lie war still. Damn straight Bammo.. tons of mixed feelings still about it!! It sure the hell messed my plans up for what I wanted in life. For what?

You know... good point bringing up the lifer aspect of it. At the time that ('nam) war was a lost cause, the lifers seemed to still enjoy it. It was like some sort of happy club to them. I guess maybe it was because they got special privilages wherever they went. They always had more than the enlisted had. I know they did everywhere I was at. We had to take more orders... do more... and still have much less. They jollied it up in their little private beer hootches... while we sucked on warm rusty beer cans (if lucky) and sweated among the skeeters while they ate our azzes off. Think about it... the privilaged back home got special favors and lifers who went to 'nam got their special privilages too. Seems to me there was little respect for the average soldier huh? We were just numbers... body counts that absorbed whatever we could just so the lifers could yak it up with all their beer drinkin' and back slappin' hoohahs. Those braggin' rights.

After I climbed off the freedom bird, I left it all behind me. The lifers can have it.... I didn't want it. Neither did 99% of the guys who came back on the same bird too.

I see a parallel possibly happening with all of this today with how Iraq was started and how lifers are all happy playing soldier in this Iraq mess. I'm not sure why, but being this is all set up by this corrupt BushCo regime... I'm just as mad now as I was back then. This is one hell of a trigger for me right now. Govt corruption and this Iraq mess.... same same lifer crap going down.

I need to look deeper into this Bro.

By ROBERT F. WILLSON JR.

Special to The Star - Posted on Sun, May. 01, 2005


An interesting paradigm shift seems to have taken place in naming groups who form to fight it out with other groups.

“Centurions” or “legionaries” were the titles assigned to those who led the charge against “barbarians” in Roman times. In the days when wars were declared by one country against another (as opposed to “wars” on terror, hunger etc.), those who fought were called “soldiers.” There were variations: “our brave fighting men,” or “doughboys” and “GIs.” But the word “soldier” was understood to mean one who was trained to do battle in an army.

In the post-Vietnam era, newfangled labels have gained popularity, in part because of localized rather than global conflicts.

“Guerrillas,” from the Spanish for “little war,” is a term that has gained currency since so many modern skirmishes involve independent rather than state units, especially in Central or South American countries. Political perspective comes into play here because one man's “guerrilla” is another man's “freedom fighter.” When Castro's guerrilleros came to power in Cuba, they were suddenly transformed into soldados.

The events of 9/11 have given greater weight to the word “terrorist,” a fighter who doesn't play by the rules and whose plots typically result in his or her violent death. “To tremble” is the translation of the word's Greek root, a reaction that is apposite because terrorists inflict suffering indiscriminately on soldiers and civilians alike. They cause society to tremble at their car bombs. Yet fundamentalist leaders who condone terrorism describe their fanatic fighters as “martyrs” waging holy wars that make them worthy of glorious afterlives for their sacrifices.

Now in Iraq those who have taken up arms against coalition forces are styled “insurgents,” and the struggle carries the title of “insurgency.” From the Latin for “rising up,” the word is apt because the rebels represent several groups united against an occupying army that saw itself as “liberator.” The irony is all too apparent: Our revolutionary forefathers were insurgents who challenged the rule of British occupiers.

A similar thing has occurred in naming a certain battlefield condition suffered by soldiers, as noted by comedian George Carlin in When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

In World War I, men whose nervous systems shut down were said to be suffering from shell shock. During World War II it became battle fatigue, and in Korea the correct term was “operational exhaustion,” which to Carlin sounds “like something that might happen to your car.”

Finally, in the Vietnam War, returning soldiers were diagnosed as having post-traumatic stress disorder. For Carlin these changes reflect a deplorable euphemizing tendency.


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Heres a good one Bro' -



It’s not the insurgency that’s killing American soldiers. It’s the self-serving strategy to control 12% of the world’s remaining petroleum and to project American military power throughout the region. This is the plan that has put American servicemen into harm’s way. The insurgency is simply acting as any resistance movement would; trying to rid their country of foreign invaders when all the political channels have been foreclosed.

Americans would behave no differently if put in a similar situation and Iraqi troops were deployed in our towns and cities. Ultimately, the Bush administration bears the responsibility for the death of every American killed in Iraq just as if they had lined them up against a wall and shot them one by one. Their blood is on the administration’s hands, not those of the Iraqi insurgency.

