William Jefferson Clinton must be the all-time champ when it comes to transferring to a foreign power, a self-declared enemy of the United States no less, American military technology and secrets. That this is the case has been well-documented officially — the “Cox Report” — and unoffically, for example, Bill Gertz’s Betrayal. Yet, former President Clinton roams the planet a free man while collecting speaking honorariums and smiling knowingly at the accolades of an adoring press and public. Even his former Oxford classmate, the late Christopher Hitchens, thought of Clinton as having “No One Left to Lie to.” And if these do not suffice, please be assured that your thirst for all travesties Clintonion will be slaked at Alamo Girl’s extensive “Downside Legacy Archives” which could furnish source notes for several books.
However, for the purpose of this posting I will limit myself to one essay from the June/July 1999 issue of David Horowitz’s Heterodoxy. If and when you find yourself unable to continue drinking from the 24-hour news cycle fire hose, you may wish refresh your awareness of Clinton’s non-sexual, presidential crimes and misdemeanors by perusing “Present Dangers,” available in a more readable .pdf format on SkyDrive.
Posting notes:
(1) Any errors in spelling or grammar you may come across in the latter are the result of my less-than-perfect reformatting of the original, and do not reflect upon Mr. Horowitz’s compositional or editorial skills.
(2) While reading “Present Dangers” you may wish to keep an air sickness bag or other suitable container nearby.
One of the most informative, well documented, but depressing books ever written, John Stormer’s “None Dare Call It Treason … 25 Years Later,” was originally published in 1964 with just the first part of the title. Seven million copies were sold. Even so, I wasn’t aware of this book until recently when out of curiousity I did a web search for the phrase “none dare call it treason.” Up popped a review by Daniel Pipes of the 1989 update to the original. Upon receiving my hastily-ordered, used paperback copy I found, on the page facing the start of the introduction, from whence cometh Mr. Stormer’s title:
Treason doth never prosper, what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.
– Sir John Harrington, 1561-1612
That struck a chord.
Since 2001, when the event of that year triggered an epiphany regarding my apparent ignorance of how the world operates, I have labored to gain an understanding of the politics of both domestic and world affairs that would offer some explanation as to how we got into this “fine mess.” Over the course of this effort I have come to the conclusion that America’s current travails are neither entirely accidental nor unintended. Call me a conspiracy theory monger if you will. However, when puzzle pieces I’ve independently come across fit with what Mr. Stormer has had to say, I am convinced.
Chapter 18 of Treason is titled “Military Aid to Communists — The Tragic Story of Vietnam.” Therein is described the crippling restrictions placed upon the U.S. Military during the war and the perfidy of the media when they portrayed the Tet Offensive of 1968 as a military disaster for the U.S. and South Vietnam.
On page 363 you’ll find the following statement:
Because the Communists got official word from Washington on which targets would be attacked — and which would be safe — they were able to concentrate their air defenses at the vulnerable sites. As a result air losses from ground fire in Vietnam were extraordinarily high. Good men died. Others spent years in brutal North Vietnamese torture camps after being shot down. Good evidence exists that some of the POW’s from Vietnam, like those in Korea, have never been returned.
Be as skeptical as you wish regarding that assertion. However, in February of 2007 I received a copy of the following email from retired Air Force general officer:
Even worse for the guys flying Thuds and Phantom IIs up in Route Pack 6, I heard the Secretary of State Dean Rusk answer a question after the war about letting NV know what targets were going to be struck the following day. I expected a denial, but the response was, “Yes we notified the NV government through the Swiss Embassy the targets to be struck the following day”. When asked why the U.S. government would do such a thing? Dean Rusk’s response was, “Well we didn’t want to hurt the North Vietnamese people, we just wanted to demonstrate that we could strike key targets anywhere in the country, so we gave them the target list so they could keep the workers home.”
Of course they didn’t seem to comprehend the NVs moved their mobile guns to defend the targets and alerted the SAM Batteries where the planes were going. I can remember intel briefings that informed us that NV only had a few thousand 37 and 57 mm guns, but it always seemed like all those guns were defending the targets we were attacking. When I heard the Sec State make these remarks, I understood why that was the case.
