Sweet, Sweet Memories. 40 Years Ago Today, 8/8/74

[GregS]

It is to be counted to this country's credit that Nixon is the only President to be buried without a state funeral.

[GregS]

All US troops had been withdrawn from Vietnam by the end of March, 1973 following the Paris Peace Accords in January of that year. Nixon resigned more than a year later.

[GregS]

Who has seen this? When shown to be wrong, conservatives want to punch someone in the face. If they don't like your politics they shoot you on a motel balcony, or in a motorcade, or in a hotel banquet room, or in a theater balcony.

 

Edited August 10, 2014 by GregS

[+Malamute]

Wow Frank. read some history... ;-)

 

It's like you weren't even there. :-)

 

 Reading Wikipedia are we?

[Hayduke]

thank you

[Hayduke]

young guy reading bs propaganda or right wing wiki... buddy, I was there.  My view is not from wiki...

[Hayduke]

Bombing Cambodia by Nixon was aimed at the 40,000 troops amassed in Cambodia at the border of S. Vietnam. Cambodia claimed to be neutral but rounded up 400,000 Vietnamese people in internment camps to use as leverage then started to fortify bases at the border in what looked like planning for an invasion. . Furthermore, bombing began in Cambodia in 1965 under LBJ. They bombed the hell out of Cambodia for years. There are some reports I have read that indicate that more ordnance was dropped in Cambodia than in all of Europe by all allies during WW2.  It all started with LBJ and continued throughout the remainder of his time in the whitehouse.  The whole issue is something that could be debated for a very long time. The interplay of the Khmer Rouge also played a role. I'm afraid it isn't as cut and dry as you are trying to portray it GregS.

this is right wing double speak...

[GregS]

USA Latest News Wires

50 years after Vietnam resolution, Are we any wiser?

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Fifty years ago Sunday, President Johnson signed a resolution – based on since discredited intelligence – that launched the US into a long, costly, and bitterly debated war.

By Hillel Italie, Associated Press August 10, 2014

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New York — A dubious threat to U.S. interests. A swift vote in Congress for broad presidential war powers in response. A long, costly and bitterly debated war.

Fifty years ago Sunday, reacting to reports of a U.S. Navy encounter with enemy warships in the Gulf of Tonkin off Vietnam — reports long since discredited — President Lyndon Johnson signed a resolution passed overwhelmingly by Congress that historians call the crucial catalyst for deep American involvement in the Vietnam War. Many also see it as a cautionary tale that has gone unheeded.

"I think we are probably a bit better informed now, but I don't think that makes us a lot safer," says Edwin Moises, author of "Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War." Every era brings new foreign policy and political challenges, said the Clemson University history professor, "and I think it is utterly unpredictable what kind of misunderstandings may come along."

Recommended: 1960s plus 50: How well do you know the tumultuous decade? Take the quiz!

"If you ask whether we learned anything, I would say not enough," says former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat who opposed the war in Iraq, long after Tonkin and Vietnam.

Test your knowledge 1960s plus 50: How well do you know the tumultuous decade? Take the quiz!

Photos of the Day Photos of the weekend

In the last five decades, Tonkin has not kept Washington from backing wars, but it has shadowed relations between presidents and Congress. Debates about foreign conflicts, whether in Bosnia, Syria or Iraq, have also been referendums on trust. Is the war really necessary? Is the president telling everything he knows? What should be the parameters, if any, for military action?

Graham was chairman of the intelligence committee when the Senate debated, in the fall of 2002, whether to authorize military action in Iraq. Did Saddam Hussein, as alleged by President George W. Bush's administration, possess weapons of mass destruction? Graham found the case "soft and unreliable" and voted no. But most of his colleagues disagreed. The Sept. 11, 2001, attacks were barely a year old, and the midterm election was just a month away, a difficult time to turn away the president or the Pentagon.

The Senate approved the Iraq resolution by 77-23, the House 296-133. A U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, opening a conflict that lasted for years. As Graham and others feared, the weapons were not found.

Former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, who had been badly wounded in Vietnam, was among those who supported the 2002 legislation. "I can't believe I volunteered for one war, which turned out to be a massive tragedy for the United States, and I went to the Senate and voted for another war, which turned out to be a massive tragedy," he says.

"It was right before my re-election, and I felt compelled for my own hide," explains Cleland, who nonetheless was defeated. "It became the worst vote I made in my life."

Trust in the White House was high at the time Johnson signed the Tonkin resolution on Aug. 10, 1964. The resolution was submitted and passed within 48 hours.

For months, the U.S. had been conducting clandestine missions, engaging in what historians now consider provocations. On Aug. 2, gunfire was briefly exchanged between the North Vietnamese and the Americans, leading to the sinking of a North Vietnamese boat. According to Stanley Karnow's respected history, "Vietnam," Johnson considered pushing for the resolution but decided to hold off because no Americans had been harmed.

Two days later, the commander of the destroyer Maddox, Capt. John J. Herrick, believed he had picked up radio messages communicating a planned North Vietnamese attack. The Maddox and a second vessel, the Turner Joy, began firing at what they thought were enemy patrol boats launching torpedoes against the Americans.

"But hardly had the shooting stopped than Herrick and his men began to have second thoughts," Karnow wrote. "Not a single sailor on either vessel had seen or heard enemy gunfire."