Expect another dictator or Mullah

We shouldn’t expect that, after a long period of internal struggle, the Iraqi leadership will embrace the values of democratic government. More likely, another Iraqi strongman, like Saddam, will take power. In fact, the rise of another dictator (or Ayatollah) is nearly certain given the catastrophic effects of the American-led war. Regardless, it is not the

right of the US to pick-and-choose the leaders of foreign countries or to meddle in their internal politics. (The UN, as imperfect as it may be, is the proper venue for deciding how to affect the behavior of foreign dictators.) At this point, we should be able to agree that the people of Iraq were better off under Saddam Hussein in every quantifiable way than they are today. Even on a physical level, the availability of work, clean water, electricity, sewage control, medicine, gas and food were far superior to the present situation. On a deeper level, the insecurity from the sporadic violence, the increasing brutality, and the gross injustice of the occupation has turned Iraq into a prison-state, where the amenities of normal life are nowhere to be found.

Support for the Bush policy is, by necessity, support for the instruments of coercion that are used to perpetuate that occupation. In other words, one must be willing to support the torture at Abu Ghraib, (which continues to this day, according to Amnesty International) the neoliberal policies (which have privatized all of Iraq’s publicly owned industries, banks and resources), an American-friendly regime that excludes 20% (Sunnis) of the

population and, worst of all, “the return-in full force-of Saddam’s Mukhabarat agents, now posing as agents of the new Iraqi security and intelligence services.” (Pepe Escobar, Asia Times)

Are Americans prepared to offer their support to the same brutal apparatus of state-terror that was employed by Saddam? (Rumsfeld’s unannounced visit to Baghdad last week was to make sure that the newly elected officials didn’t tamper with hiscounterinsurgency operatives, most of whom were formerly employed in Saddam’s secret police)

We should also ask ourselves what the long-range implications of an American victory in Iraq would be. Those who argue that we cannot leave Iraq in a state of chaos don’t realize that stabilizing the situation on the ground is tantamount to an American victory and a vindication for the policies of aggression. This would be a bigger disaster than the invasion itself. The Bush administration is fully prepared to carry on its campaign of global domination by force unless an unmovable object like the Iraqi insurgency blocks its way. Many suspect, that if it wasn’t for the resistance, the US would be in Tehran and Damascus right now. This, I think, is a rational assumption. For this reason alone, antiwar advocates should carefully consider the implications of “so-called” humanitarian objectives designed to pacify the population. “Normalizing” aggression by ameliorating

its symptoms is the greatest dilemma we collectively face.

We should be clear about our feelings about the war and the occupation. The disparate Iraqi resistance is the legitimate manifestation of a national liberation movement. Its success is imperative to the principles of national sovereignty and self-determination; ideals that are revered in the Declaration of Independence. The toppling of foreign regimes and the destruction of entire civilizations cannot be justified in terms of “democracy” or any other cynically conjured-up ideal. The peace and security of the world’s people depends on the compliance of states with the clearly articulated standards of international law and the UN Charter. Both were deliberately violated by the invasion of Iraq. Crushing the insurgency will not absolve that illicit action; it will only increase the magnitude of the crime.

Therefore we look for an American defeat in Iraq. Such a defeat would serve as a powerful deterrent to future unprovoked conflicts and would deliver a serious blow to the belief that aggression is a viable expression of foreign policy.



Posted on: Sunday, May 1, 2005
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By Dave Moniz
USA Today

WASHINGTON — On June 19, Lt. Dawn Halfaker and soldiers from her military police platoon were on a reconnaissance patrol in Baqouba, Iraq, when a rocket-propelled grenade exploded inside their armored Humvee, grievously wounding two of the soldiers inside.


Lt. Dawn Halfaker lost her right arm to a rocket-propelled grenade in Iraq. Since then, she has done about 30 interviews and counseled West Point cadets.
Tim Dillon • USA Today

Dazed and covered in blood, Halfaker mustered the energy to give an order to her driver. "Get out of the kill zone!" she shouted. Halfaker's right arm was loosely connected to her torso.