When I wrote back and asked him how he had learned of this, he said:
Dennis,
I cannot give you a source that you can go to other than one of the three major TV networks produced a program on the Vietnam War called something like the “Eleven Thousand Day War”a few years after the war ended. Dean Rusk, former Secretary of State appeared on the Program when I happened to be watching it on TV. The moderator noted that there were rumors about the U.S. providing warnings about targets that were going to be struck the following day. I saw Dean Rusk’s lips moving and heard his voice say something like, Oh yes those stories are true. We didn’t want to hurt the NVN people, we just wanted to show that we could attack whatever we wanted to with impunity.” or words to that effect.
I googled up “10,000 Day War” and found that it was a CBS Mini Series produced in 1980, in which Dean Rusk appeared along with a number of political notables. If you can run this down you’ll have the proof you seek. It was interesting to note that Clark Clifford was SecDef during part of this period–get the picture.
All the best, General P.
So, Mr. Stormer is absolutely correct. And we have it directly from the mouth of Dean Rusk.
In 2008 David Warren wrote the following in “Forty Years of the Tet Offensive” for the Ottawa Citizen:
Breaking the negotiated annual truce, for surprise, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regulars launched the Tet Offensive, in the night of 30/31 January 1968, named for the Vietnamese lunar new year. This campaign continued in various forms through September of that year, ending in total military defeat, for the aggressors. And a brilliant propaganda victory, for the same.
[snip]
The Tet Offensive was a desperate ploy by the Communist enemy in Vietnam. Tens of thousands of his troops were flung simultaneously at more than 100 South Vietnamese towns, and into the heart of Saigon. The Communists announced a general uprising, but that did not occur. The tide was actually turned within a few days by the U.S. and South Vietnamese armies. As they re-took town after town, they discovered massacres the Communists had committed while in possession. The enemy’s real object had been to decapitate a whole society.
My friend, Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German Lutheran pastor and also life-long journalist, was there as a reporter. Entering Hué as the smoke was clearing:
“I made my way to university apartments to obtain news about friends of mine, German professors at the medical school. I learned that their names had been on lists containing some 1,800 Hué residents singled out for liquidation.
“Six weeks later the bodies of doctors Alois Altekoester, Raimund Discher, Horst-Guenther Krainick, and Krainick’s wife, Elisabeth, were found in shallow graves they had been made to dig for themselves.
“Then, enormous mass graves of women and children were found. Most had been clubbed to death, some buried alive; you could tell from the beautifully manicured hands of women who had tried to claw out of their burial place.
“As we stood at one such site, Washington Post correspondent Peter Braestrup asked an American TV cameraman, ‘Why don’t you film this?’ He answered, ‘I am not here to spread anti-communist propaganda’.”
More eyewitness testimony.
Read all of Chapter 18 which includes more on how “News Media Aid Red Cause” changed the course of history. Get the book and you’ll never again think about American politics, Communism and the Cold War in the same way.
And you’ll understand why RINOs are more of a problem than Obama is.
Ciao,
Dennis
Update: This is from a close Air Force buddy of mine who in ’71/’72 flew F-4s over North Vietnam:
I think we had a previous discussion about the notification of next days targets by the U.S. government during the Vietnam War. There were many other instances of truly stupid policies and woe to the base commander who somehow “over looked” these policies in order to run a war like it is supposed to be run. For example…for quite some time there was an invisible barrier marking the border of N. Vietnam and Laos. It was fine to do your thing in Laos (you know, the country that was not at war…the “Unseen War” of SEA), but you could never, never go across the key passes to do interdiction missions in N. Vietnam. This was despite the fact that at night all the trucks, tanks, and other equipment came slinking through the passes using the Laotian Ho Chi Minh trail to move supplies to S. Vietnam.
You say, okay, a few trucks and like…maybe…right? No, I am talking about lined up supply convoys, bumper to bumper on the open trails/roads in N. Vietnam that extended for dozens of miles. Dozens? Yes, dozens! There they were, in plain sight, and all we could do was report them in our post mission debrief!
