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North Vietnamese General: America Lost (The Vietnam War) at Home Iraq: We Must Remain Committed - NewsMax - America's News Page (http://www.newsmax.com/metcalf/iraq_war/2007/10/03/37840.html - broken link)
RUSH: How many of you remember the name General Giap from the North Vietnamese army? General Giap, G-i-a-p is how you spell it, but pronounce it General Giap. He was a very famous, knowledgeable general in the North Vietnamese army. He's published his memoirs and here's a pull quote: "What we still don't understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi. You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender. It was the same at the battle of Tet. You defeated us. We knew it. We thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice that your media was definitely helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefield. We were ready to surrender. You had won." He makes the point the Vietnam War was not lost in Vietnam; it was lost here. That's why I keep telling everybody that the Drive-Bys were trying to do the same thing in Iraq that they did in Vietnam for a host of reasons, not the least of which among them was to reestablish their own ability to influence people into the United States losing a war that the media was opposed to. Scary, scary stuff.
Sooooo, we are supposed to keep bombing Iraq because their military is on the ropes? Last I checked, we defeated our specific enemy in a matter of days. We are still their 6 years later fighting an unspecific enemy with and unspecific strategy and an unspecific answer on how much more we are willing to spend and how many more solidiers we are willing to lose.
I'd rather look at this one like Reagan did with Lebanon. He vowed to never turn tail and run after the Marines barracks were bombed by terrorist, yet 5 months later he realized the folly of his intentions and resolve and left because it was irrational to stay. Nobody called him a "cut and run" president when he did that.
For the record, this is the retraction published by Greg Lewis of the Washington Dispatch on March 2, 2004, apologizing for having fallen into this very same Giap Trap. Maybe you and Rush should do a little more homework...
"A few weeks ago in a column about Kerry, I referred to what has turned out to be an 'urban legend.' Specifically, based on a 'news' item that appeared on NewsMax.com, I repeated a reference to a volume of memoirs supposedly published by North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap in 1985 as the source of an assertion by Colonel Oliver North. After a reader requested a reference to Giap's 1985 "Memoirs," I did research that convinced me no such volume exists. For that matter, I haven't been able to verify through Fox News that Colonel North actually made the comments he is said to have made and which I repeated. My apologies to Colonel North and to Washington Dispatch readers for including inadequately verified material in my piece on Kerry."
General Giap did publish two books about the war, one in 1975, the other in 1976. In neither one does any quote even vaguely resembling the urban legend quote appear.
Last edited by saganista; 12-04-2007 at 03:56 PM..
A series of Presidents who consistently lied to the American People about the course of the Vietnam War caused the reasonable, slow-to-anger electorate to eventually turn against the war.
Remember, to the Dept of Defense, having a 'police action' always going on helps them test their weaponry and keep their funding levels high, in case they have to fight a 'real' war such as against the Russkies.
Location: By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea
68,329 posts, read 54,373,658 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ParkTwain
A series of Presidents who consistently lied to the American People about the course of the Vietnam War caused the reasonable, slow-to-anger electorate to eventually turn against the war.
Remember, to the Dept of Defense, having a 'police action' always going on helps them test their weaponry and keep their funding levels high, in case they have to fight a 'real' war such as against the Russkies.
If sending young folks off to die in order to test weaponry ever becomes an accepted practice there's really not much left worth fighting for, is there?
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