In the front passenger seat, Staff Sgt. Norberto Lara was in worse shape. His right arm, Halfaker remembers, was severed, a devastating but not mortal wound.

Six days later, Halfaker was a patient at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, about to lose her arm to a life-threatening infection. Today, as she completes her rehabilitation, Halfaker is considering several job offers in Washington and planning to attend graduate school at Georgetown University after leaving the Army.

She is one of five American military women at Walter Reed who have lost limbs from combat injuries in Iraq, a war that marks the first time large numbers of female troops have faced prolonged exposure to daily combat.

A decade ago — amid a heated national debate over which military jobs women should occupy — Halfaker's story might have ignited a battle over whether women should experience the hazards of ground fighting. Today, she and other severely injured female soldiers say, reality has overtaken that debate.

Since the ambush that nearly killed her, Halfaker, 25, has done about 30 interviews and appearances, including segments on MSNBC and CNN, and has counseled cadets at West Point. She says she is sometimes asked, often by people her parents' age, whether women should be so heavily involved in fighting.

"Women in combat is not really an issue," she says. "It is happening."

Although women are eligible to fill most jobs in the military, they are barred from some of the most hazardous positions, including infantry troops, special operations commandos, tank crews and others that would place them in front-line ground combat.

But they can fly most aircraft, including fighter jets, and serve as MPs and in other jobs that put them in harm's way.

Guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — where front-line and rear-echelon troops often share the same dangers — have rendered the military's efforts to regulate risk difficult if not impossible.

"Everyone pretty much acknowledges there are no rear battle areas, no forward line of troops," Halfaker says.

Since the Iraq war began two years ago, 35 U.S. women have died and 271 have been wounded. Although several hundred American women were killed in previous wars, the majority of them were nurses or auxiliary troops assigned to rear areas, many of whom died of disease and injuries unrelated to combat.

During Vietnam, the most recent prolonged ground war, eight American women — all nurses — died.

U.S. Rep. Heather Wilson, a New Mexico Republican who served as an Air Force officer in the 1980s, says the Iraq war seems to have largely answered questions about how Americans would react to seeing women return home in bandages and body bags.

"There have been casualties, men and women, and we grieve for them. But I think we have gotten beyond the point where losing a daughter is somehow worse than losing a son," Wilson says.











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I hear you Bro' , I got back in Jan. 69 and could not hack this stateside military shine and glow BS, went back in March 69 to hump a free-kin Ruck and carry the pig! LOL Un-free-kin real!

Check this one out Bro' --think me and you are the only 2 dumb SOB'S that actually give a sheet about the 30 year anniversary! Where the he_l are all those self proclaimed "professional soldiers"?? Must be happy hour at the VFW Stool Sittin' Club!! LOL

Told you, Americans hate losers! LOL There it is Bro'




HANOI: The United States should reflect on the lessons of the Vietnam War and conduct itself appropriately abroad, an official Vietnamese newspaper said on Sunday after the country celebrated 30 years since the end of the conflict.

“The experiences gained from the Vietnam War are fully capable of helping the United States to have a more appropriate comportment on the international scene,” Hanoi Moi said.A day after celebrations marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the former capital of the US-backed South Vietnamese regime, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City, the newspaper said the United States must draw new lessons.

“And this does not in any way compromise the development of good relations between the two countries (Vietnam and the United States),” it added.In a thinly veiled allusion to the war in Iraq, the daily said, “if the United States were to look back with wisdom at past wars, including the Vietnam War, it could prevent itself from painful injuries in the future.”

Hanoi Moi also said the occasion might “provoke unhappy memories among the generations of Americans who were directly linked to the Vietnam War.”On Friday, Prime Minister Phan Van Khai said in a speech that Vietnam wanted to move on from past enmity and advance ties with its one-time “aggressors”. “We advocate friendly cooperation to strengthen relations with countries that took part in the Vietnam War,” Khai said in an address in Hanoi to top Vietnamese leaders, war veterans and foreign envoys, including US ambassador Michael Marine. The fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, came after 55 days and nights of fighting and sealed the defeat of the United States in Southeast Asia, strengthening the Communist Party which is still in power today. afp

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?p..._2-5-2005_pg4_4

Hey Bammo..... something else came to my mind. Ever think how our training did it's damage to us as well? I did a piece back in '96 (of which I have no idea of where it is now) but it was titled ' Pre PTSD' Anotherwords, this was traumatic experiences during our training.... that affected many trainees as well.