One Navy pilot wrote that during one of his missions near Hanoi he happened to see a train lined up and ready to head south with…his estimation…about 100 SAMs on railroad cars. He radioed it all in and asked for permission to strike, but it was denied because it was a “no strike” zone. His comment, “There they were. Lined up like ducks in a row and we couldn’t hit them. We wound up having to try to take them out one at a time when they were finally installed at their destinations.”
I was a completely naive believer for years and years that our highest leaders in Washington would never do anything to deliberately put our military (or civilians for that matter) in harms way…period! I now am convinced that Washington does it routinely as their daily order of business. I can only imagine Clifford Clark being confronted by the policy of revealing to the enemy the next day targets in the Vietnam War replying, “Well, that is why we give our pilots and soldiers combat pay of $225 per month!”
“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley
Shortly after the official start of the 2008 financial meltdown, there was an exchange of emails between members of my section at the Harvard Business School, class of ’72. Frustrated and dismayed by what was occurring, I prophesized that our grandchildren would dig up our bones and smash them in anger at the economic sins we had committed and visited upon them. It being Sunday, one classmate suggested that I was merely “preaching.” Perhaps I was, but four-and-a-half years later I happened upon a sermon filled with fire and brimstone on a scale much greater than the one I proffered.
At Burning Platform, Jim Quinn, nearing the end of his posting “Available,” warns:
We’ve got $1 trillion annual deficits locked in for the next decade. We’ve got total credit market debt at 350% of GDP. We’ve got true unemployment exceeding 20%. We’ve had declining real wages for thirty years and no change in that trend. We’ve got an aging, savings poor, debt rich, obese, materialistic, iGadget distracted, proudly ignorant, delusional populace that prefer lies to truth and fantasy to reality. We’ve got 20% of households on food stamps. We’ve got food pantries, thrift stores and payday loan companies doing a booming business. We’ve got millions of people occupying underwater McMansions in picturesque suburban paradises that can’t make their mortgage payments or pay their utility bills, awaiting their imminent eviction notice from one of the Wall Street banks that created this societal catastrophe.
We’ve got a government further enslaving the middle class in student loan debt with the false hope of new jobs that aren’t being created. We’ve got a shadowy unaccountable organization, owned and controlled by the biggest banks in the world, that has run a Ponzi scheme called a fractional reserve lending system for 100 years, and inflated away 96% of the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar. We’ve got a self-proclaimed Ivy League academic expert on the Great Depression (created by the Federal Reserve) who has tripled the Federal Reserve balance sheet on his way to quadrupling it by year end, who has promised QE to eternity with the sole purpose of enriching his benefactors while impoverishing senior citizens and the middle class. He will ultimately be credited in history books as the creator of the Greater Depression that destroyed the worldwide financial system and resulted in death, destruction, chaos, starvation, mayhem and ultimately war on a grand scale. But in the meantime, he serves the purposes of the financial ruling class as a useful idiot and will continue to spew gibberish and propaganda to obscure their true agenda.
It is time to open your eyes and arise from your stupor. Observe what is happening around you. Look closely. Does the storyline match what you see in your ever day reality? It is them versus us. Whether you call them the invisible government, ruling class, financial overlords, oligarchs, the powers that be, ruling elite, or owners; there are powerful wealthy men who call the shots in this global criminal enterprise. Their names are Dimon, Corzine, Blankfein, Murdoch, Buffett, Soros, Bernanke, Obama, Romney, Bloomberg, Fink, among others. They are using every means at their disposal to retain their control and power over the worldwide economic system and gorge themselves like hyenas upon the carcasses of a crippled and dying middle class. They have nothing but contempt and scorn for the peasants. They’re your owners and consider you as their slaves. They don’t care about you. They think the commoners are unworthy to be in their presence. Time is growing short for these psychopathic criminals. No amount of propaganda can cover up the physical, economic, social, and psychological descent afflicting our world. There’s a bad moon rising and trouble is on the way. The time for hard choices is coming. . .