Still, reports of a second conflict, however vague, were enough to convince Johnson that it was time to act. A Pentagon spokesman denounced a "second deliberate attack," and the U.S. launched its first bombing mission against the North Vietnamese. Johnson, meanwhile, addressed the nation on television.

"Repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States must be met not only with alert defense, but with positive reply. That reply is being given as I speak to you tonight," Johnson stated.

On Aug. 5, Johnson sent the resolution to Congress, where Democrats held solid majorities. The House of Representatives approved it unanimously two days later. The Senate passed it the same day 88-2; only Democrats Wayne Morse of Oregon and Sen. Ernest Gruening of Alaska voted no.

The Tonkin resolution allowed the president "to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression" and to assist regional allies. The resolution had no end date.

In his homespun way, Johnson likened the legislation to "grandma's nightshirt — it covered everything."

Congress rescinded the resolution in 1970, though by that time Richard Nixon was president and cited his powers as commander in chief for continuing the war. Three years later, over Nixon's veto, Congress passed the War Powers Act, which called for far greater consultation with the legislative branch.

The government itself would issue one of the harshest assessments of the Tonkin events. In 2005, 30 years after the U.S. left Vietnam and in the midst of the Iraqi conflict, the National Security Agency declassified a review concluding that the second Tonkin attack did not take place. Written by agency historian Robert J. Hanyok, the 56-page summary bluntly criticized intelligence officers.

"What was issued in the Gulf of Tonkin summaries beginning late on August 4 was deliberately skewed to support the notion that there had been an attack," Hanyok wrote. "That the NSA personnel believed that the attack happened and rationalized the contradictory evidence away is probably all that is necessary to know in order to understand what was done. They walked alone in their counsels."

[FranksHotPeppersAndMarijuana]

The secret bombing in Cambodia started in 1965. That is a fact that was recently revealed after documents were declassified. Whether we should've been in Vietnam is subject to debate but once there a leader is left trying to cobble together a plan.  Think Obama and Iraq.

 

I am no fan of Nixon. One of his campaign promises was to end the draft. He had the opportunity when the draft law was expiring in 71. He didn't do it then.

 

No Hayduke I wasn't there. I was lottery lucky. But thank you for your service.

[FranksHotPeppersAndMarijuana]

We shouldn't have been in Vietnam and we shouldn't have been in Iraq. We have no business trying to sort out wars that are the result of religious conflict. Even the current bombing of ISIS will have no long term benefit. I understand we are trying to protect our oil interests but there comes a point when you must let others figure out their problems and find ways around your own (oil problems).

[FranksHotPeppersAndMarijuana]

My info doesn't come wiki it comes from memory of events reported on. A wiki is only as good as whoever wrote it.  Some rely on it too much such as when they use it as a source to claim businesses pay no sales tax.

[GregS]

The long and short of it is that US involvement in Vietnam was a clusterfuk for which my friends died.

Edited August 11, 2014 by GregS

[+Malamute]

Yeap.

[Hayduke]

and Frank, just for the record, LBJ was a total disaster with his horrid policies of pride and brutality.  His militant stance in 'nam killed his VP's (HHH) chance in 1968.  He was not, and is not, someone I defend.

 

Nixon did not trust the American public or recognize their right to have a say in policy regarding the war.  He talked to statues and pictures and clearly was a troubled, paranoid man.  His opening of China and some things he did that seem out of character based upon his "politics", and are often cited as his accomplishments, can be written off now, upon seeing how an industrialized China has polluted the world and destroyed the manufacturing base in the US.

 

Incursions into Laos and Cambodia were denied repeatedly (similar to the lies regarding the Gulf Of Tonkin incident... which never happened)....

 

Vietnam was not necessary and the whole Domino Theory has been thoroughly and historically debunked.

 

That is a lot of wasted lives of our young people.  Over 50,000 dead Americans....

 

And we are not even discussing Agent Orange and the other terrorist acts LBJ and Nixon inflicted on this little country.

[GregS]

We were stuck between a rock and a hard spot. It did not matter who we chose as our leaders. There were, and remain, factions that worked to drive the war machine for no other purpose than to use it; a joy ride that we have seen taken again in our recent history. We were cannon fodder, flat and simple. I missed the draft by the skin of my teeth, coming of age in Feb. of 1972. By 1968 I was fully engaged in watching events closely. I've said before that I sat up late in November of 1968 watching election returns with Michael Moore and cursing the results, even though the alternative was not much better. Watching assassinations in almost real time, cities burning, police riots at the Democratic National Convention and demonstrations by a wide cross section of people across the country, murder at Kent State University, warfare video on the evening news, attending friends' funerals; people I had only recently rode bikes, played ball, and found out what girls were all about with, seeing and hearing the impassioned speech advocating peace and laying responsibility where it belonged was gut wrenching and frightful. My friends and I lived knowing that our lives could very well be sacrificed on the altar of bullschit. As I said some were. Some returned with some pretty fukd up schit. Listening to the war hawks, racists, and dumbazz rednecks defend and encourage evil was among our first early experience with sorting the schit from the shinola. I like to think that those were valuable lessons learned.

 

Nixon was only one of the major players. His part, however, revealed a width and depth of depravity we saw nowhere else.

Edited August 11, 2014 by GregS