I'm not sure where you went for your training, but at Ft Dix, we were treated like dirt. I'm sure you are used to the 0 factor right? I assume this was common place everywhere in the military. The lifer's stripped ya down to a 0 mentally.That was their main protocol for their brainwashing methods. When we were first shipped into basic training, we were nothing by 0s and other unmentionable names. We had no independence or rights... NOTHING! They screamed that to us daily for weeks among other deathly related phrases. We were threatened.... some physically attacked.... pushed beyond our limits every damn day... with nothing but dedregation and animalistic behaviour forced upon us. I did not sign up for this chit... but I was forced into it! Yeah, I think many of us at that time came out of our training with tons of PTSD.... but I guess that made us the 'right' killing machine just what Sammy and the lifers wanted.

Does any of this sound familiar with your training Bammo? Did you come out of basic and AIT with hate and anger in your eyes and heart? I do believe that Pre PTSD existed.

Bro' what the he_l has this country learned over the last thirty years? Nadda--not a da_m thing Bro' - complete sheet! Check this story out--the Nam all over again Bro'--here we go!

May 02, 2005

Violence sinks to new depths
By James Hider in Baghdad
A hundred people died in the weekend of the second anniversary of 'peace'


THE death toll in guerrilla attacks since Iraq’s first-elected Government was announced on Friday rose to more than 100 yesterday with a series of car bombings and shootings.
Two large squads of gunmen ambushed an Iraqi police position near a US base on the edge of Baghdad, killing five officers. Five civilians were also killed by a bomb which was aimed at an American convoy in the capital.



The Iraqi death toll was up by 50 per cent last month, with almost 570 people killed in attacks. The upsurge shattered hopes that January’s elections might have curbed the two-year rebellion, which a US general said had lost none of its strength in the past year.

The violence also marked two years since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on an aircraft carrier bearing the banner, “Mission accomplished”. As the attacks continued, a Sunni Arab organisation that had refused to join Iraq’s Shia-dominated Government last week accused the authorities of sending police and Shia militiamen to raid its offices and beat up its members.

Fakhri al-Qaisi, a spokesman for the Sunni National Dialogue Council, claimed that 30 cars of police commandos and members of the Badr Corps, the militia of the main Shia party now in power, arrived in the middle of the night on Thursday, just hours after the Sunni group had refused to join the Government that parliament had ratified.

Mr al-Qaisi said yesterday: “We were surprised during the night after we announced we were not participating, when 30 cars, 15 of which belonged to the Interior Ministry commandos and the second half belonged to Badr. The first were in uniform with three commando officers, while the others were in civilian clothes with black and green headbands, which are usually used by the Badr militia. It was clear they were Badr.”

He said that the men had arrived well after curfew, which would indicate that they were travelling with official permission, and had beaten up several sheikhs at the headquarters compound of the Sunni group, which includes hardline Salafist leaders. The raiders also took mobile phones and computers, he said.

The next morning, a suicide car bomber blew himself up outside the building, killing one of the guards. “We are expecting a new era of assassinations and we all expect to be targets: me and the Sunni sheikhs. You are talking to me now but tomorrow I might be dead. It’s a war on Sunnis pushed by Iran,” said Mr al-Qaisi, referring to the Badr Corps’ links with Tehran, where its fighters were trained in exile during Saddam Hussein’s era.

The Sunni council had been wooed by the new Government, which is desperate to offer important ministries to Sunnis in an attempt to quell the two-year insurgency. The council walked out after many of its demands were rejected. Some Shia officials said the council’s links to insurgents were too close for them to be offered sensitive posts, such as the defence ministry.

A car bomb exploded at the funeral of a Kurdish official in northern Iraq yesterday, which killed 20 Iraqi people and wounding more than 30. The attack occurred in the city of Tal Afar, 150km (93 miles) east of the Syrian border.