Johns Hopkins pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson got his scalpel in a wringer last Tuesday when he told Sean Hannity of Fox News that “marriage is between a man and a woman. No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA, be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition.”
John Fund, in the National Review Online, relates how Dr. Carson’s “… inappropriate comparison of gays to members of the North American Man/Boy Love Association and those who practice bestiality, along with his pointed criticisms of liberal policies at the prayer breakfast, prompted a petition demanding that he be replaced with another commencement speaker.”
I think people have completely taken the wrong meaning out of what I was saying. First of all, I certainly believe gay people should have all the rights that anybody else has. What I was basically saying is that as far as marriage is concerned that has traditionally been between a man and a woman and nobody should be able to change that.
Now perhaps the examples were not the best choice of words, and I certainly apologize if I offended anyone . . . But the point that I was making was that no group of individuals, whoever they are, whatever their belief systems, gets to change traditional definitions. The reason I believe the way I do, I will readily confess, is because I am a Christian who believes in The Bible.
Was Dr. Carson’s juxtaposition of ‘gay’, ‘NAMBLA’ and ‘bestiality’ really a comparison? Even if it was, should it be summarily dismissed as ‘inappropriate’ without any examination of the history of the “gay rights” movement and its now very well hidden underbelly? Why worry about offending gays when gays often go out of their way to offend or be “in your face”? It’s often their modus operandi as should be obvious from this posting about a subsidiary of San Francisco’s Folsom Street Fair, the 2008 “Up Your Alley” frolic, about “The Politics of Exhibitionism and Public Sex.” (Not for the faint of heart or weak of stomach.)
Criticism of the gay political agenda, including any mention of what really comprises the gay “lifestyle,” has essentially been stricken from the public record. This is most unfortunate at a time when the Supreme Court is considering the issue of gay marriage and there exists a very real possibility of it being imposed upon society, whatever the consequences. And so, I have taken it upon myself to provide access to what is not otherwise easily found.
In the Spring of 2002, the Regent University Law Review published an issue titled “Homosexuality: Truth be Told.” I happened upon it and download the articles in February of 2005 prior to the time they went behind a paywall. Here’s the editor’s introductory note:
We did not aspire to publish these articles. We did not seek them out. They sought us out. They sought us out because their ideas are shocking-too shocking to be printed elsewhere. They are shocking because they speak the truth, a truth that certain groups do not want to be told and will hate us for printing.
Somebody had to tell the truth. We take no pleasure in it. We would rather these articles had been published elsewhere. Elsewhere they might have been afforded more credibility. Some well-intentioned people may dismiss these articles because they are associated with a Christian law school. Some ill-intentioned people may maliciously label our law review and the authors as bigots, religious homophobes, or much worse. We are nothing of the sort. And the authors are all intelligent, highly-credentialed professionals. For example, Dr. George Rekers is Professor of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Science in the University of South Carolina School of Medicine; Dean Byrd is a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Utah School of Medicine. And the list goes on.
We apologize in advance for the graphic nature of this publication. We say that, not out of some affected prudishness, but because we are genuinely appalled. We are appalled at the virtual sewer of source material that our staff had to wade through in order to verify the authors’ research. We are most appalled, however, to discover that this graphic sexual material is being involuntarily foisted on school children.
By failing to tell both sides of the story, law reviews have abdicated their responsibility to the legal community. Law reviews are meant to be dialogues on the law. Freedom of thought and speech suffer, however, when one side of a debate is dismissed for not being politically correct or is suppressed by a powerful lobby. We find the Orwellian implications of this academic taboo quite disturbing. Ultimately, the law and society will be the worse for it.
So we are left with the unpopular job of setting the record straight. The legal community has a right to know, among other things, that a link exists between homosexuality and the sexual abuse of children, that the American Psychiatric Association was hijacked by homosexual activists, that homosexuality is being marketed to children, that studies claiming that homosexual parenting does not harm children are questionable, that homosexuality is not immutable, and that homosexual advocates are calling for the legalization of pedophilia. This issue of the Regent University Law Review is intended to provide a forum, a voice for this crucial information that might not otherwise be printed. Therefore, we present, “Homosexuality: Truth be Told.”
