NEWSWEEK, known for its political correctness and left of center philosophy, is not a publication that I would normally buy. However, my wife saw it in the market with a picture of a soldier on the front and a title of “War Stories,” and she thought I might enjoy reading it. I read it but I did not like it.

The first article was called “War and Remembrance” and it wasn’t that bad. It had a few good thoughts like: “Americans are not very good at remembering. Our endless capacity to focus on the future rather than the past is one of our greatest national virtues – and one of our great national vices.”

The next one was a typical bleeding heart liberal view about war called “Combat High.” Here the author tried to identify how ground combat soldiers and Marines get off on killing the enemy. His remarks were not only stupid but also insulting: “Combat was a game that the United States had asked Second Platoon…” Then there was: “As for a sense of purpose, combat is it – the only game in town.” His whole article was what he thought was the essence of men in combat – a drug like high.

I kept reading to see just how far the idiots of this magazine and its publishers would go to denigrate our U.S. fighting men and women. It got worse.

The article that won first prize for inaccuracy and hyperbole was by Steve Kroft from the TV show “60 Minutes” – another source well known for slanting stories to fit their philosophy. Kroft was said to have served in the “U.S. Army in Vietnam as a correspondent and photographer for ‘Stars and Stripes’” – an unofficial military news paper but with plenty of censorship.

Here is his take on majors and lieutenant colonels: “…obsessed with body counts and regulation haircuts care more about their next promotion than the welfare of their troops.”

One of the major inaccuracies was what Kroft wrote on a character from a book was said to be a Marine officer fresh from “Ivy League and Officer Training School.” Marines do not have Officer Training School. It’s called Officer Candidate School.

Ralph Peters, noted author and columnist, once wrote to me: “History is no longer about facts.  It’s about re-interpreting events (or ignoring them) to make a pre-determined ideological point.”

Boy did Ralph get that right.

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This is too good not to share.

“The Two Vietnam Wars” was written by Jim Guirard, 3 May 2010, in the “American Thinker.” This is his report condensed to fit my space:

“On Friday of last week, much of the establishment media reminded us of the awful 35^th anniversary of the so-called “End of the Vietnam War” – on April 30, 1975. This is only partly true, and now we need to know what the late commentator Paul Harvey would correctly call “the rest of the story.”

On Friday and throughout the weekend, familiar pictures were shown of American helicopters lifting people off the roof of the U.S. Embassy in Saigon as the South Vietnamese government was collapsing to the invading Communists from the North — and this was dutifully labeled again as the “first war ever lost by America.”

Since this snapshot of so-called “history” is highly misleading, it becomes vital that the entire story of Vietnam and its Cold War aftermath be clearly understood.

Unfortunately, we live in an age when far too little attention is paid to history — real history. What actually happened back then is often rewritten to satisfy political or ideological appetites of revisionists.

Evidence of this deceit can be found in America’s failure three months ago to memorialize the actual late-January 1973 end of the Vietnam War — or, more correctly, the end of “Vietnam One,” in which American armed forces fought which officially ended with the Paris Peace Accords of January 27, 1973.

But sadly, back in January, we saw not a single historically correct commentary about the end of “Vietnam One” in any major U.S. newspaper. Nor was there any detailed mention by any TV network “talking head” of the historical truth of a badly defeated North Vietnam’s exodus from the South. That was the imperfect but largely victorious and now-forgotten end of Vietnam One.

Remembered and loudly acclaimed, instead, is the infamous anniversary date more than two years later of the tragic end of “Vietnam Two” – which was when South Vietnam’s capital city of Saigon fell to rampaging Soviet-supplied North Vietnamese armies — and when televised pictures of helicopters rescuing American diplomatic personnel, Marine guards, and friendly South Vietnamese from the U.S. Embassy roof were first burned into our memories.

The deceitful tactic: Loudly and relentlessly propagandize a first-ever “Defeat of America” when, in fact, all American combat units had departed the scene more than two years earlier.”

It makes me sick every time I see or read something on Vietnam written/spoken by people who were probably not even in high school when we pulled out of Vietnam in 1973. Semper fi Mac!

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Don’t know about you but I’m a little sick and tired of all those who never served in Vietnam making uninformed comments about Vietnam.

Happened to be walking by the TV, have all eight major TV news channels boxed on one screen, and saw a scene on Vietnam. Tom Brokaw was interviewing a Vietnam vet and a peacenik. Didn’t take me long to see Brokaw, one of my favorite newsmen, and his interviewees didn’t know what they were talking about.

Check these stats out from the VA, Am Legion and DOD:

2,709,918 Americans served in Vietnam. This number represents 9.7% of their generation. Less than 850,000 are estimated to be alive today

3,403,100 (Including 514,300 offshore) personnel served in the broader Southeast Asia Theater (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, flight crews based in Thailand, and sailors in adjacent South China Sea waters).

2,594,000 personnel served within the borders of South Vietnam (Jan. 1, 1965 – March 28, 1973). Another 50,000 men served in Vietnam between 1960 and 1964. Of the 2.6 million, between 1-1.6 million (40-60%) either fought in combat, provided close support or were at least fairly regularly exposed to enemy attack.

7,484 women (6,250 or 83.5% were nurses) served in Vietnam.

INTERESTING STATISTICS ON THOSE WHO CLAIM TO HAVE “Been There”: the number of Americans falsely claiming to have served in-country is 9,492,958.

Enough said

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It seems the people who write for the major news media are falling into the same trap that many print journalist and TV news reporters did in January 30, 1968, in the Republic of Vietnam, during the start of the Tet Offensive.   In the recent attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, the Taliban scored a psychological victory in the info war. The Vietnam Tet Offensive attacks triggered a U.S. public opinion’s turn against the
Vietnam War and the Taliban may be trying the same thing.   

The New York Times, January 19, 2010, “Kabul Attack Shows Resilience Of Afghan Militants,by Dexter Filkins said: ”A team of militants launched a spectacular assault at the heart of the Afghan government on Monday, with two men detonating suicide bombs and the rest fighting to the death only 50 yards from the gates of the presidential palace.”  

Most should be underwhelmed by the “spectacular assault” only “50 yards from the gates of the presidential palace” where all insurgents were killed and only three Afghan soldiers and two civilians were killed. Unfortunately, a lot more were injured.   Initial news reports that said the insurgents penetrated the palace and that American troops had run to the rescue were all wrong.  

The attacks in Kabul had to have been designed to erode American claims of progress in the capitol and refute the Afghan government claim that some Taliban are talking about a reconciliation. It probably was not a coincidence that the Afghan government had earlier announced that they were in negotiations with some members of the Taliban.   As any military officer knows that in the heat of battle, first reports are usually wrong.  

The desperate communist attacks in Vietnam, including on Saigon, where most reporters lived and worked, caught the press by surprise. However, the military had been expecting an attack and had been on full alert since January 24.   The attack in Kabul, as in Saigon, probably brought many reporters in danger more than ever before including those “embedded” with a battalion of Marines.   The New York Times is often guilty of editorial interpretation of events instead of reporting the news.   I often wonder if the New York Times shouldn’t be sold with the National Enquirer and other sensational tabloids.

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