Khisru Goran, deputy provincial governor and a spokesman for the Kurdish Democratic Party, said that a suicide attacker detonated a car packed with explosives in a large tent where the funeral was being held. The funeral was being held for Sayed Talib Sayed Wahab, a KDP official shot by insurgents in Mosul, US troops tried to take 30 wounded people to a local hospital but unidentified gunmen blocked the road.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1594573,00.html

Bro' doesn't this remind you of the Vietnamese Civvies! The VC messed with them, the NVA messed with them, The ARVN'S messed with them, and the WE messed with them! What have we learned as a Nation? LOL

You hit it Bro' -

AIT At Polk was a winner - They made the Vietnamese look like you were killin' Rats! Less than Rats!

Cadence
"I want to go to Vietnam" "I want to kill the Vietcong"

Jump School - more BS

"I want to be an Airborne Ranger" "I want to live the Life of Danger" "I want to make sure I see Luke" "Guarantee he'll be a dead G**K" " All the way up the hill Airborne, Ranger -- Kill--Kill"

Jungle School - Damn did they brainwash our azz's about Luke the G**K, Chuck is a dead **** and plenty more! Now I was 18 and bought all this BS! LOL

Un--free--kin real! Hang Tough !

Oh man, did you bring back an oldie but not so good goodie. I think we sang that damn Airborne Ranger song every day. Man we were ate up. Ours ended in " i want to go to vietnam ... i want to kill charlie cong"

For the record Bammo.... as I have stated and sure that you'll agree to... among many bad lifers, there were some very good ones too. It was a simple process.... they showed repsect for you... I'd respect them right back. They seemed to have a real good head on their shoulders too.... the other were just A-1 loosers.

Believe this or not Bammo... I hope to work out some solution with what we both seem to deal with in some of our triggers. I see way too much Hollywood gunho crap again today... and it's just to promote BushCo mentallity. Got to figure ways around this.

lay low ... might be some movement nearby

Hey guys, I don't think you're losers.

I wish the Vietnam War had never happened. I wish you and others had never been subjected to the experiences you were. You did what your country asked you to do. You did what you had to do. Your country let you down. You didn't let your country down.

I understand why you are so angry. It comes from love of your country and concern for the Military and vets coming out of Iraq. You fought a war for a lie. Your government lied to you. Many of your fellow countrymen turned their backs on you. Their was nothing you could have done about it.

You watch now, it's deja-vue. A war based on a lie. A government that won't tell us the truth, and a media that sugercoats the atrosities of war. You're trying to do for the troops in Iraq what you couldn't do for yourselves thirty years ago. I know you care for those troops. Every part of you screams no, no, no not again!

Hey guys, I don't think you're losers.

They're going to do it again.
Start a war, fight a war, then forget about the warriors.

They did it to the World War I warriors.
They did it to the World War II warriors.
They did it to the Korean War warriors.
They did it to the Vietnam War warriors.
They did it to the Persian Gulf War warriors.

They'll do it to the Iraq War warriors.

We still sang all those cadences about using napalm in 1975!!

Cuz napalm sticks to kids.

wliberty, thanks for the dynamite post.

Glad to see someone with some common sense about this "SHRUB" fiasco.

Thumbs up and your right, the bitterness does not go away!

Wait until these "SHRUB" fiasco G.I.'S hit the bricks. We stayed mainly to ourselves - moved to the woods.

These G.I.'S are fighting an urban war, they will let lose in the populated areas when their triggers go off!

I am already seeing them coming into the VAMC, and there is no money or trained professionals to deal with their problems. The "SHRUB" administration puts on a good song and dance about supporting these G.I.'S It is a total lie, the inn is full and there is no money from the "SHRUB" for his G.I.'S

That there is fact and I guarantee, these G.I.'S are going to make us Nam Vets look like candy azz's when they go off!

You think the Made in China Yellow Magnetic Ribbon fad followers will support them then? LOL

They will want to see them in jail! Bet on it!

Great post wliberty and feel free to chime in anytime.

Can't get those Professional Career Soldiers off their Bar stools to add some of their life of military story's to this thread!

Wonder why that is??? LOL Hang Tough~

Charlie is long dead and gone

That is why we sing this song

If he wants to **** with me

He'll have to **** with the infantry

We're not here to take no sh*t

We know where our bayonettes fit

If I die in Vietnam

Bag me up and tell my mom

We are Airborne all the way

Charlie is going to die today

LOL--- There it is Bro'--many more where that came from!