David Lee Mundy
Editor-in-Chief
Here’s footnote no. 1 to Mundy’s note:
This issue of the Regent University Law Review features several articles that were previously slated to appear in a homosexual rights symposium published by the Stanford Law & Policy Review, 12 STAN. L. & POL’Y REV 1 (2001), but were summarily rejected because of their conservative perspective. See Ty Clevenger, Gay Orthodoxy and Academic Heresy, 14 REGENT U. L. REV. 241 (2002).
So much for Stanford as a Fountain of Truth. (Puddle of Veritas in Harvard’s case?)
Dr. Judith Reisman’s article, “Crafting Bi/Homosexual Youth,” starts out:
Based on its free speech privileges, the American press is charged with providing a “window to the world” by which the polity may locate the source of a social malaise, evaluate and correct it. But, if establishment media–news and entertainment–broadcasts disinformation and conceals adverse information about a matter or malaise, then the Fourth Estate becomes an unelected fifth column directing law and public policy. Philip Kotler’s classic work Marketing Management documents how controlled news is used to “both stimulate public opinion and miseducate” it. Rodgers and Kotler report that in a media campaign, two and one-half percent of our social leaders often sway roughly thirteen percent of the public early-on who later move another thirty-four percent, and so on until a majority accept and adapt to the proffered new product or idea.
Media portrayal–positive or negative–can have a profound impact on public perception. For example, the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York are widely considered to have been a turning point for homosexuality. The riots are widely perceived to have been a response to police harassment of innocent homosexual patrons in a gay bar. However, the riots actually were the result of a police raid on a center for drug trafficking, boy prostitution, and pederasts. In that vein, this article will offer evidence of widespread media and academic censorship and misrepresentation, the end result of which is a controlled and distorted public debate about homosexuality, now called “gay” rights.
So, there’s no need to be astonished at how rapidly has come the public’s acceptance of the notion of gay marriage. Dr. Reisman’s article is available at her website.
If you have an interest in the full series of articles, they may be download here. However, shelf life is uncertain.
For a less formal but nevertheless very informative approach to this subject, may I suggest massresistance.org for first-hand accounts of skirmishes with gay activists?
However many employees of Rocketdyne there may be still alive and kickin’, I doubt they ever imagined that their proudest achievement, the F-1 rocket engine that powered the Apollo Saturn V to the moon, would ever again be “in the news”. Thanks to Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder and CEO, a salvage operation is in the process of recovering bits and pieces of the F-1 engines that went into the briny deep when the Saturn V S1C stage was jettisoned after less than three minutes of flight. Why he’s doing this I have no idea, but the cynic in me wonders if he’s under contract to the Chinese because they have been unable to hack a blueprint of same. Nah!
National Review Online has a slide show with several pics of the F-1, both intact as well as some of the salvaged bits. And there’s a nice write-up with specs at Wikipedia.
But the F-1 is best appreciated when seen in action. Several good clips are to be found at YouTube.
To whet your appetite, here’s one of my favorites, in super slo-mo. Be sure to turn up your sound. The music makes it visceral. Credit for the clip goes to CEVOrion
Xi Jinping: Russia-China ties ‘guarantee world peace’
“Mr Xi, is that a buzzer in your hand?”
Xi Jinping has said China’s friendship with Russia guarantees “strategic balance and peace” in the world, on the second day of his trip to Moscow.
Mr Xi, on his first official overseas trip as leader, has already met President Vladimir Putin.
He described the Russian leader as a “good friend”.
[snip]
Mr Xi told students at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations that China would continue to oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
“We must respect the right of each country in the world to independently choose its path of development,” he said.
“Strong high-level Chinese-Russian ties not only meet our interests, but serve as an important, reliable guarantee of international strategic balance and peace.”
During the Cold War the two countries, while both nominally Communist, were bitter rivals.
But both sides have been full of praise for each other during Mr Xi’s visit.
“We can already say this is a historic visit with positive results,” Mr Putin said.
Mr Xi was confirmed as China’s president last week, concluding a lengthy transition process that saw him assume the Communist Party leadership in November 2012.
Wonder how Mr. Xi feels about the U.S.? Especially after all we’ve done for China? Perhaps Mr. Bosco at the Weekly Standard has an answer to that question:
‘The China Dream’ a Nightmare?
Has a quiet military coup taken over China’s foreign policy? Is China’s new president, Xi Jinping, leading the militarization of policy or submitting to it? The questions are not frivolous or far-fetched given recent actions and statements emanating from China’s new leader and other influential establishment figures.
Immediately after assuming his positions as head of the Communist Party and the Chinese military, Xi made a series of visits to state of the art military units and installations. He rallied his officers and men to be ready for “real combat” and “fighting and winning wars,” suggesting a sense of not-too-distant conflict. Unlike the more bellicose bombast coming out of North Korea, Chinese rhetoric is less explicit in naming the United States as the intended enemy.
But Major General Zhu Chenghu, who heads China’s National Defense University, was more specific when he once threatened nuclear attacks against “hundreds” of U.S. cities in a possible Taiwan conflict. Like an earlier general who made a similar nuclear threat, he was promoted, not fired. (This week Zhu will visit the Pentagon where he may deliver another tough message—or take the softer line he used at a dinner toast during a 2009 Beijing conference, vigorously insisting that “China and the U.S. are friends.”)
Xi has adopted as his governing theme “The China Dream,” the title of a popular book by another NDU intellectual, Col. Lin Mingfu, who advocates China’s military dominance, not just regionally but globally. Xi’s speeches equate “a strong nation” with “a strong military.” Arms prowess seems to have supplanted economic development as the principal component in China’s vision of “comprehensive national power”.
So, if you prefer to cling to Mr. Clinton’s assertion that he hasn’t seen a Communist since 1990, be my guest. Otherwise, send him and Mr. Obama a copy of this post. Not that it will change anything. It’s all in the dialectic, isn’t it? Just ask Mr. Atbashian over at “The People’s Cube”
Or, you can just stick with the madness, March or otherwise.
This past week I received an email from the Heritage Foundation inviting me to contribute and join incoming Heritage president Senator Emeritus Jim DeMint in his efforts to revitalize the American conservative movement:
Dear Dennis,
Our nation faces extreme peril.
Runaway government is threatening our individual freedoms. Government spending is driving our nation deeper into debt. Taxes and regulations are smothering our already-weakened economy.
And all too many Americans think more government is the only solution.
The Heritage Foundation is developing a plan to refine the conservative message in order to better communicate proven conservative ideas to the American people.
Find out more about the plan we’re developing with Heritage President-Elect Jim DeMint . . . and what we’re planning for this Tuesday, February 26.
A few days earlier I had been invited by Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of ConservativeHQ.com, to vie for the “Liberty Prize“:
Plan the Takeover
Win the $10,000 Liberty Prize,
Plus Fame, Appreciation, and
the Opportunity to Save America
This struck me as an excellent opportunity to more widely disseminate my thoughts and earn a little extra cash to boot. During the process of gathering archived articles, reports, and outlining my contemplated masterpiece, I began to realize I was accumulating enough material for at least one book, let alone an essay suitable for contest submission.
But then, from Brigadier Rudy, I received a link to the following CBS Sunday Morning segment originally broadcast on June 10, 2012:
I was stunned. Stopped dead in my compositional tracks. I began to see more clearly and realized what we as a nation are losing, perhaps have already lost. I was humbled by the emotion that welled up in a French woman’s voice when she called out the name of an American fighter pilot who, shortly after D-Day, crashed nearby while valiantly avoiding her village. Sixty-eight years later the people of Les Ventes continue to remember and honor 1st Lt. Billie D. Harris.
On my desk I keep a small shrine of my own:
That’s Jim’s yearbook entry from pilot training. Jim and I graduated together at Williams AFB, class 67C. I went to Europe, he went to Vietnam. I came back, he didn’t. Jim’s Virtual Wall entry can be found here.