Man were we brainwashed by Uncle Sammy's best! LOL

Young and dumb! Hang Tough Bro'

P.S. You get that solution Ghost, lets patten the SOB, think a lot more G.I.'S are going to need it soon!!!

Where are the lifers?

I here you on good ones, our platoon Sgt. was Japanese, fought in Korea and Nam twice. He looked out for his men. And got beaucoup respect. Very decent man and leader. He ran the whole show Bro' - and I mean everything we did.

His name is on the wall in D.C. Bro'. He took it hard from a wired 105 mm booby trap!

Then we got a shake and bake Staffy - he did not last long! LOL Had some sort of accident at a firebase. Think he was using the can and a willy pete went off under him.

Sheet happens! Hang Tough~

Big Sky, right on Bro' - for sure. Napalm sure as he_l sticks to anything Bro' - bad sheet! Feel the heat from one of them SOB'S beaucoup meters away! And I mean big-time heat!

This is a long one but worth checking out!

A K-Bar and Cross-Bow is what I packed

I did not cut Chuck any slack

Dropped from choppers on a cable line

Got hit twice but I am fine

They call me Rambo you can see

Believe my BS your a dummy

I went to Nam to fight a War

Got my medals in a Navy Store

Now I am on posting on my BS

K-Bar in hand wrists I slit

I do not feel no pain

Because Rambo is my chosen name

__________________________________________________________________

LOL---Could not resist! LOL

Rambo can you hear me?

Come on in and fill us all in!! LOL

I got to meet this hero, and I bet you Bro's want to as well!

I bet Rambo taught the Montagnards a thing or two! LOL

The Iraq war, of course, is not like Vietnam, in many ways. But in many other, profound, ways they are much alike. Jonah Goldberg, writing in USA Today, finds the comparisons silly. What about the 53% of Americans, according to Gallup, who feel the current war is "not worth it"?

By Greg Mitchell

(May 01, 2005) -- The flood of stories in the press marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of Saigon is near its end (the anniversary having passed on Saturday). There have been articles lamenting that we ever set foot in Indochina, others claiming that we could and should have won the war, and every view in between.

Then there’s Jonah Goldberg’s op-ed in USA Today. He used the occasion not to try to come to grips with that war but denounce those--mainly, he said, “liberal baby boomers”--who on a “near-daily” basis link Iraq to Vietnam. He said they are simply filled with "nostalgia" for their glory days of antiwar hedonism.

Attempting to bolster this argument, Goldberg charged the boomers aren’t even in touch with the facts: namely, the Vietnam war wasn’t among the most unpopular in our history. His one piece of evidence: someone named Sol Tax of the University of Chicago who apparently claimed, in a 1968 study, that Vietnam ranked as only "the fourth or seventh least-popular war in American history.”

Ignore for a moment the imprecision (fourth or seventh?) and consider when this ranking took place: 1968, well before most of the country turned against the war. I realize that Goldberg is a youngish man, but really, he should know his Vietnam history a little better. Then again, he didn’t live through the conflict (as baby boomers did).

With that taken care of, Goldberg described the many ways that Iraq is not Vietnam. He mentioned the differences between a “jungle war” and a “desert war.” Also, “the technologies” are “incomparable.” And let’s not forget: the “terrain,” the “ideologies,” not to mention “the cultures.” The Cold War vs. The War on Terror. The casualty rates.

Of course, this is all one big “Duh,” the knocking down of overstuffed straw men. No one I know, when they make any firm or loose connection between Iraq and Vietnam, mentions anything on Goldberg’s list, for good reason. But Goldberg has to highlight them anyway, to avoid the profound ways in which the wars are similar.

Let’s start with: the nation’s leaders lying to the American people to gain our involvement in the two wars. Don't take my word for it. Gallup found this week that half of all American now say that President Bush deliberately misled them on WMDs.

Then, how about, watching the war drag on, month after month, with “pacification” said to be right around the corner (two or three times a year). We just came out of such a “turning point,” only to be told by General Richard Myers last week that the insurgency was as strong as ever, followed by a massive upsurge in attacks in the past few days.