What troubles me is that Lt. Badley will never be remembered or honored by the Vietnamese as Lt. Harris is by the French. And it’s not because Lt. Badley was less brave than his WW II counterpart or his actions less honorable. Rather, it’s because his country broke its promise and abandoned the South Vietnamese people. Many of his countrymen dishonored, nay, vilified those who risked and gave their lives in the jungles and skies of Southeast Asia. Forty years after the return of American POWs from Hanoi and the prison they called the “Hilton,” that kind of cynically traitorous practice continues.
This past February 8th Bill Moyers used the following lead-in to the second segment of his PBS “Moyers & Company” program:
Nick Turse Describes the Real Vietnam War
February 8, 2013
Journalist Nick Turse describes his unprecedented efforts to compile a complete and compelling account of the Vietnam War’s horror.
BILL MOYERS: Just like Susan Crawford, my next guest has been driven to tell a story the powers-that-be would rather we forget. He found it by chance in documents buried deep in the recesses of the National Archives in our nation’s capital. The discovery led him on a journey of twelve years that has now concluded with this beautifully written account of ugly horrors, “Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam,” by Nick Turse.
There have been many memorable accounts of the terrible things done in Vietnam – memoirs, histories, documentaries and movies. But Nick Turse has given us a fresh holistic work that stands alone for its blending of history and journalism, for the integrity of research brought to life through the diligence of first-person interviews. Those interviews skillfully unlock the memories of American warriors and expose the wounds that to this day still scar the hearts and minds of villagers who survived the scorched earth of Vietnam. Here is a powerful message for us today, a reminder of what war really costs.
Ironically, Nick Turse wasn’t even around as the Vietnam War raged. He was born in 1975, the year it ended. Not until 25 years later, while pursuing his PhD in sociomedical sciences, did he discover the secret trove of documents that sent him on this long search. In addition to two earlier books and countless articles and essays, Nick Turse is managing editor of TomDispatch.com – the indispensable website if you want the news powerful people would prefer to keep hidden.
Nick Turse, welcome.
I doubt it is accidental that this was broadcast a week after Sen. John Kerry ascended to his State Department throne. Kerry was, as I’m sure you recall, embroiled in a bitter dispute during his 2004 Presidential campaign with a group calling themselves the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. That organization is no longer active, but the basis for their objections to Kerry as Commander in Chief are nicely summarized in this video clip:
This evolved from Kerry’s testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in April of 1971 while the Vietnam war continued. This, as well as specific actions by Kerry during his tour in Vietnam, led to the formation of the Swift Vets organization and their campaign to prevent Kerry’s election to the Presidency. Following America’s departure from Southeast Asia, much has been discovered, documented and written that definitively discredits the actions and statements of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and their spokesman, John Kerry. If you’re unfamiliar with the origin and history of the left’s efforts to discredit and demonize American military men and their actions in SEA, you should find the following informative:
American Thinker
October 09, 2007
Investigate the Winter Soldier Investigation
By Denis Keohane
FrontPageMagazine.com
February 25, 2008
Newly Discovered Army Reports Discredit “Winter Soldier” Claims
By Scott Swett
NationalReview.com
March 31, 2008
Winter-Soldier Again
But maybe this time, the press will be less credulous
By Mackubin Thomas Owens
American Thinker
May 16, 2009
Winter Soldier Embarrasses Dems
By Rick Moran
But the left’s standard catechism defining the Vietnam war and everything associated must not be discredited. So, Messrs Moyers and Turse are called upon to update the progressive imprimatur.
Equally discrediting are the left’s failures to document events and disseminate information regarding the atrocities of the Vietnamese Communists. Particularly incriminating are the horrendous events surrounding the Tet Offensive of 1968. Here’s a description of the mass executions that took place in the ancient city of Hue during the days of Communist occupation as written by David Warren in the Ottawa Citizen:
The Tet Offensive was a desperate ploy by the Communist enemy in Vietnam. Tens of thousands of his troops were flung simultaneously at more than 100 South Vietnamese towns, and into the heart of Saigon. The Communists announced a general uprising, but that did not occur. The tide was actually turned within a few days by the U.S. and South Vietnamese armies. As they re-took town after town, they discovered massacres the Communists had committed while in possession. The enemy’s real object had been to decapitate a whole society.