Goldberg types told us the war was over two years ago, nearly over a year ago, and going just fine as recently as last week. Baby boomers remember the syndrome well: The Vietnam syndrome.

Yes, we have not yet been in Iraq ten years. But military officials have said that we probably WILL have to be in Iraq for ten years.

Then there’s the public disgust with the current war, which you’d never know even existed from Goldberg. Latest Gallup surveys find that 53% of all Americans now say launching this war was “not worth it,” even after the Iraqi elections and (when the poll was taken) an air of optimism about the future. This is far ahead of the numbers for Vietnam, even after six years of our deep involvement there.

So maybe Iraq is actually Vietnam on speed.

Added to this:

-- The sending of tens of thousands of soldiers into battle ill-prepared culturally and militarily. Our soldiers in Iraq do not know who is on our side -- who they should save and who they should shoot. Sound familiar?

--Destroying cities to save them (notably, Fallujah) and the killing of tens of thousands of civilians.

-- No Gulf of Tonkin incident, no weapons of mass destruction.

--Yet despite all the above, very few in the mainstream media are calling for the a pullout in Iraq or even for setting a withdrawal deadline--again, very much like Vietnam until the early 1970s.

-- Iraqization = Vietnamization.

-- Did I mention the enormous cost, $300 billion and counting for Iraq?

--There's even a new "domino theory": we must establish democracy in Iraq (apparently at any cost) to inspire American-friendly governments throughout the region.

-- As for the difference in the casualty count: For the parent whose child has been killed or badly maimed it makes no difference whether the son or daughter was one of a hundred damaged that week or one of a thousand. And every loss of limb or loss of life takes place in the context of more than half of the Americans back home feeling the war is “not worth it.”

But let me turn this over to another baby boomer, a Vietnam veteran named Patrick Sheridan, who was permanently disabled in 1970 when a mine exploded under the personnel carrier he was riding in. He’s not exactly one of Goldberg’s effete antiwar vets nostalgic for the “good old days.”

In an article in today’s Bozeman (Mt.) Daily Chronicle, Sheridan warned that the U.S was reliving its Vietnam mistake in Iraq, getting involved again in a horrific internal conflict. "They're doomed to failure," he said. "We've gotten ourselves enmeshed in a difficult, protracted war that doesn't seem to be winnable at this point."


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Greg Mitchell (gmitchell@editorandpublisher.com) is editor of E&P and author of seven books of history and politics.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/co...t_id=1000903812

Interesting subject you bring up BSBrad. Even though we have a few designated holidays during the year that 'remembers' warriors of the past, but in reality, the perfered method of 'get over it' is to suppress the outcries of veterans that tells them to 'move on'. The real interesting aspect this ideaology is that it actually is what many 'warriors' try to do when they come home. For those of us who have, and speaking for myself, I did everything in the world to forget the bad experience that I had just gone through and did everything thing I could to restart my life. The problem was, I was 'rejected' by those in authority that stood in my way for progressing forward and get on with my life. One also needs a support group or system that is so important in one's life... everyone's life... not just veterans. Once a warrior becomes leftover discarded garbage in society, that person's progress shuts down faster than our growing national deficit.

Thus, as a warrior starts having to cover up the embarrassing tags of a unpopular and looser war, and, or corrupt govt. Many vets begin suppressing or denying their own failed forward progress in society, which usually causes some to go into isolation just to cope with their own struggling problems and possibly to prevent any serious conflict with society itself.

This act of seperation and alienation by vets comes from wrong wars that brings that vet into deeper detachments from society and life itself. Warriors once needed in battle(s) now become a silent burden on a society that would rather turn a deaf ear on the matter while pursuing their own personal dreams. The media's preplanned flag waving photo ops are encouraged by our govt's continued efforts to rally the country for giving up their own in pursuit of our govt official's greedy profiteering needs. It's flaunted in our faces to erase the 'bad things' that our past wars have created while glorifying fabricated pretenses for forcing control over others. In all, vets are appreciated when they are out of sight, out of mind and most of all, out of society's hair. That's been the case as I have seen it. Yet in unkown ways, I feel that this Iraq mess will bring about a whole different set of awareness about problems that may not repeat past failed proper care with veterans. Unfortunately, that statement holds a double speculative projection. This time, I feel