My friend, Uwe Siemon-Netto, a German Lutheran pastor and also life-long journalist, was there as a reporter. Entering Hué as the smoke was clearing: “I made my way to university apartments to obtain news about friends of mine, German professors at the medical school. I learned that their names had been on lists containing some 1,800 Hué residents singled out for liquidation.
“Six weeks later the bodies of doctors Alois Altekoester, Raimund Discher, Horst-Guenther Krainick, and Krainick’s wife, Elisabeth, were found in shallow graves they had been made to dig for themselves.
“Then, enormous mass graves of women and children were found. Most had been clubbed to death, some buried alive; you could tell from the beautifully manicured hands of women who had tried to claw out of their burial place.
“As we stood at one such site, Washington Post correspondent Peter Braestrup asked an American TV cameraman, ‘Why don’t you film this?’ He answered, ‘I am not here to spread anti-communist propaganda’.”
After discovering, re-discovering and watching such as this, I am at a loss trying to understand how Messrs DeMint and Viguerie think they will be able to reverse past and current besmirching of American honor and purpose. For progressives, this is their bread and butter. They are very good at it, and they are very persistent. And this is only one drop in the sea of woes we find ourselves drowning in.
And so, I’ve come down with a bad case of the Disappearin’ America Blues. For some strange reason I find a resonance to this and some small comfort in the last stanza and final refrain of Arlo Guthrie’s “City of New Orleans”:
Ciao.
Update: America’s military on PC-ness
Wall Street Journal
Via Power Line
February 22, 2013
America’s Kinder, Gentler Department of Defense
Cutting the military to fuel the welfare state doesn’t instill fear in a nation’s enemies.
By Mackubin Thomas Owens
FrontPageMag.com
February 25, 2013
Michael Behenna: Imprisoned for Killing a Terrorist
By Michael Volpe
Senator Obama’s 2008 campaign promise to the American people [51s]:
President Obama delivers on the “hair-trigger alert” promise:
The report of the yearlong Nuclear Posture Review changes how nuclear arms will be used against non-nuclear weapons states. Nuclear-missile forces will remain on alert to be fired within minutes to counter a nuclear strike, but the intercontinental ballistic missile warheads now are targeted on open oceans — not Russian or Chinese cities — in case of an accidental launch, senior administration officials said in releasing the report.
– Washington Times, April 7, 2010
President Obama’s 2012 campaign promise to the Russian People [11s]:
President Obama takes a step in the direction of delivering on the “nuclear-free world” promise:
WARHEAD CUTS COMING
President Obama’s plan to carry out a new round of nuclear-warhead cuts will be announced soon, U.S. officials say.
The coming round of warhead-reduction talks with Russia was put on hold partly as a result of the Senate delay in confirming Defense Secretary-designate Chuck Hagel, an outspoken proponent of the Global Zero anti-nuclear weapons group that called in a report last year for radical denuclearization steps.
[snip]
Asked about the coming cuts, a White House official told Inside the Ring: “Nothing to announce.” The official then referred to Mr. Obama’s statements in Seoul in March. The president said at the nuclear summit there he thinks the United States can maintain a strong deterrent and “still pursue further reductions in our nuclear arsenal.”
In the months ahead, the president said he would “continue to seek discussions with Russia on a step we have never taken before — reducing not only our strategic nuclear warheads, but also tactical weapons and warheads in reserve.”
The summit was also the site of the now-famous conversation overheard on an open microphone when Mr. Obama told then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that, after his re-election, Moscow could expect more flexibility toward Russian demands to limit U.S. missile defenses. Russia has been demanding those limits as a precondition for further warhead cuts.
– Washington Times, February 20, 2013
That’s America’s defense posture on Obama. Any questions?
And if these do not suffice, please be assured that your thirst for all travesties Clintonion will be slaked at Alamo Girl’s extensive “Downside Legacy Archives” which could furnish source notes for several books. 
